Becoming Friends

THEY CAME TOGETHER because they were willing to take a chance, to take a chance on love and reconciliation. Knowing that they were natural adversaries, they came together hoping and believing that they could find something better, could create something better. One group came from Massachusetts, the other from Kentucky. One, liberal, the other conservative. The bleeding heart liberal do gooders fearing the end of the world, wanting to change everything, the other, content with the comfort of long held traditions. Amid all the turmoil and acrimony of our tortured country, they knew there surely must be a better way. Well, it was worth a try. The folks from the north can see climate change in their own neighborhoods, and wonder why not everyone else can. The Kentucky folk, proud in their fundamentalist, patriotic roots, married to their livelihood in the coal mines, turned out to be less unwilling than expected to accept that, yes, the climate is changing, and yes, human beings may be causing some of it. But they know that without their coal industry, they have no hope and no future. Without hope and a future, how can people worry about the climate? Complete strangers, few if any of them had any expectation of success, of coming harmoniously together in love, replacing fear and mistrust with community. And yet, within the human spirit lives something higher, something more precious than mere political differences, and somehow, without anyone knowing or understanding why or how, this higher self emerged. They became friends. They began to understand each other. First, In Kentucky, then, in Massachusetts, they visited, talked, got to know one another. Gradually, the miracle emerged. When they parted company, they resolved to never let their new friendship be severed by petty political concerns, and to always remain friends. The Kentucky people did not want to let their sweet guests from the north go home, but, reluctantly, they parted company. They sill see each other again, they will be together always, and always, they will give the rest of us hope, the hope that if they can do it, so can we. At least we can try.

Reading Adam Smith Right

ADAM SMITH was an interesting fellow. Multifaceted, he was an accomplished moral philosopher, political scientist, and economic analyst and historian, who is generally given credit for being the first person the describe in detail in way in which modern capitalism functions, in his book "The Wealth of Nations", widely regarded as one of the most important and influential books of all time. The "Bible of Capitalism" is often seen as explaining capitalism with such clarity that it not only explains the free market economic system, but provides an unassailable argument in favor of it. This, however, is not altogether true. Smith, in fact, never uses the word "capitalism" in the book, and never uses the term "laissez faire", "leave alone', the term often associated with a lack of government intervention in the free market. He does extol the virtues of the "invisible hand" of the law of supply and demand, but uses those principles in ways not widely known today. Smith does not give his approval to people using their abilities to seek great personal wealth, and in fact expressed his view that economic inequality was harmful to general national prosperity. He believed that when the free market is allowed to operate unhindered by government regulation, it would naturally produce widespread economic equality, and that this was a desirable end. He not only believed in equality of opportunity, but also equality of outcome, a fact not well known today. He said that all government action on behalf of the poor is desirable, but that government action on behalf of the wealthy was never desirable. Today's exponents of capitalism use Smith as an example of logical justification of a wealthy class and persistent economic inequality, but smith in fact believed that a nation, any nation, was far poorer the greater the gap between the rich and the poor. In today's terms, Smith can be seen almost as much as a socialist as a capitalist, a theorist who believed that government intervention was undesirable, until it became necessary to remedy great social ills, such as impoverishment of the working class, or glaring inequality. And, today's socialists do not prefer government run economics for its own sake, but rather, like Adam Smith, for the purpose of making society more equal, compassionate, and stable.

Explaining Capitalism To Trump

IT WOULD APPEAR that Donald J. Trump could use a basic lesson in free market capitalism, (as well as grammar, articulate speech, common courtesy, and a few other areas). Hardly surprising, considering that Trump has been bailed out of bankruptcy by the taxpayers no less then four times, clearly demonstrating a lack of business acumen, if not outright incompetence. The purpose of a business is to make money, what is commonly called "the profit motive". To achieve this, businesses which are successful respond to the demands of the market place, producing, distributing, and selling such goods and services as are in demand. This is called "the law of supply and demand" in fundamental economics, and was clearly articulated for the first time in modern history by Adam Smith in his seminal 1776 monograph: "The Wealth of nations". Obviously Trump, a graduate, shockingly, of the Wharton School of Economics at the U. of Pennsylvania, has never read Adam Smith, or if he has, failed to understand the material. General Motors is down sizing its business, laying off employees, closing plants, as a response to the law of supply and demand, according to which in current American market conditions, the consumer products made at these plants are no longer in sufficient demand to justify their continued production. When some aspect, any aspect of a business fails to be profitable, a well run business eliminates the source of the problem, and redirects production resources elsewhere. Trump, petulant that General Motors is damaging his promise to bring back jobs, create jobs, and all that rhetoric we heard so much of a couple of years ago, reminded the company that he is not happy with their decision, that America has done much for it, such as bail it out of bankruptcy about ten years ago, a move Trump opposed at the time, and has given the company, and all other businesses, a huge tax cut. The president seems to be forgetting that nowhere in any basic economics class are students taught that corporations should feel a sense of gratitude and obligation for favorable government policies, and should continue to invest in unprofitable production to repay the government for its kindness. But, how could one expect a man whose only business success has come through high stakes gambling, rather than true business building, to understand basic economics?

Banning The Bible

HOMOSEXUALITY is a fact of life, a law of nature, God's will, if you will. It exists in many species of animal other than human. We are not alone. It is estimated that something on the order of five percent of human beings are homosexual. A gene for homosexuality has been isolated, proving conclusively that homosexuality is written into the very fabric of life, a deliberate natural mechanism, possibly for population control, but very definitely in accordance with the grand life plan of the creator of the universe. None of this matters to conservative Christians, whose tendency is to deny the existence of whatever they deem inconvenient to their primitive system of belief, and to invent whatever they believe enhances their own status as believers in primitive theology. There was a time when Christians denied that the Earth orbits the sun. Now, they deny the fact of evolution, and they deny that homosexuality is a biological, not a moral issue; unless troublemakers attempt to make it one. The Christian community has given us, among many other evils, Sexual Orientation Conversion Effort ,or SOCE. In this process, a gay person is forced to undergo extensive brainwashing to convince the victim of this barbaric cruelty that he or she is in fact heterosexual, and that he or she has merely strayed morally, or is somehow confused, misguided. Often people subjected to this torture convince themselves for a time ht they are indeed "cured" of homosexuality, but in almost all cases, the biological imperative returns, and the person has experienced misery and mistreatment for no beneficial reason. In California it is illegal to use Sexual Orientation Conversion Effort on anyone under the age of eighteen; a bill is now under consideration to outlaw the practice for everyone. The bill has been passed by the lower house, and is not being considered by the state Senate. The christian community is up in arms, claiming across the internet that California is attempting to "ban the Bible', and that California's fires are God's retribution for the Bible banning effort. This lunacy presumably derives from the twisted logic that since the Bible considers homosexuality a sin, to ban any attempt to eradicate it is to ban the Bible. Between homosexuality and the Bible, the Bible does far more harm, by promulgating falsehood; homosexuality does no harm, and in fact does a great service of enticing religious fanatics to expose themselves and their hateful, destructive doctrines to public scrutiny.

Loving Cats

FOR MANY YEARS I taught Western Civilization, and early in the semester I delivered lectures about ancient Egypt. lectures don't do justice to ancient Egypt; you need visual aids, maybe a trip to a world class museum of ancient history. I always smiled when it came time to make my favorite comment: the ancient Egyptians worshiped cats. My own love of dogs and cats underlay my joy in considering an entire advanced civilization with reference for my beloved felines, but when I said it, I was never quite sure what I meant. I'm not still not. Not long ago I heard an interview with a renowned scholar of ancient Egypt, and she siad that the ancients did not so much worship cats, as they paid very close attention to them. That, I can relate to. In fact there are in the Egyptian pre Christian panoply of deities, among their many incarnations of the divine, several goddesses who could and often did transform themselves into cats. The beautiful engravings on monuments attest to reference for cats. Speculation is that cats were extremely beneficial in removing rodents from granaries, allowing the people to keep their staple crops to themselves. That would inspire gratitude and reverence in anyone, one would think. Of the roughly three thousand years of ancient Egyptian history, cats only started becoming house pets during the second millennia; and their status remained quite high, although the process of "de-deification" had probably begun. The ancient Romans, always borrowing from other cultures, caught on to cats; to this very day stray cats are a welcome part of modern Rome, for the same reason; they drastically reduce the rodent population. I live in a small town in the middle of the United States, we seem to have a fairly large and healthy stray cat population, and I feed them, and "take them in", ten in all so far, but I think I have finally reached my maximum carrying capacity. (how many times have I said that before?). When you consider the absolutely primitive, cruel, and irrational nature of our modern religions, involving such nightmares as human sacrifice and eternal damnation in hell, the worship of cats, a symbol for the admiration of nature and life, doesn't seem at all hard to understand.

Stabbing America In the Back

WHEN PRESIDENT TRUMP took office, he ordered that the term "climate change' be removed from all federal government websites. Trump, a true climate change denier conservative, really doesn't care one way or another about climate change as an issue. he would be just a happy to be the world's leading crusader for fighting the problem. Trump only wants what most children want: attention. Tragically, he cast his lot with the dark side, the dark side of climate change denial, an attitude which threatens our very existence. Every four years the government issues a comprehensive report on climate change, its progress, its probable future course, based on the latest, most comprehensive research. This program was instigated by president Bush in 2001. The latest report came out this past week, and is alarmingly dire. Trump, evidently, arranged for the report to be released over the Thanksgiving weekend, hoping it would be buried beneath the holiday festivities, and would attract less attention, thus providing less demonstrable repudiation of his insane climate change policy of denial. When it became obvious that his clever little tactic had backfired - the public seems to be paying attention - the president simply shrugged off the comprehensive study as unfounded, unproven, unreliable. This is hardly surprising, however, coming from a person who cannot distinguish the difference between "weather" and "climate", an ignorance which, tragically, is apparently shared by most climate change deniers. And how often have we heard climate change deniers brilliantly pose the question, n the midst of a period of cold weather: "so where's this climate change now"? the fools would be humorous were thy not in such deadly earnest, as H. L. Mencken said. It is unspeakably tragic that Trump got elected for many obvious reasons, but the greatest of them is that by refusing to take action against the looming disaster to human existence, a disaster which is already being seen and experienced by millions, Trump is in fact stabbing his own country in the back. We are left to fantasize about some high school chemistry teacher, any of the tens of thousands in this country will do, explaining basic chemistry to the president. It'll never happen, and even if it did, Trump would ignore the explanation. it is not unreasonable, inaccurate, or unfair to characterize Trump's behavior, and for that matter the behavior of all climate change deniers, as unpatriotic, traitorous, treasonous. Any other description of this behavior would be dishonest.

