I'm still not sure about fu, it seems to be something like forte or ability, maybe given some mystic twist, and maybe it has some nerd coolness to it. You know nerds have their own internal cool, not recognized by the outside world of the truly cool, but within themselves, the way maybe among the Amish some men are known as lady killers or that little house finch on my railings thinks he is badass among finches.
I did look up Arminus in wiki, strangely enough just as I was watching something on the Smithsonian channel about some big battle between the German barbarians and the Romans, and it seems like that was the very same battle where the Romans took it in the butt and decided not to bother conquering Germany.
Of course another reason was that there wasn't much in Germany worth conquering. The vast hinterland was just a bunch of barbarians eking out a living on little farms, unlike the countries around the Mediterranean who were loaded with booty and could pay big tributes. The thing was once the Germans encountered the Romans they discovered that the Roman Empire had a lot of crap and they could get some of that crap by raiding and trading and whatnot and the word went out to the hinterlands and they came streaming in to get part of the action, and the tribes near the Roman Empire became powerful enough to eventually collapse the Roman empire while the hinterland remained a bunch of barbarians eking out a living.
I guess we all know this. I'm just saying that it is kind of ludicrous to think of him as a hero of the German nation, he was just fighting for his tribe which was fighting other German tribes as well as the Romans and in the end his own tribe did him in,
Speaking of heroes, Trump's latest tweet has the media blathering and I don't quite get it. /We all knew that he is coarse and unprincipled and this is just more of the same. I was watching CNN last night and this guy Van Jones came on. He is getting some press because he recently said that this whole Russian thing is a nothing burger. His point is that it gets the dem base riled up and thinking they are unto something and maybe it will get Trump impeached, but he is saying that that's unlikely to happen and even if it sinks Trump among the independents, it's not necessarily driving them into the arms of the dems.
The reps swept into power by being the party of no, but when they got in they were unable to govern. If the dems get in on the power of no will they be able to govern? The reps looked united when they were out of power, but in power they have proved to be divided. The dems are holding tight out of power, but will the progressives and establishment be able to hold together if they get into power?
Friday, June 30, 2017
Thursday, June 29, 2017
I Found It, But It Sucks
So I went to You Tube, searched for "Tiny Tim", and found 270 different videos, none of which seemed to be the song for which I was looking. I actually didn't know the title, so one of them might have been it, but I doubt it. Then I searched again under "Tiny Tim The Ice Caps Are Melting", on the chance that might be the title, and it was. It was, however, a different version than the one I had seen on Ed Sullivan so many years ago. Both the sound and the picture were distorted, I think it was on purpose, and Tiny appeared to be trying to scare a bunch of little kids, who seemed to be unimpressed. In the Sullivan version, he was alone on the stage and a video depicting stormy ocean scenes was projected on a large screen behind him. Both versions were surrealistic, but I thought the Sullivan version was much more effective. So now the ice caps really are melting. How about that? Too bad Tiny Tim isn't here to see his prophecy come true, but he died in 1996.
From what I have read over the years, people have been more focused on the Arctic than the Antarctic, but the Antarctic has much more potential for disrupting life as we know it. The Arctic ice is all floating on the Arctic Sea and, since ice floats quite low in the water, it has already displaced almost as much water as it ever will, even if it all melts down. Most of the Antarctic ice cap sits on solid ground, as near as anybody can tell. There has been some speculation that Antarctica, and Greenland too, might not be one solid mass of land, but rather a cluster of islands. Even so, the Antarctic ice is piled a thousand feet or so above sea level, so that's still a lot of ice to melt into the ocean. A lot of people don't know this, but Antarctica has one of the driest climates on Earth. The only reason there is so much ice and snow there is, whatever precipitation does fall, just keeps piling up and never melts, until now.
From what I have read over the years, people have been more focused on the Arctic than the Antarctic, but the Antarctic has much more potential for disrupting life as we know it. The Arctic ice is all floating on the Arctic Sea and, since ice floats quite low in the water, it has already displaced almost as much water as it ever will, even if it all melts down. Most of the Antarctic ice cap sits on solid ground, as near as anybody can tell. There has been some speculation that Antarctica, and Greenland too, might not be one solid mass of land, but rather a cluster of islands. Even so, the Antarctic ice is piled a thousand feet or so above sea level, so that's still a lot of ice to melt into the ocean. A lot of people don't know this, but Antarctica has one of the driest climates on Earth. The only reason there is so much ice and snow there is, whatever precipitation does fall, just keeps piling up and never melts, until now.
Blip
But what is this Fu?
Apparently, more obscure than I thought. It is a suffix used more often in the geek and nerd communities that indicates skill level. Since neither Wiktionary, Wikipedia, nor the Urban Dictionary include it I can only surmise that it's origin lies in poorly dubbed martial arts movies, i.e., "Your Kung-Fu is strong!" I erred in failing to hyphenate the term, my excuse being that is seldom seen in print. Nor heard frequently in conversation, for that matter. Oh, well. My Literary-Fu is weaker than yours, Uncle Ken.
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The historical documentaries available on YouTube continue to draw my attention, particularly those regarding ancient Rome. The most recent I've seen was about Rome's failed conquest of Germania. A new (to me) historical figure was introduced, Arminius, whose exploits did a lot to shape German behavior and culture. Not much is said about him today in Germany because the Third Reich considered him a sort of role model.
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It was one of those things that seem so big and then they are gone and you can't remember what the fuss was about.
Miss Vicki, Bo Derek...the Wheel of Time crushes all, but such is the nature of the entertainment industry. Plenty of has-beens are still alive, though. I sometimes wonder what they're doing. Blogging, perhaps?
Apparently, more obscure than I thought. It is a suffix used more often in the geek and nerd communities that indicates skill level. Since neither Wiktionary, Wikipedia, nor the Urban Dictionary include it I can only surmise that it's origin lies in poorly dubbed martial arts movies, i.e., "Your Kung-Fu is strong!" I erred in failing to hyphenate the term, my excuse being that is seldom seen in print. Nor heard frequently in conversation, for that matter. Oh, well. My Literary-Fu is weaker than yours, Uncle Ken.
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The historical documentaries available on YouTube continue to draw my attention, particularly those regarding ancient Rome. The most recent I've seen was about Rome's failed conquest of Germania. A new (to me) historical figure was introduced, Arminius, whose exploits did a lot to shape German behavior and culture. Not much is said about him today in Germany because the Third Reich considered him a sort of role model.
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It was one of those things that seem so big and then they are gone and you can't remember what the fuss was about.
Miss Vicki, Bo Derek...the Wheel of Time crushes all, but such is the nature of the entertainment industry. Plenty of has-beens are still alive, though. I sometimes wonder what they're doing. Blogging, perhaps?
Rear admiral takes a stern approach
I should have called it MitchCare, McConnell is too hard to spell and has too many syllables. Sounds odd though, nobody calls him Mitch. Mitch is kind of a regular guy's name and there just doesn't seem anything regular about that guy. As for the parens,I know about the brackets [{, but I just don't choose to use them, too much monkey business, like that stupid semi colon. And I have to applaud Old Dog's phrasing of Objective Reality, regardless of individual interpretations the facts remain the facts, Ma'am.
My apparently careless internet research on the bug did reveal the moth taped to the page, but I wasn't sure if that was the cause of the computer error or if it was just some prank by the computer nerds, nerds being prone to pranks, in my experience. My head was turned by this Admiral Hopper, and her rearness which I was expecting the dawgs to enlighten me on but I guess I shall have to enlighten myself.
Oh my it is below even a vice admiral. Vice admirals, and rear admirals, well we've long heard of she(less)nanigans going on in the navy, such as in that song, In the Navy. I had thought that the rear admiral was someone who was in the rear, in one of those rooms where you push your boats across the blue table with long sticks, and hence was in charge of all the other admirals. Below the rear admiral is the commodore (see once you get into that alt sex thing things keep popping up (popping up, hee hee)), and all I can think of is the Commodore 64 in the days when pcs were like those ratlike mammals crawling out of the bones of the dinosaurs.
Mu, wasn't that some kind of Buddhist thing? But what is this Fu?
I just caught the tip of that story about Trump's bogus Time cover (these things come at you so fast and furious). I'm sure the answer is that Trump distinctly remembers that he was man of the year, and so do many other really smart people. I've heard the people around him get so used to His high regard that they absorb it themselves. If you watch his spokespeople closely you will see a slight genuflection before they say His name.
I am surprised that Miss Vicki is getting all this ink in the Beaglestonian when she doesn't even have a fake butt. I see Bo Derek of Ten fame is getting some notice also. Remember that Ten mini craze associated with Bolero? It was one of those things that seem so big and then they are gone and you can't remember what the fuss was about. Hum, according to wiki she has been playing a little footsy with the reps. Well I don't guess she would have much influence with those navy guys.
The title is taken from a movie that played in an art theater in Champaign back in the day even before the Commodore 64 when if you wanted porn you had to go to an art theater.
My apparently careless internet research on the bug did reveal the moth taped to the page, but I wasn't sure if that was the cause of the computer error or if it was just some prank by the computer nerds, nerds being prone to pranks, in my experience. My head was turned by this Admiral Hopper, and her rearness which I was expecting the dawgs to enlighten me on but I guess I shall have to enlighten myself.
Oh my it is below even a vice admiral. Vice admirals, and rear admirals, well we've long heard of she(less)nanigans going on in the navy, such as in that song, In the Navy. I had thought that the rear admiral was someone who was in the rear, in one of those rooms where you push your boats across the blue table with long sticks, and hence was in charge of all the other admirals. Below the rear admiral is the commodore (see once you get into that alt sex thing things keep popping up (popping up, hee hee)), and all I can think of is the Commodore 64 in the days when pcs were like those ratlike mammals crawling out of the bones of the dinosaurs.
Mu, wasn't that some kind of Buddhist thing? But what is this Fu?
I just caught the tip of that story about Trump's bogus Time cover (these things come at you so fast and furious). I'm sure the answer is that Trump distinctly remembers that he was man of the year, and so do many other really smart people. I've heard the people around him get so used to His high regard that they absorb it themselves. If you watch his spokespeople closely you will see a slight genuflection before they say His name.
I am surprised that Miss Vicki is getting all this ink in the Beaglestonian when she doesn't even have a fake butt. I see Bo Derek of Ten fame is getting some notice also. Remember that Ten mini craze associated with Bolero? It was one of those things that seem so big and then they are gone and you can't remember what the fuss was about. Hum, according to wiki she has been playing a little footsy with the reps. Well I don't guess she would have much influence with those navy guys.
