You want to know what's stupid? I'll tell you what's stupid! Stupid is telling me what I should have said or would have said if I had known better, and dismissing what I actually did say as irrelevant. Stupid is allowing any number of illegal aliens to vote in any kind of election, or even allowing them to remain in the country at all. Stupid is telling me that my honest mistake was a stupid mistake because I've got better things to do than pay attention to personal details about a candidate who I wouldn't vote for under any circumstance. Stupid is 28 states changing their laws without telling me about it. Okay, that one was a bit of a stretch. I'd better stop now before I say something really stupid.
I have seen a couple of TV shows about those Russian foxes, but that was some time ago and I didn't know about the adrenaline connection or that so many other traits were genetically linked to it.
Friday, February 28, 2020
domestication
FACT ONE: At the time Beagles said that he had heard that illegal aliens were voting in California he did not know that this was only in some places in some local elections. It is unlikely that what he thought he heard came from this source because then he would have known, and bowing to the truth, as the honest man we all know him to be, he would have said that he had heard that some illegal aliens were voting in some local elections in some parts of California. More likely the source was one of the many rantings which are legion, from the FOX/Trump news machine.
FACT TWO: Beagles is now aware, as he was not previously, that this voting is only in some local elections in some parts of California.
INEVITABLE CONCLUSION: Beagles has been enlightened, And not only that but he has been enlightened using the method of The Liberal Agenda, which is seeking out the truth.
I would not call thinking that Obama was a Muslim an honest mistake, I would call it a stupid mistake, because simply skimming the daily newspaper (even that despicable Cheboygan fascist hate rag (not really, I am sure it is not that bad, that is just the way we spoke back in the sixties and I miss the cant)) would soon reveal that Obama is no Muslim. Thankfully now that Beagles has been enlightened he will not be making similar mistakes.
I didn't challenge the thing about felons not being able to vote because I thought that maybe too much enlightenment in one day would be too much for Beagles, but as a matter of fact felons can vote in most states. I knew this because Blago will be voting for Trump come November. Too make doubly sure, as all seekers of truth should do, I put can felons vote into the google machine, and out came this Felons who have completed their sentences are allowed to vote in most U.S. states. Between 1996 and 2008 twenty-eight states changed their laws on felon voting rights, mostly to restore rights or to simplify the process of restoration.
I've touted RadioLab in previous posts and yesterday while trodding the treadmill I heard a very interesting podcast New Normal?
A Russian geneticist Belyaev conducted experiments with foxes as a way of examining how animals have become domesticated . He selectively bred for the trait of reacting nicely with humans, basically decreasing adrenaline, and within ten years he had some domesticated foxes. Strangely even though they were only bred for that adrenaline thing they also all had floppy ears and smaller teeth and various other changes. I had heard the story before, but at that time nobody seemed to know why. But now subsequent research has shown that the genes for adrenaline, strong cartilage and bones and bigger teeth are all linked together, and breeding to decrease one, results in decreasing all those other traits too. Well how about that? But wait there is more.
Our forebears all had bigger bones and teeth and whatnot. Have we domesticated ourselves? The moderators rather thought so. Our forebears generally ran in small groups (I'm not sure how we know this, but I will accept it for the sake of brevity), but as we evolved we started hanging out in bigger groups where hotheads are not as acceptable so they were killed or exiled and in any case did not have as many children and we became more peaceable with smaller bones and teeth as the examination of our fossils has confirmed.
Actually the podcast began with the question of will war always be part of being human. I think this whole fox thing was meant to buttress the argument of maybe not,.but if so I think not. I think on the road to civilization we have fewer barroom brawler types, but I think war is a more complicated thing.
Happy Friday
FACT TWO: Beagles is now aware, as he was not previously, that this voting is only in some local elections in some parts of California.
INEVITABLE CONCLUSION: Beagles has been enlightened, And not only that but he has been enlightened using the method of The Liberal Agenda, which is seeking out the truth.
I would not call thinking that Obama was a Muslim an honest mistake, I would call it a stupid mistake, because simply skimming the daily newspaper (even that despicable Cheboygan fascist hate rag (not really, I am sure it is not that bad, that is just the way we spoke back in the sixties and I miss the cant)) would soon reveal that Obama is no Muslim. Thankfully now that Beagles has been enlightened he will not be making similar mistakes.
I didn't challenge the thing about felons not being able to vote because I thought that maybe too much enlightenment in one day would be too much for Beagles, but as a matter of fact felons can vote in most states. I knew this because Blago will be voting for Trump come November. Too make doubly sure, as all seekers of truth should do, I put can felons vote into the google machine, and out came this Felons who have completed their sentences are allowed to vote in most U.S. states. Between 1996 and 2008 twenty-eight states changed their laws on felon voting rights, mostly to restore rights or to simplify the process of restoration.
I've touted RadioLab in previous posts and yesterday while trodding the treadmill I heard a very interesting podcast New Normal?
A Russian geneticist Belyaev conducted experiments with foxes as a way of examining how animals have become domesticated . He selectively bred for the trait of reacting nicely with humans, basically decreasing adrenaline, and within ten years he had some domesticated foxes. Strangely even though they were only bred for that adrenaline thing they also all had floppy ears and smaller teeth and various other changes. I had heard the story before, but at that time nobody seemed to know why. But now subsequent research has shown that the genes for adrenaline, strong cartilage and bones and bigger teeth are all linked together, and breeding to decrease one, results in decreasing all those other traits too. Well how about that? But wait there is more.
Our forebears all had bigger bones and teeth and whatnot. Have we domesticated ourselves? The moderators rather thought so. Our forebears generally ran in small groups (I'm not sure how we know this, but I will accept it for the sake of brevity), but as we evolved we started hanging out in bigger groups where hotheads are not as acceptable so they were killed or exiled and in any case did not have as many children and we became more peaceable with smaller bones and teeth as the examination of our fossils has confirmed.
Actually the podcast began with the question of will war always be part of being human. I think this whole fox thing was meant to buttress the argument of maybe not,.but if so I think not. I think on the road to civilization we have fewer barroom brawler types, but I think war is a more complicated thing.
Happy Friday
Thursday, February 27, 2020
Fake News
"And it is all to my credit. If I hadn't challenged him he never would have looked it up. He would still believe that illegal aliens are voting in large numbers all across the USA." - Uncle Ken
For the last time, I never said that. All I said was that I had heard illegal immigrants were being allowed to vote in California period, and that turned out to be true. While looking that up, I came across the information that they were also being allowed to vote in parts of Maryland, not "all across the USA". I also found that there was a controversy about allowing them to vote in New York City and Chicago but, last I heard, that had not been implemented. I could have said something about dead people being allowed to vote in Chicago, but I didn't because I thought that would be a cheap shot, unworthy of the hallowed halls of the Institute.
As for Obama being a Muslim, that was an honest mistake that could have happened to anybody. Actually, what I think I said was that he had been raised Muslim but later converted to Christianity. Turned out, he had spent part of his childhood in a Muslim country, but his mother was a nominal Christian and his father wasn't religious so, while his Muslim neighbors might have influenced him to some degree, that's not the same as being raised Muslim. Obama himself alluded to his Muslim background in a speech that won him a Nobel Prize, but apparently he just meant that he had known some Muslims in his life and had gotten along with them just fine.
I fail to see what Galileo's balls have to do with looking things up on the internet. Galileo conducted an empirical experiment with his balls, which disproved a commonly held assumption. When we quote or link to something on the internet, we are just repeating what somebody else has said. If we search some more, we might find another source that contradicts that statement. Then we decide which source, if any, that we want to believe. Sure, some sources are more reliable than others, but it's still second hand information any way you look at it.
Speaking of educating people, I expected Uncle Ken to challenge my assertion that convicted felons are not allowed to vote or possess firearms, but he didn't, so I guess I don't have to document this one.
William Web was a typo, the correct name is William Weld. I seem to remember making that same mistake before, but a certain amount of memory loss is normal at my age. I heard that somewhere, but I don't remember where. Do I have to look that up, teacher?
For the last time, I never said that. All I said was that I had heard illegal immigrants were being allowed to vote in California period, and that turned out to be true. While looking that up, I came across the information that they were also being allowed to vote in parts of Maryland, not "all across the USA". I also found that there was a controversy about allowing them to vote in New York City and Chicago but, last I heard, that had not been implemented. I could have said something about dead people being allowed to vote in Chicago, but I didn't because I thought that would be a cheap shot, unworthy of the hallowed halls of the Institute.
As for Obama being a Muslim, that was an honest mistake that could have happened to anybody. Actually, what I think I said was that he had been raised Muslim but later converted to Christianity. Turned out, he had spent part of his childhood in a Muslim country, but his mother was a nominal Christian and his father wasn't religious so, while his Muslim neighbors might have influenced him to some degree, that's not the same as being raised Muslim. Obama himself alluded to his Muslim background in a speech that won him a Nobel Prize, but apparently he just meant that he had known some Muslims in his life and had gotten along with them just fine.
I fail to see what Galileo's balls have to do with looking things up on the internet. Galileo conducted an empirical experiment with his balls, which disproved a commonly held assumption. When we quote or link to something on the internet, we are just repeating what somebody else has said. If we search some more, we might find another source that contradicts that statement. Then we decide which source, if any, that we want to believe. Sure, some sources are more reliable than others, but it's still second hand information any way you look at it.
Speaking of educating people, I expected Uncle Ken to challenge my assertion that convicted felons are not allowed to vote or possess firearms, but he didn't, so I guess I don't have to document this one.
William Web was a typo, the correct name is William Weld. I seem to remember making that same mistake before, but a certain amount of memory loss is normal at my age. I heard that somewhere, but I don't remember where. Do I have to look that up, teacher?
dropping like the gentle rain from heaven, upon a place beneath
What good does it do to know what you heard if you don't remember where you heard it? And since there are a lot of lying sacks o shit in these parts, if you don't remember where you heard it there is a good chance that it is incorrect, as it turns out was the case because when Beagles looked it up he discovered that it only applied, in a small way, and in a small area. His knowledge is now greater than it was before.
And it is all to my credit. If I hadn't challenged him he never would have looked it up. He would still believe that illegal aliens are voting in large numbers all across the USA. I consider this a small victory for The Liberal Agenda whose method is education and analysis. Beagles has educated himself and more power to him for that.
At the beginning of The Institute Beagles believed that Obama was a muslim. I was able to educate him on that point, and at that time I thought more enlightenment would follow. The Liberal Agenda is like the gentle rain that falls upon the hard and obdurate rock, and over time, because The Liberal Agenda is patient, it is able to form a Grand Canyon of thoughtfulness and tolerance.
The idea is to first show somebody that they are wrong. Think of Galileo at the top of the Tower of Pisa with two lead balls, one of them ten times heavier than the other. The common knowledge of the observers was that the heaviest ball would fall the fastest (I once actually did this in a fifth grade class with a fat book in one hand and a pencil in the other, the kids were amazed.). At least the observers, unlike Beagles, knew where they got their information, from Aristotle a very smart man from olden times. Those Greeks were very good at like philosophy and mathematics but their science sucked because they thought getting your hands dirty was only fitting for slaves, and would never have exerted themselves by hauling two lead balls to the top of a tower.
Anyway see, the idea behind The Liberal Agenda is that the ignorant, having learned that something they believe is wrong will be roused to wonder if maybe other things that they have heard were wrong and begin to think about them, to put them into the proverbial Crucible of Truth. and emerge from that experience wiser.
It doesn't work well with Beagles who is adverse to questioning his assumptions, and probably it won''t be long till he again asserts something that he heard, but he doesn't know where, and which upon inspection turns out to be wrong. But the gentle rain continues to fall.
Who is William Web?
And it is all to my credit. If I hadn't challenged him he never would have looked it up. He would still believe that illegal aliens are voting in large numbers all across the USA. I consider this a small victory for The Liberal Agenda whose method is education and analysis. Beagles has educated himself and more power to him for that.
At the beginning of The Institute Beagles believed that Obama was a muslim. I was able to educate him on that point, and at that time I thought more enlightenment would follow. The Liberal Agenda is like the gentle rain that falls upon the hard and obdurate rock, and over time, because The Liberal Agenda is patient, it is able to form a Grand Canyon of thoughtfulness and tolerance.
The idea is to first show somebody that they are wrong. Think of Galileo at the top of the Tower of Pisa with two lead balls, one of them ten times heavier than the other. The common knowledge of the observers was that the heaviest ball would fall the fastest (I once actually did this in a fifth grade class with a fat book in one hand and a pencil in the other, the kids were amazed.). At least the observers, unlike Beagles, knew where they got their information, from Aristotle a very smart man from olden times. Those Greeks were very good at like philosophy and mathematics but their science sucked because they thought getting your hands dirty was only fitting for slaves, and would never have exerted themselves by hauling two lead balls to the top of a tower.
Anyway see, the idea behind The Liberal Agenda is that the ignorant, having learned that something they believe is wrong will be roused to wonder if maybe other things that they have heard were wrong and begin to think about them, to put them into the proverbial Crucible of Truth. and emerge from that experience wiser.
It doesn't work well with Beagles who is adverse to questioning his assumptions, and probably it won''t be long till he again asserts something that he heard, but he doesn't know where, and which upon inspection turns out to be wrong. But the gentle rain continues to fall.
Who is William Web?
Wednesday, February 26, 2020
One More Time
I know what I heard, and I know what I said. If Uncle Ken chooses not to believe me, there is nothing I can do about it. Repeating it over and over again is not likely to change his mind, just as his repeating his assertion over and over again is not likely so change my mind. So, moving right along:
Convicted felons are not allowed to vote or posses firearms for the rest of their lives, although I have read in our local paper that there is a process by which it's possible for them to get these restrictions lifted after they have served their sentence, but it's not easy. To clarify, there is a federal law that covers only federal felonies, but many states have similar laws that cover state felonies. Michigan is one of them, I don't know if Illinois is. Entering the country illegally is a misdemeanor for the first offence, so this wouldn't apply to those that do, but it becomes a felony on the second or third offence, I don't remember which.