Taking Notice, Finally

CLIMATE CHANGE has by now had a noticeable impact on every inch of the Earth, and it is difficult to imagine many people being unaware of it. Most of the human race believes in man made climate change, because most people have experienced it. In my particular neck of the woods, the growing season is much, much longer than it was fifty years ago, when I was a child. Spring now begins in February, and October is rapidly becoming a summer month. It used to snow where I live, middle America, rather frequently, but now, only rarely. Also, the weather has become more violent and dramatically changeable; the rain , when it comes, seems to come in drenching downpours, with relatively few pleasant, mild showers. Large portions of every calendar year in our area is either in a mild drought, or a serious one. The number of truly hot days, with temperatures in the high nineties, is increasing, and winter's are generally milder. Man made climate change has been occurring, to one degree or another, since the dawn of the industrial age, the middle of the eighteenth century when smokestacks began belching greenhouse house gases into the skies of first London, then all other European cities. Soon, surely, billions of people will be so impacted by climate change that our entire species will join hands to fight and reverse it, by taking strong action. Its already too late, later than it should have been. If Al Gore had been elected in 200, for example, the United States might not now be mired in our stupid, needles bickering over and ignoring of climate change. Soon, surely, the last dregs of the conservative community in America will come around, acknowledge reality, and start to help the rest of us, instead of getting in our way. The most recent, up to date report on climate change is frightening, and all new, improved research indicates the the problem is worse than we thought it was. Our grandchildren are going so suffer, long after we're dead. its just a matter ow how much, and how much we do to make their suffering less severe.

Giving Thanks

A SMALL CARAVAN OF poor, homeless, hungry, desperate immigrants, among them some criminals and other undesirables, with only their dreams and the clothes on their backs, approaches the land, and enters, without permission from the inhabitants. The rightful owners of the land, the natives, see this happening and disagree among themselves what to do about it. Some of them want to kill the intruders, while others want to drive merely them out of the land. Others want to continue to observe them, and keep deciding what to do. A small group wants to welcome the intruders, offer to help them, and try to get to know them. After much arguing, the native inhabitants did a little of all of these things, but, for the most part, they allowed the newcomers to enter the country, welcomed them, and helped them. it is surprising how often that scenario has played out in human history, and amazing how often the response has been welcoming, rather than turning away or killing the refugees. Maybe there is hope for humanity after all. Human history is the history of migrants and refugees. We humans spent millions of years living in paleolithic culture, mobile, always moving, in small groups. Now, in our permanent settlements, we can't stop moving. American history is the history of caravans of poor, helpless, desperate people coming to America, giving thanks when they got there, and working hard to survive. Whether its 1607, 1620, or 2018, its basically the same thing, even though they are all different. For instance, the 1607 Jamestown gang came for one reason only; to get rich by stealing. So, technically, they were all criminals. There are about a million reasons why it is wonderful to be an American, and today is a great day to list them. At the top it should say "my (ancestor's) successful immigration".

Supporting The President

ONE OF MY HIGH SCHOOL CLASSMATES posted on Facebook a scathing condemnation of the American people for criticizing Trump too harshly and too often, complained that no previous American president has been treated this badly, and suggested that we all work together and support the president. He was asking people to sign his letter if they agree, and quite a few did. I scratched my head when he said he has lived under five presidents before the current one, because he's my age, and I have lived under twelve presidents. My response was and is: "Every American president has been closely scrutinized and constantly criticized, an ongoing glorious display of American freedom and democracy. May we the people always speak our minds, and may we always be good citizens by voting, participating in public discourse, and always trying to make ourselves, our communities, our country, and our world better, through honest analysis."... Frankly, I think that (my response) pretty much says it all. When the infamous Access Hollywood Trump recording was given to the public, what was the appropriate response? sharp criticism, or support and approval? The answer, to any reasonable person, is obvious. I personally have not actually kept track of the number of blatant lies Trump has told while in office, but other people have, and the number is alarming: several thousand, and growing. That behavior on the part of Trump is shocking, frightening, and must be criticized often and loudly. Truly Trump often just makes it up as he goes, assuming that whatever he says is true because he said it. The arrogance and narcissism are alarming. The Mueller investigation needs to continue and complete, and then revealed to us, the American people. Apparently, a number of other disturbing situations within the Trump administration merit investigation, and to fail to reveal the facts in all of them would be detrimental to the country. We the American people pay attention to our presidents, and for thank we can thank the dear lord, the constitution, and ourselves.

Cleaning Up

A DEAD WHALE washed ashore in Indonesia the other day. The autopsy found ten pounds of plastic in the animal's stomach, including over one one hundred plastic drinking cups. Obviously, we have a problem, a major problem. The problem can be called "humans destroying the ecosystem" and can be solved by managing plastic and all other resources much more carefully, and cleaning up the oceans, the land, and the atmosphere. Whether it was the plastic which actually killed the whale, or something else, remains uncertain for the moment. It really doesn't matter; its the same problem and solution either way. it seems highly unlikely that only one whale swallows plastic, and much more likely that all or most of them do, and that it will kill them, if we don't do something. WE had better do something, fast. Already people are starting to ban plastic sacks and drinking straws; plastic cups may not be far behind. There are proposed techniques and systems for removing the millions of tons of plastic from the oceans. Humanity is going to have to "terraform" the Earth; return it to its natural, healthy state. Recycling, biodegradable waste, less consumption, slower population growth, stable, sustainable energy and economic systems, are all part of the answer. The best time to proceed in earnest with haste is the present, while we baby boomers are still alive, albeit barely, and the millennials and the next generation are coming online, and taking charge of their own future and the Earth's future. No matter who you are, you can change, and contribute. Plant a tree. Become a believer in man made climate change. Have fewer children. Buy a hybrid car. The list is endless, and we must take action now, explosively dynamic action, to save the future for our grand children.

Leaping Forward

WHEN COMPUTERS WERE INVENTED, nobody had any idea that one day everybody would have one. When I was a kid, in the nineteen sixties I read a lot of science and science fiction, and thought a lot about computers. To me computers were and would always be big, expensive, and rare, owned and operated by an elite group of big institutions and governments, operated by an elite priesthood of tech savyy computer people. Nobody else had any other attitude about computers, and their future, as far as I can remember. Science fiction writers would describe people traveling in time and across the universe, but they would always hat to find a telephone and a computer to use. A small group of people, including Bill Gates and Steve Jobs envisioned a personal computer, and started trying to make one. People like Gates and Jobs, Darwin and Newton, Einstein, ad so many others who have contributed fresh, now original ideas to humanity which work extremely well, we need more of, right now. We need someone to present to us the idea of capturing an enormous amount of solar energy and using it to desalinate an enormous amount of ocean water for human use, and someone to make us believe that we can plant and grow one trillion trees with in a few years, someone like Donald Trump. Another revolutionary thought we need is for someone to convince us convincingly that it is good, virtuous, and desirable to universally embrace the notion that each person must have his or her own religion, without exception. Someone else might demonstrate that free will and chemistry are the same thing. Mind foreruns all conditions, so the Buddhist scripture goes. If we humans can simply alter our frame of mind, our attitudes, our modes of thinking, to eliminate destructive and unproductive attitudes, and replace them with more enlightened ones, the future of the species can be promising. We can start anywhere. For instance, can we not all agree that deciding a person's worth by the color of their skin is utterly, absolutely irrational, and must cease?

Revealing Ourselves

WORDS MEAN THINGS. Personal integrity matters. When my fellow senior center member assured me that had President Nixon proceeded with his plan to nuke North Viet Nam in 1970, she, then a high school student like I was, wouldn't have been a bit bothered, I was at least mildly concerned, and maybe a bit shocked. Her comment sounded so horribly evil that it was sardonically funny; OK, maybe she was merely talking trash, blowing off steam? So what? There are many ways to do that, aside from expressing unconcern at the death, in theory, of millions of people. We never do anything out of character, speaking or behaving. As someone wise said, whatever is in us must come out. Whatever we say and do comes from within ourselves, obviously. That's why I would want to be very careful, if I happened to find myself in the middle of a turbulent, screaming mob, about chanting "Lock her up" unless I knew for certain I was yelling about someone who deserved to be locked up, by having been charged or convicted of some heinous crime. When on October 7, 2016, one month before the election, the Access Hollywood tape exploded into the public awareness, I gleefully assumed that it was the end of Trump presidential candidacy. I overlooked the willingness of people to overlook horrible speech and behavior in support of someone whose viewpoint reflects our own, someone whom we perceive as potentially helpful to our own self interests. The support for Trump, since Oct 7, 2016, is shocking and appalling in that those who support him must either ignore, overlook, forgive, or embrace the veritable plethora of vicious attacks on others, his constant lies, and the racism within himself he reveals daily. Maybe Trump supporters have an enlarged sense of humor, and love the entertainment so much they can't conquer their addiction to it. Trump is funny ,when he doesn't intend to be. If the people of California would simply rake and clean their wilderness areas, all one trillion acres of it, like they do in Finland, said Trump. there would be no wild fires, and no problem. Trump knows that no matter what he says, his knee jerk minions will lap it up, or ignore it, or not give a damn. That gives Trump the option of making up whatever fake facts (lies) suits him at any given moment, no thinking required. He has been perfecting this technique all his life, and meanwhile in Finland, thousands of good people who listened to Trump have gotten their rakes out, and are flocking into the woods, raking, and posting selfies showing the truth of trump's remarks. Aint it grand to be an American?

