Hoping For Better Ways, Signing Up

I SIGNED THREE PETITIONS TODAY, a personal record. Petitions are one of the greatest inventions of the human kind, a real backbone for democracy. Anytime anyone has the opportunity to sign a petition, go for it, no matter what the thing is all about. Signing any petition at all is a way to express your citizenship, to ensure that your voice, at least on paper, is heard. The lady sat at a table in front of the public library, with three petitions, and I was glad to sign them all. One would allow two or three casinos to commence operating in my heretofore casino free state, probably under highly regulated circumstances. Another would legalize marijuana for medical purposes in my small conservative state, and the third petition would limit attorneys fees in tort cases. Quite a trio for one day. All important issues, involving fundamental American values, such as freedom. Reprehensible and destructive an activity as gambling may be, enforcing prohibitions against it are of highly limited effectiveness and enforce-ability, and limit a person's freedom to use money. Most states have lotteries: it seems unreasonable to prohibit other forms of gambling. Finally, at long last, we are beginning to understand and explain the positive medical benefits of marijuana, and there are many. Eventually this wonder drug will be perfectly legal with reasonable regulations all across the fruited plain of freedom's land. As Abraham Lincoln said: "prohibition goes beyond the bounds of reason, in that it attempts to control a man's appetites through legislation, and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes. Prohibition strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our nation was founded." Well spoken, Lincoln. Couldn't've said it better myself. The tort reform thing is a bit tricky, because there you're limiting a person's capacity to make a living, a slippery slope, but, hell, lawyers are after all lawyers, so who cares? A little financial sanity never hurt anyone. Maybe the day will arrive in America when we pay teachers millions of dollars, and entertainers make about fifty grand a year, however good they are at entertaining us. But don't hold your breath. Although the free market is demonstrably unreasonable, at times even insane, we Americans cling to it like an outdated religion, which, in a sense it is. Intelligent, logical economics, politics and religiosity remains an unfulfilled dream for the time being, a hope for mankind's future, but, we hope not too distant future.

Changing, and Staying Alive

WITH ALL THESE PLANETS being discovered every day, it begins to seem much more likely that the universe is full of life, including very advanced lifeforms, and that there is at least one, and probably more than one civilization out among the stars which is sufficiently technologically advanced to be carefully examining at least one galaxy, maybe many more. Who is watching us? Look at it from their point of view. they want to observe us without our knowing that we're being observed, which would change our behavior. They are reluctant to contact us directly, because they believe we would freak out, and they know how violent we are. They regret our violence, and would hope that it will not destroys us, or anyone else. Perhaps they have hopes that we humans we not destroy ourselves, and it would be nice to think that if we start going extinct, they might step in and save us. The rate of change on Earth among humans is accelerating rapidly, and it has been speculated than a couple or three hundred years from now, everything we now believe will have been discarded. It might not even be a bad idea to go ahead and discard it all right now, and save our descendants the trouble. All of our religions will go down the drain first, the hundreds and thousands of them that we still have around the world, relics fro a more primitive time. it will be as if we are starting all over again, and it will be a very good feeling.

Seeking Truth...Or Not

RUSH LIMBAUGH resents journalists who insist that he prove what he says. He made that plain on his radio program. Journalists who demand proof of what Rush says, no matter how questionable his comments seem, anger him because by doing so, they are actually calling him a liar, doubting his word, and he resents it. He would much rather the mainstream media simply take everything he says at face value, and accept it all unconditionally as true. Well, Rush, the bad news is, that aint gonna happen. Welcome to the big leagues, big boy. Hang around for awhile, and hang in there kid, because at some point you'll get used to being held accountable, and it won't hurt so much. Sorry you feel so hurt, and had false ideas about human nature, and hope you recover from your previously naive attitude. That damned troublesome media, always poking around, looking to find the truth. Then also, in yet another exciting matter of the media, we have the good folks who are pissed off at this wild web site "gawker", or whatever the hell its called, the one which videotaped Hulk Hogan having sex with his best friend's wife. Oh, whatever! Do we want the media telling the truth, or not? The billionaire who owns the gawker site outed the billionaire CEO of some tech company as, oh horror, being gay, and now there's a war of billionaires hapnin'. Too....damned....funny. One thing we could all start doing is ignoring that kind of media. Duh. Another thing would be to simply assume that everyone is a liar, and that everyone, especially celebrities, is a hypocrite and sex addict, and leave it at that, so that when Rush Limbaugh or anyone else makes questionable comments, we automatically assume them to be bullshit, thus relieving the media of any need to actually prove it one way or another. And besides, who cares?

