Category Archives: Blogs' Archive

Part of the problem, a very big part of the problem, is bad journalism.  It is hard  for the public to make informed decisions, or even to make informed comments, when the information is not readily available.
A very good friend of mine, sweetest woman  in the world, is  of the ‘Vote  Blue no matter who’ persuasion, which I vehemently disagree with, as anybody who’s read any of my comments over the past year and a bit knows.  Anyway, she posted an article about how Democrats won a formerly Republican seat.  It was just in the NY state legislature, but that stuff counts, too.   I was about to make a snide comment about ‘Is he a Berniecrat or just your run of the mill corporate owned might-as-well-be-a-Republican kind of Democrat,’ but, I decided I  should read the article first, which I often don’t do, on  the off chance that that information was contained therein.  It was not.

That should be an obligatory item in any article about a Democrat  winning a seat.  It’s important, and lots of people want to know.  Lots of people base their vote on that kind of information.  It is journalistic malpractice to leave it out.  How  does a journalist know if the candidate is a Berniecrat or not?  The journalist asks.
Except the journalists don’t.  And that is a big problem.

Well, another supposed day  of the rapture – which, it seems to me, is becoming a more frequently repeating  occurrence, not as common as, say, school  shootings, but every couple  of years, anyway – has come and gone.  I’m still here and I believe I can safely assume, since you are reading this, that you are two.
World doesn’t seem too different, does it?  Have there been massive missing persons reports?  So, I reckon if there was a rapture, it must have been such a pathetic bunch of losers raptured away that nobody even misses them.

Or, it was just another false alarm.
I’ve got a Facebook friend, an Indian (as in from India) man, whose posts have been of a religious nature lately.  Sort of an obnoxious religious nature.  Since he’s seemed to be a reasonable poster up until now, I’m inclined to let it be, but the problem with print social media is that when you see a comment, and it’s just begging for an  answer, you may scroll on past, you may be stronger willed than I, but I suspect I am one with the majority of human beings on Facebook for whom that is constitutionally not possible.

It was about whether or not atheists can express proper humility, without the ability to  reference God.  Fortunately, it remained a civil discussion, despite our 180 degree difference of opinion.  I swear I do not understand the way religious people think.  Do they assume that humility was the invention of Christianity?  Humility isn’t even the invention of humanity.  It’s like the Christian view that morality is guided by religion.

These are the kind of people who say we need prayer in schools, after their son has just murdered four people in a Waffle House.

It has happened again.  This time the shooter walked into a Waffle House in Tennessee and killed 4 people.  Yup, you guessed it. An AR 15.
It is worth noting that it was a black  Waffle House and three out  of four of the victims were black, and one Hispanic.  There’s probably a race angle here.  I wouldn’t be at all surprised if we hear, over the next couple of days, of membership in some White Supremacist groups.
Another interesting angle is that this guy was not at all  unknown to  the  authorities.  He’d been arrested numerous times, like the time at the White House when he said he was a sovereign citizen and entitled to inspect the grounds, or the time that he went to a public pool, jumped in in his underwear, and repeatedly exposed himself to the lifeguards while threatening to fight them.  The police knew all about his Taylor Swift obsession, but he wasn’t stalking her… he was  convinced she was  stalking him.
In fact, authorities had revoked his gun license, at least in one state, and seized his guns.  They did, however, release the guns to the shooter’s father, who  said he’d keep them safe and wouldn’t give them back to his son, but he did.  Whether he was just straight up lying, or  if he  intended  to keep them safe but his son just wore him down, I don’t know.  Anyway, one of those guns was the AR 15 used in the attack.  In my opinion, the father deserves some of  the blame.   One, for the boneheaded  move of  giving the kids his guns back (for which he should  go to  jail) and also for whatever he did wrong  to raise such a  piece of  shit.

I sometimes question my children’s life decisions, but I’m pretty confident neither one of them is going to grow  up to be a mass murderer.

Every U.S. Senator and Congressperson makes $174,000 a year which, I’m sure the vast majority of Americans would agree, is at least twice as much as what they’re worth.  They’re seldom in  session, often absent even then, and when they rise to give a speech it’s just to get a sound bite on the evening news and not because the actually believe what is coming out of  their own  mouths.   Most Americans, truly, feel a bit  under-represented.  Some may have, at some point, written to their representatives in  congress, and got a form letter in return, but it’s clear they don’t actually give a rat’s ass what we think.
So, here’s a suggestion.  We should double their number.  It wouldn’t cost the public a thing if we simultaneously halved their salaries.  It would be the instant creation of 535 jobs, and maybe you’d get somebody who would answer your phone call.  It might, with a bit of luck, lead to people with a few more viewpoints than the Tweedle-Dee v. Tweedle-Dum group we’ve got it now.
But, of course congress would never pass anything like that because it would  mean cutting  their salaries, and diluting their power.  So, it goes into  the pile of ‘Good Ideas That Will Never Happen,’ like  having districts drawn by computer algorithm rather than by the party in power, to avoid gerrymandering, ranked voting, automatic audits for all members of congress, eliminating campaign contributions, and campaign advertising, and have the elections done as a series of 20 or 30 debates or so, and maybe tests, like “Aliens have arrived at Earth.  How do you respond?”, with some people eliminated after each round.
Maybe we need a law that congress doesn’t get to pass laws about how congress works.  Oh, wait.  Add that to the pile.

The DNC (which, I strongly suspect still means Hillary Clinton, although I have no idea why) has filed a lawsuit against Donald Trump, Wikileaks, and Russia, saying they conspired together to make her lose the election in 2016.

She’s swinging right, left and center, so to speak.

A lawsuit against Donald Trump makes sense.  Charge him with tax evasion, maybe even obstruction of justice.  Make him show his tax  returns.  Maybe get him on  the sex charges, I don’t care.  If you find something to send Donald Trump  to jail, I’ll be happy.  If the whole thing blows up in  her face and she winds up going to  jail her own self, I’ll be happy.  I’ll be happy either way, so knock yourselves out, “DNC.”

In the case of Wikileaks, there are questions with both the charge and the jurisdiction.  First of all, there’s nothing at all illegal (yet) about publishing information which is true, and you don’t even have to divulge where you got it, at least it’s that way in the movies, in real life I’m sure it works a lot different.  Anyway, you shouldn’t have to.

Then, there’s the jurisdiction.  Assange is under virtual house arrest anyway, has been for years over taking perhaps a bit much of a sexual liberty, but that’s not what it’s really about, of course, but unless the U.S. wants to go to  war with Ecuador it should probably leave Assange alone.
But, Russia?  How do you even go about that?  You, DNC, the leaders of a nearly extinct political party which itself is massively guilty of election fraud, are bringing a lawsuit against a sovereign nation, the land of the Bolshoi Ballet, and Dostoyevsky.  The land that put the first man into outer space and a land with enough nuclear weapons to end all life on Earth.  The land of bears and Vodka and hilarious dash cam videos.

But, you know what?  Go for it.  Let’s see how this plays out.