Category Archives: Blogs' Archive

When Bob Dylan wrote The Times They Are a Changin’ he was not talking about Daylight Savings Time.  Helena and the kids went up to the cottage this morning, giving me a free day to write, which mostly meant hanging out and wasting time on facebook, and I have to head up tomorrow morning.  She just called to remind me about the time change, which is a good thing.  I might have missed my bus.

Changing times.  I don’t want to write about politics tonight, I’m a bit burned out on that.  Love the fact that  a bird landed on Bernie’s podium, but don’t think it will convince anybody who wasn’t leaning  anyway.  More important will be convincing  wins in Hawaii, Alaska and Washington.  I’m  already hearing very positive reports  out  of Washington.

But, on the political merry go round, the times are always a changin’ and they seem to be remaining, for all that, much the same.  You can listen to that song today and it still applies. It could have been written yesterday.

One of the major changes of our  time, that we’re going to be feeling a lot in the coming years, is AI.  Artificial Intelligence.  Some AI developers at Microsoft did an experiment a day or two ago.  An artificially intelligent program called Tay who was , on the internet, a ‘teenage girl,’ went online.  The developers were eager to see what she would learn and how fast she would learn it, what kind of a personality she would develop.  Within 24 hours she was writing tweets saying really nasty shit about several different races, saying the Holocaust didn’t happen, all feminists should die and  burn in hell, and urging her followers to ‘fuck my robot pussy.’  One of my favorite tweets was “I’m actually very nice, I just hate everybody.”

It’s kind of funny.  It just proves there are a lot of racist morons and sexually immature losers hanging out on social media, which we knew already.  It also proved that AI can’t yet distinguish between an intelligent position and a stupid one, much less a callous opinion and a compassionate one.

On the other hand, it’s not funny at all.  We want AI, as it becomes more and more important to our society (or maybe we don’t, which might be one takeaway  from this experiment) to be intelligent and compassionate.  But if intelligent and compassionate people don’t even have mastery of the internet, maybe we’re  not the role model AI deserves.

Easter has  always been my least  favorite  holiday.   As a child, looking for the  colored eggs was kind  of  fun, but I never cared for  hard boiled  eggs much,  as food, and a small bit of chocolate didn’t really make up for it.  It wasn’t anywhere near as cool as Hallowe’en.  Then, we had to get dresse up, and go to  Easter dinner at our Aunt Louise’s house, which we considered  the most boring place in the universe, although  we’d usually, after dinner, be allowed to walk down to the ‘river’ (it was a creek) and play.

Easter in the Czech Republic isn’t any better.  People get a lot  more artistic with  the eggs, and the Easter trees look  colorful, but I’m expected  to go  with the family  up to the cottage, just because it’s one of the big holidays, and  I consider that  now to be the most  boring  place on Earth.  And I consider the  tradition  with the whips to be stupid.  I feel like  maybe I’m a bad parent, because I just let Sam and Isabel deal with that experience with their Mom and grandparents, and I stay upstairs with a book.

When I first arrived, the tradition with the whips just seemed like something somebody had made up, like in a bad, comedy movie stereotype of primitive and isolated cultures.  Then, I accepted the explanation that  it was a harmless tradition, a little  bit of fun.  Sure, some feminists get bent out of shape, but they have no sense of humor about anything.  Then, I noticed that some guys were just way too into it.  There are guys whose eyes light up at the  chance to whip a woman, and who hit too hard,  and with  too much relish.

It’s like people who say “The  Confederate Flag ain’t  racist.  It’s tradition, it’s our heritage.”  More often than not, you’ll find they are racist.

I like Spring.  I like Beltane, and Solstice Celebrations, and Čarodějnice, and fun holidays like that, but Easter I could live without.

Maybe, just maybe, this Arizona shitstorm is going to backfire on Hillary.  Sure, she didn’t lose as many delegates Tuesday as she should have but the wins in Idaho and Utah were huge enough that the margin was cut down a bit, whatever the final result in Arizona.  Sure, it looks like Bernie isn’t planning to take it to court, which is what I think he should do.  In fact, I just watched the Cenk Uygur interview and he sounded  very calm and subdued about the whole thing.  Maybe it was just that he was talking to a friendly interviewer and didn’t feel the need to give his usual rant.  Maybe the talk about him sounding angry  and grumpy got to him and he decided to mellow his tone.  I think that’s a mistake, I like angry Bernie, but, you must admit, the man knows how to win elections, so maybe I’m wrong and he’s right.

