strident movements

I do indeed remember the Mickey Mouse Club.  The whole neighborhood gang would disappear from the alley and dash into their front rooms in front of their brand new tvs.  I was thinking it was 5:00, but wiki tells me it was 4:00.  As Old Dog, my Ten Cat younger brother, says we were a few years older than him, so after awhile it became awfully corny, but then there was the development of Annette Funicello.

Girls were like a mysterious minor annoyment.  Some were prettier than others.  Annette was very pretty, but it wasn't a big deal until she began developing breasts.  Breasts, what a concept, and not long after that our annoying classmates of the opposite sex began doing the same thing.  And the whole world changed.

With the development of our classmates, we no longer needed our Annette fix and the Mickey Mouse Club drifted away.  I don't recall that I ever saw any of Annette's beach movies.  Although she looked fine in her bikini she was just too squeaky clean.


I didn't see in Old Dog's article where the US came in 4th in school massacres.  Seems to me we should be in 1st place, but I guess there are different ways to measure them.  I wrote earlier about the groundhog effect, but this one seems to carry more weight than previous ones.  I am not getting my full political fix because every time I tune into CNN, or even Fox, there are those earnest, tear-stained kids.  They had a little tete a tete with the Donald last afternoon, and I hate to say it, because I hate so say anything civil about the guy, but he was pretty civil.

I don't expect any gun control to pass and I don't think we are going to pay for armed guards at our schools, or fancy mental hospitals and there are no miracle cures, so this will continue.  We'll never eliminate drug addiction or terrorism or school shootings, the best we can do is try to keep the body count low.

My dems plan to ride this movement to victory like they plan on riding Me Too to victory.  I'm not too proud of my party for that because well, both movements make me uncomfortable.  They are too strident.  Their speakers are too loud and too weepy.  They are convinced they are in the right and therefore they must succeed.  I agree with the former but not the latter. 

When you are in the right to compromise is not just a tactical mistake, it is bad, it is like a sin.  It's the kind of thing I decry from the republicans and I don't like to see it in my party.


Despite being a good liberal I was a little soft on capital punishment.  If I liked a candidate for other reasons I didn't mind if he was for capital punishment.  I was like Old Dog, if the guy was never getting out why keep him alive.  My mind was changed when half the people on the Illinois death row were either innocent or didn't get fair trials.  But just for the sake of argument I would prefer medical experimentation to harvesting organs.  I'd be a little nice about it, I'd let it be consensual and there would be a reward, not freedom, but nicer quarters, something like that.