Category Archives: Blogs' Archive

I don’t know much about Merrick Garland.  In fact, I’d never  heard of him before today.  I suspect that’s true of the vast majority of Americans.  Judges are not basketball players, or  rock stars, or actors.

Merrick Garland

Still, I am disappointed with the choice.  Faced with the possibility of obstruction in congress, Obama chose a judge who should be palatable to Republicans.  He is male, he is white, he is even a little bit old.  He does not have a reputation for being  exceptionally progressive.  In fact, he has  been praised by key Republicans in the recent past and mentioned by them as the kind of guy Obama should appoint.

That makes me nervous.  Once again, Obama has  compromised before the battle has even been fairly engaged, and the Republican rage machine will see it as weakness and be emboldened.  It’s bullshit.  Obama should have picked the most progressive, liberal judge he could find.  And, if it  was a handicapped black lesbian, so much the better.  Bastards need to go on vacation eventually and, blammo!, recess appointment.

It  looks  like they’re going to stonewall this guy, anyway, just on principle.

*********************************************************

I just defended a Hillary supporter and, I must say, it feels good.  I’m aware of the ‘know thy enemy’ argument and if I defriend everybody just for liking Hillary then I’ll wind up with an all-Bernie page and not see opposing points of view.

I would give that argument some credence if they actually  were willing to engage in debate, but they’re not.  They either say “You should just give it up because we’re so far ahead we’re going to win,” to which I can only say “fuck you” but I never actually say that because then people would think I’m the bad guy, or (this woman’s particular transgression) “You should stop saying bad things about her because I love her and why are you saying bad things on MY page.”

To which I can only say “If it’s your page, how can I see it?, and if I’m not supposed to comment, why is there a box that says ‘comment?,’ and  if your candidate is so candy-assed weak that you can’t rebut my  negative comments about her (Iraq war vote, fracking, Monsanto, private prisons) then maybe you should come on over to the Sanders side.

But, I just defriended her.  It’s not as if I was going to convince her of anything.

I  am nervous. Not so nervous that I am going to stay  up another 4 or 5 hours and ruin a night’s sleep over something  I can do nothing about, but nervous.  The future of the world, to a large extent,  depends on how  people  are voting today, right now, in Missouri, Illinois, Ohio, North Carolina and  Florida.

To me, the  right choice is clear.  It’s Bernie Sanders, and that’s just plain obvious.  Hillary Clinton  is  part of that elite group that is running the world, which has always been running the  world, and  unless Sanders does fairly well today,  will  continue to run  the world.

That is, I am certain that  whoever gets  the Democratic nomination will win the presidency.  Either of them, in a one on  one debate against  Donald Trump, will make him look like a complete idiot.  Either one of them will manage to outcampaign him and, in fact, out fundraise him.  Rich people know Trump  would be  a  disaster.  Lots of regular Republican  voters will abandon him.

Here’s how I think it  will break down.  We’ll win  Illinois and Ohio.  If  we  can  pick up a third, I’ll be ecstatic.  If either candidate wins 4 out of 5,  it’s  going to be very  hard for the other  win the nomination.  I’m in it with Bernie to the end, but if we  don’t take at least  two, we’re in trouble.

But, it works the other way, too.  A Bernie sweep is  just as likely as a Hillary sweep.

Actually, though, I expect it will be close enough that both  sides will declare victory and the struggle will continue.

Going to bed now.  With  fingers crossed.

You’ve gotta love this town.

This  morning, after dropping Isabel off at school, I had an hour before I had to teach at 9 a.m., and I knew it would only take 15 or  20 minutes to get  there, so I decided to take  a walk from Jiřího z Poděbrad to I.P. Pavlova and from there just take the Metro one station to Vyšehrad.  It was a lovely morning, which means, basically, it wasn’t raining or  snowing.  We don’t have high expectations about the weather here.

At Náměstí Míru I saw something I’d never seen before.  It may be new or it may have  been there a while.  There have been many periods during my time in Prague where I would pass through  that square nearly every day, but I haven’t been through it for a few months, at least.  Near the  bottom of the square, heading for the exit directly  opposite  the  church, there was a brown, metal, rather ugly structure rising  from the ground, looking like a  rusty periscope.  I guess the genre, since  this was an  art  installation, would be Steampunk.

A different piece of art at Náměstí Míru, which means Peace Square

It was called  a Poeticon, or Poesiephone, or  something like  that, and there was a row of buttons with names of Czech poets next  to  them,  and a single brass button,  as to a doorbell or an elevator, at the top.  I pushed it, a red light went up and down the column, stopped next to one of the names and turned to green, and a sonorous  voice came forth from the mouth of the periscope.