Illegal aliens do indeed pay taxes and send their children to public schools, and I'm again' that too. The same argument applies. They are not supposed to be here in the first place and, if they weren't here, they wouldn't be doing any of those things. So send them back where they came from, after a short jail sentence for the first offence and progressively longer jail sentences for subsequent offenses. Of course they can't catch them all, just like they can't catch all the murderers and thieves out there, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't try.
We've been over this gun thing before. I once offered to compromise about the ARs, but Uncle Ken wanted to ban everything except single shots, so I withdrew my offer. I don't think he even knew the difference between a fully automatic and a semi automatic until I explained it to him.
I gave Joe Walsh the nickname "Alligator Joe" because I read somewhere that he had proposed to dig a moat along the Mexican border and stock it with alligators. It sounded like a good idea to me, but I later read somewhere that he had meant it as a joke. I noticed in the article that he said he had "tried" to run against Trump in the primary, so maybe he has dropped out by now. Last I heard, though, his name was still on the ballot for our March 10 primary, as was the name of William Weld. We probably haven't heard much about either of these guys because they can't afford to advertise on TV, but that doesn't mean I can't vote for one of them.
Convicted felons are not allowed to vote or posses firearms for the rest of their lives, although I have read in our local paper that there is a process by which it's possible for them to get these restrictions lifted after they have served their sentence, but it's not easy. To clarify, there is a federal law that covers only federal felonies, but many states have similar laws that cover state felonies. Michigan is one of them, I don't know if Illinois is. Entering the country illegally is a misdemeanor for the first offence, so this wouldn't apply to those that do, but it becomes a felony on the second or third offence, I don't remember which.
Illegal aliens do indeed pay taxes and send their children to public schools, and I'm again' that too. The same argument applies. They are not supposed to be here in the first place and, if they weren't here, they wouldn't be doing any of those things. So send them back where they came from, after a short jail sentence for the first offence and progressively longer jail sentences for subsequent offenses. Of course they can't catch them all, just like they can't catch all the murderers and thieves out there, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't try.
We've been over this gun thing before. I once offered to compromise about the ARs, but Uncle Ken wanted to ban everything except single shots, so I withdrew my offer. I don't think he even knew the difference between a fully automatic and a semi automatic until I explained it to him.
I gave Joe Walsh the nickname "Alligator Joe" because I read somewhere that he had proposed to dig a moat along the Mexican border and stock it with alligators. It sounded like a good idea to me, but I later read somewhere that he had meant it as a joke. I noticed in the article that he said he had "tried" to run against Trump in the primary, so maybe he has dropped out by now. Last I heard, though, his name was still on the ballot for our March 10 primary, as was the name of William Weld. We probably haven't heard much about either of these guys because they can't afford to advertise on TV, but that doesn't mean I can't vote for one of them.
all taters are the same
So here's the thing Beagles. When you said you had heard that illegals are voting in California, you did not know if that was a fact or not. You only knew that you had heard it somewhere, but you did not know where that was. My suspicion is it was an echo of that Trump quote that I put up a link to. That quote in turn was an echo of something made up up on the conspiracy part of the web, repeated by the late night Foxies, and then picked up by Trump and from there floated by, well I'm guessing by some right wing columnist or maybe a letter from the editor. Though I think Beagles is misguided, I do think he is an honest man and will have to admit that when he wrote about what he heard he was thinking they were voting regularly in regular elections. Even if Beagles believes that voting for school boards in a few local elections is not small potatoes, I believe he would have to admit that this is indeed a smaller potato than voting in regular elections throughout the whole state.
You know I have heard that people in Michigan are brandishing AR 15s on the streets of their cities. Oh wait, what it turns out is actually happening is some old fart on the edge of a swamp was carrying Old Betsy from the trunk of his car to his deer blind. Can I nevertheless call myself vindicated, and claim that the former statement still holds in all its glory? I think not?
I don't think illegal aliens should vote in national or state elections either. I think it's okay if they vote in a school board election because their kids are going to the school, and their taxes are supporting it. Why shouldn't they have a say in it. Beagles makes a case that they are criminals, but aren't criminals allowed to vote? Does Beagles have to prove that he is not a criminal when he goes to the polls?
Where despite his dalliance with minor oddballs like Walsh and Weld, we can be pretty sure that he will be voting for Trump. I think he claimed at one point that if the dems nominated someone he approved of he might not vote for Trump, but I cannot think of a dem that Beagles would approve of. At last night's debate the rightmost candidate, Amy, came out strongly for some kind of gun control, and Beagles is sworn to oppose anybody that he suspects might be glancing sideways at Old Betsy.
Of course none of the dem candidates has come out against Old Betsy, but they may have said nasty things about her murderous nephews of that AR 15 ilk. Which, much as some illegals voting in local elections is the same size tater as all illegals in California voting in national elections, and Beagles toting Old Betsy across the street is the same as mobs waving AR 15s in the streets of all of Michigan, and is reason aplenty for giving Trump four more years.
I'm pretty sure Walsh (how did he become Alligator?) is out of the race. I couldn't tell you if Weld is still alive or not. Not that it matters.
You know I have heard that people in Michigan are brandishing AR 15s on the streets of their cities. Oh wait, what it turns out is actually happening is some old fart on the edge of a swamp was carrying Old Betsy from the trunk of his car to his deer blind. Can I nevertheless call myself vindicated, and claim that the former statement still holds in all its glory? I think not?
I don't think illegal aliens should vote in national or state elections either. I think it's okay if they vote in a school board election because their kids are going to the school, and their taxes are supporting it. Why shouldn't they have a say in it. Beagles makes a case that they are criminals, but aren't criminals allowed to vote? Does Beagles have to prove that he is not a criminal when he goes to the polls?
Where despite his dalliance with minor oddballs like Walsh and Weld, we can be pretty sure that he will be voting for Trump. I think he claimed at one point that if the dems nominated someone he approved of he might not vote for Trump, but I cannot think of a dem that Beagles would approve of. At last night's debate the rightmost candidate, Amy, came out strongly for some kind of gun control, and Beagles is sworn to oppose anybody that he suspects might be glancing sideways at Old Betsy.
Of course none of the dem candidates has come out against Old Betsy, but they may have said nasty things about her murderous nephews of that AR 15 ilk. Which, much as some illegals voting in local elections is the same size tater as all illegals in California voting in national elections, and Beagles toting Old Betsy across the street is the same as mobs waving AR 15s in the streets of all of Michigan, and is reason aplenty for giving Trump four more years.
I'm pretty sure Walsh (how did he become Alligator?) is out of the race. I couldn't tell you if Weld is still alive or not. Not that it matters.
Tuesday, February 25, 2020
I'm Again' It
Whether or not it's a big deal is a subjective judgment. One guy's big deal is another guy's small potatoes. I think we can agree that it would be a bigger deal if there were millions of them, but that's a relative thing. We have already agreed that Trump is a lying sack o' shit, so his input is irrelevant.
How we got started on this track was I expressed an opinion that it was better if more people were allowed to vote than less people, but I drew the line at illegal immigrants being allowed to vote, like I had heard they were doing in California. At that point I had nothing to back that claim up except a vague memory that I had heard it somewhere. My search for confirmation led to discover that it was only in San Francisco's school board elections, not the whole State of California's elections. Nevertheless, my assertion that illegal immigrants were being allowed to vote in California was confirmed. Not only that, but they were being allowed to vote in several communities in Maryland, which was new information to me. It seems the matter has also been debated in Chicago and New York City but, last I heard, it hasn't happened yet.
Be that as it may, it is still my opinion that illegal immigrants should not be allowed to vote. This opinion is derived largely from the fact that they are, by definition, illegal immigrants. They are not supposed to be here in the first place and, if they were not here, this issue would not have been raised. If you want to change my opinion, you will need to come up with at least one good reason why illegal immigrants should be allowed to vote. Of course there is no guarantee that you will win me over, but it would be a starting point for discussion.
Remember Alligator Joe Walsh? I considered voting for him in the primary, but now I'm pretty sure that I will vote for Bill Weld. This article didn't change my mind, but it raises a good point.
https://a.msn.com/r/2/BB10mw4l?m=en-us&referrerID=InAppShare
How we got started on this track was I expressed an opinion that it was better if more people were allowed to vote than less people, but I drew the line at illegal immigrants being allowed to vote, like I had heard they were doing in California. At that point I had nothing to back that claim up except a vague memory that I had heard it somewhere. My search for confirmation led to discover that it was only in San Francisco's school board elections, not the whole State of California's elections. Nevertheless, my assertion that illegal immigrants were being allowed to vote in California was confirmed. Not only that, but they were being allowed to vote in several communities in Maryland, which was new information to me. It seems the matter has also been debated in Chicago and New York City but, last I heard, it hasn't happened yet.
Be that as it may, it is still my opinion that illegal immigrants should not be allowed to vote. This opinion is derived largely from the fact that they are, by definition, illegal immigrants. They are not supposed to be here in the first place and, if they were not here, this issue would not have been raised. If you want to change my opinion, you will need to come up with at least one good reason why illegal immigrants should be allowed to vote. Of course there is no guarantee that you will win me over, but it would be a starting point for discussion.
Remember Alligator Joe Walsh? I considered voting for him in the primary, but now I'm pretty sure that I will vote for Bill Weld. This article didn't change my mind, but it raises a good point.
https://a.msn.com/r/2/BB10mw4l?m=en-us&referrerID=InAppShare
Bernie
The fact that some illegal immigrants are voting in local elections in some parts of California is no big deal. When you proclaimed, without qualification I would draw the line at allowing illegal immigrants to vote like I heard they are doing in California That sounds like a big deal. In fact it sounds a lot like what this guy has been saying all along https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2019/jun/24/donald-trump/pants-fire-trumps-latest-california-voter-fraud-cl/
Back in the day along Telegraph Avenue and in Sproul Plaza in Berkeley the talk was all about revolution, not if, but when. Young idiots like myself would stop in front of some pamphlet strewn card table and jaw for hours. It was hip to be a lefty. The New Left they called it. The old left was kind of stodgy and with our brand new (because newer was always better) brand we would clear away all that baggage and bring in the, well, revolution,
Well that never happened. After refusing for the Hump in 1968, I found myself working for McGovern in 1972. I had become a stodgy democrat. But I still had visions of the glory of the revolution, sweep away all the bad old shit and build the shining new world. Sort of like The Liberal Agenda but at a much faster pace and not so much convincing people to do the right thing as making them do it, because we would have all the power. This did not come up much among the stodgy dems so I generally just favored the more lefty of the candidates and did not give it a whole lot of thought.
And then came Bernie. I voted for him in the primary, but I worried. Could he win the general election> I have to say that I was a little relieved when the big girl got the nomination because I thought she was more electable. Afterwards there was some talk about whether or not Bernie could have won. After all didn't he have the power to stir men's souls? I know I've said a thousand times that I don't like stirring up men's souls, but maybe, if it helps to win an election, an election against Donald Trump, well maybe it would be worth the risk.
And here he is again. And leading the pack. I'm taking a closer look at him and not liking so much what I see. I don't like the righteousness, and he seems pretty rigid. Why doesn't he just drop this socialism thing and call himself a democrat? Is just words after all, doesn't he want to win?
Polls say most democrats are moderates but they are divided between Joe, Pete, and Amy. And with my darling Elizabeth fading Bernie has the progressive lane to himself. Now the moderates are looking on in alarm, how can they stop Bernie? They are looking to a brokered convention and super delegate shenanigans and in my mind a mess. They say Bernie can't win, but I wonder what kind of chance a moderate who is seen as having stolen the election from The People can have? I say let's just cross our fingers and go with the Bern.
Back in the day along Telegraph Avenue and in Sproul Plaza in Berkeley the talk was all about revolution, not if, but when. Young idiots like myself would stop in front of some pamphlet strewn card table and jaw for hours. It was hip to be a lefty. The New Left they called it. The old left was kind of stodgy and with our brand new (because newer was always better) brand we would clear away all that baggage and bring in the, well, revolution,
Well that never happened. After refusing for the Hump in 1968, I found myself working for McGovern in 1972. I had become a stodgy democrat. But I still had visions of the glory of the revolution, sweep away all the bad old shit and build the shining new world. Sort of like The Liberal Agenda but at a much faster pace and not so much convincing people to do the right thing as making them do it, because we would have all the power. This did not come up much among the stodgy dems so I generally just favored the more lefty of the candidates and did not give it a whole lot of thought.
And then came Bernie. I voted for him in the primary, but I worried. Could he win the general election> I have to say that I was a little relieved when the big girl got the nomination because I thought she was more electable. Afterwards there was some talk about whether or not Bernie could have won. After all didn't he have the power to stir men's souls? I know I've said a thousand times that I don't like stirring up men's souls, but maybe, if it helps to win an election, an election against Donald Trump, well maybe it would be worth the risk.
And here he is again. And leading the pack. I'm taking a closer look at him and not liking so much what I see. I don't like the righteousness, and he seems pretty rigid. Why doesn't he just drop this socialism thing and call himself a democrat? Is just words after all, doesn't he want to win?
Polls say most democrats are moderates but they are divided between Joe, Pete, and Amy. And with my darling Elizabeth fading Bernie has the progressive lane to himself. Now the moderates are looking on in alarm, how can they stop Bernie? They are looking to a brokered convention and super delegate shenanigans and in my mind a mess. They say Bernie can't win, but I wonder what kind of chance a moderate who is seen as having stolen the election from The People can have? I say let's just cross our fingers and go with the Bern.