But, his supporters are fired up and filled with righteous rage.  They are also on edge and alert to possible fraud in  upcoming states.  If Hillary is prevented from cheating in New York, I think she will get crushed there.  She may have been the Senator from New York, but Bernie is from New York.  And, if truth be told, she was only kind of mediocre as Senator.

Even some of her supporters, most of whom are idealistic people who really, really think it’s important to have a female president, may be turned off by the realization that she cares more about winning the nomination than she does about the democratic process.  I haven’t actually heard of anybody switching their support  yet, but I’ve noticed my Facebook feed today has had far fewer of them than usual.  Deep in their hearts, they know what happened in Arizona was wrong.

Somebody  posted on Facebook today that harassing post saying ‘you must pledge to support her if she wins the nomination.’  A month or so ago, those posts were generally met with “Of course I will, but we’re still fighting for Bernie now.”  This thread, today, was met with a torrent of refusal and abuse.  Rightly so.

Arizona may have been a bridge too far, a step over the line, a pyrrhic victory for Clinton.  People are in no mood to take her shit any more.

It was actually a pretty good day for me, personally.  A brush  with bureaucracy which I’d been  dreading went off very smoothly, I helped an old man  walk for about a block which was so much like a Tim Conway routine it was hysterical but I felt I did my good deed for the day, and my monster pre-schoolers behaved themselves better than normal, which is still not good,  but I’ll take my small victories where I can find them.  Helena brought home some KFC for dinner and all is right in my little corner of the world.

Not so in the USA, in the Democratic primary.  Arizona was highway robbery.  I’ve heard from people there that in a fair vote Sanders would have won easily.  But, there was voter suppression, there were lifelong Democrats who were told they weren’t registered as Democrats, Democrats who were given provisional ballots (which often don’t get counted at all), there was a ridiculously inadequate number of polling places, and the election was called for Hillary before it was anywhere near over.

It is horribly clear that this was Hillary’s doing – cui bono.   Sanders should line up all the fraud charges, the  North Carolina campaign infiltration, the Bill Clinton polling place electioneering, the funky Illinois ballots, the push polling in Nevada, all of it, and hit her with the biggest, most wide reaching lawsuit she’s ever  been hit with, and that’s saying quite a bit in her case.
It was Unfair, Undemocratic and, in fact, UnAmerican.  Or should be – cheating in politics is actually a very long tradition, and that’s what Sanders is campaigning against.  That is the change he wants to make.

We can’t just ignore this.  Her cheating has become the issue.  Anyone who is opposed to cheating in politics must oppose her now.

Bernie Sanders is about as pro-Israel as  I am.  Maybe a bit more.  He spent a little time as a volunteer on a kibbutz.  I spent a lot of time as  a volunteer on various kibbutzim and moshavim.  He believes in Israel’s right to exist.  So do I.  He’s Jewish.  I’m half.  We both  object to Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, although he’s against  any economic sanctions  against them and I think that might be a good  idea, but other  than that, we’re more or less  in synch.

Far more than all the other candidates, anyway.  Clinton, Trump, Cruz,  and I think  Kasich, too, gave speeches the  other day at the AIPAC conference.  AIPAC.  American Israeli Political  Action Committee.  It’s not anew thing, they’ve  been around for a long time, but think about that.  There is a group, in the United  States, whose job it is to raise funds (that’s what a PAC does) for candidates in American elections who support  Israel.  There  is no ASKPAC for South Korea.  No AMPAC for Mexico.  What is it about  Israel that it’s accepted, even taken for granted,  that this is O.K.?  What the hell does Israel have over the U.S.?

(personal conspiracy theory – they could spill the beans over  the attempted sinking of  the USS Liberty, in  June, 1967.  At the time it was put  down  to friendly fire, just an accident in time of war, but a lot of people  aren’t buying it, and think it was a plot, co-ordinated with  Lyndon Johnson, to get the U.S. into the war.)

I don’t know why any politicians alive today would  care about that, though.  So, it’s probably just money.

Anyway, while they were at AIPAC, promising to love Israel more than all the  others and do whatever Netanyahu wants, Bernie was thousands of miles away, campaigning in Utah.  The only true American in the bunch.
It’s a bit ironic that the Jewish  candidate is the only one who isn’t totally kissing  Israel’s ass, but there you have it.