The title is taken from a movie that played in an art theater in Champaign back in the day even before the Commodore 64 when if you wanted porn you had to go to an art theater.
Wednesday, June 28, 2017
The Niagara Trickle
Okay, I was shooting from the hip on that one. What I was thinking was that the sea level would have to rise as high as Niagara Falls before it could impact the upper Great Lakes, and I don't think anyone is predicting that. While I'm correcting things, I seem to have confused Twiggy with Miss Vicki, which is understandable because it was a long time ago and I never did pay that much attention to it at the time. Funny, though, that I remembered the chorus to that song. I'm sure that I only heard the song once but, I seem to remember that the chorus was repeated multiple times. I also remember that there was a video with the song that showed various oceanic scenes. I wonder if it could be on You Tube. I'll have to search for it one of these days. Of course there was no You Tube in the 60s, but I have found some old Bo Derek movies from the 80s, and there was no You Tube then either.
According to the article, the melting of the Antarctic glaciers is not being directly caused by global warming, it's being caused by a shift in the ocean currents that is bringing warmer water to the region. Of course the case could be made that the shift in the ocean currents is being caused by global warming, but the case could also be made that global warming is being caused by the shift in the ocean currents. When they periodically have that El Nino thing in South America, it affects the weather in North America, and El Nino was first observed centuries ago.
Anyway, not to worry, the sea levels are not predicted to rise any higher than they did three million years ago, which was the last time all the ice on Earth melted down. It didn't hurt the dinosaurs because they were long gone by then, and it didn't hurt the humans because they hadn't appeared yet. I suppose the worst thing that could happen is the end of civilization as we know it, and that might not be a bad thing. It would be inconvenient for the generation that would be living at the time, but any new kids born after that would grow up with it and think of it as normal. I wonder how long it would take the human race to re-encumber itself.
I had to think about it for a minute, but I did get Uncle Ken's joke about the gibbons. I didn't respond to it because, if I responded to everything you guys wrote, I wouldn't have time to write anything myself.
According to the article, the melting of the Antarctic glaciers is not being directly caused by global warming, it's being caused by a shift in the ocean currents that is bringing warmer water to the region. Of course the case could be made that the shift in the ocean currents is being caused by global warming, but the case could also be made that global warming is being caused by the shift in the ocean currents. When they periodically have that El Nino thing in South America, it affects the weather in North America, and El Nino was first observed centuries ago.
Anyway, not to worry, the sea levels are not predicted to rise any higher than they did three million years ago, which was the last time all the ice on Earth melted down. It didn't hurt the dinosaurs because they were long gone by then, and it didn't hurt the humans because they hadn't appeared yet. I suppose the worst thing that could happen is the end of civilization as we know it, and that might not be a bad thing. It would be inconvenient for the generation that would be living at the time, but any new kids born after that would grow up with it and think of it as normal. I wonder how long it would take the human race to re-encumber itself.
I had to think about it for a minute, but I did get Uncle Ken's joke about the gibbons. I didn't respond to it because, if I responded to everything you guys wrote, I wouldn't have time to write anything myself.
The Scourge continues
I don't hit the National Geographic website as frequently as I should, but that Antarctica article was very revealing. How can global warming be denied if all that ice is melting? But Mr. Beagles implied that Niagara Falls would become a trickle, and I don't understand why that should be the case; it's more than 300 feet above sea level. Did I miss something?
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"Pedantic scourge," huh? I'll ignore that harsh assessment as I never did receive my copy of the Official Beaglesonian Style Guide, which surely delineates error tolerance. Should I point out that Tiny Tim married Miss Vicki (on the Tonight Show, no less) rather than Twiggy, or that some people forget that last 'L' in McConnell's name? Where should the bar be set? I let a lot of little things (like typos) slip through the cracks but I think factual errors should be corrected. Perhaps Mr. Objective Reality can agree. We all have access to the same information; our different experiences will cause different interpretations in many cases but facts should remain factual.
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But wait, is Old Dog claiming that the incident with the moth never really happened? Preliminary internet research is inconclusive.
How can you say that? Did I not clearly state The image (available online) of the moth taped to the page of the report is pretty funny,...? If your preliminary internet research is inconclusive I can only infer that your Google Fu is weak, my friend. A Google Image search (try "computer bug") will show the page in question; the original technical log book is in the Smithsonian.
And, as I continue my pedantic reign of terror, I seem to recall that using parentheses within parentheses is considered bad form. Brackets and braces should be used but I don't recall in which order. I could be wrong on this one but it's not important enough to me to research further, as I seldom need that type of nested phrasing. I'll stick with my clumsy use of commas and semi-colons. Mu.
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I'm beginning to enjoy Trump's tap dancing regarding "fake news," especially in light of those fake Time magazine covers. He is now blaming them on some unknown news agents in an effort to discredit him, which is quite a stretch since some of those bogus covers have been around for more than five years. The cherry on top of this sundae is that the bar code on the cover is the same one used on a website for a tutorial to create, drum roll please, fake Time magazine covers. But maybe that's fake news, too.
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Oh, Uncle Ken, I saw what you did with that reference to the monkeys typing the history book. I wonder if Mr. Beagles also noticed the fine, perhaps the finest I've seen, example of your subtle wit.
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"Pedantic scourge," huh? I'll ignore that harsh assessment as I never did receive my copy of the Official Beaglesonian Style Guide, which surely delineates error tolerance. Should I point out that Tiny Tim married Miss Vicki (on the Tonight Show, no less) rather than Twiggy, or that some people forget that last 'L' in McConnell's name? Where should the bar be set? I let a lot of little things (like typos) slip through the cracks but I think factual errors should be corrected. Perhaps Mr. Objective Reality can agree. We all have access to the same information; our different experiences will cause different interpretations in many cases but facts should remain factual.
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But wait, is Old Dog claiming that the incident with the moth never really happened? Preliminary internet research is inconclusive.
How can you say that? Did I not clearly state The image (available online) of the moth taped to the page of the report is pretty funny,...? If your preliminary internet research is inconclusive I can only infer that your Google Fu is weak, my friend. A Google Image search (try "computer bug") will show the page in question; the original technical log book is in the Smithsonian.
And, as I continue my pedantic reign of terror, I seem to recall that using parentheses within parentheses is considered bad form. Brackets and braces should be used but I don't recall in which order. I could be wrong on this one but it's not important enough to me to research further, as I seldom need that type of nested phrasing. I'll stick with my clumsy use of commas and semi-colons. Mu.
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I'm beginning to enjoy Trump's tap dancing regarding "fake news," especially in light of those fake Time magazine covers. He is now blaming them on some unknown news agents in an effort to discredit him, which is quite a stretch since some of those bogus covers have been around for more than five years. The cherry on top of this sundae is that the bar code on the cover is the same one used on a website for a tutorial to create, drum roll please, fake Time magazine covers. But maybe that's fake news, too.
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Oh, Uncle Ken, I saw what you did with that reference to the monkeys typing the history book. I wonder if Mr. Beagles also noticed the fine, perhaps the finest I've seen, example of your subtle wit.
pedantry gone wild
Admiral Hopper? Wiki (if I may dare erroneously (according to the Latin Ace now become pedantic scourge)) tells me she was a she, and a rear admiral at that, isn't a rear admiral a greater admiral than a plain admiral? Well I am sure one of dawgs will fill me in on that.
I have to agree with the wizard of Menlo Park though that it is all that little unforeseen crap that slays the mighty vision. Not that I have ever invented or built anything, but back in the day I wrote computer programs and in this day I do paintings and I have to say the grand vision is almost always true, but those niggling little details eat up most of the production time.
But wait, is Old Dog claiming that the incident with the moth never really happened? Preliminary internet research is inconclusive. I guess I am just a hopeless romantic but I love those colorful stories. I do infer, since Old Dog does not object, that the beloved tale of a billion gibbons working on typewriters that didn't exist at the time, wrote The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire remains intact and dear in the hearts of the schoolchildren of today.
And this being a slow Beaglestonian day I even looked up genitive case and after a quick scan I think my response is that we don't need no stinking genitive case. If Latin was such a hotshot language, how come nobody speaks it anymore?
Meanwhile in the freehold, Beagles has been hearing the opinions of the overwhelming majority of scientists who are not in the pocket of the fossil fuels industry and even of his favorite glossy magazine, about global warming, but has pooh poohed it until he remembers that Tiny Tim (who I don't think married Twiggy, but maybe we have had enough pedantry for a Wednesday morning) sang about it on the Ed Sullivan show.
Obviously trying to do something about it by signing the Paris Climate Agreement is out of the question, so instead Beagles worries about those New Yorkers and academic types from the Atlantic, those Hollywood and gay types from the Pacific, and those Spanish speaking types from the Gulf settling around Beaglestonia and surely making spectacles of themselves on the leafy streets of Cheboygan.
Those boats on the high seas full of Vietnamese were fleeing communism. Maybe if we turn communist on the inside that will drive those annoying twits who call us flyover country out of the county.
Speaking of turning communist I saw the Idiot Son of Rand being interviewed about how McConnelCare didn't go far enough and as he gibbered on (not in the intelligent way of those billion gibbons) he said something about how the more people you cover the cheaper it will be, and the sly CNN reporter said why that sounds like socialized medicine, and he added some harrumphs to his gibbers and was talking about Venezuela.
I am still hoping that somewhere in this endless debate and with McConnel/Ryan/Trump/RepublicanCare an albatross around their necks, they may just stumble into single payer.
If we aren't at war. Doesn't this current Syrian red line have all the fingerprints of some pig's ear idea of Trump's, dressed up to look like a silk purse by his slightly more rational advisors?
I have to agree with the wizard of Menlo Park though that it is all that little unforeseen crap that slays the mighty vision. Not that I have ever invented or built anything, but back in the day I wrote computer programs and in this day I do paintings and I have to say the grand vision is almost always true, but those niggling little details eat up most of the production time.
But wait, is Old Dog claiming that the incident with the moth never really happened? Preliminary internet research is inconclusive. I guess I am just a hopeless romantic but I love those colorful stories. I do infer, since Old Dog does not object, that the beloved tale of a billion gibbons working on typewriters that didn't exist at the time, wrote The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire remains intact and dear in the hearts of the schoolchildren of today.
And this being a slow Beaglestonian day I even looked up genitive case and after a quick scan I think my response is that we don't need no stinking genitive case. If Latin was such a hotshot language, how come nobody speaks it anymore?