Bringing Back Monica

MONICA LEWINSKI is back in the news, after twenty years of not being in the news. For those under thirty, you might not have much of a memory of Monica,; the rest of us can and never will forget her, whether we want to or not. she looks better than ever, in this old's man's opinion. Time has been god to her. she must be about forty five now, and she is much better looking than she was at twenty one. She wasn't half bad then, but seems to have lost weight, burned off a bit of baby fat. She has a new book: Monica: Her Story", which would seem to indicate that she didn't write the book, but merely cooperated in its writing. A quick google revealed that she is an activist, a fashion designer, and television personality, so maybe she hasn't been quite as under the radar as it seemed. Her TV career consisted of doing ads, her activism was a crusade against cyber bullying, as good a cause as any, I suppose, and her fashion design career was a line of handbags, her first attempt to truly prosper from her relationship with president Bill Clinton and the fame it brought her. She has done pretty well taking advantage of her affair with Clinton to enrich herself and make herself famous, yet, until two days ago I had entirely forgotten about her, as I imagine many others had, so, her efforts have seen limited success. This book is doubtless a continuation of her lifelong project to take advantage of her infamy of 1995-96, when she was a media star, a star which began to fade when Clinton left office. I apply the same standards to Bill Clinton and Donald Trump, and I don't like what I see in either man. It amazed me that Clinton couldn't even quit chasing women just for the time that he was president, if no other. He failed to respect the office. Trump, I think, is far worse, but Clinton is bad enough, and I thought that while the Monica episode was ongoing. I rolled my eyes at Clinton for not being progressive enough, for lying too much, and for Monica, which jeopardized and cost so much. I wish my fellow Americans the conservative Republican Trump supporters would apply the same standards to both me, because if they did, they would have to dump Trump, considering how severely they condemn Clinton. Alas, Trump and his supporters seem to have multiple, innumerable sets of standards, depending on the situation.

Arming Everyone

THE GREAT AMERICAN GUN DEBATE long ago congealed into two warring camps, as most issues of public policy did, The haves and have nots. The armed and the unarmed. Those whose solution to rampant gun violence and mass murder is to arm as many "good" people as possible, and those whose solution is to are as few of them as possible. The arm bearing advocates would begin by selecting administrators and teachers from among school employees and strapping steel to them. after extensive, appropriate training, presumably. the rest are mere details; deciding. whom to arm whether it will be voluntary or mandatory, and all manner of other specific details and considerations. By extension, if it is desirable under current circumstances to are teachers, it becomes desirable, or worth considering if nothing else, arming a wide variety of other officials in a wide variety of other venues. Besides public (and private?) schools, synagogues, churches, and masques come to mind, especially considering that many our our American mass murders seem to be motivated by religious based hatred. What about libraries? Athletic events on college campuses and in professional sports arenas and stadiums? Grocery stores and shopping malls? Public parks? Museums? Under this plan, it could eventuate that for the average American citizen, it becomes difficult to go anywhere in public without being under the watchful eye of a gun carrying public protector with police powers. In England, and most other countries, there are far fewer guns in public hands than in the United States, and in all these countries, the frequency of gun violence is far less. There is an obvious relationship between these facts. In London, it is nearly impossible to step outside without being on camera, and it is becoming more like that in America. If there were far fewer guns in the U.S., and more cameras, would there be less gun violence? The answer to that seems evident as well. It is difficult to envision more and more Americans becoming interested in mass murdering because fewer people are well armed, and it is equally difficult to imagine those intent on mass murder to refrain merely because more and more Americans are armed. Most mass murderers seem to have already forfeited their desire to live free in society before they pull their semi automatic triggers.

The Rise And Fall of American Political Parties

AMERICA'S FOUNDING FATHERS (and mothers, though back then they no no public political power) did not like political parties. It is difficult to find one person in 1787 who actually wanted political parties to exist in the new country. It was not popular to want them, and fashionable to speak ill of them, as all the framers of the Constitution did. Considering this, it almost seems surprisingly that we have them today, and always have. They started to form when people disagreed over how strong the new federal government should be. Hamilton wanted it stronger, Jefferson didn't, and people following those two men became factions within the Washington administration; Hamilton wanting a strong national money and banking system, Jefferson wanting to leave most things to the states. Hamilton's plan won in the long run, as we can plainly see today, with our strong federal institutions, laws, and involvement in the economy and other areas. As the nation grew in the nineteenth century, political party control was in the hands of the few; the wealthy elite white males, unsurprisingly. They chose candidates and political leaders, set the agendas, and the masses of American voting age adults was largely left out. In the twentieth century, women were given the right to vote, the primary system was developed which provided the public to vote for candidates, and took this power away from the exclusive control of the men in suits and smoke filled rooms. Radio, television, and then the internet brought the masses of American close to the actin, to the political process, and spelled the need of the all powerful, closer knit, limited membership political party system. Our Democrat and Republican parties today are weaker than ever, in terms of centralized top down control. They have become, soft , mushy, and unwieldy, as demonstrated by Trump's take over of the Republican party with his right wing populist anti-establishment movement. It may be that both of America's major parties will fade away and break into various smaller groups, as society becomes more atomized. Demagogues with money and access, like Trump, might be America's future leaders, trying to govern the country with only weak pluralities of support, and an electorate eternally in turmoil and disharmony, hopelessly fragmented. From this chaos a parliamentary system might emerge, which could work, if it can avoid choosing unstable, unreasonable demagogues for national leadership. Corporations still run politics, then as now, and money is the method, as always. If we ever decide to get the money out of politics, first, we must defeat the corporate elite in a civil war, then, if the end of money in politics brings about the end of organized parties, we'll all just have to go it alone politically, a nation with an atomized electorate, just like the founding fathers intended

Just...Saying....It

I WANT TO KEEP MAKING the same point, again and again, but I don't, because it accomplishes nothing, other than to make me dislike homo sapien sapiens even more. So, I keep my shut shut, and my fingers moving. My point is this: Humankind can be justifiably criticized for seriously damaging its own nest, the ecosystem, for destroying it. We can be sharply criticized, justifiably condemned for, no less stupidly, needlessly slaughtering ourselves in endless wars, millions of ourselves, like some primitive, low life, barbaric animal, or something. You may have other reasons for despising humankind that I can't even think of, but those are my two big pet peeves. Also, our attitudes I find irksome, which underlie our insane behavior. We are so very very terrified, arrogant, and blind. Our fear and arrogant blindness consists in, for example, our refusal to just accept the fact that, as Einstein said "we don't know one millionth of one percent of anything." Take religion, for example. We have thousands of different religions in the world, and nobody, but nobody knows which one, if any of them, has the truth, or any truth, or whether they are all merely inventions of the human mind, intended to comfort us amid our fearful ignorance. (The answer seems obvious, however.) To all you devoutly religious people, Muslims, Pentecostals, whomever....just face it...you have no real idea whether your beliefs are correct. And then too, many of you turn right around, and in the same breath as you firmly embrace fantasy, you deny the truths that are obvious, such as, evolution by natural selection, and, for instance, climate change by human activity. These two things, among a few other scientific facts, such as the shape of the Earth and the periodic table of the chemical elements, are beyond dispute. They are, in fact, fact. We are all much too fearful, arrogant, and blind to simply tell the truth, to take the easy, simple step of being honest, to embrace what little we do know, and to simply say, generally, simply, humbly, honestly: "I...don't...know"...We convince ourselves that fantasy is truth, we deny what is obviously real, we refuse to accept our ignorance. So, let's all join hands, stop the planet killing and the people killing, and the needless arguing, and agree on a few basics: Let's all agree that we paltry limited little humans have no idea whether there is one God, two, or none, we cannot even remotely conceive of the ultimate nature of god and the universe, not yet, not with our current level of understanding. however, we do know some things what we can see, all around us, in front of our eyes. We can see the evolution of life and we can see the warming of the planet due to our adding tons of green house gasses to the atmosphere, among a few other things. And if we manage to survive long enough, maybe we will someday see and know more. Adrift in a world of our own ignorance and uncertainty, there are nonetheless a few precious known quantities we can rely on. The known and the unknown. We must be careful to stop confusing the two.

Sorting Things Out, Litigiously, With The FBI and a Few Strong Drinks On Me

MY STOCKBROKER, a good friend of mine, recommended and participated with me in an investment which produced disastrous results, due to lack of knowledge on his part. I don't have much money, but half of what I had, I lost. His corporate employer found out about it, tried to penalize him, and he resigned to pursue his career elsewhere, with another financial services firm. The criminal with whom we disastrously invested is now in court, under indictment for multiple felonies, and will go to prison, like Bernie Madoff, because he did the same thing to many people, Madoff style. (He and Madoff "made off" with other people's money....sorry, bad joke). I, angry, wrote a letter to my broker's former firm, which by now had assigned me a new broker, introducing myself to my new broker, and expressing dismay at my sad misfortune. A venting, if you will. I assumed my new broker would write back and respond to my personal letter, telling how sorry he was, that he couldn't change the past, but that he would be glad to work with me in the future. This only made matters worse for my friend and former broker, because he got more heat from his former employer and certain regulatory agencies, due to my letter, which I of course never intended. I had no desire for my friend to experience trouble, notwithstanding his incompetence in losing my money to a criminal. Trouble for him doesn't help me get my money back. I, like my broker, was ignorant of certain realities within the financial services industry. the criminal ho stole our money stole over a half million dollars from other people, which makes it a federal crime, and I had an interesting adventure talking to attorneys, prosecutors, and the FBI, which has a special place on my list of people with whom I have had interesting adventures. Hint; if you walk into an FBI office, you will push a big red ominous looking buzzer beneath a sign with an ominous message engraved in steel just above it, pass through a two feet thick steel, then a metal detector, then you will approach a six inch glass window in a room decorate in a very severe decor, black and steel, deadly serious and decidedly not with the approval of Martha Stewart. On the other side of the thick glass will be a young stern looking lady attired in all black, remindful of women in the nineteen nineties, but without shoulder pads. She will look at you with apparent contempt, as you what you want, and she will not smile laugh when you try to break the ice (glass?) with a few clever quips about your being sorry to have appeared in an FBI office wearing sweats. Note to self: never make attempts a humor or warmth with an FBI employee. they don't smile, laugh, nor exchange pleasantries of any sort. They mean business. The good new is that I hired an attorney, and we are going to sue the financial firm for whom my friend and broker originally worked, and it doing so will evidently do no further damage to my friend and broker. My attorney requires no money up front, but will work on contingency, taking one third do whatever damages I get, if any. if I get anything, drinks are on me, but please promise me that if I start talking about some investment that simply cannot miss, you will remind me what an FBI office is like, and that should be enough to dissuade me from further financial folly. One can hope.

