Category Archives: Blogs' Archive

It is becoming clearer and clearer that the Democratic party, as it is currently constituted, is not interested in representing working class and poor people.  It’s also  becoming clearer and clearer that people are sick  of their shit.
It’s a dilemma.  Something’s got to give and they – with lots of money and a lifetime habit of power, which  is more addictive than cocaine – do not intend for it to be them.

A few days back, on the badly misnamed ‘unity tour’ someone asked Tom Perez if he was on board  with Bernie Sanders medicare for all plan.  He waffled on for about 5 minutes, about how Democrats believed  in health care and wanted the best plan and blah blah blah, but that was clearly the wrong  answer.  The correct answer (if they were interested in unity, or if they were interested in helping working  class and poor people, would  have been yes.

Dianne Fienstein came out today  and said she’s not in favor of medicare for all, either.  So, it is becoming clearer and  clearer that the reason the U.S. does not yet have universal health care (remember back when we called it  socialized medicine?) is not  just that Republicans are against it.  A lot of Democrats are, too.

So, we are at loggerheads.  It is  a dilemma.  The Hillary people want the Bernie people out of the party, and the feeling is mutual.  Do we Demexit and hope we can build a viable third party, or do we Dementer, to try and change the party from within?
If I  lived in the U.S., I’d be changing my registration every week or so, just to fuck with ’em.

On a different topic:  People call me a conspiracy theorist, but  there is something odd as hell about New York and San Francisco both having power outages at the  SAME TIME.  I’m  not blaming Deep State, or the Russians, or  the Rothschilds, or  the Illuminati, or the CIA, or the power companies (probably on  the short list, though), or the FBI, or Hillary Clinton, or Donald Trump.  I’m just saying it’s weird and there’s no natural explanation for it, what with the two cities  being very  far  apart, and there being large numbers of  electronic  grids in between them which were functioning normally at the time.  Which leaves two possible  explanations: a real stretcher of a coincidence, or  human intervention.  My money (figure of speech) is on human intervention.

I was reading an article the other day about the causes of addiction.  It’s an interesting subject, and it’s interesting how often people get it wrong, although I’m not claiming to be  an expert or anything.  Any way, I was prepared to read, and then deliver a scathingly condescending reply, because that’s the way I roll.

But, I found myself  saying ‘Hey, that makes a lot of sense.’  The argument was that the better a life you have, based on what the author called ‘connectivity,’ the less susceptible you are to addiction  of all sorts: drugs, alcohol, gambling, cigarettes, you name it.  Big connectivity points were family, children, friends, stuff like that.  A job you  really like and a nice house got you connectivity points, too, I think.

First, as the author fairly pointed out,  if you are happy in your life you’re not nearly as likely to go looking for drugs.  Second, which  was kind of a  surprise to  me, you’re far less likely to get addicted, even if you  do have a wild  weekend with the buddies doing blow in Vegas every now and then

It’s the kind of study that probably could have been done just by accumulation of large  amounts of data, but they did a proper double blind study  and that was the conclusion.

So, it’s psychological after all.  Good  to know.

The main thing I found interesting in the article, though, was the use of  the word connectivity.  It’s true, we’re born connected  into one family and then we start one  of our own, building  new connections all around. We make friends, we network,  we join clubs, we enroll at universities, we align  around various sports teams and we are (in some cases) proud citizens of whatever country we happen to be from.  And we  want to connect  more.

We are scattered all over the place like little  Lego pieces, connecting haphazardly, and in a dozen different  directions, to the  world  we  live  in.  We are gradually  joining these Lego pieces  together  as we  build  a better society.

It’s not just about curing addiction.  It’s about building utopia.

Bill O’Reilly is finished.  Kaput.  We will not be hearing from  him any more.  Whereas losing politicians seem to hang around and remain influential, a news commentator  without a network is like a pizza without cheese – it just doesn’t work.

I doubt very much that any other network will pick  him up.  If he was  too toxic for Fox, he’s going to be too toxic anywhere else, too.   I suppose he could  wind up at some right wing website like Breitbart or The  Daily Caller, but that  would be a huge  step down  for someone of Bill O’Reilly’s stature.  This was the man who              single-handedly convinced millions of people that there was a war on  Christmas.  Probably his proudest moment.

Of course, his sacking had nothing to do with politics.  Fox  News was perfectly happy to roll  with his ‘war on Christmas’ nonsense, and all  of his hysterically anti-Obama nonsense.  It was the sexual harassment that did him in.

This was not the first  time he’d  been accused of  sexual harassment.  He was not only notorious for  it, he was notoriously bad at it.  Remember the loofah/felafel confusion?  Basically, he  was  talking on the phone to a girl and talking about how much he’d like to use a loofah to jam it up her hoo-hah, which I wouldn’t think is terribly sexy to start  with but at least it has a phallic shape so it’s as good as Bill Clinton’s cigar, I guess, but he  said  felafel, which is deep fried chick-pea balls and salad inside pita bread, basically  a veggie kebab, so that would  be  seriously unsexy and off putting, but he got out of that sexual harassment case by paying the girl a couple of million dollars.