Monday, February 24, 2020
Read the Quote, Uncle Ken
I meant to say what I said, that I heard they are letting illegal immigrants vote in California, which they are. While looking that up, I also found that they are letting them vote in some other jurisdictions as well, and that House Democrats are trying to encourage the practice. Did you even read my posts and the links I provided?
Here's another link for you to ignore:
https://www.newsweek.com/immigrants-are-getting-right-vote-cities-across-america-664467
Here's another link for you to ignore:
https://www.newsweek.com/immigrants-are-getting-right-vote-cities-across-america-664467
If you had meant to say some illegal immigrants were voting in certain local elections then you should have said that, but I believe what you meant to say was that they were routinely voting in all elections in all of California, which is incorrect.
I don't seem to have much more to add this morning. Worried about my party.
I don't seem to have much more to add this morning. Worried about my party.
Friday, February 21, 2020
I Heard Right
" I would draw the line at allowing illegal immigrants to vote like I heard they are doing in California."
I didn't say that I heard illegal immigrants are voting in state or national elections, I said that I heard they are letting illegal immigrants vote in California. Since San Francisco is in California, what I heard was essentially correct. So how does the "lying sack o' shit" figure into this?
Thanks to Cortana, who always seems to know exactly what I'm looking for even if I don't, I was led to the second link, where I found that the problem extends beyond California, which I had not heard before. Furthermore, I learned that "House Democrats voted Friday to defend localities that allow illegal immigrants to vote in their elections, turning back a GOP attempt to discourage the practice."
I didn't say that I heard illegal immigrants are voting in state or national elections, I said that I heard they are letting illegal immigrants vote in California. Since San Francisco is in California, what I heard was essentially correct. So how does the "lying sack o' shit" figure into this?
Thanks to Cortana, who always seems to know exactly what I'm looking for even if I don't, I was led to the second link, where I found that the problem extends beyond California, which I had not heard before. Furthermore, I learned that "House Democrats voted Friday to defend localities that allow illegal immigrants to vote in their elections, turning back a GOP attempt to discourage the practice."
uncle Bloomy
The way 'the rumor' got started is some sack o shit told a lie and that enabled somebody else to say well they heard it, There are things like 4chan and qanon that just churn out bullshit then organs like FOX pick them up, and knowing it's a lie so they can't actually come out and repeat it, they say something like it's been widely reported, and this is where Trump gets his news. Also some of it leaks out into the main stream through disreputable columnists in your local paper or maybe letters to the editor. Beagles's newsfeed, msn, seems pretty truthful as does lamestream network news, so I blame that local paper, probably not its local news but columnists like that Marc Theissen character, and maybe letters to the editor.
I used to write letters to the editor. A few got published, but not nearly enough considering a lot of the half-assed, poorly written, ones that did get published and I eventually I stopped offering. But you know every now and then I think I write something pretty good in the Beaglestonian and maybe I could excerpt that out and email it to the letters to the editor. It's so much easier now that I can cut and paste it out of my post and send it off, it's not like I have to hunt up a stamp and an envelope and march out on that long trek of two or three blocks to mail it. Of course that makes it easier for everybody else too so there is a lot of competition.
I'm glad to see Beagles using Snopes. That's my first step when something doesn't pass the smell test. Naturally the Trumpists have labelled it fake news.
Before the debate I had a pretty benign view of this Bloomberg character. He was running all these ads against Trump and I believe he said he would fund the dems even if he didn't win the nomination. His rising in the polls was somewhat disturbing, I didn't like the idea that my ilk could so easily be bought by some fat cat, but still maybe he could beat Trump. His performance at the debate changed all that. He was certainly not the smiling Uncle Bloomy of the commercials, he was just some rich prick. And now this: https://www.politico.com/news/2020/02/20/bloomberg-brokered-convention-strategy-116407
In short Bernie is the front runner and it looks like he will be for awhile to come, and this makes some dems nervous, myself a little too. Like why doesn't he just dump the word socialist? It's just a word and means different things to different people. Would he rather be a president or be a socialist for Chrissake? If he comes into the convention with most of the delegates he wins the nomination, but he could come in with more delegates than anybody else but not a majority and this is something Bloomy is aiming to make so and then he has some, dubious in my mind, plan where the other candidates could give him some of their delegates and he could beat Bernie and take the nomination. Bad news, bad news, hope the bad guy goes away.
I used to write letters to the editor. A few got published, but not nearly enough considering a lot of the half-assed, poorly written, ones that did get published and I eventually I stopped offering. But you know every now and then I think I write something pretty good in the Beaglestonian and maybe I could excerpt that out and email it to the letters to the editor. It's so much easier now that I can cut and paste it out of my post and send it off, it's not like I have to hunt up a stamp and an envelope and march out on that long trek of two or three blocks to mail it. Of course that makes it easier for everybody else too so there is a lot of competition.
I'm glad to see Beagles using Snopes. That's my first step when something doesn't pass the smell test. Naturally the Trumpists have labelled it fake news.
Before the debate I had a pretty benign view of this Bloomberg character. He was running all these ads against Trump and I believe he said he would fund the dems even if he didn't win the nomination. His rising in the polls was somewhat disturbing, I didn't like the idea that my ilk could so easily be bought by some fat cat, but still maybe he could beat Trump. His performance at the debate changed all that. He was certainly not the smiling Uncle Bloomy of the commercials, he was just some rich prick. And now this: https://www.politico.com/news/2020/02/20/bloomberg-brokered-convention-strategy-116407
In short Bernie is the front runner and it looks like he will be for awhile to come, and this makes some dems nervous, myself a little too. Like why doesn't he just dump the word socialist? It's just a word and means different things to different people. Would he rather be a president or be a socialist for Chrissake? If he comes into the convention with most of the delegates he wins the nomination, but he could come in with more delegates than anybody else but not a majority and this is something Bloomy is aiming to make so and then he has some, dubious in my mind, plan where the other candidates could give him some of their delegates and he could beat Bernie and take the nomination. Bad news, bad news, hope the bad guy goes away.
Thursday, February 20, 2020
Tracking Down the Rumor
I am not familiar with Trump's use of the term "I've heard", but I'm pretty sure he's not the only person who ever said that. Although Trump is indeed a lying sack o' shit, that doesn't mean that everybody who uses some of the same words he uses is also a lying sack o' shit.
Okay, the State of California is not allowing illegal immigrants to vote in state or federal elections, but they are allowing illegals to obtain driver's licenses. When you get your driver's license in California, you are automatically registered to vote unless you opt out of it, which is probably how the rumor got started. Also, you have to provide proof of citizenship before they register you, which should weed out the illegals. Another way the rumor might have gotten started is: "In November 2016, the California city of San Francisco did pass a ballot proposition allowing some non-citizens to register to vote in local school board elections only." (My copy and paste did not work on this quote, so I wrote it down and typed it in myself. It may be found at the bottom of the following article.)
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/california-motor-voter-act/
But wait, there's more!
"A 1996 federal law prohibits noncitizens from voting in federal elections, but there is no prohibition on localities, and indeed a number of jurisdictions allow it, to some extent."
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/mar/8/house-votes-favor-illegal-immigrant-voting/
Okay, the State of California is not allowing illegal immigrants to vote in state or federal elections, but they are allowing illegals to obtain driver's licenses. When you get your driver's license in California, you are automatically registered to vote unless you opt out of it, which is probably how the rumor got started. Also, you have to provide proof of citizenship before they register you, which should weed out the illegals. Another way the rumor might have gotten started is: "In November 2016, the California city of San Francisco did pass a ballot proposition allowing some non-citizens to register to vote in local school board elections only." (My copy and paste did not work on this quote, so I wrote it down and typed it in myself. It may be found at the bottom of the following article.)
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/california-motor-voter-act/
But wait, there's more!
"A 1996 federal law prohibits noncitizens from voting in federal elections, but there is no prohibition on localities, and indeed a number of jurisdictions allow it, to some extent."
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/mar/8/house-votes-favor-illegal-immigrant-voting/
squares and kooks, fat cats vs perfessers
Beagles is right about strict constructionism the term I should have used was originalism which says that only the words in the constitution are important and the motivations of the writers be damned. I used the declaration of independence as an example because it has the most soaring rhetoric. I was looking up the thing about people with less education tending to vote conservative, but of course there is no conservative party, so we have to go with republican, and if we consider that than they tend to get fewer of the educated votes, especially Trump, but then I have to ask myself how do they know what education the voter has. I suppose they could use the polls, asking people what education they have as well as who they intend to vote for, or maybe they could consider the education level of the local area.
Well I don't know, those polls where they break it down by age, sex, wealth, race, education always seemed a little off the point to me. I guess it's good fodder over a pitcher of beer, but what difference does it make say, that women hate Trump more than men? Only the totals count.
Trump has brought the term I've heard, as in 'I've heard that smart people think that I am the smartest person who ever strode the Earth in my fine clothes,into disrepute, and Beagles uses it to backup his idea that illegal immigrants are voting in California. Both are incorrect.
I think I may have been onto something with the idea of the wealthy or the more educated being the elites. There is some overlap in that the wealthy tend to get a lot of schooling, and people who get a lot of schooling tend to make more money. I remember in college we liberal arts types tended to think of business majors as squares and they tended to look at us as kooks. When leftists rail at the elite they target the fat cats and when rightists rail at the elites they target the perfessers in their ivory towers.
Tuned into the debate last night. It was the best debate of the primary. Up till now they have all been muted. Electibility is a fog hanging over the room and nobody wanted to be too critical of anybody else, also there have been too many of them. This time they all had a common enemy in Bloomberg, and they all unloaded on him, which he strangely didn't seem prepared for and he just stood there with a frown looking like a villain. Having broken the ice they then came at each other, the moderates vs the leftists, and then the moderates and leftists against each other. Healthcare was the biggest bone they fought over and there was more light shone on the subject than previously, Biden sort of held his own, but he needs to do better than that. My gal Elizabeth was very active and most pundits awarded her the victory, but the true winner was Bernie who went in the front runner and exited the same way.
I kind of like Bernie, he seems honest and forthright, but his righteous indignation is turned up a little too high for me. You know how I feel about the power to stir men's souls..
Well I don't know, those polls where they break it down by age, sex, wealth, race, education always seemed a little off the point to me. I guess it's good fodder over a pitcher of beer, but what difference does it make say, that women hate Trump more than men? Only the totals count.
Trump has brought the term I've heard, as in 'I've heard that smart people think that I am the smartest person who ever strode the Earth in my fine clothes,into disrepute, and Beagles uses it to backup his idea that illegal immigrants are voting in California. Both are incorrect.
I think I may have been onto something with the idea of the wealthy or the more educated being the elites. There is some overlap in that the wealthy tend to get a lot of schooling, and people who get a lot of schooling tend to make more money. I remember in college we liberal arts types tended to think of business majors as squares and they tended to look at us as kooks. When leftists rail at the elite they target the fat cats and when rightists rail at the elites they target the perfessers in their ivory towers.
Tuned into the debate last night. It was the best debate of the primary. Up till now they have all been muted. Electibility is a fog hanging over the room and nobody wanted to be too critical of anybody else, also there have been too many of them. This time they all had a common enemy in Bloomberg, and they all unloaded on him, which he strangely didn't seem prepared for and he just stood there with a frown looking like a villain. Having broken the ice they then came at each other, the moderates vs the leftists, and then the moderates and leftists against each other. Healthcare was the biggest bone they fought over and there was more light shone on the subject than previously, Biden sort of held his own, but he needs to do better than that. My gal Elizabeth was very active and most pundits awarded her the victory, but the true winner was Bernie who went in the front runner and exited the same way.
I kind of like Bernie, he seems honest and forthright, but his righteous indignation is turned up a little too high for me. You know how I feel about the power to stir men's souls..
Wednesday, February 19, 2020
The More the Merrier
When I went to school, the strict constructionists were the people who believed the federal government should only do what the Constitution specifically tells it to do, and the loose constructionists were the people who believed the federal government should do anything that the Constitution doesn't specifically prohibit it from doing. Be that as it may, I think that ship sailed a long time ago. Last I heard, the current controversy was about interpreting the intent of the wording. One group wants to interpret the wording the way they think the Founders meant it when they said it, and the other group wants to interpret the wording in the way they believe it speaks to us today. I think there is a name for each of these two groups. Although I have forgotten what it is, I'm pretty sure it's not strict constructionists and loose constructionists.
The Declaration of Independence is not part of the Constitution, although they are frequently published side by side in the same book. This explains why the Declaration says that rights like life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are inalienable, while the 5th Amendment to the Constitution says "No person....shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law". By the way, the original quote by John Locke was "life, liberty, and property". The Founders changed it to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" for the Declaration and then reverted to the original text in the Constitution. I think what they were trying to do in the Declaration was expand the right of property to include the right to try to acquire property if you don't already have some, but that's just my theory. One thing I'm pretty sure of is that by "the pursuit of happiness" they did not mean emotional bliss, because that hadn't been invented yet. In those days it was generally believed that, if you had material wealth, you were by definition happy.
I think that conservatives, on average, are just as well educated as liberals, although they might have studied different subjects in school and followed different paths of interest after their formal education. I do remember reading somewhere that Trump voters were more likely to not have college educations than Hillary voters, but these are the same poll takers who predicted that Hillary was going to win in 2016.
All things considered, I believe that it's better to have more people voting than less people, although I would draw the line at allowing illegal immigrants to vote like I heard they are doing in California. Stupid California! I think this country will be better off when it finally breaks off and sinks into the sea.
The Declaration of Independence is not part of the Constitution, although they are frequently published side by side in the same book. This explains why the Declaration says that rights like life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are inalienable, while the 5th Amendment to the Constitution says "No person....shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law". By the way, the original quote by John Locke was "life, liberty, and property". The Founders changed it to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" for the Declaration and then reverted to the original text in the Constitution. I think what they were trying to do in the Declaration was expand the right of property to include the right to try to acquire property if you don't already have some, but that's just my theory. One thing I'm pretty sure of is that by "the pursuit of happiness" they did not mean emotional bliss, because that hadn't been invented yet. In those days it was generally believed that, if you had material wealth, you were by definition happy.
