picnics and ice cream cones

 Well gosh, I have been watching the 1/6 hearings pretty regularly and have learned new things every time, and so have the ink strained wretches, and yet it turns out, that Beagles, sitting there in the freehold has known all this stuff all along.  Well then I will stop bugging him about this.  But wait, no reason for me to mention this because he likely knew all along that I was going to say this.

As he likely also knows tomorrow is primary day in the Land of Lincoln.  The big news here is that. Ken Griffin, the richest man in all of Illinois is taking his moneybags and leaving this crime ridden state for the DeSantis Paradise, leaving behind his pet candidate, the mayor of Aurora, in the dust, and Trump has blessed the hayseed who will win the primary and go down in flames in the regular because we Land of Lincloners do not look kindly on the Trump banner.

And I will be taking part in it as an election judge.  A friend of mine who has been doing it for years had one of her crew drop out and she had me fill out the form and will use her pull to set me to work in the polling place.  Seems to me there will be a lot of sitting around waiting for the voters to elect their candidates, but you never know when an adventure is going to pop up it's exciting head.

Anyway it will be a welcome end to the back to back commercials which make you a little shocked that these guys are running for office when clearly they all belong behind the thickest wall of the strictest max security joint where they can wait out their days until Satan takes them straight to hell.

And then there are all those mailers, big shiny things so big that they do not easily fit into the little pigeonholes we Marina Cityers get our mail through so that our boxes are all clogged up, which is not that much of a problem since the paper recycle receptacle is only steps away.

I should run for something don't you think?  The dawgs know well of my wit and wisdom and my kindly nature.  Not so much the rest of the populace, who will need to be enlightened by my commercials and mailers which will take dough I know, but apparently there are lots of rich guys who are just looking for a candidate to back because there is a shortage of polo ponies currently, and why not Uncle Ken?

Who has a secret (well not anymore since the entire readership of The Institute knows) strategy.  My commercials will be like half the length of a regular commercial and consist of the message that I have spent the rest of  the rest of the money on a picnic for orphans, followed by a few short shots of happy orphans gamboling on bosky dells while kindly Uncle Ken hands out ice cream cones.

Of course my opponents, noting my soaring pill numbers, could do the same, but well and good.  All those smiling orphan faces will likely get boring after awhile but still much better than my opponent is a heartless criminal who they ought to have strung up long ago.  And the orphans will get to go on picnics and eat ice cream cones.  

And maybe my opponents, stealing my strategy, will defeat me in the election, but in the meantime have not the orphans and tv viewers had a swell time?  And that's really all I am about, trying to give people a swell time.

Nothing New Under the Sun

I haven't heard anything about the 2020 election than I haven't heard before, either from Uncle Ken or from any other news source.  More details may have come to light, but nothing that significantly changes the outcome.  Trump refused to acknowledge that he had lost the election and spent the next year or so unsuccessfully trying to overturn the results.  The worst thing he did was incite his followers to attack the Capitol Building while Congress was in session.  Call me "old fashioned", but that's treason in my book.  I said at the time that impeaching him was a mistake, since they knew that the Senate would never convict him.  They should have waited until he was out of office and tried him in a regular court.  Now they seem to be trying to impeach him all over again, which is impossible since he is no longer in office.  They still could try him in a regular court, it might not stick because of the double jeopardy law, but it's worth a try.  I understand that several civil suits have been filed, which they can do because that doesn't count as double jeopardy.  

Speaking of courts, an attitude such as mine would certainly be unacceptable if I was a member of a jury in a criminal or civil trial, but I'm not, and neither is Uncle Ken.  We are both merely spectators of this spectacle.  As such, we have no obligation to pay any attention to it at all if we don't want to.  Meanwhile, our attention is being redirected to Ring Number Two in this circus, where the long simmering abortion issue has been whipped up to a conflagration. 

I don't consider voting to be like betting on a sporting event, which I have never done anyway.  I don't vote for who I think is going to win, I vote for who I want to win.  I only have one vote, and if everybody else votes the wrong way, there's nothing I can do about it.

Sorry Bambi

 I've already seen more than enough of those for my taste.  I am not disputing the testimony being given at the hearings, I'm just saying that I've heard it all before and am already tired of it.  They should either prosecute the guilty parties or stop shoving the evidence in our faces.

What?  Were you not listening when your high school chum and long-time fellow blogger patiently explained that these hearing are not at all like the circus of the impeachment hearings and that they are revealing facts that previously were obscured by the murky cloud of partisanship gone wild?  

Apparently not.  And as for not wanting evidence shoved in your face, I have to say that I would not want you to be sitting in the jury box, unless I was guilty in which case I would certainly want you sitting smack dab in the middle of the box proclaiming to your fellow judges that you do not need any stinking evidence.

Suit yourself, this America and you can do whatever you want.  Like for instance find a libertarian who will lose to one of those wacko Trumpists in the primary who will then lose handily to Gutsy Gretch, America's Sweetheart.  

