Category Archives: Blogs' Archive

Well, finally.  It’s about damned time and long overdue but I’m happy that the cop who shot 17 year old Laquan  McDonald is going to be charged with  murder.

Of course, that’s still a long way from a conviction, and an even longer way from actually serving  time, but it’s a step  in the right direction and it just may happen.

Of course, this does not bring back Tamir Rice.  It does not provide justice, or closure, to the guy who was shot while holding a toy gun in his hand, in the toy aisle at Target.  It does not provide justice for the guy who was held down and suffocated on the streets of Manhattan by police for selling loose cigarettes.  It does not provide justice for Sandra Bland, who was pulled over for a broken turn signal, arrested for resisting arrest, and murdered at the precinct house.  It does not provide justice for the hundreds of people, maybe thousands, who have been murdered stone cold dead by the police in recent years.

But, it’s a start.  At trial, perhaps they can also find out why it took a year to bring this case to trial, and why it took reporters over a year to see the video.

And maybe, just maybe, seeing one police officer go to jail will have a salubrious effect on the others.  We can only hope.

Godwin’s Law says that, in any argument, the first person to accuse the other of being Hitler loses.  It makes sense.  It is, obviously, hyperbole.

Unless somebody’s set up concentration camps and killed like about 10 million people, unless somebody’s built up a military machine that could take over the whole world, unless they’ve moved their armies into a series of other countries, spreading fear and terror across the planet, then you can’t really compare them to Hitler.

Donald Trump is trying to make himself an exception to Godwin’s Law.    He will probably never be another Hitler, because the U.S. in 2015 is not the same as Germany in 1932.  It’s not as impoverished, for one thing.

But, you can’t rule it out.  He’s the leading Republican at the moment and if he gets the nomination anything can happen.

That is why his statements about making Muslims wear an identifying badge, just like Jews in Nazi Europe had to, is so frightening.  That’s why his statements about bringing back waterboarding are so frightening.  That’s why it’s so frightening when he encourages his fans to beat up people who disagree with them.

Whether or not he’s an actual Nazi, he is running as one.  That is his platform.

And he has a serious shot at winning.

I enjoy my Monday morning classes.  Two guys in one office.  The first one is a talker.  His English is pretty good, although not nearly as good as he thinks it is, but it’s an easy lesson because once he gets going I just have to nod a lot and occasionally help him out when he can’t find a word.  The second student is nearly a complete beginner, but cheerful and easy to talk to.  He’s learned the verb ‘is’ and uses it for everything, e.g. ‘I is like cheese,’ or ‘I is work weekend.’

There is just one problem, which wasn’t a problem at all until this morning.  I got there at 8, maybe a few minutes before, and almost simultaneously got a text from student #1 that he would be 15 minutes late.  That’s the same as always.  Not a real problem.  In weeks past, I’ve usually had a book to read.  This morning I had a sudoku puzzle to finish.

And then, pretty much at that exact moment, it started to snow.  A few wispy, little flakes, nothing that would even stick to the ground.  It was the first snow of the season, and rather beautiful, in a way.

Still, I didn’t feel like standing around in it for 15 minutes.  The entrance to the  parking garage provides a bit of shelter from the wind, but still isn’t an ideal place to wait.

And, sooner or later, this is going to happen when a raging blizzard is going on.  I need to scout that neighborhood and find someplace that has coffee and is open at 8 a.m.

In the never ending battle
for the human race’s soul
they have the Koran, we have
Sex, and drugs and rock’ n’ roll

You Can’t Do That in a Burqa

If we, in the West, were really confident in our cultural superiority (and we should be), we would take in all of the refugees, on the assumption that within a couple of years outside the literal and metaphorical desert of the Arab world, they’d start to come around.

Of course, some are religious, and stuck in their old ways, and don’t want to learn the new language or adopt the new ways.  They are going to move into the neighborhood that has the greatest number of their compatriots, and that’s a vicious cycle.

How long does it take to break that cycle?  One generation.  Kids want to be a part of the culture of the country they’re living in, and they will shed their old ways.

It’s an optimistic view, I know.  And, Islam provides some unique obstacles.  Women, for instance, are basically prisoners.  They cannot go to a beach in the summer and wear a bikini, they can’t even shake hands with a man, which makes intermarriage really difficult to achieve, and intermarriage is the way to group assimilation.

Nonetheless, modern, secular, international culture will prevail.  We’ve got the best music, all the cool movies and TV shows, we can eat anything we damned please, and a person can have wild sex with a wide variety of partners before marriage and nobody thinks anything of it.

I can’t understand anybody not being attracted to that.