I think that conservatives, on average, are just as well educated as liberals, although they might have studied different subjects in school and followed different paths of interest after their formal education. I do remember reading somewhere that Trump voters were more likely to not have college educations than Hillary voters, but these are the same poll takers who predicted that Hillary was going to win in 2016.
All things considered, I believe that it's better to have more people voting than less people, although I would draw the line at allowing illegal immigrants to vote like I heard they are doing in California. Stupid California! I think this country will be better off when it finally breaks off and sinks into the sea.
which elite gets the most votes?
Beagles has a point there about people tending to read too much into the constitution, probably others read too little. I expect it is much like the bible where you can find backing for anything. The strict constructionists, the ones Trump likes to make judges, maintain that it doesn't matter what the writers of the constitution thought, it is only the words that matter. Mostly this gives them leeway to make the words say whatever they want them to say without considering if that makes any sense, I suppose there is a weakness on the other side too, who is to say what those guys were thinking under their bewigged heads.
If you are under ten years old and watching the founding fathers on one of those rickety squealing old moviolas your heart may have beat louder to that flowing rhetoric of the most idealistic lilt. That was what I was thinking at the end of the last post, and maybe that was a factor in The Liberal Agenda, the equality of man and all that jazz. I was thinking I was onto something, you know, a theory so crazy that it just might be right. But having thought about it through the humdrum day and the dreamy night, I think, nah, probably not. Soaring rhetoric is cheap, you hear it all the time, probably does not amount to a hill of beans. Just as well, I have always distrusted those with the power to stir men's souls. I think our souls are better left unstirred, getting fired up just gets us into jams.
I am trying to figure out the thread of my last post before I came up with that big discovery which I have now consigned to the dust bin. Sometimes I just start writing thinking something will come up and it doesn't always.
Now I remember, it was about Buckley saying that he wanted only 'certain elites' voting. On it's face this sounds repellent, probably because it is going to depend on who gets to choose the elites. Well somebody might think, as the founding fathers apparently thought, that the richest people have the most at stake. It occurs to me now that if that is a factor, then it should be the people who pay the most taxes who should have the most say. On the other hand some might say no, we want the smartest people to have the most say, and you can measure that roughly by how much education they have had, maybe the most schooling, the more votes. If it was wealth we would probably get a more rightest government and if it was education we would probably get a more leftist one.
But also when you are sitting on the throne the tendency is to make yourself more comfortable, so the richest would tend to make the world nicer for rich people at the expense of the poorer, and the better educated would make it better for the more learned and the expense of the less learned.
If you are under ten years old and watching the founding fathers on one of those rickety squealing old moviolas your heart may have beat louder to that flowing rhetoric of the most idealistic lilt. That was what I was thinking at the end of the last post, and maybe that was a factor in The Liberal Agenda, the equality of man and all that jazz. I was thinking I was onto something, you know, a theory so crazy that it just might be right. But having thought about it through the humdrum day and the dreamy night, I think, nah, probably not. Soaring rhetoric is cheap, you hear it all the time, probably does not amount to a hill of beans. Just as well, I have always distrusted those with the power to stir men's souls. I think our souls are better left unstirred, getting fired up just gets us into jams.
I am trying to figure out the thread of my last post before I came up with that big discovery which I have now consigned to the dust bin. Sometimes I just start writing thinking something will come up and it doesn't always.
Now I remember, it was about Buckley saying that he wanted only 'certain elites' voting. On it's face this sounds repellent, probably because it is going to depend on who gets to choose the elites. Well somebody might think, as the founding fathers apparently thought, that the richest people have the most at stake. It occurs to me now that if that is a factor, then it should be the people who pay the most taxes who should have the most say. On the other hand some might say no, we want the smartest people to have the most say, and you can measure that roughly by how much education they have had, maybe the most schooling, the more votes. If it was wealth we would probably get a more rightest government and if it was education we would probably get a more leftist one.
But also when you are sitting on the throne the tendency is to make yourself more comfortable, so the richest would tend to make the world nicer for rich people at the expense of the poorer, and the better educated would make it better for the more learned and the expense of the less learned.
Tuesday, February 18, 2020
Equality
The Declaration doesn't say that all men should be treated equally, it says that "all men are created equal". Then, a little further in, it says "That to secure these rights (life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness) governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed". I think that people tend to read too much into this. The original intent was to refute the old "divine right of kings" theory, which asserted that kings rule "by the grace of God". The declaration asserts that God did not invent government, God created people and then people invented government, basically to protect them from each other. Since people invented government, it is their right to "alter or abolish it" when they believe it isn't doing its job correctly.
I think the rationale behind restricting voting rights to property owners was that they were the only ones paying taxes at the time. It didn't seem to occur to people that much of the revenue the property owners paid in taxes was derived from the rental of their property to tenant farmers. As other forms of taxation were devised, it became harder and harder to justify the property restrtiction, and it gradually withered away. I don't think there is anything in the original Constitution about it, determination of voting rights was left to the states. The 15th Amendment later prohibited the states from denying voting rights because of "race, color, or previous condition of servitude", and the 19th added sex to the list. The 24th prohibited the poll tax, and the 26th lowered the minimum age to 18. Prior to these amendments, some states let some of these groups vote and some did not. The amendments just made it uniform at the national level.
I think the rationale behind restricting voting rights to property owners was that they were the only ones paying taxes at the time. It didn't seem to occur to people that much of the revenue the property owners paid in taxes was derived from the rental of their property to tenant farmers. As other forms of taxation were devised, it became harder and harder to justify the property restrtiction, and it gradually withered away. I don't think there is anything in the original Constitution about it, determination of voting rights was left to the states. The 15th Amendment later prohibited the states from denying voting rights because of "race, color, or previous condition of servitude", and the 19th added sex to the list. The 24th prohibited the poll tax, and the 26th lowered the minimum age to 18. Prior to these amendments, some states let some of these groups vote and some did not. The amendments just made it uniform at the national level.
a new thought for cynical Uncle Ken
When Plato sat around thinking, thinking, thinking, his every need attended to by slaves so that no impediments ate into his thinking time, one of the things he came up with was the three ways a nation might be led, a king, an oligarchy, or a democracy. He quickly dismissed the idea of a democracy, let those loons run everything? An oligarchy was nothing but a bunch of squabblers and that left only a king. But it had to be a good king, and who better to fulfill that role than a philosopher? A philosopher-king. I'm hazy on the details, but he had in mind some sort of elite who would be carefully schooled and tended to, and the kings would be chosen from among them by some kind of council of the elite. and I think, unlike kings, there was no heredity, and I think the kings had terms.
Not that it mattered . The Greeks had great mathematics, but lousy scientists because they didn't want to get their hands dirty, and their ideas on governance, well very nice on a warm summer day with slaves peeling your grapes for you, but for the real world, not so hot. When the much more practical Romans conquered Greece they still had a republic, but that was gone in a hundred years. Still the Romans hung on for about four hundred more years. There was considerable injustice, assassinations and massacres now and then, but roads got built, ships got sailed, if you were well-born and didn't back some losing emperor everything was groovy.
For all its talk about democracy, the early US wasn't very in the sense of one man, one vote, but gradually the franchise was extended so that it was. I understand how it got extended to blacks and to women, but I am not sure how it was extended to people who didn't own property. Why did the property owners ever let the landless vote?
I am meandering, what I meant to be discussing is who are the elite? I don't think they are the same as The Man. You know it is a fine thing for the barefoot young boy at the fishing hole to put on his shoes and march right out to the schoolhouse and pick himself up some learning. A lot of it is very practical and it will help him help out his dad down on the farm, but some of it is, well, propaganda.
The schools were funded by the state and the state wanted these kids to be good Americans, so they made them study things like the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and all the stuff of the founding fathers. If the founding fathers were not so hot at building a democracy of equals, they excelled in soaring rhetoric, and maybe the kid in the schoolroom picked up on that shit. Maybe all men should be treated equally.
Well this is a whole new thought for me. In my cynical attitude I have long dismissed all those bewigged heads as so much fluff, but maybe I was wrong. I need some time to think.
Not that it mattered . The Greeks had great mathematics, but lousy scientists because they didn't want to get their hands dirty, and their ideas on governance, well very nice on a warm summer day with slaves peeling your grapes for you, but for the real world, not so hot. When the much more practical Romans conquered Greece they still had a republic, but that was gone in a hundred years. Still the Romans hung on for about four hundred more years. There was considerable injustice, assassinations and massacres now and then, but roads got built, ships got sailed, if you were well-born and didn't back some losing emperor everything was groovy.
For all its talk about democracy, the early US wasn't very in the sense of one man, one vote, but gradually the franchise was extended so that it was. I understand how it got extended to blacks and to women, but I am not sure how it was extended to people who didn't own property. Why did the property owners ever let the landless vote?
I am meandering, what I meant to be discussing is who are the elite? I don't think they are the same as The Man. You know it is a fine thing for the barefoot young boy at the fishing hole to put on his shoes and march right out to the schoolhouse and pick himself up some learning. A lot of it is very practical and it will help him help out his dad down on the farm, but some of it is, well, propaganda.
The schools were funded by the state and the state wanted these kids to be good Americans, so they made them study things like the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and all the stuff of the founding fathers. If the founding fathers were not so hot at building a democracy of equals, they excelled in soaring rhetoric, and maybe the kid in the schoolroom picked up on that shit. Maybe all men should be treated equally.
Well this is a whole new thought for me. In my cynical attitude I have long dismissed all those bewigged heads as so much fluff, but maybe I was wrong. I need some time to think.
Monday, February 17, 2020
Ilkism
The first time Uncle Ken said something about my ilk, I replied "I have an ilk? I've always considered myself to be one of a kind." People have been telling me that all my life, and they didn't always mean it as a compliment. I remember when Roger, a colleague of mine at the paper mill, once introduced me to one of his friends as "The most oddball person I know". I rejoined that Roger wasn't exactly Mr. Conformity himself. Roger explained, "You are an oddball, I am unique." I suppose, because man is a social animal, it seems to be human nature to assign people to groups, even when no organized group structure exists. Those whose ilk cannot easily be identified are called loners, oddballs or, if they are rich and famous, eccentrics.
When we last discussed populism, I was meaning to ask if the opposite of populism is elitism, but I don't think I got around to it at the time. I was watching PBS news the other night because some kind of sports game had pre-empted both of my usual news programs. They were interviewing a guy who had written a book about a big debate between a White guy and a Black guy that had occurred in 1965. The White guy was William F. Buckley and the Black guy was James Baldwin. At one point, a member of the audience broke in and suggested that they should allow Blacks to vote in Alabama. (The PBS interviewer explained to us that, in those days, it was difficult for Blacks to vote in Alabama, even though they were legally entitled to do so.) Buckley responded, "The problem isn't that too few Negros vote in Alabama, the problem is that too many Whites vote in Alabama." There was laughter from the audience, and the book author said most of them thought that Buckley had meant it as a joke, but that he was really serious about that. It seems that Buckley believed that universal suffrage was a bad idea, and he would prefer that only "certain elites" had the right to vote.
We've come a long way from 1965. Or have we?
When we last discussed populism, I was meaning to ask if the opposite of populism is elitism, but I don't think I got around to it at the time. I was watching PBS news the other night because some kind of sports game had pre-empted both of my usual news programs. They were interviewing a guy who had written a book about a big debate between a White guy and a Black guy that had occurred in 1965. The White guy was William F. Buckley and the Black guy was James Baldwin. At one point, a member of the audience broke in and suggested that they should allow Blacks to vote in Alabama. (The PBS interviewer explained to us that, in those days, it was difficult for Blacks to vote in Alabama, even though they were legally entitled to do so.) Buckley responded, "The problem isn't that too few Negros vote in Alabama, the problem is that too many Whites vote in Alabama." There was laughter from the audience, and the book author said most of them thought that Buckley had meant it as a joke, but that he was really serious about that. It seems that Buckley believed that universal suffrage was a bad idea, and he would prefer that only "certain elites" had the right to vote.
We've come a long way from 1965. Or have we?
Who is The Man?
I've always said that little kids are inherently good. I noticed that subbing the K's and the 1's. Whenever somebody in the class started crying, or was perceived to have been on the wrong end of the stick of some unfair behavior, his classmates would be upset. I use it to bolster my argument that we are inherently good and it is not something we learn in school or church.
That Bloonberg/Hilary ticket is just one pundit's pipe dream. I think he just used her name to get himself some ink. I didn't think that Bloomberg ever had a chance, but he is doing well in the polls. with no real qualifications outside of a huge sack of money. I would like to think my ilk was of sterner stuff than that.
When I use the term ilk, I am referring to oh, democrats in general. I am not really talking about myself but people in general who are apt to vote as I vote and to believe in The Liberal Agenda. If you took a dive in the deep blue or red sea, you would find that they are not as alike as they appear from a distance and few of them are doctrinaire in all things. Ilk is kind of a disparaging word, and /I use it to leaven political discussions with a bit of humor.
The thing is Euclid's axioms are pretty simple things, you'd look pretty stupid denying them. And things like is that tree in your front yard or backyard, or how many people attended the inaugurations are pretty cut and dried and easy to ascertain, and from the facts on the Earth The Liberal Agenda follows like the day follows the night, But of course even though the inauguration numbers are indisputable, you can deny them, you can just say no. To me this is the worst thing about Trump. He denies that facts are facts, and he gets a willing crowd of a third of the people in the country and this denies the method of The Liberal Agenda. I don't mind saying it again.