Did a brief search and couldn't find one, but there surely is since anybody can call themselves a libertarian.

And apparently we radical libs have failed once again to wrest Old  Betsy from Beagles' grasp and once our jackboots are planted firmly in the swamp make him marry his gay dog.

Sorry Bambi, maybe next year.

I'll Pass on the Drama

  "See now that's what I have been saying about the Jan 6 Hearings, unlike the impeachment shows which consisted mostly of senators making little speeches, these hearings are full of drama.  Not too long-ago Beagles was complaining that most things he can't see for himself and has to listen to other people tell him about it and here he has a chance to witness the hearings live and direct and he chooses not to in favor of listening to other people, who I might add are steering him very wrong if they are telling him that nothing much is going on."

I wasn't complaining, I was just saying that there are lots of things that we will never witness ourselves and have to rely on secondary sources to tell us about them.  It's not a bad thing, it's just the way life is.  Watching the hearings is not the same as witnessing the events for ourselves anyway, unless you count the video segments, and I've already seen more than enough of those for my taste.  I am not disputing the testimony being given at the hearings, I'm just saying that I've heard it all before and am already tired of it.  They should either prosecute the guilty parties or stop shoving the evidence in our faces.  As the old saying goes, "Shit or get off the pot."  As for the drama, I have gotten to the age where I don't want more drama in my life.  What I want is comfort and tranquility. 

I still say that we don't have a two-party system in this country, system being the operative word here.  Of course, we have political parties, but there is no system about it, and there is certainly no law or rule that limits the number of parties to two.  There are laws and rules that govern the conduct of parties, varying slightly from state to state.  There are also laws and rules governing the use of automobiles and firearms, but by no stretch of the imagination could you say that we have an automobile or gun system in this country. 

Speaking of guns, I see that the Senate passed some new gun laws while the Supreme Court overthrew some others.  Sounds like a break-even day to me, and at my age I can't ask for much more than that. 

so many topics this morning

 See now that's what I have been saying about the Jan 6 Hearings, unlike the impeachment shows which consisted mostly of senators making little speeches, these hearings are full of drama.  Not too long ago Beagles was complaining that most things he can't see for himself and has to listen to other people tell him about it and here he has a chance to witness the hearings live and direct and he chooses not to in favor of listening to other people, who I might add are steering him very wrong if they are telling him that nothing much is going on.

Has Old Dog considered that maybe his computer is becoming sentient?  Maybe those opening windows are like baby computer crying out for something and those strange characters are baby talk.  Maybe if he were to speak to it gently like a mother it could pick up on his cadences and learn to speak English.

The founding fathers did not want a party system, but bam there it was in four or eight years because it is just a natural outcome like mold growing on your corn muffins that you let sit too long in a closed box.  I thought it worked fine when Obama got elected (it could have given him more congressmen though so that we could have real socialized medicine instead of the hodgepodge we have today which is still much better than the republican alternative which was nothing, oh, and tax cuts for the rich, because everything is better when the fatcats are happier.

I think things started going south when LBJ passed the voting rights act which he knew down the road would lose the south for the democrats, and was accelerated when Nixon chose the southern strategy, and the tea partiers, with their no compromise attitude and their silly hats pushed it right to the edge of the cliff.  And then along came Trump, and really what kind of system would ever work with that jerk in power? 

We do get that cooling effect in Chicago and cooler by the lake is how the weatherman closes his forecast, but when Mother Nature sends those westerly blasts across the plains the lake might as well be where the Atlantic Ocean is.

The party was cancelled for the first time in its forty some years in 2020.  It came roaring back in the covid lull of summer of 2021 when suddenly it looked like we had it licked and the engineers and the passengers on the train and the people in the station and oh hell everybody you met on the street were smiling and high fiving each other.  Then along came omricon. Which I think is about beat, cases, hospitalizations, and deaths have been dropping for months.  Well how come all those people in the news are getting it?  My Champaign friend says what is going on is that everybody is getting it but it is so mild that nobody notices.  Those famous people get tested all the time and that's why they are in the papers.  Of course that doesn't mean some new variant won't be stepping out of the wings.

So  I will be heading south on the 3rd.  Oh, and I will be taking down my show on the first so if Old Dog wants to see what may be my last show he might want to amble some blocks south before then.

It's Not Really a System

 "I will say this, though: after the last five years I can safely conclude that the two-party system doesn't work anymore." - Old Dog

I have heard people refer to the "Two-Party System" all my life, but truth be known, there ain't no sucha thing.  There is no mention of political parties in the U.S. Constitution, but that doesn't mean they weren't invented yet.  Political parties certainly existed at the time the Constitution was written, but the Founding Fathers chose not to make any of them an official government agency, which was probably a good thing.   There are all sorts of rules and regulations concerning political parties, mostly at the state level, but I am not aware of any state that limits the number of them to two.  Michigan categorizes them as "major" and "minor" parties, depending on how many votes they got in the last election.  If more people voted for the Libertarians than either the Republicans or the Democrats, the Libertarians would be promoted to major party status in the next election.  That doesn't mean, however, that one of the others would necessarily be demoted to minor party status.  I don't know what the current threshold is, but if all three parties exceeded it, there would then be three major parties in Michigan.  

