A mighty wind

What was I missing this morning?  I took my shower, got dressed, fed the cats, got the newspapers from outside my door, fired up the computer and went to The Institute all while NPR was playing, but something was missing.  What could it be?  Oh that was it, no Dump shitstorm.  In fact not for the last three days.  Why bother to print newspapers, to air NPR, to have those excellent CNN panels ask each other: I dunno Wolf, what's new with you?

He was in a room Monday morning signing his new and improved immigration bill.  Those lying reporters wanted to enter the room to get photos and stuff, but his handlers wouldn't let them in the room.  Maybe one of them would have tossed him a handful of peanuts and when his attention was diverted another one of them might have asked him a question, and before his handlers could intervene he might have responded, and that was something they surely didn't want to happen.

Hard to believe that little Reince The Prebe and his gang could hold the raging beast down, but maybe he is on heavy drugs, maybe they have broken his tiny tweeting fingers.


I'm always a little suspicious of those experiments where they dupe college students.  How well does that correspond to the real world I wonder.  But then that part about people being unamenable to reason does jibe with my experience and my theories, oh was that a surge of dopamine just now? Groovy.


From my subbing experience I would say kids are still learning to read, and to do arithmetic and gather a smattering of science and history and geography, pretty much like we did in our elementary schools.  I'd even say they are learning more, they are teaching reading in Kindergarten and algebra in the seventh grade.  Will they be able to apply these skills to figure things out in this modern world with its deistractions?  I don't know.


The wishy-washys is what Beagles calls independents.  My experience is that maybe ten percent are thoughtful folks too proud to be bound to a party and the other ninety percent just plain ignorant, couldn't tell Ukraine from Nicki Minaj's fake butt.  I believe they split half and half between the big girl (oh how boring our lives might have been if the electoral college didn't skew this election) and Dump. Currently when you see those reports about Dump's bad polls it is their opinions that have changed, most of the reps and dems have not  changed their minds,and likely they never will.


I imagine I am as safe from the vagaries of politics in my tower as Beagles in his swamp, but I can't quite achieve the level of detached amusement that Beagles has.  I am a bleeding heart liberal and my heart bleeds for the people who will lose their health insurance and die younger, and the families that are separated at the border, and the guys that helped us out in the mideast being barred from entering the country, and all the treasure that will be wasted on that stoopid wall, and the national debt, oh my lord the national debt is going to soar.


That bathroom thing.  On the one hand I don't see the harm if a boy who thnks he's a girl uses the women's room and vice versa, especially since the boy is going to look like a girl and vice versa, so it seems it is better in keeping the peace that they use the dress appropriate bathroom.  I don't see the harm.  Some apparently think that if we allow this to happen, and who can doubt that it is happening all the time anyway, that there will be some kind of orgy and rapine in the bathroom unless we have some rent-a-cop outside the door checking IDs.  It involves so few people that I don't think it deserves much attention.


Beagles appears to think that it is approximately the same thing between electing a black man and electing a raving lunatic, inasmuch as the other side claims it would be the end of the world if such were come to pass.  Well of course we don't know about Dump, but I believe that by most measures Obama left us a much healthier country than the one W handed him, and who knows what Dump will be leaving us. And let me further add that electing a black man (who is not a raving lunatic) or a woman (who is not a raving lunatic) or a latin woman (who is not a raving lunatic) or a latin woman lesbian (who is not a raving lunatic), is a lot different from electing a raving lunatic,


See even the staid, fuddy-duddy, Institute is not immune to the winds of Dump.  Don't worry though, as soon as this blows over I'll be back with my discussions of the crucible and of objective reality.