Senior Citizens, Voting For Trump Without Holding Their Noses

BACK OVER AT THE SENIOR CENTER, a mecca of culture in the small town American south, a seventy five year old fella from Boston, who is illiterate and looks so scruffy and shaggy in his faded jean jacket and torn bluejeans that he's really cool, holds forth with hugs and handshakes. Friendly fella. He's never read the Bible, because he can't read, but he believes every word of it, and is eager to share his extreme faith with anyone. He recently retired from dragging a large white cross all over area towns, proclaiming the sacrifice of Christ. It takes all kinds. A guy like that is a good potential socialist revolutionary, but probably couldn't care less about anything having to do with the real world. He lives in a realm of fire and brimstone. It would be nice if he would at least bring a little eastern liberalism to the table here in the land of the eternally provincial, but hell no, its all about the Lord. Thus he contributes nothing to diversity, nothing to the necessity of preventing an entire community from being dominated by right wing Christians, and although he's from back east and has a Boston accent, he fits right in with very small town conservative Christian America. Why and how the Christian faith and modern American conservatism conspire to inhabit the same souls is one of the many wonders of American society. These people at the senior center, the seventy and eighty and ninety year old set, most of them trouble me because I just know, that during the turbulent nineteen sixties, they were condemning Martin Luther King as a trouble maker, and Muhammad Ali as an uppity you know what. Of course, American conservatives to this very day have to hold their noses at the very thought of Martin Luther King, or forcing society to accept racial equality and justice. Donald Trump is the new George Wallace, and somehow I can just imagine these senior center citizens voting for him in November, without even needing to hold their noses.

Surviving Long Enough To Find Aliens

ALL IS NOT LOST, although it may at times seems so. True, we in the U.S.A. are going to either have a President Trump or a President Clinton, which is enough to make us somehow feel that all is lost, but bear in mind, we've survived worse circumstances, and we'll find a way to get through this, somehow... And there really is good news. Hands down, the best thing going on right now is the fact that our astronomical community is discovering new planets in the galaxy by the bushelful, and it now begins to look very strongly as though every star in the heavens, four hundred billion in our galaxy alone, is encircled by a planets. Nothing could be more exciting. For centuries we've wondered whether there are planets throughout the universe, and now, we know, there are. Now we have a real reason to go to the stars! There are probably many lifeforms nearby, in cosmic terms. As our telescopes keep getting better, we'll be able to look straight down onto the surfaces of far away planets orbiting other stars, and into the living rooms of houses, to see what the aliens look like. We won't have to wait for them to come to us for us to know about them; and it won't even be necessary for us to travel to them and find them, although we will want to do that as well; we can just keep looking, closer and closer...until we find them, the aliens. Our telescopes are getting better, fast. Bigger, more powerful. If we can just find a way to keep from wiping out the Earth's climate and the Earth's climate from wiping us out, if we can cut down enough on our violence and wars and other forms of self destruction to survive a little longer; we can find out what's gong on with life on other planets. And even better; can you imagine how utterly thrilled intelligent beings on other planets will be to encounter humanity? We humans are such wonderful creatures, who in their right mind would be put off by us, and avoid us?