We've had some hot weather this year, but nothing like what they are getting Down Below.  I think it has a lot to do with the Jet Stream.  We are usually on the cold side of it.  It may shift north of us on occasion, but it doesn't stay there long before shifting back.  Then there's the lake effect, not the one that brings the snow, the other lake effect.  As the sun rises in the morning, it heats the air over the land faster than the air over the water.  This warm air then rises, allowing the cooler air over the water to drift in and replace it.  I'm not sure why you don't get that in Chicago, but I think it has something to do with all that concrete and asphalt covering the ground.

I read somewhere that this January 6 committee doesn't intend to prosecute anybody as a result of their findings.  So, what do they intend to do with all this information besides preempting my favorite TV sit-com?  Has anything new been discovered, or are they just re-hashing, all the stuff we've been hearing for the last year and a half?

Ghost in the machine

Hope y'all had a fine summer solstice, and now the days will be getting shorter again.  Tempus fugit, eh?

Even though I've been avoiding the news I must admit that the hearings that are going on are quite entertaining.  Tomorrow should be a doozy; I read that the British guy who was filming the transition period is going to testify.  Should be fun.

-----

So, instead of watching the news I've been going back through the Institute archives and reading about the hot topics of days gone by.  I've got most of the stuff in a huge text file so I can easily find stuff; just do a keyword search and see what comes up.

There is a lot of stuff to peruse and the quality of writing is such that I'm jumping in and out of rabbit holes.  A lot of food for thought and I'm in no hurry to draw any conclusions, I'm enjoying the process too much.

I will say this, though: after the last five years I can safely conclude that the two party system doesn't work anymore.

-----

There have been some strange computer problems on my end, probably hardware related but I can't track it down.  There is a ghost in my machine that has taken over the keyboard but it comes and goes.  It's like a demon is pressing keys without my input; I'll watch an open Notepad window fill up with thousands of characters, like a period, tilde, bracket, or a letter.  Hundreds of them, and then a pause, and then hundreds more.  Sometimes the characters change, sometimes they don't.  It comes and goes and is not predictable and would be entertaining if it wasn't so frustrating.  I'll be entering some text and then the field fills up with equal signs and keeps going.  The only way out of it is to smack the keys in the lower left of the keyboard, like the control, alt, function, shift, and maybe the spacebar.  That usually gets it to stop.  I suspect that it's simply a keyboard issue, maybe some gunk in there somewhere.

I've run a bunch of programs that check for viruses, spyware, and malware and I think I'm fine on that front.  The most puzzling thing is that it doesn't happen on a regular basis.  The machine can go for days with no problems and then it's hours of headaches, like today.  I was doing a text search and then dozens of new Notepad windows started opening up.  WTF?, I ask myself.  And just now the cursor started going down the page, as if someone kept hitting the return key.  A few judicious smacks and I'm back in business.

The computer is a laptop, and that's the keyboard that is giving me the flux and requires the occasional attitude adjustment.  I'm typing on a nice, big Microsoft keyboard that's plugged into a USB port, real keys with plenty of travel and a dream to type on.  Not as good as some of the old IBM keyboards but whole lots better than the crappy keyboards you see today.  Okay, I'm done venting.

-----

It's nearly time for Uncle Ken's sojourn downstate for Fourth of July festivities, isn't it?  I know he keeps in contact with his old (and getting older, ha, ha) chums from his University days and Covid has screwed things up lately.  Maybe this year things will be back on track.

playing guns

 Oh yar, the guy is a stinkeroo alright.  That ad reminded me of the Christmas when all the neighborhood boys got burp guns and we would play the battle oi the Alamo all day long.  Of course we were like ten years old.

I think Cheboygan might be just a bit too far north for the heat dome that has been ruling the great lakes area the last couple weeks.  I was hosting a guest from Champaign and I had to take her about to entertain her and while the city looks magnificent from the roof of the towers on a summer night all twinkling lights and the hum of folks out to have a good time on the streets below; it is quite a different thing on a midday scorcher to be at State Street level with the noise and the smells shouldering your way through a crowd that is as ill=tempered as you.  Still about ten people showed up for the opening and we had a swell conversation in the air-conditioned back room, but when I took them out front to give them my art spiel most of them took advantage of proximity of the street to make their escapes.  Well still it was fine.

I know you are not watching the hearings but yesterday's were pretty good with tales of tRudy and Don phoning into various state officials to get them to over rule the results of the election on zippo proof.  Well the best line was the drunken gnome telling the guy they had no proof but they had plenty of theories.  And then they had all these bogus elector lists of the quality of a ten year old boy's notes from his mom to excuse him for being sick.  It was all so amateurish but even as I write they are collecting sacks of cash from poor dumb schlubs over it.