Meanwhile in the freehold, Beagles has been hearing the opinions of the overwhelming majority of scientists who are not in the pocket of the fossil fuels industry and even of his favorite glossy magazine, about global warming, but has pooh poohed it until he remembers that Tiny Tim (who I don't think married Twiggy, but maybe we have had enough pedantry for a Wednesday morning) sang about it on the Ed Sullivan show.
Obviously trying to do something about it by signing the Paris Climate Agreement is out of the question, so instead Beagles worries about those New Yorkers and academic types from the Atlantic, those Hollywood and gay types from the Pacific, and those Spanish speaking types from the Gulf settling around Beaglestonia and surely making spectacles of themselves on the leafy streets of Cheboygan.
Those boats on the high seas full of Vietnamese were fleeing communism. Maybe if we turn communist on the inside that will drive those annoying twits who call us flyover country out of the county.
Speaking of turning communist I saw the Idiot Son of Rand being interviewed about how McConnelCare didn't go far enough and as he gibbered on (not in the intelligent way of those billion gibbons) he said something about how the more people you cover the cheaper it will be, and the sly CNN reporter said why that sounds like socialized medicine, and he added some harrumphs to his gibbers and was talking about Venezuela.
I am still hoping that somewhere in this endless debate and with McConnel/Ryan/Trump/RepublicanCare an albatross around their necks, they may just stumble into single payer.
If we aren't at war. Doesn't this current Syrian red line have all the fingerprints of some pig's ear idea of Trump's, dressed up to look like a silk purse by his slightly more rational advisors?
Tuesday, June 27, 2017
Tiny Tim Was Right!
Remember Tiny Tim? Not the one from the Dickens novel, that goofy looking guy back in the 60s who sang "Tiptoe Through the Tulips" in a falsetto voice. I seem to remember that he married Twiggy, that goofy looking skinny woman who was supposed to be a fashion model. I don't remember hearing much about either of them after they got married. I suppose they had both made enough money by then to be able to comfortably retire. Anyway, I saw Tiny Tim on TV once, maybe on the Ed Sullivan Show, and he did another song that I have not heard before or since. I thought at the time that it was a strange song, even for a strange guy like Tiny Tim to be doing, but an article I just read in National Geographic brought it back to my mind:
"The ice caps are melting, tra-la-la-la-la la.
The ice caps are melting, tra-la-la-la-la-la.
The ice caps are melting, the tide is rushing in.
The whole world is drowning to wash away its sin."
National Geographic has been harping about climate change for years, but there is also enough good stuff in there that I never cancelled my subscription. You know how it is, the more often you hear something repeated, the more likely you are to believe it, all other factors being equal. Well, I am beginning to believe that there might be something to this climate change thing after all, and Tiny Tim knew about it way back in the 60s. Well, I don't know if Tiny wrote that song himself, but he sang it so enthusiastically that he must have felt some ownership. And he was happy about it, like it was a good thing! Well, maybe it is. With all the trouble in this world, maybe it is time to pull the plug.
Anyway, according to that NG article, all of our coastal cities will be underwater by the end of this century. Not Chicago, though, because Lake Michigan is some 600 feet above sea level, but Niagara Falls stands to lose a lot of tourist business. Who wants to spend their honeymoon at a place called "Niagara Trickle"? I have long believed that this country would be better off without sea coasts anyway because that's where a lot of our problems seem to originate. It just now occurred to me, though, that those coastal cities are not going to drown out overnight, there will be plenty of time to evacuate them as the waters slowly rise. Now where do you suppose all those refugees are going to evacuate to? Why to the middle part of the country, because that will be the only part left. President Trump would be well advised to stop worrying about those Muslims and Mexicans coming into the country and start figuring out a way to keep those coast dwellers from over running the good part of it. Maybe they could load them into boats and set them adrift on the high seas. It worked for Vietnam.
"The ice caps are melting, tra-la-la-la-la la.
The ice caps are melting, tra-la-la-la-la-la.
The ice caps are melting, the tide is rushing in.
The whole world is drowning to wash away its sin."
National Geographic has been harping about climate change for years, but there is also enough good stuff in there that I never cancelled my subscription. You know how it is, the more often you hear something repeated, the more likely you are to believe it, all other factors being equal. Well, I am beginning to believe that there might be something to this climate change thing after all, and Tiny Tim knew about it way back in the 60s. Well, I don't know if Tiny wrote that song himself, but he sang it so enthusiastically that he must have felt some ownership. And he was happy about it, like it was a good thing! Well, maybe it is. With all the trouble in this world, maybe it is time to pull the plug.
Anyway, according to that NG article, all of our coastal cities will be underwater by the end of this century. Not Chicago, though, because Lake Michigan is some 600 feet above sea level, but Niagara Falls stands to lose a lot of tourist business. Who wants to spend their honeymoon at a place called "Niagara Trickle"? I have long believed that this country would be better off without sea coasts anyway because that's where a lot of our problems seem to originate. It just now occurred to me, though, that those coastal cities are not going to drown out overnight, there will be plenty of time to evacuate them as the waters slowly rise. Now where do you suppose all those refugees are going to evacuate to? Why to the middle part of the country, because that will be the only part left. President Trump would be well advised to stop worrying about those Muslims and Mexicans coming into the country and start figuring out a way to keep those coast dwellers from over running the good part of it. Maybe they could load them into boats and set them adrift on the high seas. It worked for Vietnam.
Bugged
So the common practice of calling computer problems "bugs" originated with a misidentification of taxonomy by a guy who should have known better.
The image (available online) of the moth taped to the page of the report is pretty funny, but the use of bug to describe a problem was common among engineering types prior to the development of computers. This is one more thing that we can credit to Thomas Edison, who wrote to a colleague stating "It has been just so in all of my inventions. The first step is an intuition, and comes with a burst, then difficulties arise—this thing gives out and [it is] then that "Bugs"—as such little faults and difficulties are called—show themselves and months of intense watching, study and labor are requisite before commercial success or failure is certainly reached."
That guy on Admiral Hopper's staff may not have known his taxonomy but he knew how to make a joke.
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The plural of gluteus maximus is glutei maximi, but that's in the nominative case. In the genitive case, the plural would be gluteorum maximorum, but I'm not an expert; that's the best I can come up with based on a rusty memory and recently read citations from Wikipedia.
Speaking of which, Uncle Ken keeps referring to "wiki," which is incorrect usage. A wiki is a web page that can be modified directly from the browser, and Wikipedia is only one of many. You know where to look for more details.
The image (available online) of the moth taped to the page of the report is pretty funny, but the use of bug to describe a problem was common among engineering types prior to the development of computers. This is one more thing that we can credit to Thomas Edison, who wrote to a colleague stating "It has been just so in all of my inventions. The first step is an intuition, and comes with a burst, then difficulties arise—this thing gives out and [it is] then that "Bugs"—as such little faults and difficulties are called—show themselves and months of intense watching, study and labor are requisite before commercial success or failure is certainly reached."
That guy on Admiral Hopper's staff may not have known his taxonomy but he knew how to make a joke.
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The plural of gluteus maximus is glutei maximi, but that's in the nominative case. In the genitive case, the plural would be gluteorum maximorum, but I'm not an expert; that's the best I can come up with based on a rusty memory and recently read citations from Wikipedia.
Speaking of which, Uncle Ken keeps referring to "wiki," which is incorrect usage. A wiki is a web page that can be modified directly from the browser, and Wikipedia is only one of many. You know where to look for more details.
losing a tail, gaining a butt
I expect the reason that the non primates don't fling their feces is because they don't have hands. Speaking of feces and the difference between primates and the rest of the animal kingdom, I was reading Cecil of the Straight Dope (I was wondering if we could add the Straight Dope to our shelf of reference material next to wiki and general internet research, but I found its search key words thing lacking) and somebody asked how do animals get by without toilet paper, and Cecil pointed out that the assholes of non primates are flush with the out of doors, but we primates, walking on two legs have maximized our gluteus maximi (is that plural form proper, newly discovered Latin Ace of the Institute?) and created a tunnel as it were between the sphincter and the out of doors.
I guess this is one more reason that we have hands, Our taxonomy expert may correct me here but I think the main difference between the apes (wiki has just informed that there are lesser apes, namely the gibbons. I don't know much about them except that about two hundred years ago there were like a billion of them pecking away at typewriters (especially amazing since they weren't invented yet) and they produced The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire). and the non apes is that we don't have tails and they do.
I sit around and watch my kitties wander around and curl up and sleep and I am seized with longing for a tail, how languid, how graceful, what a loss it was when we got up on two legs. On the other hand, not only did that lead to us having hands, it led to us having butts. I have to think how even snooty cats must envy us our butts, like carrying around a soft armchair with you without having to carry it around with you, without being encumbered.
Like carrying around an umbrella. I don't know about the hooded rain jacket, and I am assuming here a jacket made of some bright shiny material, which I have to say is a step above that coat that kind of looks like a dorky dress coat but is really a rain jacket. I don't know, a garment that hides its function is most likely worn by someone who is untrusty. Am I right?
Actually I was just listening to my Hollies CD a day or two ago. It seems a little odd that the guy would have the umbrella, but she wouldn't. Girls have purses so they are encumbered wherever they go, so carrying an umbrella would just be one more thing, and since shaking yourself dry all over like a dog is more of a guy thing than a girl thing, girls are more sensitive about getting wet
You know I know that there are arachnids and insects and inside the family of insects there is an exclusive little family of bugs, but you know if I happened to point out that there is a bug crawling across the bar and the guy on the next stool corrected me that perhaps it was an arachnid, and even if it was an insect, it was mostly likely not a member of the exclusive bug family, I would give him a cold stare in place of flinging my feces, well maybe just a flick.
There is a blogger dictionary? I used to write my posts in the body of an email which I believe was under the purview of some Microsoft Word dictionary, so that when I clicked add it went into the dictionary and I didn't have to worry about it anymore. For some reason that became too complicated and now I write directly into the blog and whenever I get one of those squiggly red underlines I click on the ABC thing and suddenly all those words, which I know are perfectly good words, are shining in hooded raincoat yellow. Annoying. Like the pendant who insists on the difference between arachnids, insects and bugs, but unlike the other guy who insists on the difference between the primates, the apes, and the lesser apes, who is a teller of thrilling tales.
I guess this is one more reason that we have hands, Our taxonomy expert may correct me here but I think the main difference between the apes (wiki has just informed that there are lesser apes, namely the gibbons. I don't know much about them except that about two hundred years ago there were like a billion of them pecking away at typewriters (especially amazing since they weren't invented yet) and they produced The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire). and the non apes is that we don't have tails and they do.