Trump, Talking (again)

DONALD J. TRUMP is apparently suggesting, or outright claiming, that Democrats often vote, then go home, change clothes, and perhaps put on a wig and Grouch Marx face gear, then return to the polling place and vote again. It is be almost impossible to conceive of anyone, other than Trump, even thinking such a thing, but in the case of Trump, it sounds exactly like the sort of thing he would say, the sort of thing he has actually said many times before, early and often. Where he got this notion nobody knows, or actually everyone knows, from the fertile folds of his very unusual, and regrettably diseased mind. Obviously, no evidence exists to support his outrageous claim, but with Trump and other delusional psychopaths, there never is. Similarly, there was no evidence to support his claim that thousands of Islamic folk celebrated raucously the meant the World Trade Center fell, or that the Mueller investigation is a conspiracy between the left wing and the media to destroy him in a 'witch hunt", or that climate change is a Chinese and liberal hoax...or that three million people voted illegally against him in the presidential election, or that the election was rigged against him by Democrats, or that.....well, surely you got the point. Not long after Trump took office, several thousand sociologists and psychiatrists signed a letter attesting their finding that the president is several narcissistic, and many of them added that he is delusional.When its too windy to stack BBs, it is an interesting activity to google terms such as: "Trump's most outrageous lies", and "Trump's craziest tweets. They are all well documented, in terms of time and place. Amazingly, none of this matters to his supporters, none of it fazes then a bit, indicating that they manifest as level of delusional thinking comparable to his, just as Hitler's most ardent supporter believed every insane word the Fuhrer uttered concerning Jewish complicity in German national difficulties. We believe what we wish to. A shrinking plurality of Americans continue to choose to either believe, or ignore the inanity uttered by their leader. They'll eventually be forced to recant by the overweening force of social pressure, and political and factual reality, just like Hitler's followers once were, long ago.

Dropping the Don, Like a Bad Habit

ON INAUGURATION DAY, I promised myself, and the American people, including those on the far right who bear confederate battle flags, guns, including AR15s fully loaded, and on special occasion swastikas, that I would give the new president, the Don, a fair chance. A decent respect to the opinions of mankind, as Jefferson might write, and basic integrity, demand nothing less. Two years later I have done this, and am done. The only thing the don would have to do to entice me to like him even at this late date would be to announce, or to twitter tweet, that he received a message from nature's God, as Jefferson might write, and is now determined to fight climate change, and whip its ass, as only he, the don, can do, totally terrifically, as the don might tweet. Believe him, as he he might add, tweetingly. That alone, a mere twitter tweet from our Don, without even proper grammar or articulate use of English, and I would be on board. What might you guess are the chances are of that happening? About as great as the chance of the don (I call him that because of his leadership role in a large gang of organized criminals, called republicans, whose crime it is to fail to fight climate change) letting his hair turn from bright orange to natural grey, you might reply. You would be quite correct. Trump must be impeached and removed not because he likely conspired with Russian criminals to get elected, or because he has lied seven hundred trillion times, or because his has a cobweb of conflicts of interest, or any of the other multitude of reasons for his possible impeachment, but for one reason, and one reason alone: he believes, or says he believes, that climate change is a liberal, media, and Chinese conspiracy hoax, and that even if the climate is changing, it will change back. He actually said all those things; you couldn't make them up, but you could look it up, as Casey Stengal used to say. This of itself proves the man is wacko, and unfit to serve, as my bumper sticker proclaims. Thus, he refuses to fight climate change, and he actually encourages it by digging for coal, even though coal is being priced out of the free market by natural gas and solar and wind energy. Trump ignores the free market, and digs for coal, without even getting his hair or suit ruffled. For many years the Department of Defense, USA, has described climate change as the greatest threat to American national security. Thus Trump is disrespecting our nation's military, by ignoring its warnings about external threats to America, as well as by refusing to honor dead hero veterans of world War One because it was raining. I hereby renounce all hope of my becoming a member of his gang of republican planet killers, which means nothing, because I was never really on board to begin with, even though I gave the Don a fair chance.

Moving To Switzerland, For the Sake of Guns, and Military Security, After Losing A War

A NEW REPORT has been released, by somebody or other, presumably competent and official, stating in no uncertain terms that the United States might possibly lose a war, should she be silly enough to participate in one, to either Russia or China, or both. It might have even been the beloved Pentagon saying this, since the Pentagon is likely to say anything, being a very loquacious edifice. No other countries were mentioned, if memory serves, but, aren't two enough? Certainly we the American electorate might hope that the list pf potential ass kickers of America does not extend any further, to, say, France, Germany, or England, or even, heaven forbid, to Sweden or Norway, or worse yet, to those impoverished nations all across the fruited African plain which Donald Trump rather unflatteringly referred to as "shit hole countries". Good Americans certainly hope, presumably, that the American military has not sunk to the bottom of the pack, number one hundred and eighty something in the world, below even Switzerland, which, as of the latest report, scarcely has any military at all, apart from its national requirement that everyone must keep a gun in the house. That in itself is sufficient to entice right wing republican NRA gun packing types to want to move to Switzerland, and, by all means, by our guest. Switzerland, it would seem, is an NRA members dream come true. But, I digress. With thousands of nuclear warheads, and a variety of means of delivering them to unfortunate enemies, and fourteen aircraft carriers, how on God's green Earth could the United States of Aggression ever hope to lose a war, other than the ones in Viet Nam, Afghanistan, and the War of 1812, which were flukes, and which we Americans would sure as hell win, if we could talk our conquerors into giving us a mulligan. Maybe it has something to do with the level of intelligence and training of our actual men and women in uniform, or the number of them available? Like P.T. Barnum said, "nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people, so, maybe its the lack of smarts thing which is our potential Achilles heal. I heard this shocking report on the CBS nightly news with some cat named "Glor", on Wednesday, November 14, in case you want to check it out. don't take my word for it.And, if all else fails and our beloved U.S. of A. actually does meet its match in a match against some shit hole country, at least we can take consolation in knowing that one can move to Switzerland, and at least have a gun around the house, if not much else, and, as a bonuds, some great mountain scenery and skiing to boot.

Lighting Up Legally In Mexico

MEXICO, with a newly elected liberal legislature and head of state, is considering legalizing marijuana, which, in a sense, would change the personal habits of the average Mexican very little, since those in mexico who wish to smoke marijuana already do so with impunity, as they do and long have in the United States. And because many American states are legalizing it, the profit from drug smuggling pot is diminishing, rapidly. The logic is simple; decriminalize activities from which organized criminals derive profit, shift the production, distribution, and profit seeking from the criminal to the legal sector, and, magically, legitimate business people now earn the profit, and the decent living, without fear of black market competition. In the United States, we the people experienced this process in the alcohol industry, the only surprise being the length of time it took American law makers to come to an understanding of basic economic reality and human nature. Prohibition of alcohol existed in the U.S. between 1919 ans 1933, during which time organized crime was rampant, and the sale and profit of alcohol was exclusively the domain of criminals, by legal definition. marijuana was criminalized in 1935, at the behest of the newly legal alcohol industry, and the consequences of this horrible law has been evident for generations. Tens of thousands of good people have gone to prison in the U.S. for the fabricated crime of growing, selling, or smoking marijuana, and most of the incarcerated have been and still are African-Americans, proof of the racism deeply embedded in american legal and criminal justice institutions. Abraham Lincoln best expressed the insanity of prohibiting people from enjoying hedonistic pleasures: "prohibition goes beyond the bounds of reasons, in that it attempts to control a man's appetites by legislation, and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes. Prohibition goes against the very principles upon which the United States was founded". Lincoln was referring to drinking, gambling, and prostitution, of which he refrained from the first two, but indulged often in the third, as a young, libidinous man in Springfield, Illinois. The United States is essentially a progressive country, surveys consistently indicate. Marijuana is already being legalized, at long last, and gay and transgender people are gaining legal status, after long being treated like criminals, pariahs, and sinners, further demonstrating America's fundamentally progressive nature. The traditional Christian belief that whatever yields sensual gratification is sin is being relegated to history, thank the lord, as more people come to their progressive sense, and leave stagnant conservative views in the dust.

