Category Archives: Blogs' Archive

When the question of what to do about the Donald comes up, ‘serious’ Republicans say ‘Don’t worry.  He will never be nominated.  He’s a joke.’

I sure hope they’re right, but what about Dr. Ben Carson? ‘Don’t worry.  He will never be nominated.  He’s a joke.’

Every single one of them is flat out bonkers

O.K., what about Carly Fiorina? ‘Don’t worry.  She will never be nominated.  She’s a joke.’

And it’s true.  None of those three have ever held an elective office, they haven’t got a clue about it, and I sincerely hope they will never get closer to the White House than the public tour.

But what about the bridge-blocking New Jersey governor, who likes telling people to shut up at town hall meetings?  He’s a joke, of course, but he’s not as funny as John Candy or Chris Farley.

What about Ted Cruz or Mike Huckabee, who swear up, down and sideways that God speaks directly to them, and apparently God says some really perverted shit.  Jokes, right?

How about John “I’m not crazy like those other guys” Kasich, who says ‘Global Warming might be real, but that doesn’t mean we need to do anything about it.’  He’s a joke, right?

Let’s face it: everybody in that party is a science denier, they all believe that opinions (or ‘beliefs’) are more important than facts, they all want to gut social security, weaken public schools, repeal Obamacare and keep the poor poor.

And one of them will get the nomination.  It’s a joke, but it’s not very funny.

Lots of people are excited by the results of the Paris Climate Conference, which concluded a couple of days ago.

196 nations (That’s pretty much all the nations.  Amazingly, there’s no  exact number, there’s a plus/minus of about 30 or so depending on your point of view.  Is China one country or two, does Vatican City count, and what about Chechnya, Kurdistan and the Tamil part of Sri Lanka?) have signed an agreement to try and actually clean up the environment.

It’s nice that they agreed to that much, none of the world’s countries are actually managed by American Republicans, yet, but in reality, it is surprisingly little.  The wording of the  accord is long on “pursuing the goal” and  not very big  on enforcing  compliance.  In other words, it’s a mission statement, a resolution, but it’s non-binding.

Still, it’s a start and the binding stuff comes later on.  If America had lost its revolutionary war, the Declaration of Independence wouldn’t have meant diddly.  When John Kennedy declared in 1961 that we were going to the moon ‘in this decade,’ he got lucky.  If NASA hadn’t  pulled off a miracle, it would have been hollow words.

And  politicians are used to uttering  hollow words.  As are average people.  How many people have stood in front of witnesses and said “Till death do us part,” when  what they really meant was ‘or until we get sick of each other.’

So, we will see.  It is possible to clean up the environment, even just using the technology we have today.  Solar panels in every available spot, windmills in spots that get a lot of wind, plant trees all over the place, ban certain chemicals (the kind that kill honeybees), and encourage more public transportation, and we’d be well on our way.

If, in the end, we succeed, this conference may come to be seen as the moment it all began.

I was about to make a comment in reply to the statement “Left wingers like to think all right wingers are stupid” with the slight correction that we don’t necessarily LIKE thinking that way, but the preponderance of evidence COMPELS us to think that way, but my finger slipped and the comment was gone.

Not only that, facebook had suddenly added a whole bunch of comments and refreshed my feed for me, which I’m pretty sure I  didn’t  actually ask them to do.

Eventually, I decided to take it as a sign.  Despite the wittiness (and the truth) of my comment, I know  (from having said similar things before) that it was not likely to win any converts, and might put the original poster in hot water.  I don’t know him except for facebook, but he’s generally a fairly liberal guy who lives in an extremely conservative state, so he probably has to deal with right wingers every day in real life.

What can we do, though?  The biggest reason to vote against Republicans, at this juncture in history, is that of all the somewhere between 10 an 15 candidates left, there isn’t a one who doesn’t deny science, and logic.  There isn’t a one who has fully thought out policies, or any policies which won’t fit on a bumper sticker.  There isn’t a single one of them who respects knowledge.

That’s  pretty horrible.  But, their party hasn’t collapsed yet because they have supporters who feel that way.  Smart people think they’re so smart.  We go with our gut.  And the flag.  And the bible.  And guns.

The thing is, we’re not allowed to say they are stupid, even though they obviously are.  I’d just like to point out one thing, though, in case there are any stupid people reading this  (there aren’t): smart people can tell.  Not every typo reveals a stupid person, but some of them do.  And logical fallacies all over the place.

I saw one guy the other day, when chastised for writing ‘strait,’ as in a body of water, when he wanted to write ‘straight’ as in “Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve, stupid liberals” and when called on it, said “Spell check accepted it so you can spell it either way.”

How do you even argue with that?

Which comes first, the black hole or the galaxy?  In other words, is the galaxy a product of the black hole, which  would then have to have a spewing out stage stage as well as a sucking everything in a like a huge (i.e. galactic) vacuum cleaner.  Or, contrariwise, is the black hole a product of the galaxy around it, like a spinning marble of darkness that consumes all around  it and will eventually end us all.

I was just now watching a show on Discovery with that premise, and now I’m curious.  It strikes me as more logical that the black hole came first, but had to be something else, something exploding outwards, and now the black hole is the  burnt cinder at the middle of that explosion, but with a massive gravitational pull, which I can’t explain.

Then they talked about  wormholes, which totally seems like something out of Star Trek, I mean, who’s going to be the first volunteers to take their ship into a black hole?  But, it’s a cool thought.  A portal to another universe…

Isabel asked me this morning, while I was watching a similar program (weekends are for outer space and aliens), “How do we even know there are black holes.”

I looked it up.  It’s complicated.

Donald Trump has said more than once, and he said it again recently, that if he doesn’t get the Republican  nomination he might just go ahead and bolt the party and run Bull Moose, just for the hell of it.

Certain figures in the Republican party want Trump gone bad enough they’re trying to figure out if there’s some way they can kick him out of the party.

Can they even do that?  I don’t know.  They’re a political party, their internal affairs are no business of the government’s and  I don’t know  what, exactly, their rules are.  Being Republicans, they probably just make them up as they go along.

What would happen if they did?  Well, others would fill in the vacuum right away.  Probably Cruz or Rubio.

Trump would get plenty of votes as a 3rd party candidate because he is not fucking joking, folks.  Get over that scenario.  He has tasted the love of the  crowd, and he is going to hang onto that as long as he can.  But, with a split in Republican ranks, Bernie gets a free White House pass.  Awesome.

Also, Ben Carson has  made the same threat.  Sad, really.  The Republican party won’t cut Trump loose because he would tear the party in two.  They’ll dump Carson in a heartbeat.