I sit around and watch my kitties wander around and curl up and sleep and I am seized with longing for a tail, how languid, how graceful, what a loss it was when we got up on two legs. On the other hand, not only did that lead to us having hands, it led to us having butts. I have to think how even snooty cats must envy us our butts, like carrying around a soft armchair with you without having to carry it around with you, without being encumbered.
Like carrying around an umbrella. I don't know about the hooded rain jacket, and I am assuming here a jacket made of some bright shiny material, which I have to say is a step above that coat that kind of looks like a dorky dress coat but is really a rain jacket. I don't know, a garment that hides its function is most likely worn by someone who is untrusty. Am I right?
Actually I was just listening to my Hollies CD a day or two ago. It seems a little odd that the guy would have the umbrella, but she wouldn't. Girls have purses so they are encumbered wherever they go, so carrying an umbrella would just be one more thing, and since shaking yourself dry all over like a dog is more of a guy thing than a girl thing, girls are more sensitive about getting wet
You know I know that there are arachnids and insects and inside the family of insects there is an exclusive little family of bugs, but you know if I happened to point out that there is a bug crawling across the bar and the guy on the next stool corrected me that perhaps it was an arachnid, and even if it was an insect, it was mostly likely not a member of the exclusive bug family, I would give him a cold stare in place of flinging my feces, well maybe just a flick.
There is a blogger dictionary? I used to write my posts in the body of an email which I believe was under the purview of some Microsoft Word dictionary, so that when I clicked add it went into the dictionary and I didn't have to worry about it anymore. For some reason that became too complicated and now I write directly into the blog and whenever I get one of those squiggly red underlines I click on the ABC thing and suddenly all those words, which I know are perfectly good words, are shining in hooded raincoat yellow. Annoying. Like the pendant who insists on the difference between arachnids, insects and bugs, but unlike the other guy who insists on the difference between the primates, the apes, and the lesser apes, who is a teller of thrilling tales.
Monday, June 26, 2017
I Told You Guys Wrong
It's been a long time since I went to school, and they have changed a bunch of stuff since then. I said in my last blog that ticks were arthropods, not insects. Truth is, insects are also arthropods, but ticks are still not insects, they are arachnids. Insects are not a phylum, they are a class in the phylum arthropoda, as are arachnids. I just now discovered my mistake as I was looking up some stuff so I could tell Uncle Ken that neither moths nor ticks are bugs. Although people commonly refer to all creepy-crawlies as bugs, true bugs are actually an order (heteroptera) in the class insecta, which is in the phylum arthropoda. Therefore, all bugs are insects, but not all insects are bugs, and ticks aren't even insects, they are arachnids. Moths and butterflies are indeed insects, but they belong to the order lepidoptera, not heteroptera, so they are not true bugs.
Don't feel bad, greater men than we have made similar mistakes. I read somewhere that the guy who invented the term "bug" in the context of computer problems was a computer expert, back in the days when only the government had computers. When called in to trouble shoot a problem, he took the machine apart and found a dead moth inside. He then wrote up a detailed report in which he concluded the problem was this bug in the machine, and he taped the dead moth to the report. So the common practice of calling computer problems "bugs" originated with a misidentification of taxonomy by a guy who should have known better.
By the way, I had to add all the Latin words I just used to the Blogger dictionary. My daughter told me how to do that the last time we visited. Apparently, Windows 10 replaced a lot of task bar controls with right click controls. If you can't figure out how to do anything in Windows 10, just right click on it. I don't know why that should affect the Blogger spell check program. Maybe they are all in it together.
I forgot to answer one of Uncle Ken's questions in my last post: The reason I was wearing my ROTC uniform to work was that it was Friday, the day we all wore our ROTC uniforms to school. I went directly to work from school, and there was no need to change clothes because I didn't get dirty on that job. My uniform would have gotten more rumpled being carried in a gym bag than it did getting worn by me for another few hours.
Don't feel bad, greater men than we have made similar mistakes. I read somewhere that the guy who invented the term "bug" in the context of computer problems was a computer expert, back in the days when only the government had computers. When called in to trouble shoot a problem, he took the machine apart and found a dead moth inside. He then wrote up a detailed report in which he concluded the problem was this bug in the machine, and he taped the dead moth to the report. So the common practice of calling computer problems "bugs" originated with a misidentification of taxonomy by a guy who should have known better.
By the way, I had to add all the Latin words I just used to the Blogger dictionary. My daughter told me how to do that the last time we visited. Apparently, Windows 10 replaced a lot of task bar controls with right click controls. If you can't figure out how to do anything in Windows 10, just right click on it. I don't know why that should affect the Blogger spell check program. Maybe they are all in it together.
I forgot to answer one of Uncle Ken's questions in my last post: The reason I was wearing my ROTC uniform to work was that it was Friday, the day we all wore our ROTC uniforms to school. I went directly to work from school, and there was no need to change clothes because I didn't get dirty on that job. My uniform would have gotten more rumpled being carried in a gym bag than it did getting worn by me for another few hours.
Casting dregs
Goodness, Mr. Beagles has certainly done his homework on the tick topic, which makes sense since he is the most likely of this group to encounter them. I have nothing to add except that the Lone Star Tick is the one responsible for those meat allergies I've been reading about.
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Humans, as a rule, don't generally fling feces but we are certainly adept at shoveling shit, aren't we? Excremental expression must be a simian trait; I'm not aware of other species that behave in such a manner. I had to look up plurale tantum; it looked like Latin to me also (and it is) but it didn't seem to have any connection to feces. I had a couple of years of Latin in high school but I've never heard that expression before; good catch, Uncle Ken! Q: What do scissors, pants, eyeglasses, and feces all have in common? A: They are all plurale tantum!
Maybe feces shouldn't be in that group since it is the plural nominative form of the third declension noun faex, meaning dregs in classical Latin. It didn't mean human excrement until its use in 17th century English. We're probably pronouncing it wrong, too. The Latin letter 'c' was pronounced as 'k' so it should be spoken something like "feekees," which sounds like a good name for a sugary breakfast cereal. An argument could be made that, metaphorically, we have to eat feekees frequently.
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Since umbrellas are held in the hand they seem to be a very slight burden, but I like my hands unencumbered. The hooded rain jacket is my garment of choice in wet weather. Umbrellas seem to have limited utility, only good for something like exiting a vehicle and immediately entering shelter. If it's raining heavily or is windy, forget it, you'll get pretty wet. But it has an advantage in that it can be shared. You may be a hero to some sweet young thing, as sung by The Hollies in that song...Bus stop, wet day, she's there, I say. Please share my umbrella... It gets better; the bus goes, she stays, love grows, under that flimsy umbrella. Maybe it's just a British thing.
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Humans, as a rule, don't generally fling feces but we are certainly adept at shoveling shit, aren't we? Excremental expression must be a simian trait; I'm not aware of other species that behave in such a manner. I had to look up plurale tantum; it looked like Latin to me also (and it is) but it didn't seem to have any connection to feces. I had a couple of years of Latin in high school but I've never heard that expression before; good catch, Uncle Ken! Q: What do scissors, pants, eyeglasses, and feces all have in common? A: They are all plurale tantum!
Maybe feces shouldn't be in that group since it is the plural nominative form of the third declension noun faex, meaning dregs in classical Latin. It didn't mean human excrement until its use in 17th century English. We're probably pronouncing it wrong, too. The Latin letter 'c' was pronounced as 'k' so it should be spoken something like "feekees," which sounds like a good name for a sugary breakfast cereal. An argument could be made that, metaphorically, we have to eat feekees frequently.
-----
Since umbrellas are held in the hand they seem to be a very slight burden, but I like my hands unencumbered. The hooded rain jacket is my garment of choice in wet weather. Umbrellas seem to have limited utility, only good for something like exiting a vehicle and immediately entering shelter. If it's raining heavily or is windy, forget it, you'll get pretty wet. But it has an advantage in that it can be shared. You may be a hero to some sweet young thing, as sung by The Hollies in that song...Bus stop, wet day, she's there, I say. Please share my umbrella... It gets better; the bus goes, she stays, love grows, under that flimsy umbrella. Maybe it's just a British thing.
the march to civilization
I don't know about no ticks, but I had a moth in here last night. Buddy was eyeing him intently but these cats just don't have the killer instinct, so I was able to trap the bug between my open palms, walk out onto the balcony and release it . It didn't fly off right away, it crawled across my fingers a bit, maybe the way, we great apes, apples of God's eye, look around to make sure we have all our crap before we get off the train or the plane. And then it was off, free and unburdened.
We're burdened by crap, us modern humans with our streak of lightning cars and fancy clothes, unlike our brothers, the orangs, the gorillas, and the chimps. who don't get to drive those streak of lightning cars, but on the other hand are unburdened by fancy clothes, who are free to fling their feces wherever and whenever they want and not get kicked out of some fancy restaurant or local bar.
Not that I have ever flung a feces (it seems there is some controversy over this plural noun, wiki speaks of plurale tantum, which looks latin to my eye, but I don't think anybody in these univied halls knows any latin. We should recruit a Catholic, they always maintain a smattering of latin.), nor is it the sort of thing I would wish to do, a simple fuck you is sufficient and much cleaner.
But maybe I would like to be unburdened. I hate to even carry an umbrella, you know it's stuck in your hand and you have to set it down when you walk in the bar, and then you have to remember to pick it up when you leave, nagging little details that can trammel the free flow of conversation when your pals are rapt by your thrilling tales. And most of the time it's not raining all that hard, and you can pull down your hat and hunch your shoulders forward, and you look kind of cool, manly even, compared to those dorks with their umbrellas, who are staying dry, to be sure, but are burdened. They'll have to find someplace to put that thing when they get where they are going, and remember to pick it up when they leave, and if the occasion should occur for tossing feces while they are there, they shall just have to smile nicely with empty hands.
I think the chimps, and probably the gorillas, probably not the orangs who I don't know who let them into the hallowed halls of great apes, know how to use some tools, basically just sticks or a rock or two, and the thing is they just use whatever is at hand. But somewhere along the path to that handsome Cro Magnon, one of our ancestors realized that that was a pretty good stick or rock that he had just used, probably better than whatever might be at hand the next time he wanted to crack open a nut or whatever, so why not just take it along with him?
And thus burdened, our species began the long climb to civilization and towers in cities where one might have to rescue an innocent moth from a savage beast, but one need never fear those loathsome blood sucking little bugs.