I tried to get some data from the web about Obama voters turning to Trump. Most of the data was for 2012 Obama voters, but I was looking for 2008 when Obama was much more the outsider voice for change, but 13 percent of those who voted for Obama in 2012 went for Trump in 2016, When you examine the politics of the well-educated and well-informed you can place them to the right or the left on a political chart, like that test we all took a year or two ago, but when you get to the less well-educated and informed, you are descending into a quantum foam where left and right, democrat and republican, ideas just bob along chaotically.
Wiki appears to agree with me that stick it to the man is from the sixties. Certainly the cops were The Man, the military too, very authoritarian, usually in uniform, types were The Man. I guess it extended through all these beefy white men all the way up to the prez. Part of this was The Liberal Agenda, fighting institutional racism etc, but part of it was just adolescent rebellion, thumbing your nose at the teacher (who was certainly The Man). Even though he is prez, Trump is not The Man to the Trumpists. The Man is everybody who is opposed to Trump, increasingly it is becoming The Deep State, a shadowy concept, but all the better for that because then it can be anything. To the Trumpist's he is them, he is their embodiment, a win for him is a win for them, and anybody who criticizes Trump is criticizing them personally.
Sunday, February 16, 2020
Little bits
Quite a while ago there was some discussion whether or not humans are inherently good or bad, or something like that, and the results are in. A recent study shows that infants are altruistic and willing to help others, something they haven't learned. I don't know what to make of it but it represents a silver lining in these stormy times.
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For a while I thought the Democrats were slowly getting their act together but that notion has flown out the window. Bloomberg is spending money hand over fist, lots of ads on my YouTube feeds, and now I've read that a possible running mate would be the Big Girl herself. Are they kidding me? Wouldn't Hillary be the kiss of death at this point?
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Some day you guys will have to explain your use of the term "ilk." I know what it means but it seems too simplistic and restrictive to use in a description of you gentlemen, for you both contain multitudes.
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I don't know if this ever came up in past discussions about Uncle Ken's Corn series of watercolors, but the typical cornstalk has only one ear of corn. It's amazing what you can learn on YouTube; I've been following some farmers that have their own channels and it's fascinating the way they keep working across the generations. There are much easier ways to make a living.
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For a while I thought the Democrats were slowly getting their act together but that notion has flown out the window. Bloomberg is spending money hand over fist, lots of ads on my YouTube feeds, and now I've read that a possible running mate would be the Big Girl herself. Are they kidding me? Wouldn't Hillary be the kiss of death at this point?
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Some day you guys will have to explain your use of the term "ilk." I know what it means but it seems too simplistic and restrictive to use in a description of you gentlemen, for you both contain multitudes.
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I don't know if this ever came up in past discussions about Uncle Ken's Corn series of watercolors, but the typical cornstalk has only one ear of corn. It's amazing what you can learn on YouTube; I've been following some farmers that have their own channels and it's fascinating the way they keep working across the generations. There are much easier ways to make a living.
Saturday, February 15, 2020
Point and Counter Point
Okay, it's coming back to me now. Euclid did not say that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, what he said was that a line is the shortest distance between two points. Of course that works on any surface, and even if the two points are floating free with no surface at all. If I remember correctly, you can't even establish a plane with two points, it takes at least three.
The point I was trying to make is that, if you don't believe Euclid's definition of a point, you are not likely to agree with anything else Euclid says. In order to reason logically with someone, you first have to find at least one thing that you both agree to accept, even if only for the purposes of the discussion. The thing is, most people are not interested in logical discussion in the first place, they prefer to just repeat what others have told them. If you tell them something that is inconsistent with what they already think they know, their first impulse is to reject it. If you can get past that, you might have a chance but, if not, you might as well fold your tent and silently steal away.
The point I was trying to make is that, if you don't believe Euclid's definition of a point, you are not likely to agree with anything else Euclid says. In order to reason logically with someone, you first have to find at least one thing that you both agree to accept, even if only for the purposes of the discussion. The thing is, most people are not interested in logical discussion in the first place, they prefer to just repeat what others have told them. If you tell them something that is inconsistent with what they already think they know, their first impulse is to reject it. If you can get past that, you might have a chance but, if not, you might as well fold your tent and silently steal away.
No Sucha Thing
I may not remember much about geometry, but common sense tells me that you can't draw a straight line on a concave or convex surface. Since the surfaces themselves are curved, any line you draw on them will also be curved. The shortest distance between the North Pole and the South Pole is a straight line through the center of the Earth. The shortest distance between the North Pole and the South Pole on the surface of the Earth is any one of the longitudinal lines, which are curved because the surface of the Earth is curved. Well, not on the surface of the real Earth because there are mountains and stuff in the way, but on the surface of the globe that is commonly used as a model of the Earth. If you are using a flat map, which I believe is called a Mercator projection, you can draw a straight line between any two points on the map but, if you chart a course from that map, your actual course on the real Earth will be a curved line. Interestingly, if you plot a compass heading on your flat map it will be identical to the same compass heading on the real Earth. How weird is that?
Speaking of weird things, are you telling me that some people voted for Obama in 2008 and then turned around and voted for Trump in 2016, and they voted for both of those guys for the same reason? I seem to remember discussing some Bernie Sanders fans who switched sides like that, which is a little less weird because both Sanders and Trump were considered to be mavericks at the time. Obama might have been considered maverick back in the 20th Century but he was pure establishment by the 21st. I remember Uncle Ken saying once that many people voted for Trump because they wanted to "stick it to the Man". Some of our younger readers might not know what that means, but us old timers know who "the Man" is. Or do we? The more I think about it, the Man that Uncle Ken wanted to stick it to back in his Hippie days is not the same Man who is in power today. Could it be that there are some people out there who like sticking it to any Man, regardless of race, color. or creed?
Speaking of weird things, are you telling me that some people voted for Obama in 2008 and then turned around and voted for Trump in 2016, and they voted for both of those guys for the same reason? I seem to remember discussing some Bernie Sanders fans who switched sides like that, which is a little less weird because both Sanders and Trump were considered to be mavericks at the time. Obama might have been considered maverick back in the 20th Century but he was pure establishment by the 21st. I remember Uncle Ken saying once that many people voted for Trump because they wanted to "stick it to the Man". Some of our younger readers might not know what that means, but us old timers know who "the Man" is. Or do we? The more I think about it, the Man that Uncle Ken wanted to stick it to back in his Hippie days is not the same Man who is in power today. Could it be that there are some people out there who like sticking it to any Man, regardless of race, color. or creed?
Friday, February 14, 2020
geometry class
Oh a sharp crack across Beagles's knuckles with Mrs Hradek's ruler for Beagles. The shortest distance between two points is a straight line in flat, convex, and concave geometries. Euclid begins his geometry with five axioms, things that are pretty obvious (like the shortest distance) and that everybody would readily agree on. From these he proves all the theorems that we learned in high school and many more. The first four are pretty simple, but the fifth is: That if a straight line falling on two straight lines makes the interior angles on the same side less than two right angles, the straight lines, if produced indefinitely, will meet on that side on which the angles are less that two right angles Boy that is even more complicated than I remember.. I remember it more like if you have a line, and a point outside that line then you can construct one and only one line containing that point that is parallel to the other line. Even Euclid thought that that last axiom was way too prolix, and there are some indications that he tried to prove it from the first four axioms, but he couldn't do that so he just kept in in the axioms.
This is the axiom that is untrue on convex and concave surfaces. On a convex surface there is no line you can construct from a point that won't intersect with that first line, and on a concave surface there are infinitely many.
Convex and concave are just two different surfaces. Everything Euclid said about geometry is still true for flat surfaces. There is no disagreement here. Another crack across Beagles's knuckles from Mrs Hradek.
In the eighteenth century there were two schools of thought, one by Berkeley and one by Locke. Berkeley maintained that everything that happened happened in our heads.and Locke said no, there is an objective reality outside our heads that exists whether we like it or not. It is not a matter of opinion as to whether there is a tree in Beagles's front yard or back yard. It is in one place only and can be measured and the measurements are true for everybody. It is a fact and facts are real and hard as rocks. When Trump says that the crowd for his inaugural was bigger than Obama's, that does make it so. We all have access to the facts in this case, and the facts point in only one direction.
Facts are the bedrock of logical reasoning and without them it cannot exist, and if it cannot exist than The Liberal Agenda cannot function.
The Liberal Agenda is not the democratic party. I am referring to the original definition of liberal which would include both the democrats and the republicans before they turned Trumpist. Conservatives and libertarians are both classic liberals. They believe that in a fair debate they can at least hold their own. Trump is not a liberal in the old sense and he is not a conservative in the new sense.
There are some conservatives like Beagles who have made a devil's deal with Trump. They are glad to sacrifice good manners, telling the truth, and the prez dominating the other two branches of government for conservative judges etc. But the true Trumpists, many of them who voted for Obama in 08, aren't all that interested in conservative values. They are full of resentment at what they see as the elites and they just want to tear the house down. Beagles is spot on in saying that they do not distinguish between truth and falsehoods, but I would take it further, they don't believe in truth at all, one man's opinion is as good as any other's, And the guy who is yelling the loudest is probably right.
I was going to speculate about what makes Trumpists run in this post, but I have had to spend most of it doing the work of Mrs Hradek which apparently did not take with Beagles the first time around.
The dems are not The Liberal Agenda, many of them are not on that page, and there are a number of republicans who are with The Liberal Agenda, mostly commentators, as far as republicans holding political office I think there are a few who are not up for reelection and that is it.
This is the axiom that is untrue on convex and concave surfaces. On a convex surface there is no line you can construct from a point that won't intersect with that first line, and on a concave surface there are infinitely many.
Convex and concave are just two different surfaces. Everything Euclid said about geometry is still true for flat surfaces. There is no disagreement here. Another crack across Beagles's knuckles from Mrs Hradek.
In the eighteenth century there were two schools of thought, one by Berkeley and one by Locke. Berkeley maintained that everything that happened happened in our heads.and Locke said no, there is an objective reality outside our heads that exists whether we like it or not. It is not a matter of opinion as to whether there is a tree in Beagles's front yard or back yard. It is in one place only and can be measured and the measurements are true for everybody. It is a fact and facts are real and hard as rocks. When Trump says that the crowd for his inaugural was bigger than Obama's, that does make it so. We all have access to the facts in this case, and the facts point in only one direction.
Facts are the bedrock of logical reasoning and without them it cannot exist, and if it cannot exist than The Liberal Agenda cannot function.
The Liberal Agenda is not the democratic party. I am referring to the original definition of liberal which would include both the democrats and the republicans before they turned Trumpist. Conservatives and libertarians are both classic liberals. They believe that in a fair debate they can at least hold their own. Trump is not a liberal in the old sense and he is not a conservative in the new sense.
There are some conservatives like Beagles who have made a devil's deal with Trump. They are glad to sacrifice good manners, telling the truth, and the prez dominating the other two branches of government for conservative judges etc. But the true Trumpists, many of them who voted for Obama in 08, aren't all that interested in conservative values. They are full of resentment at what they see as the elites and they just want to tear the house down. Beagles is spot on in saying that they do not distinguish between truth and falsehoods, but I would take it further, they don't believe in truth at all, one man's opinion is as good as any other's, And the guy who is yelling the loudest is probably right.
I was going to speculate about what makes Trumpists run in this post, but I have had to spend most of it doing the work of Mrs Hradek which apparently did not take with Beagles the first time around.
The dems are not The Liberal Agenda, many of them are not on that page, and there are a number of republicans who are with The Liberal Agenda, mostly commentators, as far as republicans holding political office I think there are a few who are not up for reelection and that is it.
Thursday, February 13, 2020
Euclid and That Other Guy
Okay, I think I know why Uncle Ken's liberal agenda took it in the ass in the 2016 election. In order for any logical discussion to continue, all parties concerned must agree on one or more axiomatic statements or "givens". If they don't start out in the same place, they are not likely to end up in the same place, no matter how logical their arguments are. For instance, everybody knows that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line but, in truth, that is only valid in Euclidian geometry. There are other geometries in existence. I am certainly not an expert, but I do remember from Mrs. Hradek's class that one of them was invented by a Slavic guy, Russian or Polish or something like that, whose name I remember, but will not even attempt to spell. While Euclid constructed his geometry on a plane, this other guy constructed his geometry on a sphere, where the shortest distance between two points is a great circle. If Euclid and this other guy were alive today and had an argument about geometry, neither of them would ever convince the other that he was right, unless one of them would agree to accept the other one's axioms and definitions for the purposes of the discussion. Lots of luck getting that to happen in a political discussion!
The reason the liberal agenda failed in the 2016 election is that everybody in this country is not a liberal. Those who aren't usually identify themselves as conservatives, and they have their own agenda which is as different from the liberal agenda as Euclid's geometry is from that other guy's geometry. I would classify Trump as a reactionary rather than a conservative, but most of the people I have known in my life are not familiar with that term, and I gave up trying to explain it to them a long time ago. Suffice it to say that most of the people who voted for Trump did so because he promised to advance their conservative agenda at the expense of Uncle Ken's liberal agenda. I'm not so sure about the "lying sack o' shit" part. Maybe they voted for him in spite of that, or maybe they voted for him because of that, or maybe, as I have long suspected, there are people who simply do not make a distinction between truth and falsehood, it's all the same to them.
As for all those Never Trumpers who have now been transformed into Forever Trumpers, I think it's simply because Trump won the election. For some people, winning is not everything, it's the only thing. While it's true that no politician can advance his agenda unless he gets elected, I think that some of them become so obsessed with getting elected that they have forgotten why they wanted the job in the first place, or maybe they never cared about any agenda in the first place. Maybe they just want to get elected and are willing to assume any agenda that they believe will help them in that effort.