Building A Better Wall, Or Better Yet, Not At All

"MAYBE WE COULD USE a little crazy in the White House - nothing else works". Which might be just exactly what we get. Who knows what crazy policies and ideas we'll soon get? We the people might have to strong arm President Donald J. Trump into giving up the great Mexican wall. That idea is just a little bit tooo crazy, even by American standards. In the first place, it'll never work. Isn't there already a wall or fence between Mexico and America, hundreds of miles long, mostly twelve foot chain link topped with barbed wire? How well does that work? How would a new wall be any different? You climb over, go through, or dig under walls, right? Besides, Trump wants the Mexicans to build the wall and pay for it, and if they do that, then it will be full of secret passages, holes, tunnels, and who knows what else? You want Americans to supervise the building of the wall? Or maybe just build it themselves, so Americans will get the construction jobs? Then why not use the money to rebuild America's highways, bridges, and infrastructure, and screw the dad blasted wall? A wall won't work, unless it is constantly monitored by the military, and if you have to use the military anyway, why not forget the wall, just put the military on the border, and let it (the military) do what it was in theory intended to do by the original framers of the sacred American constitution: guard, protect, and defend the country. What a novel idea! A wall can't keep its eyes open, watch for and stop invaders when the try to cross the border into the U.S... but the American military can, right? Cut costs by closing down American military bases around the world, and use the personnel to defend America itself, instead of using the military to try to control other countries!

Voting For Trump With Nose Held

WE'VE ALL GONE TO WEDDINGS knowing, just knowing that the bride and groom were making a terrible mistake, that it would never last. Usually, we were right. We've all met people and realized from the moment we met that we would never be friends. At first, nobody but nobody thought Donald Trump would hang around. Everyone assumed that he would shoot himself in the foot with his mouth. And he still might. Its still early. Right now we're all trying to recover from the shock that he has actually become the republican candidate, that he has gotten to where he now is. And somehow, as we continue to watch this bizarre, unlikely, volatile marriage between the Donald and the Republican party, we have the foreboding sense that something's going to happen, that it will never work out, that it will all come crashing down, somehow. Already there are signs. Even the leaders of the party are losing patience with Trump's irrational behavior, his anger, insulting comments, his racism. They are starting to tell him to cease and desist, to suddenly become more "presidential", and as we all know, the Donald doesn't take criticism well; it usually inspires him to only increase, or 'double down" as we like to say, his bad behavior. Trump is not the candidate most republicans want, but he is the one they've got, and they're stuck with him, for better or worse, which makes their situation terribly awkward at best. And its likely to get worse before it gets better. The real question is: exactly how much do the republicans hate Hillary? Enough to support a loose cannon? Enough to hold their noses and support a candidate who responds to his own bad behavior by increasing it? Are they really willing to go to this extreme to elect a president who appear more closely aligned with their conservative agenda? You almost feel sorry for their dilemma. Almost, but not quite. In a way, its rather funny.

Wanting Capitalism, Kinda

IF YOU WANT CAPITALISM, as most of us say we do, you must have a free market, and people must behave rationally, meaning, in their own best interests. Under those conditions, the invisible hand of Adam Smith operates, bringing supply and demand into a perfect, natural balance, as everyone makes choices concerning where to work, what to buy, what to sell, and it all evens out, with everything, including money and power, naturally and automatically ending up where it belongs. Supposedly. The problem is, neither condition can ever exist, in the real world. Like a perfect vacuum, or a perpetual motion machine, or infinite velocity, perfect capitalism has never and can never exist. For one thing, it can hardly be claimed by anyone that human beings always, or even usually, behave in their own "best interest". We are demonstrably self destructive little creatures, irrational, consistently making decisions, such as to drink and to eat to excess, and to drive recklessly, not in our best interests. Then too, in a free market, businesses compete, some win, some lose, and monopolies naturally form, which distort the free market, making it free no longer, which must be remedied and regulated by government. If you want to get all government out of the market right now, for instance, including the removal of all tariff barriers and completely unregulated international commerce and trade, feel free. But bear in mind that all those jobs we all say we want to come back home to America, where they once were, will, under complete global free market capitalism, never, ever come back home to America. To do that, its gonna take government, Trump or no Trump. Otherwise, the international new world order free market will invisibly but surely keep handing jobs to the cheapest labor markets, which are most definitely not in the United States of America. Any billionaire business person seeking the office of the president surely knows this, and must, at some point in time, gently explain to conservative America that, sorry, but the government has a big role to play in our American economic future. Big government is here, to stay, folks. Unless, of course, you want all services such as police and fire protection privatized, along with roads and highways, schools, and the military. You don't really want that, do you, dear pro private sector citizens? You don't want that any more than you want a complete monopoly of the economy by a single person, which is what perfect free market capitalism would inevitably create, if we didn't, by the good graces of government, prevent it.