We're burdened by crap, us modern humans with our streak of lightning cars and fancy clothes, unlike our brothers, the orangs, the gorillas, and the chimps. who don't get to drive those streak of lightning cars, but on the other hand are unburdened by fancy clothes, who are free to fling their feces wherever and whenever they want and not get kicked out of some fancy restaurant or local bar.
Not that I have ever flung a feces (it seems there is some controversy over this plural noun, wiki speaks of plurale tantum, which looks latin to my eye, but I don't think anybody in these univied halls knows any latin. We should recruit a Catholic, they always maintain a smattering of latin.), nor is it the sort of thing I would wish to do, a simple fuck you is sufficient and much cleaner.
But maybe I would like to be unburdened. I hate to even carry an umbrella, you know it's stuck in your hand and you have to set it down when you walk in the bar, and then you have to remember to pick it up when you leave, nagging little details that can trammel the free flow of conversation when your pals are rapt by your thrilling tales. And most of the time it's not raining all that hard, and you can pull down your hat and hunch your shoulders forward, and you look kind of cool, manly even, compared to those dorks with their umbrellas, who are staying dry, to be sure, but are burdened. They'll have to find someplace to put that thing when they get where they are going, and remember to pick it up when they leave, and if the occasion should occur for tossing feces while they are there, they shall just have to smile nicely with empty hands.
I think the chimps, and probably the gorillas, probably not the orangs who I don't know who let them into the hallowed halls of great apes, know how to use some tools, basically just sticks or a rock or two, and the thing is they just use whatever is at hand. But somewhere along the path to that handsome Cro Magnon, one of our ancestors realized that that was a pretty good stick or rock that he had just used, probably better than whatever might be at hand the next time he wanted to crack open a nut or whatever, so why not just take it along with him?
And thus burdened, our species began the long climb to civilization and towers in cities where one might have to rescue an innocent moth from a savage beast, but one need never fear those loathsome blood sucking little bugs.
Sunday, June 25, 2017
Tick Report - It's Worse Than We Thought
According to Wikipedia there are approximately 900 tick species world wide. All but one of these species are grouped into two families, hard ticks and soft ticks. Although ticks flourish in warm humid climates, they may be found in all habitats that don't stay frozen year round. Ticks do indeed live in farm country and are a real problem in some regions. Livestock that experience severe tick infestations may turn anemic, lose weight, or die from one of the dozen or so diseases that are spread by ticks. Farmers and ranchers in areas that are thick with ticks have to run their stock through a chemical bath or shower once or twice a year to minimize the damage.
Ticks go through a number of growth stages in their lifetimes, which may be a year or more. The four stages of hard ticks are egg, larva, nymph, and adult. In addition, soft ticks may experience up to three intermediate stages. Larval ticks only have six legs, but they grow two additional legs in the next stage, making them true arthropods, not insects. Except for the egg stage, ticks must suck some blood before advancing to the next stage. They will suck on all manner of mammals, birds, and even the occasional reptile or amphibian. They cannot fly or jump, so they must make direct contact with their victim. Some species sneak up and climb aboard when the animal is sleeping, but most of them make contact by "questing". This involves climbing on a blade of tall grass or other vegetation and waiting for something to brush against them. Seems like an unlikely way to meet someone, and some ticks must starve to death in the attempt, but there's plenty more where they came from. Adult ticks mate and the females lay thousands of eggs after their last meal, and die shortly thereafter. The hard ticks drop off their host after each meal, but some soft ticks may live their whole lives on the same host. The bite of the hard ticks is generally painless, and they may stay attached for days or even weeks, sucking away, with their host unaware of their presence. Soft tick bites can be painful, so they have to do their sucking in a matter of minutes before their host takes measures to remove them.
When ticks suck blood, they swell up like a balloon, their outer covering stretching to accommodate. This covering will molt off later, in preparation for the next growth spurt. The ticks I picked off my dogs many years ago must have been full up, which is probably why I could squish them so easily. The tiny black ones that we have been seeing are probably babies who haven't sucked yet, so there is little under their hard shells to squish.
Ticks are almost impossible to eradicate, but there are measures you can take to inhibit their growth and subsequent reproduction. While chemical baths may work on individual animals, broadcast spraying of the land itself is expensive, ineffective, and may be harmful to non-target species. Your best bet there is to keep your grass and other vegetation cut short and fence out wildlife. But who's got time for that? Another tactic is to free range Guinea fowl because they are particularly fond of eating ticks. The problem I can see with that is the Guinea fowl will likely attract predators that will just bring in more ticks. Ah, the joys of country living!
Ticks go through a number of growth stages in their lifetimes, which may be a year or more. The four stages of hard ticks are egg, larva, nymph, and adult. In addition, soft ticks may experience up to three intermediate stages. Larval ticks only have six legs, but they grow two additional legs in the next stage, making them true arthropods, not insects. Except for the egg stage, ticks must suck some blood before advancing to the next stage. They will suck on all manner of mammals, birds, and even the occasional reptile or amphibian. They cannot fly or jump, so they must make direct contact with their victim. Some species sneak up and climb aboard when the animal is sleeping, but most of them make contact by "questing". This involves climbing on a blade of tall grass or other vegetation and waiting for something to brush against them. Seems like an unlikely way to meet someone, and some ticks must starve to death in the attempt, but there's plenty more where they came from. Adult ticks mate and the females lay thousands of eggs after their last meal, and die shortly thereafter. The hard ticks drop off their host after each meal, but some soft ticks may live their whole lives on the same host. The bite of the hard ticks is generally painless, and they may stay attached for days or even weeks, sucking away, with their host unaware of their presence. Soft tick bites can be painful, so they have to do their sucking in a matter of minutes before their host takes measures to remove them.
When ticks suck blood, they swell up like a balloon, their outer covering stretching to accommodate. This covering will molt off later, in preparation for the next growth spurt. The ticks I picked off my dogs many years ago must have been full up, which is probably why I could squish them so easily. The tiny black ones that we have been seeing are probably babies who haven't sucked yet, so there is little under their hard shells to squish.
Ticks are almost impossible to eradicate, but there are measures you can take to inhibit their growth and subsequent reproduction. While chemical baths may work on individual animals, broadcast spraying of the land itself is expensive, ineffective, and may be harmful to non-target species. Your best bet there is to keep your grass and other vegetation cut short and fence out wildlife. But who's got time for that? Another tactic is to free range Guinea fowl because they are particularly fond of eating ticks. The problem I can see with that is the Guinea fowl will likely attract predators that will just bring in more ticks. Ah, the joys of country living!
Friday, June 23, 2017
healthcare, whither do we drift?
There is a little strip along the south side of the river east of the Michigan Avenue bridge where there is grass and some bushes and some trees. Other than that I don't get much interaction with the wilderness, and I have no contact with ticks. Icky little bugs if you ask me. I think nutrition bang for agriculture buck we would be way better off if we were vegetarians. A couple friends of mine live in a farmhouse just north of Indianapolis (I don't think farmland is tick country, I think they need little varmints to keep their reproductive circle going until they can latch onto a succulent great ape), and sometimes the cows are hanging around and I look into their deep dark eyes and I want to promise that I will never eat one again and then I remember Italian beef and I say sorry guy and amble off.
Ah. I get all those North Korean dictators mixed up. Why aren't they Kim I, Kim II, and Kim III like popes and kings? I go to google a word or nme if I am not sure how to spell it and begin typing until google suggests the word I want. I guess Kim Il Sung was the first name to pop up after typing in Kim and I just ran with it.
That national registry seemed to work for awhile, though pols and anybody you ever did the remotest business with got through. I assume the current crop of phone spammers are out and out crooks and they don't need no stinking national registry.
The house bill was called ACHA to distinguish it from ACA which was actually Obamacare only a lot of people who hated Obamacare and liked ACA didn't know that. The name of the senate bill is The Better Care Reconcilliation Act of 2017. As Beagles observes it is sort of watered down Obamacare, that is less of the good things about Obamacare and no way to pay for them so states can decide they won't implement them if they don't wish to. And insurance companies only have to cover what they want to which should make insurance cheap but useless. And slashing medicaid, which might not mean much to fiscally responsible folks like ourselves but it is what we will go on when we go bankrupt paying medical bills at the ends of our lives, Maybe they will take us to deer blinds in the top of Michigan and give us a rifle and a bag of peanuts and leave us to fend for ourselves.
I have to agree with Beagles plan for,well, socialized medicine, possibly by another name. I keep hoping that in all this mess somebody will look up from the fray and say hey if we just get rid of those damn insurance companies we could do a lot better, but not bloody likely.
Hilarycare gave the Clintons a big punch in the stomach, and Obamacare gave Obama a bigger one, now this RepCare is likely to do the same for the deserving folks of the GOP. Notice I don't say Trumpcare, because so far he has only given it a lukewarm nod. If it comes out bad, he will distance himself from it, he will blame the press of course, and the democrats though they are just standing around with their hands in their pockets. Okay, they are braying incessantly, but really, that is just a way of standing around with your hands in your pockets only making more noise. And lastly he will blame some republicans, will it be the freedom caucus or those Goddamn moderates? Only time will tell.
Clinton Street would probably be considered in the loop nowadays, it certainly looks like the loop. There is still an anatomically correct definition of the loop encircled by the el, but anymore people just use it to denote downtown. I think my sisters sometimes took the Kedzie bus to the Lake Street el and back, but I never did. Wait a minute, did you wear your ROTC uniform to work?
That was another thing the exotic northside had besides streets with names instead of numbers and a plethora of diagonal streets, el trains. The Lake Street el, now the Green Line, is a pretty good train, all elevated, a straight shot from classy Oak Park through the blighted west side and through the gentrifying near west side into glittering downtown. And the Southwest side has had the Orange Line for about fifteen years now, roughly paralleling Archer Avenue from the loop to Midway, so that anymore the Camino Real is just a shadow of its former self. There is still an Archer bus, but no longer an express.
Ah. I get all those North Korean dictators mixed up. Why aren't they Kim I, Kim II, and Kim III like popes and kings? I go to google a word or nme if I am not sure how to spell it and begin typing until google suggests the word I want. I guess Kim Il Sung was the first name to pop up after typing in Kim and I just ran with it.
That national registry seemed to work for awhile, though pols and anybody you ever did the remotest business with got through. I assume the current crop of phone spammers are out and out crooks and they don't need no stinking national registry.