Be that as it may, I maintain that Uncle Ken's liberal agenda is not dead at all. The Dems made some solid gains in 2018, and who knows what will happen in 2020. When Obama was elected the first time, many conservatives considered it a wake up call. I'm sure that many liberals felt the same way when Trump was elected. Now that everybody is awake, let then party begin!
The reason the liberal agenda failed in the 2016 election is that everybody in this country is not a liberal. Those who aren't usually identify themselves as conservatives, and they have their own agenda which is as different from the liberal agenda as Euclid's geometry is from that other guy's geometry. I would classify Trump as a reactionary rather than a conservative, but most of the people I have known in my life are not familiar with that term, and I gave up trying to explain it to them a long time ago. Suffice it to say that most of the people who voted for Trump did so because he promised to advance their conservative agenda at the expense of Uncle Ken's liberal agenda. I'm not so sure about the "lying sack o' shit" part. Maybe they voted for him in spite of that, or maybe they voted for him because of that, or maybe, as I have long suspected, there are people who simply do not make a distinction between truth and falsehood, it's all the same to them.
As for all those Never Trumpers who have now been transformed into Forever Trumpers, I think it's simply because Trump won the election. For some people, winning is not everything, it's the only thing. While it's true that no politician can advance his agenda unless he gets elected, I think that some of them become so obsessed with getting elected that they have forgotten why they wanted the job in the first place, or maybe they never cared about any agenda in the first place. Maybe they just want to get elected and are willing to assume any agenda that they believe will help them in that effort.
Be that as it may, I maintain that Uncle Ken's liberal agenda is not dead at all. The Dems made some solid gains in 2018, and who knows what will happen in 2020. When Obama was elected the first time, many conservatives considered it a wake up call. I'm sure that many liberals felt the same way when Trump was elected. Now that everybody is awake, let then party begin!
what went wrong 7
It's hard to believe but less than four years ago most republicans were not Trumpists. I tried to get a list of all the 2016 candidates but I couldn't find a list that is easy to cut and paste. But anyway all of them spoke of Trump with derision, but on stage, at the debates, they didn't lay a glove on him. Perhaps they could have nipped him in the bud. Perhaps if there had been fewer candidates somebody would have taken him on, but since there were so many maybe they all thought somebody else would do it. Oh there was Jeb Bush, who seems to have vanished from the face of the earth, and John Kasich who surprisingly is not doing so badly in his current role as commentator. All the rest of them, in accordance with their craven roles in the primary, have become vociferous Trumpists, aiming every utterance at the ever present Big Brother party of one.
But I have to confess that I was sort of rooting for him myself. At first I thought he was a monkey wrench in the works of the GOP so that was great. When he won the nomination I still felt well this is the weakest candidate to run against the big girl so I was all for that. As he blustered and ranted I rather enjoyed it. Now he is showing the whole electorate what an idiot he is, he is surely digging his own grave. Another thing to remember from 2016 is Trump was much less wild than he is today. Of course he had no power to abuse then, but in addition he had handlers. When he went too far they would rein him in, and he would actually allow that, but over the past four years he has shed all of his handlers. The guys with the elephant sticks are gone now, replaced by guys with those long-handled fans murmuring, "Yes M'Lord, yes M'Lord."
For awhile there, for longer than I like to admit, I used to see a silver lining in his black outbursts, ha, there, even the most besotten Trumpist would see through that. Most of them tie their own shoes and if a guy has the sense to do that surely he has the sense to see that the emperor is naked.
See that was The Liberal Agenda speaking. The truth will set you free. Once you see the facts and apply the logic, which you have learned to do due to universal schooling, you cannot help but come to the conclusion that the guy is a lying sack o' shit. But no such thing happened, even though the pink skin gleamed clearly in the broad light of daylight, all they spoke of was how resplendent was the ensemble.
Then there was the incident of the inauguration crowd. All evidence, good, hard, cold, inconvertible, fact showed that Obama had a bigger crowd. When faced with the videotape surely he would have to admit that he was a lying sack o' shit, and if he didn't his followers would see clear evidence and have to admit that he is a lying sack o' shit. But he didn't, and they didn't.
Facts are the bones that the sinews of reason attach to. Without bones sinews are so many strings lying on the ground. The Trumpists have destroyed facts. Everything is just a matter of opinion, and their opinion is the only one that counts. The method of The Liberal Agenda has been hamstrung.
The Liberal Agenda has been obliterated.
There. This is the point I have been leading up to over these past six points. This is all I have to say about that.
But I have to confess that I was sort of rooting for him myself. At first I thought he was a monkey wrench in the works of the GOP so that was great. When he won the nomination I still felt well this is the weakest candidate to run against the big girl so I was all for that. As he blustered and ranted I rather enjoyed it. Now he is showing the whole electorate what an idiot he is, he is surely digging his own grave. Another thing to remember from 2016 is Trump was much less wild than he is today. Of course he had no power to abuse then, but in addition he had handlers. When he went too far they would rein him in, and he would actually allow that, but over the past four years he has shed all of his handlers. The guys with the elephant sticks are gone now, replaced by guys with those long-handled fans murmuring, "Yes M'Lord, yes M'Lord."
For awhile there, for longer than I like to admit, I used to see a silver lining in his black outbursts, ha, there, even the most besotten Trumpist would see through that. Most of them tie their own shoes and if a guy has the sense to do that surely he has the sense to see that the emperor is naked.
See that was The Liberal Agenda speaking. The truth will set you free. Once you see the facts and apply the logic, which you have learned to do due to universal schooling, you cannot help but come to the conclusion that the guy is a lying sack o' shit. But no such thing happened, even though the pink skin gleamed clearly in the broad light of daylight, all they spoke of was how resplendent was the ensemble.
Then there was the incident of the inauguration crowd. All evidence, good, hard, cold, inconvertible, fact showed that Obama had a bigger crowd. When faced with the videotape surely he would have to admit that he was a lying sack o' shit, and if he didn't his followers would see clear evidence and have to admit that he is a lying sack o' shit. But he didn't, and they didn't.
Facts are the bones that the sinews of reason attach to. Without bones sinews are so many strings lying on the ground. The Trumpists have destroyed facts. Everything is just a matter of opinion, and their opinion is the only one that counts. The method of The Liberal Agenda has been hamstrung.
The Liberal Agenda has been obliterated.
There. This is the point I have been leading up to over these past six points. This is all I have to say about that.
Wednesday, February 12, 2020
What Went Wrong? 6.1
https://a.msn.com/r/2/BBZU9yG?m=en-us&referrerID=InAppShare
I found this on my news app tonight, I don't know if it helps or not. It asks the same question that Uncle Ken has been asking, and it gives some answers, but I don't know if any of them are the correct answers. I think what it is saying is that, to beat Trump this time around, it will take a better candidate than Hillary was the last time around, and Bernie Sanders is not it.
I am reminded of an old quote from a politician whose name I don't remember. When asked why he had lost the election, this guy said, "The other candidate got more votes." In this case, you would have to add one more word to the quote to make it accurate: "The other candidate got more electoral votes." It's the same principle, though. I think that Trump is only the third or fourth minority president we've ever had. One of them was Abraham Lincoln, another one was Bush the Second, and there may have been one more, but I don't remember who it was. JFK came close, but I seem to remember that, although he got only slightly more popular votes than Nixon, he got way more electoral votes.
I found this on my news app tonight, I don't know if it helps or not. It asks the same question that Uncle Ken has been asking, and it gives some answers, but I don't know if any of them are the correct answers. I think what it is saying is that, to beat Trump this time around, it will take a better candidate than Hillary was the last time around, and Bernie Sanders is not it.
I am reminded of an old quote from a politician whose name I don't remember. When asked why he had lost the election, this guy said, "The other candidate got more votes." In this case, you would have to add one more word to the quote to make it accurate: "The other candidate got more electoral votes." It's the same principle, though. I think that Trump is only the third or fourth minority president we've ever had. One of them was Abraham Lincoln, another one was Bush the Second, and there may have been one more, but I don't remember who it was. JFK came close, but I seem to remember that, although he got only slightly more popular votes than Nixon, he got way more electoral votes.
Tuesday, February 11, 2020
what went wrong 6
The internet says that 1980 when Reagan won the presidency was the year that the great industry centers along the great lakes fell on hard times and were called the rust belt. Champaign was 130 miles south of there but it got pretty rusty too, the storefronts were empty and I couldn't find a job. I ended up in Texas by the end of 1984, ruby red Texas where they loved Reagan. I felt like I was in enemy country. Then a real estate bust in Texas sent me to Chicago to live in my paretnts' attic. Herbert Walker replaced Reagan, wasn't as bad as I thought he was at the time, but still a republican. Then Bill Clinton took the presidency. Don't Stop Believing, his campaign song, filled the air as I inked the contract for my condo. Downtown which had forever been dormant after five pm and on weekends began to bloom under the Bill Clinton economy. Things were good.
But that's just in response to Beagles's memories of Reagan. In my narrative we were at the election of Obama, the triumph of The Liberal Agenda. At last we had won over the man in the street and everything was groovy.
It was a decisive victory and the word on the political street was coming in with the big mo you need to do something big. Healthcare had been a big stumbling block for the Clintons, but our charismatic new prez thought he could do it. Everybody agreed the current system was terrible so this could be a bipartisan thing, how great was that? But the republicans were in the thrall of the tea partiers who hated government and the last thing they wanted was for the government to do anything that the people would like. They dug in their heels, and the blue dogs that the dems picked up along with their decisive victory were hesitant, and the wheels came off the whole thing.
Well shit, apparently the masses had not seen the light. Well we scraped through, we got Obamacare which was not as thorough as we would have wanted, but was better than what preceded it, we did little things here and there. Four years later we defeated McCain who seemed then like a horrible warmonger, but now that the republicans have become the party of Trump, seems like a gentle statesman. We scaped along. Maybe this what not our time.
And then the anti-Christ came down the escalator. A total windbag, a failure with businesses that ran into bankruptcies, a guy no American bank would lend money too, a guy who cheated in his businesses and made his contractors sue to get the money they owed him, a boasting philanderer, a lying sack of shit with no attention span. You could smell the sulfur. Well surely the people who had been educated in our schools, who had benefited from our programs, who now had better healthcare than before, who had access to all the information on the internet, surely they would not get taken in.
To be continued,
PS, there is a comment at the end of this post.
But that's just in response to Beagles's memories of Reagan. In my narrative we were at the election of Obama, the triumph of The Liberal Agenda. At last we had won over the man in the street and everything was groovy.
It was a decisive victory and the word on the political street was coming in with the big mo you need to do something big. Healthcare had been a big stumbling block for the Clintons, but our charismatic new prez thought he could do it. Everybody agreed the current system was terrible so this could be a bipartisan thing, how great was that? But the republicans were in the thrall of the tea partiers who hated government and the last thing they wanted was for the government to do anything that the people would like. They dug in their heels, and the blue dogs that the dems picked up along with their decisive victory were hesitant, and the wheels came off the whole thing.
Well shit, apparently the masses had not seen the light. Well we scraped through, we got Obamacare which was not as thorough as we would have wanted, but was better than what preceded it, we did little things here and there. Four years later we defeated McCain who seemed then like a horrible warmonger, but now that the republicans have become the party of Trump, seems like a gentle statesman. We scaped along. Maybe this what not our time.
And then the anti-Christ came down the escalator. A total windbag, a failure with businesses that ran into bankruptcies, a guy no American bank would lend money too, a guy who cheated in his businesses and made his contractors sue to get the money they owed him, a boasting philanderer, a lying sack of shit with no attention span. You could smell the sulfur. Well surely the people who had been educated in our schools, who had benefited from our programs, who now had better healthcare than before, who had access to all the information on the internet, surely they would not get taken in.
To be continued,
PS, there is a comment at the end of this post.
Monday, February 10, 2020
Success is Not Permanent
That's one of the hardest lessons I've had to learn in my whole life. I used to go deer hunting with my father in Freesoil, Michigan. I was too young to legally hunt deer in Michigan at the time so I was just a tagalong, but it was the high point of my whole year. We used to stay with a farm family that lived right across the road from the Manistee National Forest. I made up my mind right then that I was going to live someplace where I could hunt right from my house when I grew up. That way, if there was ever another Great Depression, or a war or something when gas was rationed, or if I became too poor to own a car, I would still be able to go hunting. My dream was fulfilled in 1970, when we built a house near Indian River that was right next to a 40 acre tract of state land. All the other land around there was privately owned, but the owners didn't live around there, they had bought their land as an investment, planning to subdivide and sell it at a profit some day, and they didn't care who hunted on it. I found a good sitting spot about a ten minute walk from the house, from which I shot a little doe while the house was still under construction. The first season after we moved in, I shot a nice buck from the same spot. I naively believed it was going to be like that forever, but it was eleven years before I shot my next deer, an then I had to travel 20 miles to do it.
I voted for Reagan twice in primaries when he ran against an incumbant, once against Nixon and once against Ford. The third time was the charm, when he finally won the nomination and the presidency in 1980. The Soviet Union collapsed in 1990, under the watch of Reagan's successor, Bush the First. Life was good, the world was finally made safe for democracy, and I naively believed it was going to be like that forever.
That's the way it goes, sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, and nothing lasts forever.
I voted for Reagan twice in primaries when he ran against an incumbant, once against Nixon and once against Ford. The third time was the charm, when he finally won the nomination and the presidency in 1980. The Soviet Union collapsed in 1990, under the watch of Reagan's successor, Bush the First. Life was good, the world was finally made safe for democracy, and I naively believed it was going to be like that forever.
That's the way it goes, sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, and nothing lasts forever.
What went wrong 5
I don't really understand what is going on in Iowa. They didn't use the app in all the years prior and everything seemed to be ok. They still have all the paper records like they did in past years. Why can't they just put those together and announce the victor like they have done before? Well the whole Iowa thing was like that corn palace in the Dakotas I think, kind of a colorful thing that people liked because it was colorful, but a lot of people also thought it was stupid and I expect it won't be a thing four years from mow.