Where do They Find These People?

 After viewing the video on Uncle Ken's link, I found this article about the same guy, another wing nut heard from.  

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/navy-eric-greitens-is-no-longer-with-the-navy-reserve-or-the-department-of-the-navy/ar-AAYIBGu?rt=0&ocid=Win10NewsApp&referrerID=InAppShare

The Michigan primary is not till August which, come to think of it, is not that far away.  I suppose I should start researching the candidates one of these days.  From what I have seen so far, they're all Trumpists, or at least Trumpettes.  The Libertarians are looking better and better to me with each passing day.

How did your show go, Uncle Ken?

 

primaries

 Haven't heard anything this week and was wondering how the gubernatory primary in Michigan is going.  It appears to me that it is one of those where both reps and dems run in the same election and my gutsy gal is at about half and the rep who is leading is that guy who got arrested for being part of the Jan 6 hug and kiss lovefest by law-abiding tourists.

Meanwhile here in Illinois that moderate dem who accepted a truckload of dough from Ken Griffin to run as a stealth candidate has lost the lead to the hayseed who is taking dough from another fatcat.  Well at least the hayseed is straight talking, though not so much about his plan to boot Chicago out of Illinois.

But all this pales in comparison to what is going on in Missouri in the senatorial primary.  If you have not yet seen the famous commercial here it is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZZ2Y6fAq8o  And the thing is he is not talking about Chinese or Russkies, or immigrants or minorities, or democrats, but of fellow republicans.  He is one of the leading candidates and this ad will either sink him or catapult him into the lead.

It's a pretty good show though

 There are all kinds of ways to resolve what is true when there is a disagreement.  We must have discussed this a million times.  For one thing don't take the word of somebody who says we discussed something a million times because that certainly is not true.

You're better off taking the word from someone who has knowledge of the subject, your doctor or mechanic for instance, rather than the guy on the next barstool.  And when you get an expert make sure he is not some kind of outlier.  The anti-global warming folks used to trot out some character who had their point of view. and by way of bolstering their point would note that he was a Harvard professor,  But if being a Harvard professor was so important why did they ignore what the other 99 percent of Harvard professors say?  And serial liars you want to avoid them.  Of course sometimes everybody is wrong and there is not much to be done about that.  

Anyway just because there are two dissenting views is no reason to wave your hands in the air.  It's not that hard to tell which side is more likely to have the truth.

When McCarthy was asked to choose republicans to be on the committee he chose all bomb throwers like Coatless Jim Jordan and guys who were likely guilty of compliance with the operation.  And the dems wisely gave them thumbs down.  Of course McCarthy knew that  and he wanted it to be a partisan vehicle so that he could rail against it.  But notice that as much as they rail against it, they do not dispute the findings.  Because there are no rep gunslingers no time is wasted on fire breathing reps and pontificating dems who were basically just making speeches which was boring and likely to give you a headaches.  This is more like a seminar where a thesis is advanced and is proved.

The proof is mostly in the witnesses who are all Trump people who had been lying their asses off because lying to the American people is not a crime, but lying to congress is and they don't want to go to jail so now they are being honest for the first time.

So that is all very entertaining and you might want to drop in for just fifteen minutes to see what is going on.  But this is America and you don't have to if you don't want.  The lame stream media is doing a good enough job on this and if you want to limit your exposure to an article or two a day, five minutes on the subject from some talking head I think you will get a pretty good idea of what is going on.

Some people like to just skim the box score the next morning,  Myself I like to watch the game.

The heat dome is settling over us and I am having my show opening Wednesday night and I will have an out of town guest from Tuesday to Thursday, so I probably won't be posting until next week.

Preaching to the Choir

If Uncle Ken's hypothetical tree were real, we could indeed go check it out for ourselves if we were so inclined, but there are lots of things, both real and imaginary, that we will never get to see for ourselves.  For these things we have to take somebody else's word for it.  When two or more people give two or more conflicting words, we need to decide which one to believe, unless we decide not to believe any of them.  Whatever we decide, it's not carved in stone, our beliefs are subject to change anytime new information presents itself to us.  Of course, we could choose to disregard the new information and stick with what we already think we know, which is what a lot of people tend to do. 

I'm not very interested in those January 6 hearings because I decided a long time ago that I wasn't ever going to vote for Trump again, and I would be surprised if anything comes out of those hearings that would change my mind.  If it does, I'm sure I will hear about it without having to sit through hours and hours of repetitive testimony.  I had mixed feelings about Trump before, but when January 6 first hit the fan, I said "This time he's gone too far."  As for all the lesser luminaries involved, I expect that the wheels of justice will catch up with them eventually with or without my help.

Nuttin but da trut

 That arrest was in the national news.  Michiganders go figure.  But then they have arrested a few in Illinois also, and even in THE GREATEST CITY INNA WORLD, so go figure again.