Coming Out of the Nonconformist Pro Ali Closet

IN 1964, I was nine years old, and already beginning to become a nonconformist. I wanted to be different, maybe to get attention, maybe to avoid it. Already I was suspicious of religion, and was a budding reverse racist. A black celebrity, especially a great athlete, and I was good to go, an automatic fan. Because they were members of the less popular race, because my white friends and family tended towards bigotry, and because I wanted to separate myself from my milieu, I befanned myself towards black stars. Starting then, and to this very day my favorite football player is Gale Sayers, my favorite basketball player is Wilt Chamberlain, my favorite trumpet player is Louis Armstrong, because and not in spite of their blackness. I still don't like religion, and yes, my favorite boxer is Muhammad Ali. As a twelve year old in 1967, I thought Ali was getting the shaft by the boxing establishment for his stand against the Viet Nam War. I still think he got it. Obviously, in retrospect, Ali and the rest of the war protesters were right, and the establishment was wrong. Even at that age, I thought racism was the fault of my white colleagues, and I still do. At that age, I think I was smart enough to know when to keep my opinions to myself; Viet Nam opponents were considered unpatriotic by the white establishment. But now, things have changed. It is no longer considered unpatriotic to assert that the Viet Nam War was a mistake, its a little more acceptable to dislike religion, and middle class white people don't have to hide their love of black music, or black athletes. When I was a kid, I thought I had to keep quiet about my fanship of Ali, within my middle class white circles; I'm glad that is no longer the case. It turns out that Muhammed ali and the rest of the viet Nam war protesters were right on, and tens of millions of good, God fearing patriotic conservative Christian Americans were dead wrong about Viet Nam. We (the United States) lost the war, and it never should have been fought.

Teeming Masses For Trump!

DEAR MR TRUMP; Weird as the prospect of your becoming president seems, and your presidency would seem, you just never know. You might lead us down the road to national destruction, after the fashion of Hitler in Germany, or, you could in fact eventuate as a great source of human progress. If elected, could you please order the human race to plant a trillion trees, and to restore larger populations of tigers, elephants, and many other threatened plants and animals? Then too, there is that annoying climate change thingie. By the time you enter your second term, if indeed you ever enter it, the fact that climate change, man made, is quite real will doubtless have dawned on even the most ardent political and religious conservative nutcases, of which you, it is obvious, are not one. You, through power and charisma, could doubtless persuade the corporate community to invest in renewable energy. A simple executive order from the likes of you should be sufficient, for whatever needs to be accomplished We the people tend, I think to view you as a man long accustomed to top authority, willing to act strongly in favor of whatever project you embrace. Whereas Obama has been much maligned for allegedly using presidential executive orders to reach way beyond his rightful authority, a President Trump would appear, at first glance, to be very much more inclined than Obama to exercise, shall we way, questionable levels of authority for good causes. Redistribute the wealth, stimulate the economy, tax the uber wealthy! Few people realize how very willing a President Trump would be to verily speak and act like that, populistically tyrannical, like a, say, Hitler, for the sake of mass adulation. You, Mr. Trump, hardly need the favor of the uber rich, thou art one. But those teeming, unwashed, poor masses, now, there's your potential adulators.