That lighter story is interesting, One of the good things about cash registers is they did all the adding so the operator didn't have to. There was a small controversy in the grade schools about calculators. Should they be allowed when taking tests or not?. On the one hand who wants to put the kids through the torture of multiplying one six digit number by another, and long division, a horror. I still think they should know their multiplication tables though, sometimes you have to make a small calculation in your head, like Beagles, and it helps you know your way around the neighborhood of numbers. One time I was teaching them positive and negative multiplication, you know, like positive and unlike negative, and a lot of kids were like that is just too hard a concept and what they would rather do was multiply the numbers on their calculators and see what came out. To them learning to do arithmetic amounted to learning how to use a calculator. That is just wrong.
Our involvement with Vietnam ended with Ford. Well there wasn't that much involvement at that time. Vietnamization proved to be very successful at getting the US out, but not so good at stopping North Vietnam. Then we got Carter, and then to my horror we got Reagan, and then we got Slick Willie who was okay, and then W, who I think might have not been so bad if 911 hadn't happened on his watch and allowed Cheney and the neocons to take over. But then we got Obama. At last.
At last the triumph of the Liberal agenda had come along
Our long struggle was over and life was like a song
At last the skies glowed with good karma
Our hears were wrapped in hopeful change the night we elected Obama
See The Liberal Agenda, like science, is not just a grab bag of theories, it is also a method. It goes back to The Enlightenment. You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free. The Enlightenment did not spread at the point of a spear, it spread in the written word, It did not subdue its foes at the bottom of a hobnobbed foot. It enlightened them so that they willingly joined it. The basic fact was that we were all equal, the nobleman as well as the peasant, the white as well as the moor and the heathen chinee, men and women, gays and straight, look at the genome, we are all the same Jack, and it's illogical and impractical to act as if it were otherwise. And since we are all equal it follows that the wealth should be shared more equally than it was.
And this was all spread by knowledge, from the country schools of yore to the great schools of today, and now that wonderful spreader of knowledge the internet. And see finally the message had spread far enough to take the White House. Red states had become purple, purple states had become blue.
At last. What could go wrong?
To be continued.
That lighter story is interesting, One of the good things about cash registers is they did all the adding so the operator didn't have to. There was a small controversy in the grade schools about calculators. Should they be allowed when taking tests or not?. On the one hand who wants to put the kids through the torture of multiplying one six digit number by another, and long division, a horror. I still think they should know their multiplication tables though, sometimes you have to make a small calculation in your head, like Beagles, and it helps you know your way around the neighborhood of numbers. One time I was teaching them positive and negative multiplication, you know, like positive and unlike negative, and a lot of kids were like that is just too hard a concept and what they would rather do was multiply the numbers on their calculators and see what came out. To them learning to do arithmetic amounted to learning how to use a calculator. That is just wrong.
Our involvement with Vietnam ended with Ford. Well there wasn't that much involvement at that time. Vietnamization proved to be very successful at getting the US out, but not so good at stopping North Vietnam. Then we got Carter, and then to my horror we got Reagan, and then we got Slick Willie who was okay, and then W, who I think might have not been so bad if 911 hadn't happened on his watch and allowed Cheney and the neocons to take over. But then we got Obama. At last.
At last the triumph of the Liberal agenda had come along
Our long struggle was over and life was like a song
At last the skies glowed with good karma
Our hears were wrapped in hopeful change the night we elected Obama
See The Liberal Agenda, like science, is not just a grab bag of theories, it is also a method. It goes back to The Enlightenment. You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free. The Enlightenment did not spread at the point of a spear, it spread in the written word, It did not subdue its foes at the bottom of a hobnobbed foot. It enlightened them so that they willingly joined it. The basic fact was that we were all equal, the nobleman as well as the peasant, the white as well as the moor and the heathen chinee, men and women, gays and straight, look at the genome, we are all the same Jack, and it's illogical and impractical to act as if it were otherwise. And since we are all equal it follows that the wealth should be shared more equally than it was.
And this was all spread by knowledge, from the country schools of yore to the great schools of today, and now that wonderful spreader of knowledge the internet. And see finally the message had spread far enough to take the White House. Red states had become purple, purple states had become blue.
At last. What could go wrong?
To be continued.
Sunday, February 9, 2020
What's Up With Iowa?
I don't know what to say about Uncle Ken's assertion that the liberal agenda died with the election of Trump. Maybe something will come to me after I see where he is going with this.
Meanwhile, what's up with those people in Iowa? I read that there was a glitch in their new software system that made it impossible to accurately count the votes. It seems that the way those Iowa caucuses work is the participants split up into groups that represent the candidate of their choice. Then somebody counts each group, and any group that represents a candidate who failed to get at least 15% of the vote is disbanded. The members of the dissolved group then go join their second choice group and the surviving groups are re-counted. For this they need software? Why don't they just write the count for each group on a piece of paper and divide it by the total number of people in attendance? If they have problem with long division, they could figure the percentage with a simple pocket calculator.
This reminds me of the time my disposable lighter died while I was driving down the road and I stopped at a convenience store to buy another one. (Stop me if I've told you this story before.) The kid behind the counter said that he couldn't sell me anything right now because the computer was down, but he had already called his boss, who should be there shortly. I suggested that he just write the amount of the sale on a piece of paper and put it in the drawer with my money. It's not like he was too busy because I was the only customer in the store. He told me that was impossible because he wouldn't know how much sales tax to charge me. "Twelve cents.", I replied. "How do you know that?", he inquired. "Well", says I, "The lighter costs $1.99 which, for all practical purposes, is $2.00. Six percent of $2.00 is twelve cents." At this point, the kid produced a pocket calculator and quickly confirmed my calculation. He stood in awe of my mathematical ability and the fact that I even knew the sales tax was 6%. I have been told that good help is hard to find nowadays, but this happened a long time ago when unemployment was much higher than it is today.
Meanwhile, what's up with those people in Iowa? I read that there was a glitch in their new software system that made it impossible to accurately count the votes. It seems that the way those Iowa caucuses work is the participants split up into groups that represent the candidate of their choice. Then somebody counts each group, and any group that represents a candidate who failed to get at least 15% of the vote is disbanded. The members of the dissolved group then go join their second choice group and the surviving groups are re-counted. For this they need software? Why don't they just write the count for each group on a piece of paper and divide it by the total number of people in attendance? If they have problem with long division, they could figure the percentage with a simple pocket calculator.
This reminds me of the time my disposable lighter died while I was driving down the road and I stopped at a convenience store to buy another one. (Stop me if I've told you this story before.) The kid behind the counter said that he couldn't sell me anything right now because the computer was down, but he had already called his boss, who should be there shortly. I suggested that he just write the amount of the sale on a piece of paper and put it in the drawer with my money. It's not like he was too busy because I was the only customer in the store. He told me that was impossible because he wouldn't know how much sales tax to charge me. "Twelve cents.", I replied. "How do you know that?", he inquired. "Well", says I, "The lighter costs $1.99 which, for all practical purposes, is $2.00. Six percent of $2.00 is twelve cents." At this point, the kid produced a pocket calculator and quickly confirmed my calculation. He stood in awe of my mathematical ability and the fact that I even knew the sales tax was 6%. I have been told that good help is hard to find nowadays, but this happened a long time ago when unemployment was much higher than it is today.
Friday, February 7, 2020
what went wrong 5
There are some similarities between white flighters and refugees, but they are not the same thing.
When /I was a sub I didn't like the way that they taught science, kind of as a dull recitation of facts, rather then we used to think this but then we discovered this and that and and now we believe something else because of such and such..
Depending on how you define it, The Liberal Agenda is a lot like secular humanism and Beagles is correct that some people accept it because somebody told them so rather than reasoning it out themselves. Religion is a little different because even if you reason it out you are reasoning it out from what other people have said rather than for yourself.
I was glad to get out of high school and its petty authoritarianism. I thought a lot of college would be sitting on the greensward discussing great ideas. It wasn't. The petty authoritarianism was gone, but other than that it was a lot like high school only harder. Then there were friends of friends coming back to school in September and talking about marching down south. Then Martin Luther King was marching in Marquette Park. On a visit back to Chicago I was walking along 63rd Street and came across the headquarters of the American Nazi Party.
All through grade and high school I was taught that America was flawless. Every war we fought in we were on the right side. American people were more moral than other people. Anybody who thought otherwise was an oddball and not to be listened to. It was American Exceptionalism before anybody thought of the name, It's a personal theory of mine that the sixties would not have been so violent if we hadn't had that America is great thing hammered so hard into our heads. It was like hey Man, all these years you have been lying to us.
I guess I still believed in The Liberal Agenda, but I distrusted the authorities that I had previously thought were implementing it. How can you trust a University which, through inaction. is complicit in institutional racism? Then along came the war, and they wanted me to fight in it. Kick out the jams, bring on the revolution!
In 1968 I wanted to vote for the Peace and Freedom party, but I didn't register because I feared that once I got into the polling place I would lose my nerve and vote for Hubert Humphrey, the hated Hump that we wanted to dump. In 1972 I was working for George McGovern.
There was still some tumult but things were settling down. There was no need to burn down the house. The Liberal Agenda could still be implemented. The Democrat party was certainly an imperfect instrument, but it was certainly the side to choose if you wanted to implement The Liberal Agenda.
To be continued.
When /I was a sub I didn't like the way that they taught science, kind of as a dull recitation of facts, rather then we used to think this but then we discovered this and that and and now we believe something else because of such and such..
Depending on how you define it, The Liberal Agenda is a lot like secular humanism and Beagles is correct that some people accept it because somebody told them so rather than reasoning it out themselves. Religion is a little different because even if you reason it out you are reasoning it out from what other people have said rather than for yourself.
I was glad to get out of high school and its petty authoritarianism. I thought a lot of college would be sitting on the greensward discussing great ideas. It wasn't. The petty authoritarianism was gone, but other than that it was a lot like high school only harder. Then there were friends of friends coming back to school in September and talking about marching down south. Then Martin Luther King was marching in Marquette Park. On a visit back to Chicago I was walking along 63rd Street and came across the headquarters of the American Nazi Party.
All through grade and high school I was taught that America was flawless. Every war we fought in we were on the right side. American people were more moral than other people. Anybody who thought otherwise was an oddball and not to be listened to. It was American Exceptionalism before anybody thought of the name, It's a personal theory of mine that the sixties would not have been so violent if we hadn't had that America is great thing hammered so hard into our heads. It was like hey Man, all these years you have been lying to us.
I guess I still believed in The Liberal Agenda, but I distrusted the authorities that I had previously thought were implementing it. How can you trust a University which, through inaction. is complicit in institutional racism? Then along came the war, and they wanted me to fight in it. Kick out the jams, bring on the revolution!
In 1968 I wanted to vote for the Peace and Freedom party, but I didn't register because I feared that once I got into the polling place I would lose my nerve and vote for Hubert Humphrey, the hated Hump that we wanted to dump. In 1972 I was working for George McGovern.
There was still some tumult but things were settling down. There was no need to burn down the house. The Liberal Agenda could still be implemented. The Democrat party was certainly an imperfect instrument, but it was certainly the side to choose if you wanted to implement The Liberal Agenda.
To be continued.
Thursday, February 6, 2020
White Flight
That's what they were calling it back in the day. Calling them refugees was my own idea, I don't remember hearing anybody else calling them refugees, but I think the term is appropriate. Refugees aren't always evicted from their homes, sometimes they abandon their homes and flee the scene because they believe it's too dangerous to live there anymore. Many city dwellers had always wanted to live in the country, but they stayed in the city because it was easier to make a living there. Rural electrification brought city conveniences to the country, and later improvements in transportation made it possible to live in the country while working in the city. Most of the White Flight people probably would have sold their city homes and moved out sooner of later, changing demographics just caused them to do it sooner rather than later.
Many people who believe in science aren't all that familiar with the scientific method, they just believe what they believe because they heard or read about it. Many religious people aren't much better. They believe what their priest or minister tells them, it doesn't occur to them to seek verification in the Bible or any other source of information. I have heard Uncle Ken's Liberal Agenda called "Secular Humanism", it's kind of like a religion but without the God part. I am sure that Uncle Ken arrived at his beliefs through extensive study and introspection, but I'm not so sure about a lot of other Secular Humanists. Indeed, many of them probably aren't even familiar with the term, they just believe what they see on TV and social media. The only thing different about the Trumpists and their ilk is that they watch different TV programs and follow different blogs and tweets on the internet.
Many people who believe in science aren't all that familiar with the scientific method, they just believe what they believe because they heard or read about it. Many religious people aren't much better. They believe what their priest or minister tells them, it doesn't occur to them to seek verification in the Bible or any other source of information. I have heard Uncle Ken's Liberal Agenda called "Secular Humanism", it's kind of like a religion but without the God part. I am sure that Uncle Ken arrived at his beliefs through extensive study and introspection, but I'm not so sure about a lot of other Secular Humanists. Indeed, many of them probably aren't even familiar with the term, they just believe what they see on TV and social media. The only thing different about the Trumpists and their ilk is that they watch different TV programs and follow different blogs and tweets on the internet.
what went wrong 4
I'm working my way to the failure of The Liberal Agenda. I'm taking the long slow route through my biography because I am retired and have plenty of time and, of course I like to talk about myself. I'll skip ahead a bit and inform you that the failure of TLA is the election of Trump, the revolt of the simmering resentments of the rural and less educated. Although Beagles walks like a Trumpist and talks like a Trumpist I realize that he is not himself a Trumpist. The first paragraph in his post, the idea that my ilk has gotten everything they wanted is emblematic of the thinking of the Trumpists.
When Germany invaded France the fleeing French people were refugees. They had lost their homes and now a foreign nation was occupying their land. Whites selling their homes and moving to the burbs were not huddled masses.