Actually the guy who got busted seems to be the only guy who has any experience in gummint.  The rest are a radio talker, a bible thumper, a white-coated crook, and one guy who calls himself a businessman which doesn't sound so bad until you remember that is what Al Capone always called himself.  As far as getting rid of Gutsy Gretch, I think that scheme to kidnap her and leave her in the middle of the lake without a paddle had a better chance of success than any of that crew beating her in an election.

While a journey down to the southern edge of the great lakes would be quite a burden you do have my address (you could google earth or maybe ask a friend who lives in Chicago, or maybe you could pay somebody), and a thirty foot tall tree is a well-defined, ten yardsticks and a ladder could determine it right there and then, true of false, unlike these calls of an unfair election which have neither time or place, and the reason they have neither is because when they have named them in the past it turns out nothing happened there then.  If you want to broadcast a lie it is better not to give details.  That is the point of the objective physical universe, you can always figure out if something is true or false.  Again, as opposed to the Tucker Carlson response to the hearings that he was preempting which was that they were all a bunch of liars, which is very unspecific.

And of course I watched the hearings, I didn't previously know how well the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers were organized, nor how close their ties were with the Trumpists, though we will need more info on that which I believe will be forthcoming.  And I thought that from the top it was mostly just Trump ranting and the sychophants accommodating him, but it was a whole big plan with many planners and moving pieces.  Not much better a plan than the one the wolverines had for Gutsy Gretch, but a whole big plan nevertheless.

Civilization is not built on lies it is built on truth.  Astrology took us nowhere, but astronomy took us out to Pluto.  Of course there are many things wrong with the way civilization is going like teen agers with AR-15's, we don't seem to be able to use our shiny new tools right.  Even then the truths from our scientists may (not likely) lead us to some sort of uncatastrophic solution while the lies of the deniers takes us further away.

I'm a democrat what kind of voice do I have?  I cannot even convince two crabby old dawgs of anything.

The firearm owner may resent being called a gun nut, but he can comfort himself with the fact that he is running roughshod over the gun control nuts.

The true liberal sees things in terms of greys and that is why we are so indecisive and seen as weak.

I make typos more often than I would like.  I double check but they slip by sometimes.

And Then There Were Four

 On June 9, 2022, candidate Ryan Kelley was arrested by the FBI following numerous tips that he had participated in the 2021 United States Capitol attack.^[14] The criminal complaint alleges that Kelley engaged in disorderly conduct on restricted grounds and engaged in acts of violence against a person or property. ^[14]

Candidates

Declared[edit]

• Tudor Dixon, conservative media ^{personality [15][16]}
• Ryan D. Kelley, Allendale Township Planning commissioner (candidacy in question after being arrested for participating in the January 6th riot)
• Ralph Rebandt, Farmington Hills pastor ^[17]
• Kevin Rinke, businessman ^[18][19]
• Garrett Soldano, chiropractor, businessman and former co-chairman of Unlock Michigan ^[2

2022 Michigan gubernatorial election - Wikipedia

At this rate, I won't have to make a decision in our August primary.  I do hope, however, that one of them is still standing by then.  

I am in general agreement with Uncle Ken's position on objective reality.  The thing is, though, I am unlikely to journey to Chicago to measure this hypothetical tree for myself, so I have to take his word for it.  But what if Old Dog hypothetically were to claim that the alleged tree does not exist?  Which of my esteemed colleagues am I supposed to believe?  First, I would try to ascertain if either of them had anything to gain or lose by deceiving me.  Then I would try to decide if I had anything to gain or lose by believing either of them.  Then I would compare both claims to any previous knowledge I had of trees and backyards to see which claim made the most logical sense to me.  I don't think that Uncle Ken even has a back yard.  I don't know that for an absolute fact, but let's say I checked it out on Google Earth and found that the closest thing Uncle Ken has to a backyard is his balcony garden.  While I have been impressed by the photos I have seen of this garden, I don't think a 30-foot tree would fit in there without encroaching on the balcony of his upstairs neighbor.  Said neighbor would likely complain to the condo management, and they would likely agree with him.  Therefore, I believe it is unlikely that Uncle Ken has a 30-foot tree in his backyard.  Not impossible, you understand, for nothing is impossible, just not bloody likely.

"Idit ebat sebe!

That's not a nice thing to say to your fellow Beaglesonians, Mr. Beagles.  Maybe it loses something in the translation."

Sorry, I didn't mean it as an insult, I was merely quoting the Ukrainian Battle Cry as a source of inspiration, kind of like "Remember the Alamo!"

Worn out

One of the many things that Chicago has and Beaglesonia doesn't have is lumpsuckers.

