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Do you know how I know Bernie Sanders won the debate last night?  Because there are no blaring headlines saying “Hillary Wins!,” which you know darned well, from prior experience, there would be if it was even close.

In fact, there weren’t very many blaring headlines at all.  So, I figure Bernie must have done great.

Of course, all of my Sanders supporting friends on facebook (which is most of them, I think) have been sending links, so I’ve seen some good Bernie speeches (they’re all the same, actually, which is both his strength and his weakness), and that funny little moment at the beginning when Hillary walked in late for class.

The handful of Hillary supporters I know have also been sending clips, which I’m assuming were Hillary’s  highlights of the evening, and they weren’t really impressive.  “May the force be with  you,” indeed.

Still, no knockout punch, which brings me to my next observation, and conclusion: I’ve heard people say that Iowa, or Iowa and New Hampshire, are must wins for Sanders (or for Hillary.)

These people have obviously not been watching politics for the last couple of decades.  There is no more must.  And I don’t think either of these candidates are going to drop out, no matter what.

So, buckle up.  It’s going to be a long ride.

I have been watching a thing on Discovery Channel about comets and asteroids and all manner of swiftly moving, potentially deadly space debris.

Scary shit.  Even though we have a bit more knowledge of the universe around us than the dinosaurs did, we are no more prepared. If we get hit with an object that size, we will be just as extinct as the dinosaurs.

Of course, events like that don’t happen very often.  Maybe once every 60 million years or so.  Which means, from a gambler’s point of view, that we’re overdue.

One of the reasons Earth is only hit by a life destroying object like that is because we are shielded by our moon.  Our moon which was formed a few billion years ago when a huge chunk of the Earth just ripped off, and that also led to our atmosphere and to the stability of the Earth’s spin which gives us our pleasant and manageable mix of 4 seasons.

So, here’s where the Drake Equation comes in.  If it’s necessary to have a planet with a large moon that was formed by  being pulled from the planet itself in order for life to evolve, and to avoid asteroids for long enough for intelligent life to figure out how to leave the planet, and if that only happens in one solar system in a million, because it sure seems like a bizarre and random occurrence, then maybe intelligent, spacefaring species only exist in around 1 in a million solar systems.

Which means there might not be more than a couple thousand intelligent species in the galaxy,  and spaced pretty far apart.

I’m as much of a space enthusiast as anybody, but I’m starting to suspect that we might still be alone for a while.

This is still new  news, so maybe it’s best not to jump to conclusions.  Maybe it’s just a wee understanding, something that can be worked out, since theoretically  we all belong to the same party.  Maybe tomorrow or the next day, Debbie Unterwasserman Schultz, as I’m referring to her from now on unless she gives me reason not to, will issue an apology and we will go back to having a nice, civilized election.

Debbie Unterwasserman Schultz

Probably not.  This  has political dirty trick written all over it.  If so, it’s a rather ham-handed one that is likely to backfire.

First, the backlash.  Bernie is playing nice so far, but that doesn’t obligate his supporters to do the same.  I suspect that a few thousand keyboard Berniacs read of this perfidy at the same time I did, and had the same visceral reaction: the gloves are off.

I expected we’d see dirty tricks at some point in the campaign, but I didn’t figure it to start until a few primaries in.  So, maybe camp Hillary  is feeling threatened.

Secondly, even as a campaign tactic, trying to keep down Bernie’s caucus attendance, it’s not likely to be effective.  There is this thing called social media,and there is about 2 months before the Iowa caucuses.  It’s not about having some list of names of possible attendees.  It’s about feeling the Bern.

And watching DNC Chairperson Debbie Unterwasserman Schultz actually trying to sabotage one  of the Democratic parties candidates leaves me feeling the Bern, most definitely.

*unterwasserman is Czech slang for a swindler or a con artist.

Martin Shkreli has been arrested, and everybody who has heard of him is tickled pink.

Martin Shkreli

Of course, it would be nice if he had been arrested for being a price gouging weasel, a heartless extorter of the poor, a subhuman money worshipper, but there’s nothing illegal about any of those things.

He has been arrested for securities fraud.  I’m pretty sure he’ll be convicted and go to jail.  After all, it’s white collar crime so they’re not going to arrest somebody unless they are pretty sure they’ve got enough evidence to convict.

If it’s murder, or marijuana, you can be arrested just for looking like somebody else, but here there is a paper trail.  At least, I hope so.

I know, I know, rich people have good lawyers and he will try everything he can to get out of it, but Martha Stewart went to jail on roughly the same charge, and people LIKE Martha Stewart.  Bernie Madoff got jailed for a similar crime and he’s never going to get out of jail.

Also, if it’s a jury trial, every person on that jury will be saying “Hey, isn’t he the guy who wanted to charge $750 or a $13.50 pill?” and even though the judge will tell them to disregard that, they’ll be as eager to put the slimebucket behind bars as everybody else.

They should hold his trial in Madison Square Garden and sell tickets.  That would be fun. Cathartic, even.

It’s kind of like how they got Al Capone for tax evasion.  Everybody knows they arrested him for being Al Capone.  They still put him away.

I watched a bit of the debate this morning on CNN.

Trumps rant about how the American internets are just going to kick ISIS’s internets butts was quite comical.  Full disclosure, I’m not an expert on how the internet works either, but he sounded really dumb.  I think it would be fun to just ask him questions about all the different internets, and what we can do about them, from now on.

The main thing that struck me, though, was all the talk of war.  We are at war, we are under attack, Islamic extremists, why won’t  Obama say that, this is a war.

And Rubio, saying if we don’t keep spending kazillions of dollars on military equipment, we’ll have  the saddest, little, old air force the country’s ever seen.

They are all unhinged, as are all their supporters.  The U.S. is not at war.  There are no tanks massed on the Mexican border, no fleets of planes dropping bombs on New York and forcing everybody to take cover in the Subways, no Syrian submarines have been spotter near the Atlantic shore.

The war on terror is more like the war on drugs, or the war on poverty, than it is like an actual war.  The only problem is that people are getting killed.  Innocent people.

And, if Donald Trump his his way, there will be more of them.