Discussing Religion, At My Own Risk, Against My Teacher's Advice

WHEN I WAS IN SIXTH GRADE, in 1967, our teacher told us that we should never discuss religion or politics with anyone. She didn't explain why, and I wondered why. I was afraid to raise my hand and ask, thinking that for some reason maybe children should not discuss those topics, because they were the exclusive domain of adults. The idea that these two topics precipitate conflict never crossed my mind, because as an eleven year old, I hadn't the slightest intention of arguing with anybody. I didn't know enough about either subject to have much of an opinion, other than, I thought religion was kind of strange, I still do, for that matter. I loved my sixth grade teacher; to this day she is my favorite teacher. I remember thinking, but not saying, that she was excluding from our conversations the two most interesting topics in the world, and that it was a shame, and was she really sure she thought that was a good idea? Over the years of my adult life, I have usually ignored her sage advice, and have usually suffered no ill consequences, because most often I discuss the twin taboo topics with people with whom I agree, which is the key to conflict avoidance. But every time I talk with someone on the other side of the fence, namely, Christians, and conservatives, it doesn't go well. So, I can see her point. Maybe Mrs. Stirewalt should have qualified her admonition to exclude from conversation only those with whom we are likely to disagree, and therefore argue. No topics are more explosive, obviously. Writing about them is another matter, however, and I do that all the time, like, right now. I despise political conservatism, and I despise religion, and my hatred of religion began in about the sixth grade. In 1543 Copernicus published his famous, seminal work, "On the Motions of the Heavenly Bodies", but only upon his death. He was afraid to publish in his lifetime, because in the book he demonstrated that the Earth revolves around the sun, rather than the other way around, and the church, firmly convinced that the sun revolves around the earth because Christ lived on the Earth and not the sun, would have killed Copernicus had he published while still living, and he knew it. In 1608, Galileo saw through his newly invented telescope the moons of Jupiter orbiting around Jupiter, and he had the audacity (reckless stupidity?) to say so, and for that, the Pope made him recant, under threat of death, and put him on house arrest for the rest of his life. The official verdict of the church was that his "optick tube" was bewitched, haunted with demons. No, I'm not kidding. Fast forward to today. The church never changed. It fought against Darwin, beginning in 1859, when "The Origin of Species" was published, and still does. All truly educated people understand that evolution is nature, and for the Christian religion, or any part of it, to argue against Darwin in the year 2018, which many Christians do, is sheer, unadulterated stubborn, evil, benighted stupidity, just as it was in 1543 and 1608 on the subject of earth's place in the solar system. The church should have accepted Galileo the moment he proved his work was correct, and the church should have accepted Darwinian evolution long ago. These days, I only talk about how stupid and superstitious and evil christian thought is, with people with whom I agree. Or, I write about it. The evolution deniers are impossible to reason with, as devout Christians always have been. The Christian religion hasn't changed, neither have I, and, I assume, neither has Mrs. Stirewalt, in her wisdom.

Setting Andrew Jackson Straight About Indians, Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone

ANDREW JACKSON did not like Indians, although he adopted an Indian child, perhaps from guilt stemming from his slaughter of Indians in various battles, including Horseshoe Bend. Jackson, a self proclaimed Christian, was actually the first American president who was openly, unabashedly Christian. (see Mathew Stewart "Nature's God: The Heretical Origins of the American Republic") Jackson, like most nineteenth century Americans, regarded native Americans as something less than fully human, owing to their lack of enculturation into European-American culture, and the absence of christian faith in their lives. For this, and for other reasons, Jackson and David Crockett, the hillbilly Congress person from Tennessee, became political enemies. Crockett began his political career as a follower of Jackson, but parted company over the controversy surrounding the Bank of the United States, and the Indian Removal Act of 1830. Crockett wanted the national bank to continue, Jackson did not. Jackson wanted to force all native Americans to move west of the Mississippi, Crockett did not, because, as he said, the government had promised the natives they could remain in Georgia and other eastern locations forever. Crockett believed in keeping promises. Crockett eventually became so anti-Jackson that he started referring to the seventh president as "The Government", a derogatory term, meant to imply that Jackson was behaving like a dictator. Crockett,like his idol Daniel Bone, preferred Indians to "white" people, and both said they never wanted to live where there were no Indians, whom they considered to be of superior integrity and lifestyle. Both Boone and Crockett, whose attitudes and lives were remarkably similar, kept moving west as they grew older, in large part to be away from white settlers and to be closer to Indians. In today's world, the native Americans are still living in poverty on reservations, and there are many controversies and difficulties concerning their voting rights, as illustrated by the recent mid term election. Crockett and Boone would have been appalled at the treatment of Indians beyond their lifetimes (Boone died in 1820, Crockett in 1836.) In Eastern Oklahoma live many Indian tribes today, and they have been granted the wonderful opportunity to operate casinos, a questionable enterprise, due to the massive corruption associated with casino operations. That The five civilized tribe (Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, Seminole) would be consigned to a corner of Oklahoma and would base much of their livelihood on casino revenues would doubtless be appalling to both Boone and Crockett, and both men would beyond doubt find it incredibly unjust that so often there would be barriers erected to the voting rights of native-Americans. all we can do now is long for the mores of Daniel Boone and David Crockett (he didn't like being called "Davy"), and hope to God that Indian votes finally get counted. Its the least we can do.

Getting It Right, Linguistically

OF THE MILLION OR SO words in the highly eclectic much evolved English language, there are some which merit special attention, and it is a shame that they are often misused, or altogether neglected. My father once commented that he considered it a shame that the word "gay" had been appropriated by the homosexual community, people he called "queers", because he asserted that the perfectly fine word had been ruined, somehow. He didn't specify how, but my assumption is that since he was conservative, heavily biased against gay folks, he wanted the word 'gay" to mean only "happy". Well, I could not've disagreed more. (My father and I often disagreed, but still loved each other. Oh, that we could all do that). The essential fact about words is that they acquire cannotations over time, as well as their stone engraved denotations, and, well, no mater what term we use to describe homosexuals, the word inevitably becomes associated with negative, hateful overtones, owing to the pervasive hatred of gay folks by conservatives, especially Christians.(to hate the sin and love the sinner is a false, cowardly concept, intended only to preserve a hater's false sense of decency and self respect. We are what we do, at least in part, after all.) Similarly, the words "moron", "idiot", and "imbecile" once upon a time were formal medical terms describing people with cognitive impairments,and were not nearly as pejorative as they are today. Alas, "moron" became "retarded", retarded became "mentally handicapped", mentally handicapped became "mentally disabled', and, most recently mentally disabled has become "cognitively impaired", or whatever, all on account of the tendency to "demonize" ("demonize" is a currently very popular word, as is "amazing") any and all descriptors pertaining to people who are widely despised or ridiculed. For the moment,my pet peeve is our current national obsession, or habit if you will, of misusing the word "gubernatorial", be replacing it with ""gubenatorial". As a nation, we the people, and we the media, have either decided collectively or accidently to leave out the "R", which can be seen as politically incorrect ant-R discrimination. Goober nuh tor ee ul, has thus become gooben na tor ee ul. During the recent campaign season, this was obvious, and everyone, yes everyone, was doing it wrong. I have never seen any pronunciation guide indicating that the "R" is silent, but society has seemingly decided that indeed it is.

Giving Facebook A Try

OF THE SEVERAL ESSAYS this website has published on the topic of "FACEBOOK", none have been especially flattering. They have emphasized the monetizing and commodification of personal information, and other various questionable practices the corporation engages in. But, facts are facts, it is what it is, as everyone is fond of saying; there is, in the end, no way around Facebook. Facebook is omnipresent, Facebook is the answer, evidently, Facebook, in a word, is king, or queen, for the sake of gender equality. so I signed up and got started. My first few friends were people whose intellects and post I respected, and I responded to what they had to say. My comments about their comments and posts tended to get "liked", which flattered me, and created within me a sense of wanting to further participate, a sense of belonging, a sense of being ass kickingly "cool". So, I proceeded to add friends and post stuff my own self. No original posts at first, merely a bit of sharing of material I thought socially relevant, kitten cute, or profound. Again, the likes. A few people began to ask for my friendship, to which i graciously acceded, except in a few instances when, head up butt, I forgot to click on the appropriate button. I noticed that as my list of friends grew, the list of friends on the right side of my page did not add them on, and to this day, my list only lists the original few, and not the later arrivals. I'm sure, that with the help of a teenager or two, I can push the right button, and complete the friendly update. It begins to seem to me that Facebook has its uses, for exchanging info and photos with people you ave known long, and wish to remain in contact with, without the odious burden of paper, pen, and stamp, or telephonic talking at the same time syndrome. And yet, there is a certain feeling of unfulfillment stemming from the fact that almost all communication on the platform consists on sound bytes, or, if you will "word bytes", quick, simple responses, not thorough, complete, insightful commentary and conversation. The verdict here is that Facebook has value, and should be utilized, but that one out not think of it as a replacement for other, better forms of communication, and one should keep on hand paper, pen, stamps, email, phones, both land and smar,t and above all, the ever present iconic cup of coffee for those increasingly rare but increasing valuable face to face interfaces.

Making Gay People Straight Christians

AMONG THE MANY manifestations of insanity inherent in the Christian religion is the notion that to be homosexual is sinful, will result in consignment to eternal damnation in hell,( an imaginary place created not by any anthropomorphic deity living in the sky, but by the human imagination), and that a homosexual person can be converted to heterosexuality by a process called "conversion therapy". Conversion therapy harms people severely, as is well documented. This is because it is predicated on the insanity that it is wrong, and "unnatural" to be gay, and that being gay is what happens to people who are raised wrong, do not accept Christ, and is the result of poor environmental circumstances rather than genetic predisposition.. In fact, there exists, and has been isolated, a gene for homosexuality, so, so much for the Christian notion of a person being bad, and thus being gay. As late as the nineteen sixties it was illegal to be homosexual in America, and still is in many countries Little wonder that gay folks have only recently begun to "come out of the closet", and live openly gay lifestyles. The proscription against homosexuality is ancient, and is probably to a certain extent hard wired into the human psyche, having originated in ancient times when most people were aware only of their immediate tribal group, fearful of their groups survival chances, and greatly inclined to disparage any member who failed to produce offspring to contribute to the tribe's survival chances. the bible explicitly condemns homosexuality, for example. In the mofern world we are not only acutely aware that all threats to human survival have nothing to do with any possibility that the human species will fail to reproduce in sufficient numbers, but quite the opposite; many of the current threats to the likelihood of humankind continuing are related to the fact that the human planetary population is actually far too great, growing far too rapidly, and seems destined to reach unsustainable numbers, if it already hasn't. No society on record has ever explicitly approved of homosexuality, which also probably has something to do with the fact that an overwhelmingly majority of people are heterosexual, for obvious reasons, and always have been. for the standpoint of human survival, the species may well have reached the point wherein homosexuality should not only be tolerated, and indeed accepted, but actually encouraged, for teh sake of human survival.