My heart sank when I read that, thinking of all of the invasive species invading our Great Lakes, joining the Zebra Mussels and Asian Carp.  But no, lumpsuckers aren't fresh water fish; the fish Mr. Beagles referred to are sitting in a tank at the Shedd Aquarium.  Whew!  Cute little guys, I thought, as I read the article and I had to know more.  YouTube to the rescue, plenty of info on lumpsuckers and their habits.  The most significant thing that I saw was that they are critical to the salmon farming industry.  Farmed salmon are kept in close quarters and are prone to insidious sea lice, not a good thing for healthy salmon.  Pesticides aren't useful for a number of reasons but our friends the lumpsuckers find sea lice tasty morsels and will chow down with great vigor.  The result is no more sea lice and we can enjoy pesticide-free farmed salmon.  Good news, I'll say.  When I was a kid I liked eating sockeye salmon straight out of the can, and I still do.

-----

Idit ebat sebe!

That's not a nice thing to say to your fellow Beaglesonians, Mr. Beagles.  Maybe it loses something in the translation.

-----

Well I will certainly be tuning in to the Jan 6 show tonight.

Knock yourself out, Uncle Ken.  Do I give a rat's ass?  Short answer, no.  Long answer, n-o-o-o-o-o.

-----

Thousands of years of recorded history and this is the best we can do?  Seems to me that human culture has been built on lies and we go along with the deceptions because otherwise we couldn't maintain any semblance of order.  Some folks take a very binary view on social issues, you're on one side or the other and there are no other options.  That stinks, in my opinion.  If you're neither a Republican nor Democrat you are essentially disenfranchised and have no voice.  And God forbid you own a firearm; you will be further marginalized by being called a gun nut.  I'm glad I never researched any of the fringe politicians lest I be called a crazed right-winger. but that's neither here nor there.  Some folks see only black or white but the Old Dog sees nothing but an infinite range of grays.  Maybe it's just my cataracts.

But the funny thing is that folks had the right idea long ago, back to the Epic of Gilgamesh.  In the words of Siduri, bartender to the gods, 

Humans are born, they live, then they die, this is the order that the gods have decreed.  But until the end comes, enjoy your life, spend it in happiness, not despair.

You can usually depend on a bartender for good advice, and this is no exception.

----- 

Well are right then that being even-handed kind of wears a guy out.

Sure thing, Uncle Ken.

 

 

The Objective Physical Universe

 Well I will certainly be tuning in to the Jan 6 show tonight.  They promise some blockbuster revelations are promised.  I dunno, a gaggle of pols has a hard time keeping secrets, but nothing so far has been revealed.  

I can watch it on any of the networks and on CNN or MSNBC, but not on FOX.  Well what else can you expect form them?  Not surprised at all, didn't the other two cable channels stop airing Trump's rallies after awhile when it became apparent they were all the same rant.

But this will be different than some windbag ranting.  This will be more like a courtroom procedure.  It won't just be the dems calling Trump and his Trumpets names, there will be evidence.  It won't just be Schiff shouting that Trump tried to overturn the election this meeting took place at such and such a time and place and this is what was said, and we know this because that is what these witnesses testified under oath.   It will respect the Objective Physical Universe.

In a bit of a nostalgic mood here what with reposting the original two posts of The Institute.  I remember how I used to expound at length on the subject amid the yawns of the dawgs.  

It's one thing to say that the tree in my back yard is an ugly stick.  We are all entitled to our opinions and ugly is vague word.  Unlike say thirty feet tall (okay three words).  If I say my tree is thirty feet tall, well anybody can come into my backyard (I will allow it) and measure it and as a result it will be revealed that my tree is thirty feet tall or that it is not.

Indeed if the republicans are sure that Trump did not try to overturn the election then wouldn't evidence show that.  Isn't that something they would want to see.  They had ample opportunity to be a part of the committee and to testify before it to tell their truth and they refused at every one.

They are whipping up a supposed truth squad of house members to refute the findings, but of course they will not be saying this meeting didn't happen at such and such a place and time and this is not what is said and we can prove that because we have witnesses who testified under oath, they will just be calling the dems liars, and if that does not convince then they will yell the same thing louder and longer.

This came up in a recent trial for a buddy of Bannon's (Bannon was pardoned by Trump) who were raising money to build the wall and putting a lot of that money in his pocket. 

https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/jury-deadlocked-build-wall-fraud-trial-85146527

The evidence was clear as a bell and eleven jurors were convinced, but the twelfth juror was a Trumpist and even though this Shea guy was cheating fellow Trumpist, still he was a Trumpist, and the gummint was a bunch of liberal anti-Trumpers (because clearly only liberal anti-Trumpers would prosecute a Trumpist.

With this kind of thing going on, this blatant disregard for the Objective Physical Universe, how can the court system prevail, how can crooks get sent to jail?  Ladies and Gentleman I beseech you, bring Objective Physical Universalism back to the forefront of our public life.

kumbaya

 That sounded like a yes.  Well good for you Beagles.  I, of course, would like to get rid of them all, but focusing on the possible, if that is all that we get out of this brief moment of kumbaya, that is better than what I expect will happen, which is nothing.  

A few young law-abiding citizens will be unable to get their hands on the super gun and will have to settle for a lesser weapon and a few  less kids will be killed and that is a good thing.  The bad thing is that some teens will not be able to own that shiny toy for a few more years, which, while tragic, is not as bad as the killing, so if it comes to pass, that will be a good day for America.