Now, I must confess that my understanding  of Czech is pretty  weak, in view of the fact that  I’ve  lived  here 18 years, but I loved the concept, and  I do call myself a poet, so I stayed to listen, and I caught  something about ‘the wings of swans’ (a bit of a poetry cliché here) and something about  the water flowing by, and the  last line was either ‘sam budu sedět’ or ‘budu sedět sam’ or something like that.  I will sit alone.

So, it planted the seed  of a poem in my own mind, all about never stepping in the same river twice and sitting on the bank  watching the river, which is  both current, i.e. in the present, and eternal, because of the ambiguous nature of water, particle, wave, particle, wave, forever, and probably won’t have anything  to do with the poem I heard today, but that’s  all right.

It was still the coolest thing  that happened to me today.

We just watched two films, which is as good a way to cap off  a weekend as any.  The first was kid’s  choice, and it was an  incredibly lame teen  comedy  called “Mark and Russel’s Wild  Ride” about  a nerd who had to  get his driver’s license so he could drive the cool girl to the pool party.  It was badly acted (but heavy  handed overacting  is part  of the genre), slow paced, looked like Diary of a Wimpy  Kid (which I hated – all of them) and the  jokes were insanely predictable, but I still got  a laugh or  two.  When he  catapulted himself over  the fence and said he’d land  on the mattress, you knew perfectly  well he was going to land in the dirt, but it was funny anyway, in  a Three Stooges way.  The kid’s liked  it, and that’s the point.  I’m not sure  if  it’s  just different tastes, or if they  have way lower standards in films, it’s just like watching another TV show, whereas to my generation watching  a film is  an event, even  if you’re watching  it at home, on  TV.

Then we put the kids to bed and watched Inception.  Wow.  What a great film.  Sure, it worked as action adventure, and special effects extravaganza, but it also worked in the way that counts, as a great science fiction film.  They took a plausible, but not yet real, technology, and examined it pretty thoroughly, ethical dilemmas and all.  Basically, they could go into other people’s dreams and direct them to some extent.  Of course, they did this to try and convince the rich heir to break up his father’s company, because they were the opposition, which certainly should be illegal, but the film also goes into what happens when people  prefer the dream to the reality and don’t want to come back, and when  people stop knowing the  difference.

It was dark and, by  the end, I was wondering if there were any positive uses for this technology.  Well, of course there are.  It could be  an amazing tool for psychoanalysis, although that makes issues of discretion and confidentiality even more problematic.  Also, for couples, it could  take relationships to a much deeper  level.
But, in Inception, mostly they blew shit up and had gunfights and  stuff.  It was a great movie.

There are two topics  I want to talk about tonight.  Well, three.  RIP Keith Emerson.  What can you say  about that, though?  He was an awesome keyboard player, the driving  force behind Emerson, Lake, and Palmer, a legend from the golden age  of music.  He was 71, and he died.  My thoughts go  out to his family and close friends.  As far as his  fans, well, we’ll always have  his music.

The two political things I want to talk about, though , are Hillary’s  flub, and the  Trump ‘riot.’

I had quite a few arguments with Hillary people today, and it  reminds me  of arguments about Nixon, Reagan, and  Bush (either one, take  yourpick)  The question was always, malicious or just stupid.  It’s an unfair argument, since malicious is not  a defense, not an argument you  shouldbe able  to use to say “Well, he’s not stupid,” and  stupid  is an  inadequate argument to use to say “Well,at least  he’s not  malicious” and whichever argument we  choose to make  they will deflect  with the other  one.

Hillary’s supporters defended her statement (that Nancy Reagan was a hero in the fight against  AIDS) by saying “It was just a mistake,” i.e. stupid, not malicious, and one  went  so far as to say she had a “middle aged moment” which was an obvious  way of saying ‘senior moment.’  Which is not  an argument in her favor.

But,as in  all arguments with Hillary  supporters, they eventually just said “You’re being mean, stop criticizing  her, you’re  only helping Trump.”  Like their chosen candidate, they can dish it out but  they can’t take it.

On to the Trump  riots, which weren’t really riots.  It didn’t descend  into a Ferguson or Baltimore type situation.  I’m pretty sure no shops were looted, I didn’t hear of any shots  fired, and I suspect everybody’s gone  home by now.  They had to cancel a rally because the  protesters, who’ve been appearing in twos and threes and  promptly been thrown out of the rallies, sometimes with an unacceptable level of aggression and violence, showed  up in the thousands, and they couldn’t throw them all out, so they canceled the rally.

Actually, I don’t think this is a tactic we should pursue.  Let the crazy man have his rallies.  Protest in front of the building.  Make funny  signs about his tiny penis.  By all means take note of who’s there, let their pictures go viral, shame them.  But  don’t stop the rallies.  That’s not nice.  That’s not democratic.