Trumping Up Charges of Land Mismanagement As Primary Wildfire Causation

PRESIDENT TRUMP, tweetingly, with his signature singular lack of articulation or tact, has indicated quite clearly that the raging wildfires in California are entirely unnecessary, should not have happened, have nothing to do with climate change, a lack of rainfall, lightening strikes or the incidental spark from the incidental cigarette, but rather, are entirely the result of of absolutely horrible, totally terrible mismanagement, by, by implication, government agencies of various sorts. This wildly fantastic and typically insane assertion by the unconvincingly elected President accomplishes for the head of gangster state several presumed objectives. One, it places responsibility for the conflagration squarely upon the massive shoulders of overreaching, regulation ridden big government, thereby substantiating, at least in the convoluted minds of conservative Trump votaries,the stale conservative meme that there are simply too many government agencies operating too intrusively in the land of the free market. furthermore, it seems to imply that not only is there something that he (Trump( can do about it, but something that he will do about it; namely, stop sending money to all federal agencies which have anything to do with land management. Also, it gets Trump's narcissistic name back in the headlines, where he (Trump) seems to want it eternally placed. Heaven forbid that the firefighting heroes be allowed to simply go about their business of saving billions of dollars of property,millions of acres of wilderness, and hundreds of lives, without any comment being made by the Don. After two years of this bull carp, the lies, the vicious slandering, the lack of facility using the English language, there must be about a quintrillion reasons why Trump and his gang of indictees should and must be removed from civilized humanity, and he keeps adding to that bloated number every day. Trump, the consummate critic of overreaching big government, who with the stroke of a pen wishes to eliminate amendments to the constitution. If this presidential administration and the people who support it were not verifiably real, they would make a rather second rate but mildly amusing dystopian science fiction movie with political processes run amok as its central theme.

Defining Transgender Folks Out Of Existence

THE DEPARTMENT OF HUMAN SERVICES, which in the Trump administration could aptly be renamed "The Department Of Human Disservices" is fully intending, according to a leaked document.,to reclassify transgender people, in essence to reclassify them according to their gender before they went to all that trouble to change their sex. The new classification will consist of identifying a person's gender based on whether the person's genitalia at birth were male, or female. Thus, for all intents and purposes, transgender people will be eliminated from the realm of the existing, since there will now be a complete failure to acknowledge transgender people as they currently exist. Possible motives for this can only engender speculation at this point. Perhaps President Trump, in a rare (or maybe not so rare) fit of pique and pettiness, has decided that he has had quite enough of people becoming dissatisfied with their God given genitalia, and has decided that no matter the expense, inconvenience, and trouble to which one has gone to become a gender other than that of which one was born, rejects the transition, and determines to stamp it out. Somehow, that seems plausible. Or, it may be that within the apparatus of the federal government it has been decided that transgender folks really do not exist, and that therefore to consider them as actually being present is without merit. It is frankly difficult to imagine any possible motive for this transgender refutation which has any sort of noble or generous origin or intent. It is very easy to imagine this reclassification to have emerged from within the twisted minds of people who despise transgender folk, think of them as "freaks", rather than people, and wish to eliminate them from society, if only by virtue of redefining them. Without question this action bespeaks the hidden hand of conservatism and Christianity, both philosophies of which are widely known to despise any form of sexual behavior, orientation, or culture which departs in the most minute manner from what their votaries consider to be morally acceptable. Aside from the well known fact that the American federal government is a secular rather than a religious entity, and that it is neither conservative nor liberal inherently, but open to all political persuasions, it begins to appear that christian conservatism has insinuated itself extremely snugly into the framework of the federal government apparatus. And this is a damned shame, because conservative christian values are not, one might surprisingly find, the values of Americans at large, being less popular nowadays than progressive and religiously diverse values, and in particular, civic values. Besides which, it is a damned shame that transgender people will apparently shortly be removed from existence by the U.S. government, considering that they shall remain quite demonstrably corporeal, whether some cockeyed government agency wants them to, or not.

Hanging Out With Riotously Ribald Carlin

GEORGE CARLIN woulda been one helluava guy to party with, what with the cocaine, booze, jokes and all. You can almost imagine hanging with him and his wife, and letting him just improvise, while you sit back, blow a fattie, and listen. If memory serves, Carlin and his wife, and maybe even his kids, were quite the partiers, which might have been instrumental in his seemingly premature demise. He was not ancient when he died. All of his stand up routines were hilarious, socially relevant commentary, as we all know. The seven deadly words, implicitly exposing the frivolity of such a thing as a taboo vocabulary for the expression of anger and sexual prohibitions, the baseball football comparison, among other, are beyond hilarious. They are off the wall hilarious. And, oh, so true. Carlin never fails to reveal profound truths about the human condition in his comedy, as all great comedians do. My favorite, and that of many others, has to be his routine on religion. Religion would have you believe there is a great big powerful invisible man in the sky, who sees, hears, and knows everything everybody does, who controls everything, and has ten rules, engraved in stone, which we must all follow closely, concerning things one must never, ever do. And if one ever does any of these things, such as steal, or fail to respect one's parents, or have the audacity to have another god in one's repertoire of anthropomorphic human like deities, one might possibly suffer the fate of burning in torment forever, in excruciating agony, until the end of time, in hell. In hell, which presumably is someplace deep within the bowels of the earth, where heat is heat. The deeper down you go, the hotter it gets. Geologically, if in no other way, that does indeed make a certain sense. And yet, this God, this supreme deity of a man-God, the same deity who slaughtered fifty thousand seventy people because someone took a peak into a forbidden box containing the law, the most important document in the world which no one must see,...loves us all unconditionally and infinitely. Oh, how he loves us, so much so that, if we embrace his one true religion (Christianity) en toto, we stand at least an outside chance of living forever in blissful if a bit boring harmony in heaven..with him. At some point in the monologue, Carlin out and says it: "religion is bullshit". If memory serves, he actually says it right at the start of his rib splitting monologue, which is of course where it belongs.

Whining About The Media, From the Righteously Outraged Right

AH, THE NEWS MEDIA, everybody's nemesis, America's scapegoat, the source of all that fails in our society. That execrable, mainstream, liberal, muckraking news media. NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN, The new York Times, or "slimes", as our clever ingenious conservative muckraking talking heads slanderously whine and opine. The Washington compost, and so forth. Always the acerbic, acidic, cute little barb, from moronic minds such as Chris Plant, the great fatuous Limbaugh, and the others. Its almost as if the spewers of hatred on conservative talk radio think they have a monopoly on linguistic cleverness, which they do not, although surely they think they do. they don't report the news, they make the news, they offer commentary, and personal opinion, and call it news, so the right wing whine goes. As if liberals invented that style of journalism yesterday As if William Randolph Hearst, Paul Harvey, and yellow journalism never existed before the turn of the millennium, as if liberals invented the genre of distorting the facts for the sake of sensation just for the sake of ruining news coverage and losing their ratings, to further socialism. God, what a pathetic, whining lament. Ironic, in that it is the whining complainers, led by the President of these Whining States himself, who offer the most distortions of fact, b their very lamentations. News flash to Republicans: we, the media are merely the messenger boys. And when we report the news, we call it reporting the news, and when we offer commentary, editorials, and opinion, we either call it that, or we assume that any discerning mind can tell the difference. The mainstream media, in fact, is either as reliably accurate or more so then ever before, Walter Cronkite notwithstanding. Suppose. for instance, that President Donald J. Trump utters a comment in the white House, to the effect that the nations of Africa are "shit hole" countries. This is a purely hypothetical scenario. suppose he so utters, and all across the news media all across the fruited plain, those dastardly liberal outlets report that "today in Washington President Trump described African nations as "shit hole" countries. thus commences the uproar, the volcanic hatred spew of our aforementioned right wing wing nuts. how dare CNN! Oh, how they unfairly slander our beloved President, while he nobly goes about the business of making America great again, by demeaning Africa! The media has liberal bias! The media should report news, not slander! The point is, if you accurately report what Trump and indeed America's conservative community and does, its slander, because when you report slander and low life people behaving badly, no matter how truthful the reporting, its sounds negative, slanderous, biased, unfair. The Republican part is the conservative white Christian party which tends not to accept climate change, believes in social Darwinism, believes that welfare programs make peo[le lazy and dependent, wants a huge military coupled with isolationism, and wants to give the wealthy tax cuts, which they way will help the poor, somehow, by some magic. to merely report these facts sounds so negative, that no commentary about them is necessary to give the impression that the media reports are unfair, slanted, biased. The mainstream media is not liberal, or biased against conservatives. the mainstream media simply does not echo conservative values, such as denying climate change and bringing back coal for more atmospheric carbon. Trump today made a remark which sounds racist he said that Latin immigrants are all criminals - again. OMG! How dare our liberal media even say such a thing! My fellow Americans" if anyone needs to be shot, it sure aint the news media, which, after all, is merely the messenger boy.