Of course any day now the Supreme Court is likely to throw out all bans on weapons so none of this will matter.

So, in the spirit of kumbaya, let me say this about that.  I remember scoffing at Beagles talking about card carrying reps and dems.  A card, why would there be a card?  Would it get you a discount at the dry cleaners or something?  I have been a pretty partisan democrat for many years and nobody had ever offered to give me no card.

But last night I was talking to a neighbor and somewhere in the conversation she said that she was a card-carrying republican.  Wait, I replied, you are being metaphorical here, you don't mean an actual card, like cardboard, like you would put in your wallet?  But no, she did mean an actual card.  It was issued by the national republican party and I believe she even paid dues.  So Beagles, I am sorry that I scoffed at you.

Well are right then that being even-handed kind of wears a guy out.  See you tomorrow.

Sure. Why Not?

 "At the risk of opening up a can of worms, how about as a single issue how about raising the age for AR-15's to 21?"

Congress has been under a lot of pressure lately to "Do something!".  This is something that might evoke bi-partisan agreement, which is what they need nowadays to get anything passed.  I doubt it will make a noticeable dent in the mass shooting numbers, but at least they will be able to say that they did something.  I think a guy has to be over 21 to buy a handgun in Michigan already.  

Remember handguns?  There was a time when they were the primary target of the anti-gun crowd, but you hardly ever hear them mentioned anymore.  I hear that Canada is currently cracking down on handguns, but I thought they were already banned in Canada.  The reason I say that is I met a guy in Alaska back in '63 who said he was not allowed to carry his handgun through Canada when he crossed it to get to Alaska from the Lower 48.  What he did was ship it to himself and then reclaim it when he got there.  When I drove through Canada on my way back from Alaska, they asked me at the border if I had any handguns and I told them no, only a shotgun.  They asked me how much ammunition I had for it, and they had no problem with the modest amount I was carrying.  If I had over a certain amount, I forget how much, they would have put it a sealed container which I would have been forbidden to open until I crossed back into the U.S.

primaries

 Let me begin by saying any candidate who hires a sketchy company to get their signatures was never a serious candidate.  Geez Politics 101.

Looked through the list of Michigan candidates and it seems that about half of them are Trumpists, but if they are the only ones running commercials it sounds like the non Trumpists have little funding, and no hope.  

Here in the Land of Lincoln, well-known for our good gummint, we have five reps in the rep primary to unseat jolly rich fat guy Pritzker.  But only three are running commercials so I don't know the names of the other two.  

The top gun among them is Irvin who was the mayor of Aurora and pretty much a Democrat and not an awful guy, but Ken Griffin, the richest guy in the state waved a fat stack of bills in his face and now he is running as a republican, hiding from the press behind a shitload of law and order (he used to be a public defender) commercials.  

The next guy is Baily, some right wing hayseed whose former claim to fame was trying to kick Chicago out of Illinois which is fine for running in a republican primary, but not so good for the general.  He is backed by another rich guy who funds Christian right candidates.

The third guy is Sullivan who is a California crypto hedge fund guy who apparently was born in some small Illinois town and now is back to recover his roots, and as long as he is busting sod, is running for gov as a Christian law and order guy.

Oh and the dems, who think Bailey would be easier to beat than Irvin are running commercials about how Bailey is too damned conservative for Illinois, the intended effect of which is to get more rep voters to vote for Bailey and not Irvin.

Pritzker has run a pretty tight ship with none of his people under indictment and even inching up our pitiful credit rating and is filthy rich and putting in his own money so I don't see any of the republican clown parade beating him.

Did you note the common thread in that listing of candidates?  Big bucks, and I also saw plenty of money bags in the Michigan list.  You can thank that old turtle Mitch McConnel for that.

I hadn't expected any response this morning and was going to discourse on the birth of Beaglesonia, well maybe next time.

At the risk of opening up a can of worms, how about as a single issue how about raising the age for AR-15's to 21?

And Then There Were Five

 Ten candidates filed petitions for the Republican gubernatorial primary in Michigan, and five of them have been rejected by the Board of Canvassers because they found a substantial number of fraudulent signatures on each one.  Nobody is blaming the candidates themselves.  It seems they all hired the same outfit to solicit signatures for them, which sounds fishy right there, but I understand it's a common practice that is not illegal in and of itself.  It is those solicitors that have been accused of falsifying signatures.  I'm not sure if that is illegal but, of course, it ought to be.  Either way, those five candidates will not be on the primary ballot in August.  

That's fine by me, 10 candidates were way too many for my taste.  Even five is more than we need.  All we really need is one Trumpist and one non-Trumpist to provide us with a clear choice.  One of the disqualified candidates had the Trump endorsement, for which he beat out one of the surviving candidates by waging a Trumpier Than Thou campaign.  With him gone, it remains to be seen if Trump will pick the other guy as his second choice.  Last I heard, he had not, at least not yet.  The two Trumpers have been the only ones advertising on TV so far, and I don't know anything about the other four guys, not even their names.  I hope that they are not all non-Trumpists, because if they are, they will likely split the vote between them, the Trumpist will win the nomination, and we will have four more years of Queen Gretchen and her motley crew. 