The house bill was called ACHA to distinguish it from ACA which was actually Obamacare only a lot of people who hated Obamacare and liked ACA didn't know that. The name of the senate bill is The Better Care Reconcilliation Act of 2017. As Beagles observes it is sort of watered down Obamacare, that is less of the good things about Obamacare and no way to pay for them so states can decide they won't implement them if they don't wish to. And insurance companies only have to cover what they want to which should make insurance cheap but useless. And slashing medicaid, which might not mean much to fiscally responsible folks like ourselves but it is what we will go on when we go bankrupt paying medical bills at the ends of our lives, Maybe they will take us to deer blinds in the top of Michigan and give us a rifle and a bag of peanuts and leave us to fend for ourselves.
I have to agree with Beagles plan for,well, socialized medicine, possibly by another name. I keep hoping that in all this mess somebody will look up from the fray and say hey if we just get rid of those damn insurance companies we could do a lot better, but not bloody likely.
Hilarycare gave the Clintons a big punch in the stomach, and Obamacare gave Obama a bigger one, now this RepCare is likely to do the same for the deserving folks of the GOP. Notice I don't say Trumpcare, because so far he has only given it a lukewarm nod. If it comes out bad, he will distance himself from it, he will blame the press of course, and the democrats though they are just standing around with their hands in their pockets. Okay, they are braying incessantly, but really, that is just a way of standing around with your hands in your pockets only making more noise. And lastly he will blame some republicans, will it be the freedom caucus or those Goddamn moderates? Only time will tell.
Clinton Street would probably be considered in the loop nowadays, it certainly looks like the loop. There is still an anatomically correct definition of the loop encircled by the el, but anymore people just use it to denote downtown. I think my sisters sometimes took the Kedzie bus to the Lake Street el and back, but I never did. Wait a minute, did you wear your ROTC uniform to work?
That was another thing the exotic northside had besides streets with names instead of numbers and a plethora of diagonal streets, el trains. The Lake Street el, now the Green Line, is a pretty good train, all elevated, a straight shot from classy Oak Park through the blighted west side and through the gentrifying near west side into glittering downtown. And the Southwest side has had the Orange Line for about fifteen years now, roughly paralleling Archer Avenue from the loop to Midway, so that anymore the Camino Real is just a shadow of its former self. There is still an Archer bus, but no longer an express.
Thursday, June 22, 2017
Ticks Suck
We usually only see one or two ticks a year, but we have already seen a dozen or so this season, and it's way early yet. I have not heard of those vegetarian ticks, but they are always warning us about our deer ticks, which carry lime disease. I don't even know if those are the ones we have been seeing, these are really small and black. I have picked ticks off of dogs before, and I seem to remember that they were much larger and tan in color. The dog ticks were easy to kill, just pinch them between your thumb nail and forefinger until they pop, but these little black fuckers are almost indestructible. We've found that the best bet is just flush them down the toilet or down the drain in the shower, which is where they commonly become noticeable. This year, however, we are spotting them on our clothing after coming in from outside which, I suppose, is better than not seeing them until they have latched on to you.
We don't have voice mail, caller ID, or any of those fancy gadgets, just a regular telephone. We hardly use it, but we need to keep it for emergencies and the occasional call from our daughter. Some months there are only one or two outgoing calls on our bill, and I'm sure that our incoming calls are more spammers and scammers than regular people. We are on the National Phone Registry, but that doesn't stop the politicians and other crooks. I have tried all kinds of smart alecky responses, intending to waste their time and perhaps discourage them from calling us again. My current favorite is "Shut up and leave me alone!" I got that from an old Peanuts comic strip where Charlie Brown tries to make friends with his bunk mate at summer camp and, no matter what Charlie says, the kid responds with "Shut up and leave me alone!" It might be my imagination, but we seem to be getting less of those calls since I started using that one. If it's a robo-call, I press "1" to get a live person and, if that doesn't work, I press all the numbers at random until they hang up, hoping to confuse their machine.
From what I've heard, Trump Care is going to be nothing more than a re-hash of Obama Care, taking the money out of one pocket and putting it into another. What they should do is to put everybody on one program, like Medicare or Medicaid, and then abolish all the other programs. Private insurance could still be available for the things not covered, but it should be strictly voluntary. For people who cannot afford the deductible or co-pay, there should be charity hospitals and clinics like there was before health insurance was invented.
I didn't go downtown any more than I had to as a kid. I got a part time job during my senior year that was on Clinton, one block over from Canal, which was sort of downtown but not actually in the Loop. I used to catch the Archer Express on California after school but, for some reason, I would take the Lake Street El to Kedzie, then the Kedzie bus to 51st Street on the way home. Maybe the Archer Express didn't run after a certain hour or maybe it was just because I liked riding the rails. For whatever reason, it took about the same time either way. That Kedzie bus stop under the Lake Street El was kind of spooky after dark, but I never had any trouble. Well there was that one time when this little colored kid was talking to me and admiring my ROTC uniform. About a half dozen older kids, maybe my own age, came sauntering over from across the street, which made me a little nervous, but they sauntered away after the little kid assured them that we were just talking and that everything was fine. Thinking about it later, I thought it was admirable that those Black dudes were so protective of their little brother. I'm not sure that the local hoodlums in our own neighborhood would have done the same.
We don't have voice mail, caller ID, or any of those fancy gadgets, just a regular telephone. We hardly use it, but we need to keep it for emergencies and the occasional call from our daughter. Some months there are only one or two outgoing calls on our bill, and I'm sure that our incoming calls are more spammers and scammers than regular people. We are on the National Phone Registry, but that doesn't stop the politicians and other crooks. I have tried all kinds of smart alecky responses, intending to waste their time and perhaps discourage them from calling us again. My current favorite is "Shut up and leave me alone!" I got that from an old Peanuts comic strip where Charlie Brown tries to make friends with his bunk mate at summer camp and, no matter what Charlie says, the kid responds with "Shut up and leave me alone!" It might be my imagination, but we seem to be getting less of those calls since I started using that one. If it's a robo-call, I press "1" to get a live person and, if that doesn't work, I press all the numbers at random until they hang up, hoping to confuse their machine.
From what I've heard, Trump Care is going to be nothing more than a re-hash of Obama Care, taking the money out of one pocket and putting it into another. What they should do is to put everybody on one program, like Medicare or Medicaid, and then abolish all the other programs. Private insurance could still be available for the things not covered, but it should be strictly voluntary. For people who cannot afford the deductible or co-pay, there should be charity hospitals and clinics like there was before health insurance was invented.
I didn't go downtown any more than I had to as a kid. I got a part time job during my senior year that was on Clinton, one block over from Canal, which was sort of downtown but not actually in the Loop. I used to catch the Archer Express on California after school but, for some reason, I would take the Lake Street El to Kedzie, then the Kedzie bus to 51st Street on the way home. Maybe the Archer Express didn't run after a certain hour or maybe it was just because I liked riding the rails. For whatever reason, it took about the same time either way. That Kedzie bus stop under the Lake Street El was kind of spooky after dark, but I never had any trouble. Well there was that one time when this little colored kid was talking to me and admiring my ROTC uniform. About a half dozen older kids, maybe my own age, came sauntering over from across the street, which made me a little nervous, but they sauntered away after the little kid assured them that we were just talking and that everything was fine. Thinking about it later, I thought it was admirable that those Black dudes were so protective of their little brother. I'm not sure that the local hoodlums in our own neighborhood would have done the same.
Once bit
Not many scam/spam calls on my end. Any unknown callers are ignored. If they leave a message (they usually don't) I'll listen to it, but usually the message is total silence. I think it's due to the nature of robocalls and how they respond to automated messaging.
Just in case I may have missed something, I'll do a search of those unknown numbers; they're often cable companies, cellphone companies, and often, real estate firms. There have been a few calls from a pediatric medical practice, which is baffling. I suspect they are all part of the modern marketing machine.
Mystery calls were more frequent when I first got my cellphone and my old number was carried over. I added those numbers to the "ignore" directory on the phone until it was filled up, and then saved them in the phone directory with names specifying a variation of "spam," like spamm, sspam, zspam, etc. I haven't gotten any calls from those numbers in a long time; I suspect that after a few attempts they give up and move on to another victim.
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Of course it will be a simple matter for Kim Il Sung...
I don't get it. How does my reference to Kim Jong Un connect to his grandfather? This seems more than a simple brain fart, Uncle Ken.
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Although I've been trying to ignore most of the news lately, a notice from the AP sneaked through. Our ever-optimistic president is hosting his first re-election fundraiser next week at one of his own hotels, of course. His obsession with money transcends greed, but this could be a ruse to raise money for the inevitable defense fund. If his lawyers are hiring their own lawyers you know something is afoot.
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Carnivores, beware! There is a recently discovered tick in the northern states that causes an allergic reaction to bacon and red meat. Let me be the first crackpot to claim that it's an insidious plot by the Big Vegetarian lobby to destroy our way of life.
Just in case I may have missed something, I'll do a search of those unknown numbers; they're often cable companies, cellphone companies, and often, real estate firms. There have been a few calls from a pediatric medical practice, which is baffling. I suspect they are all part of the modern marketing machine.
Mystery calls were more frequent when I first got my cellphone and my old number was carried over. I added those numbers to the "ignore" directory on the phone until it was filled up, and then saved them in the phone directory with names specifying a variation of "spam," like spamm, sspam, zspam, etc. I haven't gotten any calls from those numbers in a long time; I suspect that after a few attempts they give up and move on to another victim.
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Of course it will be a simple matter for Kim Il Sung...
I don't get it. How does my reference to Kim Jong Un connect to his grandfather? This seems more than a simple brain fart, Uncle Ken.
-----
Although I've been trying to ignore most of the news lately, a notice from the AP sneaked through. Our ever-optimistic president is hosting his first re-election fundraiser next week at one of his own hotels, of course. His obsession with money transcends greed, but this could be a ruse to raise money for the inevitable defense fund. If his lawyers are hiring their own lawyers you know something is afoot.
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Carnivores, beware! There is a recently discovered tick in the northern states that causes an allergic reaction to bacon and red meat. Let me be the first crackpot to claim that it's an insidious plot by the Big Vegetarian lobby to destroy our way of life.
the morn of the big repeal
The first one of those microsoft calls I got, I was like gee have I landed on some kind of suckers list. Anymore I have learned that everybody gets them. I suspect their is a scammers list of old folks, but maybe young people get them too, I'd ask, but I don't know any young people.