In high school I was kind of a troublemaker, not like the guys who beat you up for your lunch money, more like the guy who disrupted class to get a laugh. I was bored and the whole thing was stupid and in those heavily conformist times anybody who didn't fit in got knocked in, and overall I thought the school had way too much power over us kids.
But I believed in education in general. The more you knew the better off you were, the more everybody knew, the better off everybody was. Before the enlightenment the church knew a whole lot, but a lot of that turned out to be wrong. My beloved science is what slew the dragons of untruths, and it wasn't just that they held a different form of Truth. They had a method. If you wanted to know something you didn't just take anybody's word, you examined the matter. You looked at the facts and the logic,and if what you figured out turned out to be untrue it was because there was a flaw in your facts and logic that you could track back.
This is the basis of The Liberal Agenda. It's kind of my own invention, it's not the sort of thing like when your local televangelist talks about say, the gay agenda, but I think it hews closely to a real thing. It's also driven by morality, not church morality but altruistic morality, the golden rule.
Ok so The Liberal Agenda believes in knowledge and the extension of equal rights for everybody and a certain amount of economic equality though that can be fungible.
Okay, now that I have gotten that out of the way I will march myself off to college.
To be continued.
When Germany invaded France the fleeing French people were refugees. They had lost their homes and now a foreign nation was occupying their land. Whites selling their homes and moving to the burbs were not huddled masses.
In high school I was kind of a troublemaker, not like the guys who beat you up for your lunch money, more like the guy who disrupted class to get a laugh. I was bored and the whole thing was stupid and in those heavily conformist times anybody who didn't fit in got knocked in, and overall I thought the school had way too much power over us kids.
But I believed in education in general. The more you knew the better off you were, the more everybody knew, the better off everybody was. Before the enlightenment the church knew a whole lot, but a lot of that turned out to be wrong. My beloved science is what slew the dragons of untruths, and it wasn't just that they held a different form of Truth. They had a method. If you wanted to know something you didn't just take anybody's word, you examined the matter. You looked at the facts and the logic,and if what you figured out turned out to be untrue it was because there was a flaw in your facts and logic that you could track back.
This is the basis of The Liberal Agenda. It's kind of my own invention, it's not the sort of thing like when your local televangelist talks about say, the gay agenda, but I think it hews closely to a real thing. It's also driven by morality, not church morality but altruistic morality, the golden rule.
Ok so The Liberal Agenda believes in knowledge and the extension of equal rights for everybody and a certain amount of economic equality though that can be fungible.
Okay, now that I have gotten that out of the way I will march myself off to college.
To be continued.
Wednesday, February 5, 2020
What Failure?
I'm not sure that I understand the failure of the liberal agenda that Uncle Ken has been talking about. Haven't you guys gotten pretty much everything you wanted over the years? There have been periodic setbacks from time to time, but those are to be expected in any long term endeavor.
I don't remember the 50s as being all that rosy, maybe I was too young to appreciate it, but I remember the 60s as being much better. There was certainly more troubling news on the national and international scene in the 60s than there was in the 50s but, for some reason, it didn't bother me nearly as much. One reason might be that I was too busy to watch a lot of TV in the 60s, and I was too preoccupied with my own issues to worry about everybody else's.
I got out of Chicago just in time to miss the worst of the racial conflicts. I didn't leave for that reason, it just worked out that way. My parents had moved to the suburbs by the time I got out of the army in March of '67, but I spent some time visiting my old city friends. They talked about it some, but it didn't impact me because I no longer lived there. I was living in Cheboygan by June. There were several riots downstate that summer, and I knew some people in the National Guard who were sent to quell them, but they didn't talk about it much after they came home. Shortly afterwards, we started getting White refugees from the cities. It looked like they were going to over run the place for awhile but, after the initial surge, our population stabilized in the 70s and, last I heard, it was actually declining. That's a good thing as far as I'm concerned.
what went wrong 3
I remember that nuclear thing. I remember the air raid drills and duck and cover. I used to take my transistor radio to bed with me and when I heard sirens I would set it on the Conelrad station (which was clearly marked on all new radios) to see if missiles were winging across the Atlantic, I remember when the White Sox won the pennant in 1959 and Daley turned on the sirens and there was a bit of a dustup. But for all that I was never really afraid, I don't know why not. Maybe because I was young and it seemed like an adventure. like the British and the V2's (which I am sure that they didn't think of as an adventure). And it was all so far away.
What wasn't far away was Them crossing Ashland and advancing towards the tracks on the other side of Western. Before we discovered the Kedzie-Archer bus route downtown we use to take the 55th Street bus. It went up 55th to around State Street and then turned north and took that street downtown. A little after Western black people would begin getting on the bus. That is when we knew we had crossed the boundary (we called it the boundary). As we progressed east more black people got on and certainly no white people got off. From a casual glance it looked like a rainbow coalition, blacks and whites riding the bus downtown together, but if you looked closer you would see both sides eyeing the other warily, huddled within themselves. There was tension but I never saw any violence or even a discouraging word.
As we moved eastward and then northwards, the neighborhoods got more and more rundown. These had all formerly been white neighborhoods and we all knew they had looked better then. This is what happened when black people moved into white neighborhoods, they ruined them (of course it was more complicated than that, but that is what the word was then), and that's why we had to keep them at bay, lest they ruin our neighborhoods.
I guess I believed the same things that all my neighbors believed. Who doesn't? Somewhere around high school I became interested in science and read a lot of books, and one of the first things they said was that this idea of one race being superior to others is a bunch of hooey. That changed my mind. I would like to say that I made a stand against racial prejudice because of my high moral standards and belief in the dignity of man, but it was more just because I thought it was the smart thing to do, and I always liked to think of myself as smart. I'd like to say that I made a stand, but what that amounted to was disagreeing with my friends on the subject, and when I failed to win any of them over, and indeed, saw that I was losing friends over this, I dropped the subject.
The subject is, by the way, The Failure of The Liberal Agenda and how it relates to rural people feeling denigrated and disrespected. I have gotten a little off the subject with my biography and the subject of race, though I believe race has a big part in this. I'll try to get closer to my subject in the next post.
To be continued.
What wasn't far away was Them crossing Ashland and advancing towards the tracks on the other side of Western. Before we discovered the Kedzie-Archer bus route downtown we use to take the 55th Street bus. It went up 55th to around State Street and then turned north and took that street downtown. A little after Western black people would begin getting on the bus. That is when we knew we had crossed the boundary (we called it the boundary). As we progressed east more black people got on and certainly no white people got off. From a casual glance it looked like a rainbow coalition, blacks and whites riding the bus downtown together, but if you looked closer you would see both sides eyeing the other warily, huddled within themselves. There was tension but I never saw any violence or even a discouraging word.
As we moved eastward and then northwards, the neighborhoods got more and more rundown. These had all formerly been white neighborhoods and we all knew they had looked better then. This is what happened when black people moved into white neighborhoods, they ruined them (of course it was more complicated than that, but that is what the word was then), and that's why we had to keep them at bay, lest they ruin our neighborhoods.
I guess I believed the same things that all my neighbors believed. Who doesn't? Somewhere around high school I became interested in science and read a lot of books, and one of the first things they said was that this idea of one race being superior to others is a bunch of hooey. That changed my mind. I would like to say that I made a stand against racial prejudice because of my high moral standards and belief in the dignity of man, but it was more just because I thought it was the smart thing to do, and I always liked to think of myself as smart. I'd like to say that I made a stand, but what that amounted to was disagreeing with my friends on the subject, and when I failed to win any of them over, and indeed, saw that I was losing friends over this, I dropped the subject.
The subject is, by the way, The Failure of The Liberal Agenda and how it relates to rural people feeling denigrated and disrespected. I have gotten a little off the subject with my biography and the subject of race, though I believe race has a big part in this. I'll try to get closer to my subject in the next post.
To be continued.
Tuesday, February 4, 2020
Where Were We in '53?
I'm not sure where Uncle Ken is going with this, but it seems like he is trying to say that everything was better in 1953 when we were both eight years old. He knows this because he read it in his Weekly Reader, a newspaper for kids that was put out by the education establishment. I was starting to read the grown up newspapers by then, and I remember a serial feature that they had about how the last few people in Australia were preparing to die as the nuclear fallout that had been released by World War III was drifting towards their shores. I knew that it was fiction, but I figured that something like that was at least possible.
We had air raid drills in school where we would all go down in the basement, sit cross legged on the floor, bend our heads down between our knees, and kiss out asses good by. Okay, the "kiss our asses good by" part was not in the drill at that time, that came from a joke paper that was passed around our high school study hall a few years later. By then we were no longer having air raid drills which, I suppose, were left over from World War II when it was still possible to survive a bombing attack on our city. Civilization as we knew it was going to be wiped out in World War III, and the next war after that was going to be fought with sticks and stones. At least that was the talk on the street.
It was about that time an oil refinery and tank farm in Whiting, Indiana exploded and burned all summer. We could see the smoke from our neighborhood on the first day, and it did look a little like the films we had seen of nuclear explosions. A bunch of us were standing around in the alley, figuring "this is it" when somebody who had been watching TV or listening to the radio came out and told us what it really was. I don't remember being afraid of the coming nuclear holocaust, I just accepted it as something that was going to happen someday, but it never did. What I learned from this was: Don't believe everything you hear on the street or read in the newspaper.
We had air raid drills in school where we would all go down in the basement, sit cross legged on the floor, bend our heads down between our knees, and kiss out asses good by. Okay, the "kiss our asses good by" part was not in the drill at that time, that came from a joke paper that was passed around our high school study hall a few years later. By then we were no longer having air raid drills which, I suppose, were left over from World War II when it was still possible to survive a bombing attack on our city. Civilization as we knew it was going to be wiped out in World War III, and the next war after that was going to be fought with sticks and stones. At least that was the talk on the street.
It was about that time an oil refinery and tank farm in Whiting, Indiana exploded and burned all summer. We could see the smoke from our neighborhood on the first day, and it did look a little like the films we had seen of nuclear explosions. A bunch of us were standing around in the alley, figuring "this is it" when somebody who had been watching TV or listening to the radio came out and told us what it really was. I don't remember being afraid of the coming nuclear holocaust, I just accepted it as something that was going to happen someday, but it never did. What I learned from this was: Don't believe everything you hear on the street or read in the newspaper.
what went wrong 2
Republic, democracy, they are just words like pilsner or lager on a can of lawnmower, or as Beagles likes to call it yellow, beer. Doesn't have a thing to do with the contents. I stopped watching the impeachment hearings towards the end of last week, just as Old Dog said, a lot of the same stuff over and over in pursuit of a foregone conclusion. I understand why they are doing it, but I don't know why they are televising it. The Iowa caucus was even worse, just one reporter after another following well-meaning true Americans from one spot to another in some little nowhere precinct in Nowhereville, Even this morning they are not sure who won.
And you know, I don't care, not very much. Looks like Bernie or Biden to me, one guy I like better, and the other guy I think has a better chance of winning. I just want to win. The main thing is that everybody is being pretty nice (there are exceptions, but I maintain they are small) to each other and that's good, all hands together for 2020 to rip the money from Beagle's bank account and Old Betsy from his hands, and for good measure make him buy a gay dog and marry him.
Anyway there I was in 1953 and things were good in the neighborhood which was smack dab in the middle of the bungalow belt so nobody was very rich but nobody was very poor. It wasn't very intellectual but there were plenty of factories down on 47th Street and anybody could get a job and do well enough to buy a bungalow, a tv, an automobile, and maybe send that kid to college. In retrospect we were not that different from our country cousins whose offspring now feel denigrated and disrespected.
We were still coming out on top of the wreckage of WW II, and everything was getting better and better. I remember being taught about The Statue of Liberty (paid of by the pennies of school children), and all those DPs steaming past it on the way in to the country that welcomed huddled masses. I was proud to be an American. In our grade school graduation I got to read a paper. I have it around somewhere (a brief search this AM turned up nothing (don't you wish you could google your possessions?)), but I remember that I proposed education as the cure for the nation's ills. More education, smarter decisions, progress. people living in harmony and peace.
Well didn't everybody believe in that? Seemed like they did, who wouldn't.? It was basically The Liberal Agenda.
But there was a problem to the east. They had crossed Ashland and they were advancing towards the tracks on the other side of Western.
To be continued.
And you know, I don't care, not very much. Looks like Bernie or Biden to me, one guy I like better, and the other guy I think has a better chance of winning. I just want to win. The main thing is that everybody is being pretty nice (there are exceptions, but I maintain they are small) to each other and that's good, all hands together for 2020 to rip the money from Beagle's bank account and Old Betsy from his hands, and for good measure make him buy a gay dog and marry him.
Anyway there I was in 1953 and things were good in the neighborhood which was smack dab in the middle of the bungalow belt so nobody was very rich but nobody was very poor. It wasn't very intellectual but there were plenty of factories down on 47th Street and anybody could get a job and do well enough to buy a bungalow, a tv, an automobile, and maybe send that kid to college. In retrospect we were not that different from our country cousins whose offspring now feel denigrated and disrespected.
We were still coming out on top of the wreckage of WW II, and everything was getting better and better. I remember being taught about The Statue of Liberty (paid of by the pennies of school children), and all those DPs steaming past it on the way in to the country that welcomed huddled masses. I was proud to be an American. In our grade school graduation I got to read a paper. I have it around somewhere (a brief search this AM turned up nothing (don't you wish you could google your possessions?)), but I remember that I proposed education as the cure for the nation's ills. More education, smarter decisions, progress. people living in harmony and peace.
Well didn't everybody believe in that? Seemed like they did, who wouldn't.? It was basically The Liberal Agenda.
But there was a problem to the east. They had crossed Ashland and they were advancing towards the tracks on the other side of Western.
To be continued.
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