Remember when we were wondering what use those Russian invaders had for the defunct Chernobyl nuclear plant?  Well now we know, they just wanted a warm place to shit.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/russian-forces-left-roughly-100-liters-of-high-quality-vodka-at-the-chernobyl-nuclear-plant-before-they-retreated-ukrainian-workers-say/ar-AAYa2oD?rt=0&ocid=Win10NewsApp&referrerID=InAppShare

the dawn of Beaglestonia

 The year was 2013, Obama's second term was less than a year old.  Trump's tv show still had four more years to run.  Actually we had been corresponding by mail for a year and a half before that, but that wisdom has passed into the ghost of  cyberdom. As has been our pattern Beagles wrote in the night and I wrote in the dawn,

It was mostly politics in those days.  There were a few conservative drinkers at the bar, and they were of the sort who could have a peaceful conversation and I enjoyed honing my arguments and understanding how they came to their beliefs.

See there were Beagles and I, a couple pretty smart guys, both growing up in the same time in the same place, we both had access to the same news sources (back when the news tried to be impartial) and yet we came to very different world views.  How did that happen?

I believed then pretty much as I said in the last paragraph, though I was already becoming skeptical.  Anymore I really don't believe that it is possible, but I continue to act as if it were because that is the only card in my deck.  

Around the time of this post, Trump was still a buffoon who lorded over a panel of sychophants making silly pronouncements to silly people doing silly stunts, and in his spare time pushing birtherism and I thought everybody was laughing at him, but apparently not.  

But here are our thoughts before the elephant strutted into the room,  We seem almost like choirboys don't we?

Well anyway comments are welcomed.  I am doing all that I can to get this tin can started and puffing down the road because I love the smell of keyboard keys in the morning.

November 3,2013 pm

About a year and a half ago, I ran across one of my old high school buddies on the internet. We hadn't been in contact since we graduated back in 1963, so we had a lot of catching up to do. Truth be known, we hadn't known each other all that well in the old days but, by now, we have become fast friends. Funny thing is that we have very little in common, in fact we are on the opposite sides of most issues, yet we seem to be able to discuss those issues in a fairly rational and dispassionate manner, which is kind of unique nowadays. We have been communicating exclusively by e-mail because both of us were tired of the abusive and insulting dialog that has become so common in both  cyberspace and in the real world of today. Nevertheless, we recently decided that our ponderings and permutations are just too good not to share, and that the world would become a better place if everybody else would follow our shinning example. Neither of us are spring chickens anymore and, all too soon, we will belong to the ages. Will we be remembered for our wit and wisdom, or will we be buried under the ash heap of history? Only time will tell, but we'll never know if we don't try.

Ken and I grew up in a decent neighborhood on the South West Side of Chicago. I was exposed to rural living at an early age and quickly decided that was what I wanted to do when I grew up. Ken, on the other hand, was a city boy at heart, and still is. He ended up living in a high rise apartment downtown, and I ended up living in a modest home in the swamps of Northern Michigan. Politically, I like to think of myself as a reactionary, but I get tired of trying to explain to people what that means, so I usually tell them that I'm a conservative. Ken is a self described liberal who marched in protest demonstrations during the Vietnam era, while I marched with the U.S Army in Berlin, Germany. Our discussions have helped us to understand what was going on in each other's heads in those days so that we have both become more tolerant of diverse and dissenting opinions. May they do the same for you., 

November 4, 2013 am

About a year and a half ago I started thinking about my high school friend, Talks with Beagles. We were both in what were called advanced classes at Gage Park High School on the southwest side of Chicago, and it was drummed into our heads constantly that we had to go to college. But when it came to time to apply for college, Talks with Beagles announced he had no plans to go to college. It was a bit of a scandal, how could he not go to college?  It was the American dream of getting ahead. I didn't agree with his decision, but I rather admired him for standing against the tide.

I went to college, dropped out, and dropped back in. Became a hippie, was a Conscientious Objector during the Vietnam war, spent about twenty years tending bar, had a state job for about ten, and was a substitute teacher for about seven. All this time I have been a liberal democrat, and I follow politics the way some follow the sports page.

When I got in touch with Talks With Beagles I learned that his politics were about 180 degrees of mine, and he liked to write, and so far we have been exchanging about an email a day.

I’m not a man of faith, but I have always believed that if men of reason could get together and discuss things coolly and logically, and not stray from the subject and call each other names then they would eventually come to an agreement. I have to admit I have never seen this happen in real life, and I don’t think I have changed Talks with Beagles’ mind about anything, but you never know.

So now we need a subject to gnaw on.  Beagles, the ball is in your court.