Category Archives: Blogs' Archive

“Spurred by Capitol Riots, Thousands Drop Out of GOP” says the headline on the article from NPR. Thousands. Which is a lot is you’re talking about how many times you’ve seen The Matrix, or how many people were killed in an earthquake. It’s not really a lot when you’re talking about voters, in the U.S., which has a population of 328,000,000. Let’s say 200,000,000 are of voting age, and 100,000,000 are registered to vote. We know that, of all voters, approximately 50% don’t list any party preference. Of the remaining 50,000,000, there is a slight difference between the number of Democrats and Republicans. It’s enough of a difference to be measurable, but not significant, sort of like the lifespans of women v. men or the penis size of black men v. white men. (if you really need to always know who wins, in these cases it’s Democrats, women, and black men).
So, let’s say 24 million. I’m not looking it up, which probably would have been easier, but anything over 10 million would prove my point, which is this: Thousands is not that many. It which might be as few as 2,000, but it’s certainly lower than 20,000, because if it were over 20,000, a very common number if you’re talking about people who attended a Bernie Sanders rally, they would have said ‘tens of thousands’ because obvs, they are trying to convince you that it’s a very large number.
So, let’s be generous and say it was 20,000. 20,000 over 10 million is 1 out of 500. 1/5th of a percent. So, when they say ‘thousands left the GOP,’ what it means is ‘almost nobody left the GOP.’ But, that’s not the story they wanted to tell. So, that’s not what they said.

The headline read: Poll: As Many People Support Green New Deal as Legalizing Weed and my first thought was, well, of course. It’s generally the same people. We also believe in universal health care, ending private prisons, making rich people pay their taxes, a minimum wage, getting money out of politics, and so on.
But there’s a greater link between these two issues, and I mean going beyond the mere fact that they are both good for the environment, which they are. In fact, legalization of marijuana should be part of the Green New Deal.
It’s that they are both backed by science. If you believe in science, then you probably accept that anthropomorphic climate change is a real thing, and it’s going to be disastrous, that is, more disastrous than it’s been already. If you believe in science, then you know that consumption of marijuana has serious medical benefits, and no medical drawbacks. It is not addictive. It is never fatal.
If you believe in science, you are probably among the 63% who support both the Green New Deal and legalization of marijuana. If you do not believe in science, you are probably among the 30 or so percent who answer yes to questions like do you believe that the story of Noah’s Ark is literal, do you literally believe that angels exist, do you understand the meaning of the word literal, and no, I mean do you really, literally understand the meaning of the word literal.
So, why are elections always so tight, and why are we not even close to getting legal marijuana or a green new deal. Among that 63 percent, there are some who are very wealthy. I don’t believe that people like Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg don’t understand the science. They are perfectly aware that we need a Green New Deal to save the planet. But, it will cost them money. And money, to people who have money, is more important than the long term survival of humanity. It may not be scientific but it’s a fact.

It’s somewhere between disconcerting and terrifying, Mark Zuckerberg’s comments that he intends to ‘limit political content’ on Facebook, because I’m pretty sure he’s likely to cut groups I like, and silence voices I agree with, rather than just censoring hate speech, or cracking down on white supremacy, or televangelists, or any of the weird coalition of right wing nutcases who are the superficial justification. They vote Republican, and imagine Mark Zuckerberg does, too. He is a multi-billionaire, after all.
He may or may not be successful in his endeavors. In some ways, Facebook has outgrown Mark Zuckerberg, and become too big for even him to control. But, he’s the head honcho, so we’ve definitely got to be worried.
I think what the left needs, since it will never be treated fairly by the mainstream media, and now it appears we’re not going to be treated fairly by social media, is its own media.
I would call it Leftbook, but the name’s not important. There would be a mission statement right at the top of the home page, with 9 or 10 of the things we almost all agree on – saving the planet, universal health care, raising the minimum wage to a livable wage, getting money out of politics, ending private prisons, you know the list. In addition to news stories on all subjects, there would be comment boards for all these issues, for us to hammer out policy and discuss tactics. I’d go light on the trolls, I wouldn’t want to be a closed group, and we do want to hear all points of view. Light, but maybe not too light.
There are millions of us. It could happen.

