Category Archives: Blogs' Archive

When you voted ‘Blue No Matter Who’ it left you wide open. You were saying to the Democratic Party ‘we will vote for absolutely any candidate you present, no matter how anti-working class they are’ and your wish was fulfilled. You now have a president who is going senile (There is a tremendous amount of evidence. Yes, they’ve managed to keep him propped up, probably a combination of drugs and keeping him out of reporters’ way except for very controlled appearances, but there is plenty of publicly available evidence, on YouTube, of Joe Biden forgetting where he was, what office he was running for, Barack Obama’s name, or the word ‘constitution.’), who is far more handy with women than feminists like (Yes, I believe Tara Reade. And, yes, I know Trump is worse. This blog is not about Trump. This blog is about what you get when you vote ‘no matter who.’), and is not at all interested in universal health care, saving the environment, raising the minimum wage, or legalizing marijuana (he’s against it). You can see all this from his cabinet picks. None of them are environmentalists, all of them have corporate connections.
You do not go into a restaurant and say ‘just give me anything.’ You do not go into a pet shop and say ‘Whatever, just give me an animal.’ You do not walk into a car dealership and say ‘Give me whatever you like, as long as it’s blue.’
That was a stupid way to vote, and the whole world is about to be punished for it.

Here are a couple more observations about Vikings, the TV series that is. First, I see lots of British people moaning and bitching about The Crown. Many people think Charles is portrayed unfairly, some people resent the portrayal of Maggie Thatcher (I think that’s coming from both sides), some are saying Philip is portrayed unfairly, as if hi isn’t an arrogant, entitled, casual racist in reality, and I’ve even seen some people defending Camilla Parker-Bowles on the grounds that “Hey, they weren’t boinking each other through ALL of Charles and Di’s marriage,” because there were maybe a few weeks after the wedding when they didn’t see each other. But I haven’t heard from a single Norwegian objecting to the characterization of Harald Finehair, even though if you go to Wikipedia you get an image of a beloved and popular king who ruled Norway for about 50 years, but in the series he’s a cruel, opportunistic back-stabber who exists at least half a century before he actually did. I guess Norwegians are a bit less obsessed with defending their royal lineage than the Brits.
Also, there is the oft heard maxim in contemporary politics “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.” Well, I’m sick of that. In Vikings, everybody is aligning with their enemies enemies, and then killing the ones they’re aligned with just as soon as possible, and it really leads to a horrible mess.
In modern terms, it’s often used to say that progressives should align themselves with extreme right wingers, because the DNC is an enemy to us both.
But, that way lies madness.

Astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson once explained, on Bill Maher’s show, a fundamental problem with the U.S. congress. “Law, law, law, law, businessman, law. Where are all the engineers? Where is the rest of life?”
It’s true. Well over half the people in congress come from the legal profession. Barack Obama taught law. Bill Clinton was the Attorney General of Arkansas. Kamala Harris was the Attorney General of California. These are not people who are looking for the best for everybody. These are people who are skilled at finding loopholes and helping their wealthy clients screw everybody else.
But there is no rule that says it must be so, and I think the newly born People’s Party, if it is to succeed, would do well to heed DeGrasse Tyson’s advice. First, it is very important that they field congressional candidates in as close to 100% of districts as possible. If we are looking to career politicians, we are looking at a very tainted pool and most of them are already committed to one of the two bloodsucking capitalist parties who are destroying the planet and oppressing the poor.
We should try to find doctors and nurses, those who got into medicine because they truly want to help people and cure diseases, because surely a couple of hundred of them in congress would be able to bring about universal health care, and that would save a huge amount of lives.
We should recruit teachers, because working in congress to get better funding for schools, establish a pre-K system (which is also important to working parents), eliminate college debt, and make college tuition free would accomplish so much more than they could possibly do in the classroom.
We should try to recruit farmers who know, firsthand, more than anybody about the disastrous effects of climate change, and want to really do something about it.
And some engineers. And some accountants. And some bartenders.

I just finished reading an article complaining about the Netflix series The Crown, but in the spirit of skepticism which modern communications necessitates, the first thing I looked at was who wrote it. I don’t recall his name but it started with Royal Biographer…
And that strikes me as true of most of the complainants I’ve heard so far, except some people complaining about Gillian Anderson for talking in that weird, wooden way but if memory serves me correctly, that’s what Margaret Thatcher actually sounded like, so I credit Agent Scully for the win on that one.
Of course the royals and their employees and sycophants are going to object to the film. It shows the British Royal Family as being a real, but very dysfunctional family. Whatever the specific words ( a lot of the complaints are just he/she didn’t say THAT, as if the writers have to get every bit of dialogue verbatim) used, they did ruin Margaret’s love affair, and pretty much forced Charles to marry Diana, after sending him to that Lord of the Flies prep school and shitting all over him for speaking in Welsh, in Wales, and they were kind of dismissive of Andrew, Edward and Anne, and they weren’t supportive of Margaret’s very successful diplomacy with LBJ, and Philip is an arrogant old, elitist who occasionally blurts out something incredibly racist or sexist without thinking about it, and the Queen really is amazingly out of touch with the lives of real people.
This is all information that’s available elsewhere.
So, if the critics of the series have evidence that some facts, or incidents, or even conversations were significantly misrepresented, then they can take it to court and let the people with funny wigs decide. Otherwise, they can just back off.

About a week or so ago I saw a photo, accompanied by an article, on my Facebook page. It was of a highway overpass somewhere in the American West, I think it was Utah, and it was a bridge for animals, so they won’t have to cross the road and it will save wildlife.
The basic tone of the accompanying article was “Wow. It works!” as if that were a surprising thing. These have been around for years, some places more than others, and of course they work.
Animals don’t think like we do. They don’t have language, and can’t read books, so you’re never going to have a good conversation about history, or politics, or great literature with a moose, but they are not so stupid that they would cross a freeway and risk their life if there’s a perfectly safe pedestrian crossing nearby. Animals actually tend to be pretty good about navigating their environment.
But also, road planners and politicians should know they work, because they have worked in other places. And that is a bigger point. When a program works exceptionally well, it seems to me they should be imitated. Places which have legalized marijuana are reaping numerous benefits, so why isn’t that happening everywhere? Countries with universal health care have healthier people, and no economic problems associated with health, so why is it not possible in the U.S.? China and Japan have been testing high speed trains for decades, so why hasn’t a network of them spread across the Earth?
We have all the ideas we need to make civilization work. Animal bridges is at least a positive step.