Keeping Jesus and the Babe

WHEN OUR ACTIONS MAKE NO SENSE, the world makes no sense. Our actions make no sense when our thoughts and beliefs make no sense. Consider, for example, religion. The crucifixion of Jesus Christ makes no more sense than, say, the selling of Babe Ruth, maybe even less. Jesus was totally innocent, and was arrested, charged, tried, convicted, and murdered under false justice, by people behaving like idiots, all too humanly. Babe Ruth was sold by the Red Sox to the Yankees in 1920 for one hundred thousand dollars to finance a Broadway play, and the Red Sox didn't even get any players in the deal. The Babe led the Yankees to glory, which lasts even unto this very day, while the Red Sox suffered much frustration for the selling of the Babe. Christians often believe that Jesus died for our sins, and they seem to find this arrangement wonderful. But do you, deep down, really want somebody else to take the blame for and to suffer punishment for what you do? Normally you wouldn't. Normally, we are all taught personal responsibility, and to be accountable for our actions, willing to accept the consequences. As wonderful as Jesus was, can you imagine how much more he could have given us had he lived another, say, fifty years? For him to die so unnecessarily, and so prematurely was and remains one of the great tragedies of human history. When Babe Ruth was with the Red Sox, he was young, healthy, the best pitcher in baseball, and he could hit a baseball a country mile, and, during his time with the team, the Red Sox had already won the World Series, and seemed to have the promise to do so many more times. Then, they sold the Babe, and the Babe did the same for the Yankees, bringing them glory and success, while the Red Sox sank into long term frustration and mediocrity. The moral of the story? If you are fortunate enough to have a Jesus or a Babe Ruth on your team....keep him.

Choosing Between Two Extremes

MY TWO FAVORITE forms of government are: secular democracy, and benevolent dictatorship. None of this "representative democracy", aka "republican" either. Straight up, direct democracy, with freedom from and of religion, aka mob rule. Bring it. Chaos, yes, but at least better than having a few billionaires control everything in the United States, and calling it "freedom". We, the mob, could vote for EVERYTHING instead of farming it all out to politicians and their corporate owners and masters. Gay marriage? A national online referendum! Legalized pot? Vote across America, on laptops, desk tops, and cell phones! Power to the people! Every single vote that comes before Congress, instead of being voted on in Congress, could be decided by a vigilant and pro active electorate. The electronic revolution has give enormous potential power to the unwashed masses, if only they realize it, and actualize it, which seems very unlikely at this point. We spend too much of our time posting on Facebook about our flower garden and our significant others to allow for sustained involvement with the affairs of the nation. With regard to the benevolent dictatorship concept, who among us would not want Jesus Christ to return to Earth now, and establish his complete rule? Oh, maybe a few anarchist holdouts, but, other than that, you gotta believe most of us would welcome a dictatorship of the savior, eh? What sort of dictatorship would Jesus institute? One where there is a rigid social and financial pecking order, or one in which everyone is equal, socially, economically? The communist dictatorship of Jesus Christ, perhaps? If one really thinks about it, one soon realizes that a completely enlightened and benevolent dictatorship, such as the type we would doubtless receive from Jesus, is the most desirable for of government. But we humans are an adventuresome lot of wee beasties, and we would probably wish to govern ourselves. But when do we propose to start, if ever, and how?

