Category Archives: Blogs' Archive

As a Sanders supporter, of course you all know how I’m going to react to the Panama Papers scandal.  (which I’m very glad no newspaper has yet called Panamagate – perhaps we are finally over that nonsense meme).

Hillary bad, Bernie good.  But lest I be accused of simply being partisan, let me just leave this here: https://www.facebook.com/senatorsanders/videos/10154705986312908/

Sanders is amazing!  Not  only can he talk to little birds and appear behind Hillary in 20 year old photographs, he also was right about this.  Like hundred percent right, when nobody else was paying attention.  Certainly not those of us out her in real-world land, where most people only pay attention to politics every 4 years, and even then don’t bother to be well informed.

Hillary Clinton, of course, was Secretary of State  in 2011 and thus directly responsible for the Panamanian Free Trade Act.

Of  course, Obama shares a bit of blame for it, too, and it pains me to say  that.  For the most part, I think, he’s been a brilliant president.  He brought America back from the brink of economic collapse, he saved the bus from going over a cliff.  He got the affordable care act passed, over opposition that  was completely unhinged and irrational.  While he hasn’t exactly brought peace to the Middle East but he hasn’t invaded any new countries base on totally fraudulent information, either.  So, I’m bummed that he’s involved  in this, but there you have it. He is.

Obama brought us hope, but in a lot of key areas, there was no change.  Sanders will be a change.

I just saw that Hillary was linked to a couple of the people in the scandal.  I don’t really think that’s the issue.  She probably didn’t actually do anything illegal herself (she’s smart), and neither did her friends who were involved.

The scandal is that ALL OF THIS (Sanders estimates it’s about $100 billion a year) is completely legal.  Hillary made it so.

We had the first Alchemy poetry  reading in a long time tonight.  There was one in December, which I missed,because it  was at The Globe, with whom I am feuding.  It is a bit of a shame, since I think that’s  the  first one I’ve ever missed in the history  of Alchemy.
Then before that, we’d skipped November, so it’s been like half a year.  I hope they’re going to start happening regularly again.

It was a pretty good night.  Everybody liked the featured reader.  Her poems all at least said something.  I liked the one called ‘Awkward.’ “For those  of us who think that talking physics is flirting.”
Then, there  was an Irish a capella singer who was great, a story teller, which always breaks up the monotony a bit, and most of the poets were good as well.  I particularly like the one about (well, I think it was about.  My mind had been wandering a bit until it got to be super dramatic) about a Viking in Starbucks.  Threatening the barista with a double handled ax.
My stuff came out O.K., I think, got a couple of chuckles, but I didn’t really have an anchor poem, a big bazoomba, and that’s what I should work on for next time.  The big bazoomba.

Well, they say you learn something new every day, but that doesn’t always mean it’s  anything useful.

I learned today that you can’t convince a Hillary  supporter that Hillary’s shit stinks even if you rub their noses right  in it, but  I sort of knew that already.

I learned that people who point out  other people’s  grammatical and  spelling  mistakes are jerks and  nobody likes them.  It’s like scientifically proven, I guess. I didn’t go deeper than the headline.  It’s a bit disturbing, because they’re  talking about me.
When you’re commenting on the internet, you are commenting in public.  That doesn’t necessarily mean you have to bring your A game with every comment, it’s not a competition, but it’s in public.  You don’t want to disgrace yourself.
Writing could of instead of could have is the equivalent of picking your  nose on the bus.  Everybody can  see  at a glance that you  are a slovenly  cretin.  Writing lose with a double o is the equivalent of walking  down the block with your mouth open, and a bit of drool coming out.  It’s clear you  don’t understand the world  around you.  People cross the street.

So, learn these  things, people.

Then I learned about Salticidae, which  is the largest class  of spider with over 500 species.  They can  jump, and they are,  even  by the  standards of spiders, seriously ugly.  A friend of mine is interested  in them.

I learned today that my friend is weird.

Of course, I’ve spent a great portion of the day leaving nasty, mean  spirited posts on facebook,because that’s just the kind of vitriolic guy  I am, but I’m not going to spend my blog on that tonight.

There were a few good, in-between moments to the day  that I’ll  talk about instead.  We had lunch in the park.  Not  truly a picnic,since we didn’t spread a blanket on the ground but just sat on a bench, and  we had sandwiches from Boulevard instead of bringing food from home, but we brought the rabbit with us and let her laze on the grass with her little leash on and when I was watching her, she just sat right  next to a tree and when Isabel came to take  over I was giving her a lesson  on rabbit psychology, how they’d always look for the safest place  and just stay there and as soon as Isabel took the leash she started romping around all over the lawn.  Existence exists for the  purpose of making fools out of parents who try to turn a picnic into a science lecture.

Then, we spent some  time working on a jigsaw puzzle and, at  5 o’clock, went bowling.  Bowling is like English lessons.  I’ve often noticed that my once a week students, even if they  take lessons from me for years, don’t really make any progress.  Those who have several lessons a week, maybe for several hours a day, make very swift progress.  Likewise bowling.  We go once every  couple of months, probably no more than 4 or 5 times a year, on average.  Which means we’ll never get any better.

Then, a bit  more work on the puzzle, a few more nasty comments on facebook, and here we are.  Another day done, another blog written.

By now, I’m sure most of you have seen  the clip of Hillary Clinton snapping at  a Greenpeace activist who asked her a question.  If not, you can take a look at it here.

Hillary supporters see it as forcefulness and conviction.  A lot of people (fingers crossed) may see it as a sign that she has slipped off the rails.  Personally, I see it as prepared, calculated bullshit.

One thing Clinton supporters often say about her, which I don’t deny, is that she’s very intelligent.  This is a question she was ready for, and she had that answer practiced.  She may not have known it was coming last night, but she knew it was coming eventually.  Greenpeace had already challenged her over the issue in writing, and Greenpeace does send people to events to confront candidates with questions like this.  So, it was not a spontaneous outburst.

Consider her wording.  “I do not….I have money from people in the fossil fuel industry.  I am so sick of the Sanders campaign lying about that.”  It is not, in fact, a denial.  It is a confession.  But the tone, and the confusing beginning of the sentence, makes it sound like a denial.  So, she said she has money from people in the fossil fuel industry, which is true.

Then, ‘I am so sick of the Sanders campaign lying about that.’  She doesn’t say Bernie Sanders has ever lied about her.  She carefully said ‘the Sanders campaign.’  If that includes all his supporters on Facebook and Twitter, everybody who’s ever attended one of his rallies, then it’s probably true that some of us have said things about her that are untrue.  We are millions.  We are a wave made of many particles.

So, she’s covered her butt.  Still, I think this outburst will come back to haunt her.  Because she truly is a transparent shill for oil and coal companies.  She supported the Keystone pipeline up until September of last year and will probably turn around and support it again if she becomes president, because she has received money from people heavily invested in it.  Because she still supports fracking.  And there is no reason on this green Earth to take either of those positions unless you owe the oil industry, and you owe it big.