Flipping On Cats

CATS ARE ADORABLE, beautiful, intelligent creatures, as anybody on Facebook should know by now, considering the abundance of kitten videos endlessly shared. The number of domestic home based cats is approximately equal to the number of stray cats across America, estimates indicate. maybe forty million apiece. I go for the strays. Six years ago a small pretty female showed up in my yard, every day for several days in the fall, staring at me relentlessly, young, angry, frightened. I telepathed to her that I was willing if she was. Although I had just built and moved into a nice new house, and was determined to have no animals shedding on my perfectly lovely carpet, this little cat flipped me, over a period of about a week. Every day she inched closer to my porch as I got home from work and walked past her, pretending not to notice her. One fateful day I fed her, and then, tired of her still being leery of me, I, with great temerity, the hell with it, went into the house, made a heaping big tuna sandwich, and sat down on the front porch. Try that! Try avoiding my lap now, you little hard to get girl! No free lunches; tuna has a price. Within seconds she was in my lap, and within days, my house. She has been with me six years now. Soon after her entry, another feral stray, a yellow tabby, noticed Mandi coming and going like she owned the place, and he decided he wanted to join her. Why is she so special! What am I, chopped livah? He started standing at my front door, day after day, screaming at me. Now it was my turn to play hard to get. One stray kitten is quite enough, thank you. He tried to dig a hole in the window screen of my bedroom, and succeeded, sticking a wire in his foot, which caused him to limp. That broke my hard heart. He ended up inside too. Two five inch kittens, scampering about atop me as I slept nightly. Then came the third, a siammese blue point male cutie, who sat in my driveway one frigid night, howling pitifully. In he came, where he remains six years later. My three babies. All spayed and neutered, three feral cats turned snuggle companions. And now, new developments recently. Seven stray cats, two mothers and five kittens, living in my garage, at my leisure. Two precious pure white momma kittens, feral as hell, with their broods. They still won't let me touch them, but I'm closing in. That's a lot of cat food, and ground beef left over at the senior center. The five kittens are beautiful and adorable, all different coolers, all vaccinated and "fixed", having been trapped by me and taken to the vet, frightened but healthier, just like their beautiful mothers. That hassle is finally complete. God, the money. Now, the only question is, how long until they come in also, and start the process of integrating into the family? That's one small step for cat, one giant leap for many new litter boxes. I keep the place clean. The moral of this story is; take in, adopt the nearest stray cat. Its a lot of love and fulfillment for a relatively low price.

Calling The Criminally Insane Criminally Insane

EVERY FEW DAYS some american citizen with a semi automatic weapon walks into a place where people are gathered together, and opens fire, killing several or many of them. This has been occurring for several years. My introduction to this form of conduct was in the the mid nineteen sixties, when a mentally ill man ensconced himself in a tower on the Texas University campus in Austin, and killed, if memory serves, thirty one people below. I also recall in 1966 I believe it was when Richard Speck murder twelve student nurses with a knife in Chicago.. In recent decades and years, this pattern or behavior has increased in frequency, and now, in 2018, it has become a nearly weekly event. It can be argued that all of the perpetrators of these heinous crimes are criminally insane, in the sense that it is not possible to behave like this when lucid of mind. Meanwhile, President Trump and most republicans are placing greater importance and emphasis on a large group of desperate, homeless, hungry refugees from Central America who are walking towards the United States hoping to survive, calling it an "invasion". To classify it in that manner, while paying far less attention to the "invasion" of repeated mass murders from within the country by white, mostly right wing killers, arguably, is a form of criminal insanity, of incredibly misplaced priorities, delusional. There are other examples of criminal insanity evinced by the American conservative community, as stipulated by renowned Professor and dissident Noam Chomksy. Trump, and most conservatives deny the existence of global warming and climate change, for the obvious reason that to acknowledge it would inconvenience their world view, one in which all forms of capitalism, including current modes of industrial production, which are causing climate change, are too important and desirable to be abandoned and replace, To deny an obviously grave threat to humanity for the sake of personal ideology almost must, of necessity, be described as "criminally insane". What could possibly be more criminal, or crazy, than to pretend that the imminent destruction of the Earth's environment is not happening, merely for personal convenience? it is as if your house is burning down, with your family and possessions inside, because you failed to pay your home insurance premium, or because you prefer that it not be burning down, or because you wish to watch television, and the burning down of your house will deadly your television watching. Chomsky has described teh Republican as the greatest threat to human existence in human history, precisely for that reason; when one's criminal insanity threatens us all, as it does now but never has before, you and your ilk are indeed the greatest threat to human survival in the history of the world.

Spinning the Results, Like All Good Crime Bosses Should

PRESIDENT TRUMP and other republican shills are claiming a great victory in the election, by virtue of the enhancement of their Senate majority. Little or no mention is being made of the circumstances in the House of Reps, other than a few Republican analysts stating that the gains made by the Democrats, resulting in a Democratic majority, are actually far less impressive than one might expect, far less impressive than Republican gains under similar circumstances in past elections, and so on, so forth, blah blah. Blatant damage control. What else would one expect from sore losers, which, in all fairness, most of us are? And now, suddenly, with the House lost, Trump is advocating bi partisan, non confrontational politics, seeking common ground, the whole works. Never before in the history of Donald Trump has he waxed so conciliatory, other than the numerous times he dealt with federal prosecutors for committing crimes such as neglecting to pay low skill workers at his properties, hiding income, failing to report taxable income, and refusing to rent properties to people of color. Buy your way out, Donnie boy, but maybe, just maybe, not this time. The very moment trump gets in trouble, which is very momentous, numerically, he becomes tame as a teddy bear, and abandons his tough guy gangster act. Too funny. He knows he's in big trouble now, because he knows that the newly Democratic House majority is going to launch innumerable investigations concerning his many forms of corruption, personally, and administratively. Like Obama said, during the Trump administration, enough indictments have been handed down to his subordinates to field a pretty strong football team. Actually, the number of indictments against Trump administration personnel is greater than the number of elementary particles in the known universe, and that's goin' some. But the gangster in Trump cannot be entirely submerged. If the Dems launch all the promised investigations of him, well then, he'll simply be forced to launch an equal and opposite number of investigations against members of the House. Tit for tat, as it were...The only problem is that Trump's investigations, which will undoubtedly by sanctioned by his vengeful G.O.P. cronies, will yield nothing, while the House of Representative look see into Trump's misdeeds is quite likely to yield a veritable cornucopia bonanza of dirt. Trump, ever the tough gangster guy hitting back twice as hard, is offering the carrot and the stick. If you lay off me, I'll lay off you, just like Al Capone John Gotti. By firing Attorney General Sessions, the Don is sending out a warning; Sessions would not protect me (Trump) from Robert Mueller, so, well, he got the ax. Just think what I (Trump) can do to you (Democrats, et al)..and you..and you..; Trump is a man of the purest form of petty vindictiveness and unrelenting, vengeful anger and hatred, and, as Joseph P. Kennedy said of his little boy Bobby (RFK), when Donnie the Don Trump hates you, you stay hated. Trump assures us that in the event he gets into a game of "dueling investigations", he will emerge stronger, politically, and in terms of his popularity with the American people. That, of course, remains to be seen. Incredibly, delusionally, Trump the Don seems to believe that he is currently popular with the American people, rather then mired in a thirty nine percent approval rating. Senate majority leader McConnell reminds us that, twenty years ago, when the Republicans impeached Clinton, his popularity went up, and that of the G.O.P. plummeted, as if to warn off and ward off any impending impeachment proceeding by the newly empowered House Democrats. Too funny. Way too funny. Are these mobsters frightened, or what? As James Comey observed, Donnie the Don is very much remindful of a mafia don, presiding over a highly organized and massively corrupt criminal syndicate, which, by virtue of his being the putative head of the Republican party, he in actuality is.

Vote Nagging: Voting, Coercion Free

I AM A LOYAL, patriotic, civic minded American citizen, more grateful than proud to so be, because I consider pride to be too closely akin to arrogance, and I consider pride to be a trap, a deadly sin if you will. I believe that it is my great privilege, and my inalienable right, and my sacred duty as an American citizen living in a democracy, to vote. I have voted at every opportunity since 1974, when I first became eligible by virtue of the fact that I turned eighteen in 1973, and eighteen year olds had been given the right to vote in nineteen seventy one. Many brave Americans have died in battle to protect my right to vote, and to them I am sincerely indebted and grateful. I shall, along with all good Americans, forever hold them dear to my heart, including my father, who served in World War Two. To all veterans, my sincere love and gratitude. For me to miss a chance to vote is unthinkable. If I ever did, I would feel overwhelmingly guilty, as if I had let my beloved country down. How pleasant my memory is of the 1974 mid term election, in which Democrats, in the wake of Watergate, dominated the election, and enticed me to think that progressive politicians and progressive policies would always prevail. Alas, the naivete of a nineteen year old idealist. If ever I fail to cast my ballot, than I am turning my responsibility to govern our great nation over to someone else, and who knows whether my replacement will vote according to my wishes, or according to the sacred principles of intelligent, educated, civic discernment. The great writer and historian Gore Vidal once remarked that those who do not vote are simply people who are sufficiently aware of how the United States political system operates to realize that their vote is meaningless, because the candidates for office are all chosen by a very small fraction of the general population, the wealthy corporate elite, whom Vidal referred to as "our corporate masters". He had a point. In America, regrettably, political offices, especially national ones, are for sale to the highest bidder, on account of the effectiveness of advertising and propaganda, and to the winner, i.e. the highest bidder, go the spoils. Vidal, in point of fact, was quite correct, and he was not afraid to express this tragic truth, because he believed it his duty to do so, and he offered a solution, consisting of nine words enacted into law: "the sale and purchase of political advertising is prohibited". Paid advertising could be replaced by free information as a public service, provided by anyone who has relevant information about the candidates for office. The idea has merit, would not be unconstitutional, unless a conservative Supreme wedded to and in debt to corporate interests decided otherwise, and these nine words would make America great, for the first time ever, politically, rather than corrupt. I, however, refuse to surrender to cynicism, regardless of how appropriate and fact based it is, and I would fight and die for my right to vote. Aside from that, I am glad that this election is over, because, frankly, I am sick, tired, and resentful of anyone and everyone telling me to vote. Within my memory, never have so many people told me to vote in such an obtrusive and obnoxious fashion, as if they were my appointed advisers, and as if i needed to be told. Voting is a right privilege, and a duty, but it is not mandatory, and shouldn't be. Its as if we have been on a national vote nagging binge, and I find it repugnant, and disrespectful of my right to be a bad citizen. It may be that people who do not care enough to vote should not vote, because their vote is not fortified by true citizenship, knowledge, or a sense of purpose, and when they do vote they vote only because they have been browbeaten into it. It seems tragic that anyone at all fails to vote, but, alas, half of eligible voters don't vote, but they indisputably have the right not to, and I think we need to stop telling each other to vote, and simply vote. Anyone who needs to be told to vote, quite possibly is not qualified to cast a ballot. To all the trillions of people who have been telling me and others to vote; mind your own business, vote-nag not, and vote to your heart's contentment.