Risking All For Money

ANY BIOLOGICAL SCIENTIST, high school science teacher, or whomever, can tell you certain things, such as: man made climate change is real, evolution is a law of nature, and the upcoming Olympics in Brazil should be postponed, due to the mosquito virus thing. In fact, a petition, urging that the Brazil Olympics be either cancelled or postponed, containing the names of hundreds of such people, eminent biological scientists including epidemiologists and micro biologists, has been circulated and presented to the International Olympic Committee and the World Health Organization, both of which esteemed and influential organizations promptly rejected, ignored, or maybe even tossed the document into the trash can without so much as looking at it. Gee, how surprising. The very organization which has the final say on whether to proceed on schedule with the summer Olympics, is owned, controlled, and beholden to the billionaire interests funding the whole affair, and who have the most to gain by holding the event and the most to lose by cancelling it, choosing not to cancel, "the show must go on!" Is the World health Organization controlled by health and medical professionals, or by politicians? Take a wild guess. People from all over the world congregating in Brazil by the hundreds of thousands, among the mosquitoes carrying a deadly virus, only to return home later, with or without the virus. All because of money, and the fact that the decisions are made by the people with the most money, the most money to gain or lose. The scientists, who are objective and independent, and are overwhelmingly recommending a safer but less financially lucrative course of action, are ignored. How surprising. How intelligent, and how utterly human. Let us fervently hope that over the next few years there is no widespread outbreak of very serious cranial malformation among the world's newborn.

Discovering

FLOWERS, WE NOW KNOW, are surrounded by an electromagnetic field, presumably of their own manufacture, to which insects are sensitive. Bumble Bees toss their hair when they approach a flower's electronic field. This is an utterly amazing discovery. Who knows what else flowers can do? Likewise, thousands of new planets are being discovered almost daily orbiting stars far from the sun. It turns out that just about every star in the sky has planets orbiting it, many of them very much like the Earth. That should be enough to get the UFO people really, really excited, because it seems more reasonable than ever to suppose that the universe might be filled with millions of lifeforms. Science, rather than superstition or religion, might eventually be our salvation. All you new age type people - you know who you are - the ones who believe in parallel universes and other dimensions and all manner of pseudo science and extraterrestrials disguised as humans among us; that sort; its time for you to strut your stuff! "We don't know one millionth of one percent of anything", said Einstein; but it looks as if we are starting to learn a great deal. And what we are learning would seem to indicate that the universe is far more amazing than any science fiction writers in their wildest imaginings had ever thought. All the more reason to "get it together", and save the planet, for future generations of humans. Can you imagine how far our descendants could take human knowledge and civilization? We (through our descendants) could become civilized! its a race to the finish! Will we the human conquers of the planet Earth find a way to salvage the Earth, and ourselves, and transmit a civilized version of our species into the future, and the cosmos? Stay tuned.

Voting For Freedom In America

SPEAKING OF ACCEPTING CRAZY AS NORMAL, I still like Donald Trump, that fact still freaks me out, but he's starting to wear thin, and I suspect many other Americans feel the same way. How much craziness can even the United States tolerate? (Let's face it; a whole lot.) Trump is bad news, America's answer to Hitler, full of bombast and promises of national glory regained, full of unreasonable hatreds, entirely unsuited by temperament for the job of president. Republicans as well as democrats realize this. That so many people support Trump only because of their hatred of Hillary is a true testament to American's capacity for hatred, and lack of reason. Even "crooked Hillary" is, at best, much more experienced than Trump in government, and at the very least, is sane, comparatively. Pissed off republicans - and there are many of them - might wish to consider the libertarian party, which has a couple of former republican governors on its ticket, and looks very attractive and moderate. We must, however, at all costs never revert to economic libertarianism, otherwise known as "neo-liberalism" or "trickle down economics", or "supply side economics", or "Reaganomics". The minimum wage law is good for America. So are the anti-trust acts, and some reasonable regulation of the financial services industry. But let's deep six Trump's crazy great wall of mexico idea, and his anti-Islamic phobia. And if you really want to get rid of "big government", why not start by getting rid of big wars overseas, and getting rid of several hundred unnecessary American military bases all over the world, in places like Europe and Japan and the Island of Diego Garcia, places where the locals should be defending themselves. Long live American freedom!