I saw The Dig a couple of days ago, and liked it pretty well, but many of my Facebook friends are praising it as well, so it’s a popular show and let me just jump on the old bandwagon and give you my review. Don’t worry too much about spoiler alerts, it’s based on a true story and you can look it all up online anyway.
There were a couple of things I liked about it very much. Based on a true story generally makes for a better film, IMO. The action is not as dramatic and violent as in most things we see nowadays, but it’s more meaningful. It’s set in England, which I like. It’s a very pretty place. But that’s not it. Americans (I’m not completely an exception) like all sorts of British stuff, like Downton Abbey (which I never saw) and Sherlock Holmes, and Harry Potter, and James Bond, and part of the appeal is the way they talk. I don’t just mean the accent. In your average American film, people are just telling each other to fuck off all the time. In British films they talk all British like, which sounds posh, and better than us, and we like that for some reason. I think, perhaps, we tend to mistake etiquette for class, since both are in such short supply on my natal side of the Atlantic.
It’s not entirely a true perception. Although Americans are the reigning world champs when it comes to sheer world ignorance, the Brits are close to dead even with us, I’m sure, in the average amount of dickwads and backstabbing weasels. It’s pretty much the same the world around.
And it has lots of archaeology, which I find very interesting, and some history, but while that will keep my interest (loved Time Team, that was a great show), it was the personal drama of the people involved that really made it good.
Whenever I see a film that’s based on real life, I always wonder just how closely based, and go to Wikipedia to check. One character who I thought “No, they just made her up for the movie, to have a little bit of a romantic interest,” was Peggy Piggot, who was tempted to cheat on her sexless husband with a dashing young aviator about to go off to WWII and probably get killed.
Well, the dashing young aviator may have been invented, maybe not, but Peggy Piggot went on to a long and illustrious career as an archaeologist, and Sutton Hoo was not even her greatest accomplishment. That’s not a spoiler alert, since it wasn’t in the film.

I feel like maybe I’m running this topic into the ground, this is the third blog in a row I’ve written about it. In my defense, it’s the topic everybody’s talking about it and there’s still breaking news. Which is one of the good aspects of GameStopGate. If it wasn’t such a hot topic, we never would have known that Janet Yellen, Biden’s secretary of the treasury, received $800,000 from the Citadel group for speeches.
Now, we’ve been through this particular issue before, with Hillary Clinton. Stipulated, it’s not illegal to be paid for speeches. But it does present a conflict of interest, and Janet Yellen should recuse herself from any role in the upcoming investigation of Citadel.
I’m still not sure of the need for an investigation. We all know what happened with the GameStop stock, and nobody did anything illegal. Since then RobinHood, and their parent company Citadel, have blocked Reddit users from trading certain stocks (AMC cinemas. Bed, Bath and Beyond, and a couple of others) and now will only allow them to sell them, but not to buy them.
People who know how stocks work say this is stock manipulation, and prosecutable. I’d just call it breach of contract, which is prosecutable. But, the facts are already on the table.
Congress does love a good investigation, though. Everybody gets to stand up and deliver a speech, which is aimed at their constituency and often has little to do with the case, and then they all vote, and the status quo is preserved.
But, it will be real hard to go back to normal.
A Wall St. transaction tax has been suggested. This was also suggested by Bernie Sanders during the campaign and I think it’s a great idea. It would both raise revenue and slow down the pace of Wall St. trading, perhaps even prevent another 1929 style crash.
Making ‘shorting’ illegal has also been suggested.
If congress fails to punish Citadel, and does nothing to reform the situation or, worse, does something to lock small investors out so the hedge funds can continue to drive businesses into bankruptcy….well, you can expect me to have some very nasty words about that.