Defining People Poorly, and Somewhat Inaccurately

SURVEYS INDICATE that seventy five percent or republicans consider the approaching caravan of refugee presumed asylum seekers to be an "invasion", borrowing the term from president Trump. Whether they also believe that the refugees are being paid by George Soros and the Democratic National committee to feign poverty and spend weeks walking hundreds of miles remains unclear, although many republicans would most likely say they do. Whether they actually believe this nonsense, or are merely pretending to for political expediency also remains unclear, though one might suspect them of feigning their beliefs for some perceived political advantage. If they truly believe what they say they believe, they are either seriously misguided, or, as Noam Chomsky suggests, criminally insane. If they do not, they are perniciously dishonest.An invasion is an act carried out with malevolent intent. Not a shred of evidence has surfaced indicating any such intent; the only visible motive being an urgent desire to escape unrelenting violence and poverty in their home countries. Among democrats, seventy five percent believe the refugees to be harmless, desperate people, as they appear to be. Democrats further believe that the migrants should be given a chance for asylum, and whatever assistance they require, which obviously is food, water, clothing, shoes, and shelter. If there are any organized groups planning on helping these people, their existence is unknown, and although an such an organization would be acting in the manner of good Christians, it is probably not a conservative republican Christian organization. As many as one in five Americans is unaware of neither the very existence of the approaching caravan, nor of its humanitarian moral, or political implications. Whether this ignorance, or the republican consensus is more alarming and dangerous is a matter of opinion. The republican party is predominantly white, conservative, and christian. Christian doctrine is clear: strangers are to be welcomed, not as invaders, but as guests, and are to be accorded whatever assistance they require. IN this instance the requirements are obvious; food, water, clothing, shoes, shelter, and the opportunity to earn a decent living through gainful employment in the United States. President Trump, a self proclaimed "good Christian", instead offers them barbed wire, rejection, and military opposition. Are there any good conservative Christians in America attempting to do what Jesus would do?

Blaming the Bitterness on Newt

THERE WAS A TIME, in the middle of the twentieth century, when there existed a tangible if somewhat precarious bipartisan moderate consensus within the legislative branch of the federal government of the United States. Warmly recalls the image of President Ronald Wilson Reagan having a sandwich and beer with Democratic Speaker of the House Thomas P. "Tip" O'Neil. Although the nineteen eighties was the beginning of our current divided hate filled legislative branch, we had not yet become fully aware of it. Scholars and regular folks are now asking the question "when and why and by whose actions did the era of relative civility in American politics transform into our current era of bitter, angry conflict? One possible nominee for the credit is New Gingrich, of "Contract With America" fame, for those old enough to remember 1994. Gingrich was a right wing college history professor in the nineteen seventies at a small college in Georgia, then made the fateful decision to enter politics. He had grown tired of democratic control of congress and the congressional agenda, having never in his lifetime experienced any republican dominance, and himself being republican. He decided that politics is war, and that in order to win, one must turn political campaigns into battle zones, with ceaseless, unrelenting personal attacks on all political enemies. To this end he convinced some of his fellow republicans of the correctness of his philosophy, and the rest, as the cliche minded say, is history. The nineteen eighty presidential election was an easy target for the G.O.P., with the mild mannered Jimmy Carter having served one ineffectual term, amid nearly out of control inflation and economic stagnation. Reagan himself refrained from the embittered warpath, but he didn't have to participate in dirty politics; by this time, Newt and his brigades of hate spewing politicians did his dirty work for him. And it worked. So, it continued, to this very day Reagan's landslide victory emboldened him to pursue a distinctly non moderate very right wing agenda, replete with tax cuts for the very wealthy (supply side "Reaganomics"), aggressive foreign policy in fighting socialism in Central America, a project to build a system, which has never been built to this day, of lasers and computers to defend against incoming missiles from imaginary enemies (Star Wars), and the appointment of extreme right wing judges to federal courts. The process by which the nomination of Robert Bork was defeated was seminal in fueling partisan bitterness, which has never vanished, as witnessed by the Brett Kavanaugh debacle. The Star Wars scheme was a complete failure, but bitter, angry, uncivil, divisive politics is a winner in the United States of Acrimony, and unless and until somebody wins an election with tender loving kindness, we're in for the long haul.

Having The Wrong Accent

THERE IS A MAN who lives across the street from me, who came to the Estados Unidos from Guatemala, some years ago. He is forty seven years old, and entered the country legally, having gained permission from the appropriate authorities to do so. In Guatemala he worked in a bank, but decided he might prefer to work farther north. He underwent the process by which a person from a foreign land becomes a naturalized American citizen, and became naturalized american citizen. He learned to speak English, albeit with a lilting Hispanic accent, learned how to answer questions such as "name one accomplishment of George Washington other than attempting to lose the French and Indian War of 1756-1763 by serving ineptly in the British military as a commanding officer of the Virginia militia", and, name one, any one, of the rights enumerated in the bill of Rights. (He chose the second amendment's guarantee of the right to bear one's arms, thinking, wisely, that the test results might be evaluated by an American conservative.) He speak Inglish velly, velly good. He married an American girl, had a couple of kids, bought a house, and worked hard, in his own business, doing repair and remodeling work in the homes of affluent white American born Americans. Jose, my neighbor from Guatemala, is built rather like a linebacker in the NFL, slightly over six feet, broad of shoulder, narrow of hip, with a ruggedly handsome face, and at some point someone suggested to him that he might do well to pursue a career as a police officer. He decided that it would be a great honor to serve as a police officer in his new, beloved country. To that end he was accepted into, entered, and attended a police academy every day, arising a four in the morning to do so, appearing at the academy at five in the morning, and returning home at five in the evening, after a ten to twelve hour police academy day. He did this for eleven weeks, in a twelve week process. In the meantime, he was assigned a regulation police cruiser, handsomely painted and adorned with sirens, flashing lights, and the rest of it, and given a nice blue uniform, and a weapon. He worked as a patrol man on weekends, while actually still in training at the police academy. He looked dashing in his patrol car and police uniform, I can assure everyone. At the academy he had fun, learning a great deal about the law, and proper police procedure and techniques, practicing on the firing range with handguns and semi automatic weapons and even a shot gun, running a mile and a half in less than fourteen minutes, and so forth. Then, as graduation approached and the academy regimen was about to end, he was given the standard speaking test. It is necessary that all police officers be able to speak English clearly, in order to avoid a situation in which a defendant's lawyer in court claims innocence for his client on the basis that the law breaker did not understand the officer's instructions. He failed the test, owing to his Hispanic accent. He was assured that nothing could be done, and was never told why nobody had bothered to tell him from the start that his accent would present a problem. Now, he has returned to his former work as a home repair carpenter type, where he will actually make more money then he would have catching criminals. No one with a brain and two ears could possibly fail to understand what he says, but, one cannot be too careful in the police profession, it seem. The craziness of this story is exacerbated by the fact that every word of it is true. I suspect that someone in the Trump administration found out that Jose voted for Hillary Clinton, and was able to classify him as an "invading caravan and a potential Hispanic criminal with slightly darker skin than an American caucasian". Fortunately for my anger management problem, I will never know.

Campaigning Irrelevantly

THE ATTORNEY GENERAL of a red state, running for reelection, assures us that she is a conservative, a Christian, pro life, gun packing mother, while images of a happy domestic life, home, husband, and children, float blissfully in the background across the flat screen. She mentions that seven generations of her family have lived in the state. Impressive though these credentials seem, the question of whether they in any way can be considered evidence of competence is reasonable and relevant. The primary job of any attorney general, unless I'm mistaken, is to represent the legal interests of the jurisdiction which the office encompasses. An attorney general's religious beliefs seem irrelevant if only by virtue of the fact that state offices are political and legal in nature, not religious. A more important credential might be the fact that she graduated from an accredited law school, and was admitted to the bar association, where she remains a member in good standing. That would seem relevant. Who's to say whether a Jewish or Islamic or a Christian or an agnostic law school graduate would make the better A.G.? Similarly, no studies with which I am familiar have ever been conducted demonstrating conclusively whether people with conservative, moderate, or progressive political beliefs are better at serving as attorneys general. With regard to her alleged "pro life" viewpoint, it could rather safely be concluded that all people are "pro life", in the sense that they favor their own continued existence, and that of others, prefer life to death, tend to prefer healthy child birth over abortion, and even if they happen to support a woman's right to choose her own reproductive fate, do not necessarily support the act of aborting an unborn fetus. There is no evidence which indicates that those who believe the government should outlaw abortion serve more capably in state offices of any sort. With regard to carrying guns, it may well be that people who do so are better attorneys - they certainly would seem to have a tangible basis for being more confident ones - but, once again, nobody has ever proven that carrying a gun better qualifies anyone for public service. If being a mother enhances a person's competence for public service or service to others of any sort, we should all get pregnant. The fact that one's ancestors lived in the same state that you do would not appear to be of any help in improving one's qualifications for holding office either. So, in what way does this advertisement demonstrate good work? In no way whatever, it appears. The lady conspicuously made no mention of her work in her office as attorney general heretofore, which seems strange, because prior performance is ostensibly a better indicator of probable future performance on the job than religious beliefs, political beliefs, motherhood, family ancestry, or possession of firearms. Perhaps we will learn more from her next commercial message, if there is one. We can only hope.