I don’t know  the details of this  case.  Maybe the girl  was asking for more money.  Maybe there was more  than one girl.   Maybe Fox just got  tired of his shit.  After all, there is no shortage of crazy, right wing people willing to say whatever stupid shit pops into their  head while millions of people are listening.
They’ll have him replaced pretty quick  and nothing will change.  Nonetheless, I am happy to see him gone.

The tricky  thing about politics is that there are so many different issues going on, and everybody’s perspective is completely different, and even people  who agree with you on most of the fundamental stuff will disagree with you on  some things, because we are all  different people and that  is  both the beauty and the curse  of  humanity.

I just unfriended somebody.  It was the phrase ‘the Jew George Soros’ that did it.  I commented, saying ‘I’m Jewish’ which, in fact, I am (half), although I don’t talk about it much because it really is irrelevant, most of the time.  I’m not observant, I’m a total atheist (because if God exists, like  as a real thing, then what is beyond God, and what is beyond that, and what is beyond that?), and I’m  not  at all supportive of Israel, although I  was in my youth and spent a great deal of  time there.

My kids are not Jewish, because my wife is not Jewish, and we all know how that works (well, most Jewish people know.  It’s a matrilinear culture.  Father’s bloodline doesn’t count.)  This does not bother me.  Judaism has crappy food and boring holidays (except for Purim.  Purim is a blast.)  Hysterical comedians, but you  don’t actually have to be Jewish to get the jokes.  I don’t feel my kids are missing out on anything important.

I also am not a big fan of George  Soros.  Yeah, he’s made a big show of donating money to ‘liberal’ causes, as if that excuses his deliberate wrecking of economies.  I put him sort of in  the same category as Andrew Carnegie.  Yes, the libraries are a good thing, and then there’s Carnegie Hall, but in life he was a cut-throat son of a bitch and if there’s a hell (which I don’t believe), he’s roasting in  it.
If she had said ‘the evil cocksucker George Soros’ I would not have been so  offended, although I imagine some gay men might have.  If she had said ‘the hypocritical walking mound of decrepit, melting flesh that is George Soros’ that  might  be  ageist and appearance shaming, but I’d have  been cool  with it.
But, no.  Her idea of the worst insult she could hurl was ‘Jew’ and so she is gone from my Facebook page.

Free speech is important, it’s not as if I’d report her or anything.  But, life is too short to spend too much time dealing with racist assholes I don’t even know in real life.

Easter was never my favorite holiday.  To Christians, it’s important.  To everybody else, it’s something about rabbits and eggs, and hard boiled is my least favorite way to  eat eggs, and I can have chocolate any day of the year.

Of course, Czech Easter traditions are even weirder, what with the  whip and all, but the Easter trees are sort of pretty.

Anyway, a couple of political thoughts on  this day, since everything is political, like it or not:  the Easter Egg roll was not nearly as  big a disaster for Trump as it could have been.  So what if he didn’t order enough eggs or have anywhere near as many people  walking around inn stuffed animal suits as Obama?  The only thing that’s important (for a politician) is for the press to get lots of pictures of people standing around and  cheering his speech, and the press has become very adept at doing that even if it’s a small crowd.

The incident of him having to be prodded by Melania to put his hand over his heart during the national anthem does more to make her look good than him look bad, and Barron standing up on the balcony looking bored as fuck doesn’t actually surprise anybody.  Signing a kid’s cap and then heaving it into the crowd was a dick move, but I don’t expect any uproar.  The kid was a Trump supporter, which means his parents are just as big dicks as Trump his.
So, tomorrow we’ll be back to real issues.

Then, there is a Facebook friend of mine, who I haven’t unfriended because a) I like having a few friends who are  more radically left than me to make me seem moderate, and b) because sometimes he’s right and c) because sometimes he’s funny, even though he’s kind of  an asshole who goes out  of his way to offend people and then pretends to be offended at their  offense.

Like Easter, he goes all out on  what a bullshit holiday it is, how  Christians plagiarized it from all the old  village religions, where people would eat a breakfast of eggs and rabbit, and then go out into the tall meadow to have sex.  Except Christians leave out the part about outdoor sex.

He’s got a point, I’m sure he’s factually  correct, but he’s just doing it to piss people off.  In his defense, he does prove that a lot of them can’t take a  joke, and that’s an important point to make.
So, here’s the deal, the  way I see  it.   You want to celebrate Christmas and Easter as Christian holidays?  Fine.   Knock yourself  out.  Have a good time in church.  But the rest of  us would rather  just sing songs about  reindeer, eat, drink and give presents.

We won’t give you any shit, you don’t give us any  shit.  Because you don’t actually own the days of the year.  You just don’t.