For awhile I played along with them a bit, I don't know why, to amuse myself I guess, but it was never amusing and then I started just hanging up on them, and anymore I just never answer my phone. If somebody wants to talk to me they can leave a message. Most of the time the other line hangs up when it gets my automated response, though sometimes it leaves me its own automated response. How about those guys that leave some vaguely threatening message from some vaguely threatening legal institution, but they cut themselves off early so it sounds like you really better call them?
Mostly the Islamists kill each other. Everybody in the world is killing innocent people and we ourselves are always having miscues with our drones where we wipe out wedding parties. We're mostly out of there (thank you Obama)on except for our drones and the occasional Seal raid. I would just as soon we were out of there completely, though it seems like we are sticking our toes in a little deeper what with the generals having a free rein while Trump makes war on the media.
Today is the day the healthcare bill will be revealed. I was wondering if there was going to be some specific ceremony, and I just looked at Politico and it will be 8:30 our time. So far no leaks which is surprising, I expect all hell to break loose. I don't know how it could go otherwise.
And then we dems took it in the ass again in Georgia (Hey that sounds like a song title). I don't know why we put up such a big fight and raised expectations over like four percent of the people in Newt's old district.
Disappointed that we seem to have dropped the memories of going downtown and going to the country.
For awhile I played along with them a bit, I don't know why, to amuse myself I guess, but it was never amusing and then I started just hanging up on them, and anymore I just never answer my phone. If somebody wants to talk to me they can leave a message. Most of the time the other line hangs up when it gets my automated response, though sometimes it leaves me its own automated response. How about those guys that leave some vaguely threatening message from some vaguely threatening legal institution, but they cut themselves off early so it sounds like you really better call them?
Mostly the Islamists kill each other. Everybody in the world is killing innocent people and we ourselves are always having miscues with our drones where we wipe out wedding parties. We're mostly out of there (thank you Obama)on except for our drones and the occasional Seal raid. I would just as soon we were out of there completely, though it seems like we are sticking our toes in a little deeper what with the generals having a free rein while Trump makes war on the media.
Today is the day the healthcare bill will be revealed. I was wondering if there was going to be some specific ceremony, and I just looked at Politico and it will be 8:30 our time. So far no leaks which is surprising, I expect all hell to break loose. I don't know how it could go otherwise.
And then we dems took it in the ass again in Georgia (Hey that sounds like a song title). I don't know why we put up such a big fight and raised expectations over like four percent of the people in Newt's old district.
Disappointed that we seem to have dropped the memories of going downtown and going to the country.
Wednesday, June 21, 2017
Trumping the Scammers
Do you guys get those phone scammers who tell you they're from Microsoft support and that they have detected a problem with your computer? Most people just hang up on them, but I like to press "1" to talk to a live person, tell them to shut up and leave me alone, and then hang up. I don't know if it bothers them, but it makes me feel better.
When I was struggling with my new Windows 10, I actually did talk to the real Microsoft support a couple of times, but I had initiated the calls. They gave me a case number both times and told me they would always refer to it in any future communications. Since they spoke with the same goofy accent as the scammers, I wrote the case numbers down by the phone so that I would be able to tell the real guys from the scammers. One day my hypothetical wife answered the phone and, when the guy claimed to be with Microsoft, she asked him if it was in reference to one of my case numbers or was it just bull shit. The guy actually said, "It's bullshit." I am not making this up!
Today we got a new one, claiming to be from AT&T, which is not our internet provider, although we do get our phone service through them. They called us five times within a few hours. My hypothetical wife answered the first couple of times, but she was busy, so she just hung up on the recording. I picked it up the next couple of times, pressed "1", and told them to shut up and leave me alone. The second time I even said "What is it about 'Shut up and leave me alone.' that you don't understand? Don't call me again!" The fifth time they called, I decided to throw some bullshit of my own at them. I had planned to say that Donald Trump was a personal friend of mine and, if they called me again, I would have him target their place of business with 59 cruise missiles. I only got as far as, "Donald Trump is a personal friend of mine" before they hung up.... and they did not call us again. It appears that the mere mention of Trump's name strikes fear in the hearts of bad guys.....Okay, it was only one time so it might have been a coincidence, but I plan to try it again, and you guys should too. If we can confirm this hypothesis, we could use it to save the world from all manner of evildoers.
Speaking of evildoers: While the Islamic terrorists are no threat to our national sovereignty, they are certainly a threat to the lives of innocent people all over the world. Hardly a day goes by that they don't set off a bomb or shoot up a marketplace somewhere. As Old Dog has previously mentioned, there seem to be more frequent attacks in Europe than in the US. That may be because there are more Islamics in Europe than in the US, which should be a lesson to us all.
When I was struggling with my new Windows 10, I actually did talk to the real Microsoft support a couple of times, but I had initiated the calls. They gave me a case number both times and told me they would always refer to it in any future communications. Since they spoke with the same goofy accent as the scammers, I wrote the case numbers down by the phone so that I would be able to tell the real guys from the scammers. One day my hypothetical wife answered the phone and, when the guy claimed to be with Microsoft, she asked him if it was in reference to one of my case numbers or was it just bull shit. The guy actually said, "It's bullshit." I am not making this up!
Today we got a new one, claiming to be from AT&T, which is not our internet provider, although we do get our phone service through them. They called us five times within a few hours. My hypothetical wife answered the first couple of times, but she was busy, so she just hung up on the recording. I picked it up the next couple of times, pressed "1", and told them to shut up and leave me alone. The second time I even said "What is it about 'Shut up and leave me alone.' that you don't understand? Don't call me again!" The fifth time they called, I decided to throw some bullshit of my own at them. I had planned to say that Donald Trump was a personal friend of mine and, if they called me again, I would have him target their place of business with 59 cruise missiles. I only got as far as, "Donald Trump is a personal friend of mine" before they hung up.... and they did not call us again. It appears that the mere mention of Trump's name strikes fear in the hearts of bad guys.....Okay, it was only one time so it might have been a coincidence, but I plan to try it again, and you guys should too. If we can confirm this hypothesis, we could use it to save the world from all manner of evildoers.
Speaking of evildoers: While the Islamic terrorists are no threat to our national sovereignty, they are certainly a threat to the lives of innocent people all over the world. Hardly a day goes by that they don't set off a bomb or shoot up a marketplace somewhere. As Old Dog has previously mentioned, there seem to be more frequent attacks in Europe than in the US. That may be because there are more Islamics in Europe than in the US, which should be a lesson to us all.
El Camino Real
Of course it will be a simple matter for Kim Il Sung to execute some poor schlubs to mitigate the blame for the death of that poor guy. Of course that will never happen. Was Old Dog kidding when he called the guy reputed to have assassinated his uncle with an anti-aircraft gun (probably not true but it does give me a vivid image to start the morning with) politically expedient? I don't expect he'll do shit. Probably not us either except for a blaze or rhetoric since they are already sanctioned to the max. Of course one worries a bit about the spoiled child in the white house, but he has proved himself adept at the blaze of rhetoric signifying nothing.
You're asking me how long it took as a child to get downtown by the 55th street bus, that lumbering, noisy, smelly, bus jammed with people for the most part also lumbering, noisy, and smelly? Two or three days maybe? I looked up that peculiar L-shaped path. It seems like it was the vagaries of the old private company buslines coming together. In my early teens we discovered Archer Avenue which was about a mile north on Kedzie. The petty nuisance of that crumbled transfer was a small price to pay to be soaring downtown on broad diagonal Archer Avenue, El Camino Real of the southwest side.
Kroch's was a great place, that big cool basement of affordable, even to a kid, books. Paperbacks were so progressive. Remember that spinning metal contraption of paperbacks in every drugstore in the hood, placed in a dark nook, but not so dark that the owner couldn't spot you and yell, "Hey buy it or get out of here," to the kid scanning the lurid covers with his heart pounding.
We were deprived, we had no internet, we had to depend on lurid paperback covers, and the posters on the burlesque houses as the Archer bus sped past on State on the way to or from El Camino Real, and, of course, Debbie Drake.
I don't remember, nor do I recall reading anything about the dems wanting to dump Kennedy in 1964.
I do remember growing up in Gage Park in the 50s pretty fondly. I was never hungry, I was never really beaten up, the vast realms of bungalows intersected by busy streets with a bit of neon that I could traverse with my transistor radio tuned to the great Dick Biondi, suited me just fine. I had a grandfather who raised chickens in Goshen Indiana. The little farm was kind of interesting. The chicken houses stunk, but you could chase the geese, but then they would chase you right back, which was fun enough also. Getting there and back though took way longer than that lumbering, noisy, smelly, bus, and outside the window there was nothing but country and after you had seen a cow or two you had seen them all.
The Russkies had the Red Army which looked pretty impressive on May Day, along with that stirring music as the guys in overcoats on the balcony, all eyeing each other suspiciously, watched those missiles on tractors and those fleets of aircraft (later revealed to be the same damn planes circling back over and over) pass by. I suspect the local music was replaced by something more menacing when the parade was played over the networks here.
But, as Beagles has pointed out, a paper tiger, and then one day poof, they were gone. Remember the peace dividend? All that money we were going to have now that we didn't have to spend it to defend ourselves against those awful Russkies where we could build schools and roads and repair the infrastructure? Oh happy day. Only that never happened. They don't call it the military industrial complex for nothing.
And now the Russkies are back, sort of, I mean they look fearsome fucking with Ukraine and flying their jets next to ours and thumbing their vodka-reddened noses at us, and that thing in Syria. which
I'm not sure if that will turn out well for them, and the only kind of income (what does Russia manufacture besides vodka, most of which they drink themselves) is oil, the price of which is going down, down, down.
And for all that the Islamics have no army and no country. They fight each other way more than they fight us. They are no threat to us.
You're asking me how long it took as a child to get downtown by the 55th street bus, that lumbering, noisy, smelly, bus jammed with people for the most part also lumbering, noisy, and smelly? Two or three days maybe? I looked up that peculiar L-shaped path. It seems like it was the vagaries of the old private company buslines coming together. In my early teens we discovered Archer Avenue which was about a mile north on Kedzie. The petty nuisance of that crumbled transfer was a small price to pay to be soaring downtown on broad diagonal Archer Avenue, El Camino Real of the southwest side.
Kroch's was a great place, that big cool basement of affordable, even to a kid, books. Paperbacks were so progressive. Remember that spinning metal contraption of paperbacks in every drugstore in the hood, placed in a dark nook, but not so dark that the owner couldn't spot you and yell, "Hey buy it or get out of here," to the kid scanning the lurid covers with his heart pounding.
We were deprived, we had no internet, we had to depend on lurid paperback covers, and the posters on the burlesque houses as the Archer bus sped past on State on the way to or from El Camino Real, and, of course, Debbie Drake.
I don't remember, nor do I recall reading anything about the dems wanting to dump Kennedy in 1964.
I do remember growing up in Gage Park in the 50s pretty fondly. I was never hungry, I was never really beaten up, the vast realms of bungalows intersected by busy streets with a bit of neon that I could traverse with my transistor radio tuned to the great Dick Biondi, suited me just fine. I had a grandfather who raised chickens in Goshen Indiana. The little farm was kind of interesting. The chicken houses stunk, but you could chase the geese, but then they would chase you right back, which was fun enough also. Getting there and back though took way longer than that lumbering, noisy, smelly, bus, and outside the window there was nothing but country and after you had seen a cow or two you had seen them all.
The Russkies had the Red Army which looked pretty impressive on May Day, along with that stirring music as the guys in overcoats on the balcony, all eyeing each other suspiciously, watched those missiles on tractors and those fleets of aircraft (later revealed to be the same damn planes circling back over and over) pass by. I suspect the local music was replaced by something more menacing when the parade was played over the networks here.
But, as Beagles has pointed out, a paper tiger, and then one day poof, they were gone. Remember the peace dividend? All that money we were going to have now that we didn't have to spend it to defend ourselves against those awful Russkies where we could build schools and roads and repair the infrastructure? Oh happy day. Only that never happened. They don't call it the military industrial complex for nothing.
And now the Russkies are back, sort of, I mean they look fearsome fucking with Ukraine and flying their jets next to ours and thumbing their vodka-reddened noses at us, and that thing in Syria. which
I'm not sure if that will turn out well for them, and the only kind of income (what does Russia manufacture besides vodka, most of which they drink themselves) is oil, the price of which is going down, down, down.
And for all that the Islamics have no army and no country. They fight each other way more than they fight us. They are no threat to us.
Tuesday, June 20, 2017
Ups and Downs
First of all, I didn't say that I believed that the country has been going downhill for decades, I said that the people who voted for Trump believed that. Actually, I do sometimes get that feeling myself, but I'm old now, and that's what old people do, complain about the present and yearn for those thrilling days of yesteryear. Looking back on it, though, this country has always had good times and bad times, often good times and bad times at the same time. Whether or not you are experiencing the good or the bad depends on your circumstances and your point of view.
Uncle Ken remembers the 50s fondly, me, not so much. All I remember was being an adult imprisoned in a child's body, trying to grow up as fast as possible so I could get out of that stinking city. I remember the 60s more fondly because that's when I finally grew up and got out. Although there was lots of trouble on the national and international scene, I wasn't bothered by it much, maybe because I didn't watch a lot of television in those days. I thought the country started going downhill during the 70s, when many employers started downsizing. The 80s held the promise of a renaissance, but that was mostly illusionary. My personal situation improved, but many others found that their new jobs didn't pay as well as their old jobs. It caught up with me when the paper mill closed down in 1990.
I derived some comfort when the Soviet Union collapsed that same year. Looking back on it, they never were that much of a threat, but most of us believed that they were, which, of course, was exactly what they wanted us to believe. On September 11, 2001, the first thought that came to me upon hearing the news was that I preferred the Russians. They were evil, to be sure, but these Islamics were just nuts. How do you deal with an enemy like that? Now it seems that the Russians are trying to weasel their way back onto the enemy list, and I don't know why. They should be our allies against the Islamics like they were against the NAZIs. Maybe we could have another Cold War after we defeat our common enemy, just for old times sake.
I don't know what to think about Trump's international policies. I like how he got us out of that Paris deal, but I'm not crazy about the way he kissed up to the Saudis. Maybe he knows something that I don't, but all those Islamics look alike to me. I understand that he has cancelled Obama's agreement with Cuba, which may or may not be for the best. It's hard to justify being pissed at Cuba after all these years when we have been in bed with Red China for decades. Of course I don't approve of that either, but two wrongs don't make a right.
Uncle Ken remembers the 50s fondly, me, not so much. All I remember was being an adult imprisoned in a child's body, trying to grow up as fast as possible so I could get out of that stinking city. I remember the 60s more fondly because that's when I finally grew up and got out. Although there was lots of trouble on the national and international scene, I wasn't bothered by it much, maybe because I didn't watch a lot of television in those days. I thought the country started going downhill during the 70s, when many employers started downsizing. The 80s held the promise of a renaissance, but that was mostly illusionary. My personal situation improved, but many others found that their new jobs didn't pay as well as their old jobs. It caught up with me when the paper mill closed down in 1990.
I derived some comfort when the Soviet Union collapsed that same year. Looking back on it, they never were that much of a threat, but most of us believed that they were, which, of course, was exactly what they wanted us to believe. On September 11, 2001, the first thought that came to me upon hearing the news was that I preferred the Russians. They were evil, to be sure, but these Islamics were just nuts. How do you deal with an enemy like that? Now it seems that the Russians are trying to weasel their way back onto the enemy list, and I don't know why. They should be our allies against the Islamics like they were against the NAZIs. Maybe we could have another Cold War after we defeat our common enemy, just for old times sake.
I don't know what to think about Trump's international policies. I like how he got us out of that Paris deal, but I'm not crazy about the way he kissed up to the Saudis. Maybe he knows something that I don't, but all those Islamics look alike to me. I understand that he has cancelled Obama's agreement with Cuba, which may or may not be for the best. It's hard to justify being pissed at Cuba after all these years when we have been in bed with Red China for decades. Of course I don't approve of that either, but two wrongs don't make a right.
Still on the rails
Sometimes the train runs uphill, other times downhill, but I think that the train is running on level ground right now but with many unforeseen zigs and zags.
Despite all the smoke and mirrors of investigations and accusations, not much is really happening except the sneaky health bill that is proposed. Both sides of the aisle in Congress are unhappy with Mitch McConnell's shenanigans but not much may come of their ire. We'll just have to wait and see.
It's puzzling; Trump hasn't really accomplished much of anything except for his tweets and blather yet Wall Street is doing well from what I've read and business is booming. Maybe they (denizens of Wall Street) know something I don't or they are simply gambling on an unknown future where regulations are lifted, social and environmental consequences be damned. Again, we'll have to wait and see.
Trump's failure to fully staff his cabinet seems to be of little consequence; services are still being delivered as the federal bureaucracy keeps chugging along. I wonder if all those appointees are really necessary in the first place; they don't seem to be missed.
Foreign policy is a different matter, in that I don't think Trump has the slightest clue of international matters. Somebody must be running the show, but I don't think it's Trump. Cooler heads are prevailing but that could be up for grabs. I don't know what to think about that poor kid, recently released by the North Koreans, who died. My guess is that Kim Jong Un, as a political expedient, will find some suitable scapegoats in his prison system to arrest and summarily execute, thus rendering the incident moot. The bad guys will have been punished, so no harm, no foul, right?
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How long did it take you guys to ride downtown on the bus? I had it easy; a three block walk to the El station that took me to the Loop via the old Ravenswood line, since renamed the Brown Line. No need to switch trains at the Belmont station for the subway unless I was in a hurry, which was never. The subway seemed a little scary, and very loud, to me; can't see where you're going when you're underground. I liked to see the sights from the El, peering at all the back porches.
Solo trips downtown began when I was twelve or so, usually to hit the Kroch's & Brentano's bookstore on Wabash for their humongous paperback selection in the lower level. Amazon is a poor substitute.
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I have a very distinct memory of the Kennedy years, which I am unable to verify today. At some time in September or October of '63 I recall hearing on the radio that the Democratic Party was very unhappy with Kennedy and was thinking of finding someone else to run in '64. Dallas changed all that, of course, but the memory lingers. Maybe it was my imagination.
Despite all the smoke and mirrors of investigations and accusations, not much is really happening except the sneaky health bill that is proposed. Both sides of the aisle in Congress are unhappy with Mitch McConnell's shenanigans but not much may come of their ire. We'll just have to wait and see.
It's puzzling; Trump hasn't really accomplished much of anything except for his tweets and blather yet Wall Street is doing well from what I've read and business is booming. Maybe they (denizens of Wall Street) know something I don't or they are simply gambling on an unknown future where regulations are lifted, social and environmental consequences be damned. Again, we'll have to wait and see.
Trump's failure to fully staff his cabinet seems to be of little consequence; services are still being delivered as the federal bureaucracy keeps chugging along. I wonder if all those appointees are really necessary in the first place; they don't seem to be missed.
Foreign policy is a different matter, in that I don't think Trump has the slightest clue of international matters. Somebody must be running the show, but I don't think it's Trump. Cooler heads are prevailing but that could be up for grabs. I don't know what to think about that poor kid, recently released by the North Koreans, who died. My guess is that Kim Jong Un, as a political expedient, will find some suitable scapegoats in his prison system to arrest and summarily execute, thus rendering the incident moot. The bad guys will have been punished, so no harm, no foul, right?
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How long did it take you guys to ride downtown on the bus? I had it easy; a three block walk to the El station that took me to the Loop via the old Ravenswood line, since renamed the Brown Line. No need to switch trains at the Belmont station for the subway unless I was in a hurry, which was never. The subway seemed a little scary, and very loud, to me; can't see where you're going when you're underground. I liked to see the sights from the El, peering at all the back porches.
Solo trips downtown began when I was twelve or so, usually to hit the Kroch's & Brentano's bookstore on Wabash for their humongous paperback selection in the lower level. Amazon is a poor substitute.
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I have a very distinct memory of the Kennedy years, which I am unable to verify today. At some time in September or October of '63 I recall hearing on the radio that the Democratic Party was very unhappy with Kennedy and was thinking of finding someone else to run in '64. Dallas changed all that, of course, but the memory lingers. Maybe it was my imagination.
when did this train begin running downhill?
Sounds like Beagles is putting a tentative toe unto the Trump train, one foot on the platform the other on the train, as the beloved old song goes. He's not crazy about the engineer, but he likes the direction the train is going which would appear from the freehold to be uphill, after going downhill for decades.
Well I reckon I have been hearing that the country is going downhill for decades, that would be six or seven of them. If I care to extrapolate, and I do, I would reckon that complaining about the country going downhill has been going on since, well I suppose 1796 when we at last had two decades of history to rub together.
I wonder what decade Beagles would choose that marked the point where the train of state went from rolling upwards or at least level to go down into that loathsome valley for decades. I'm going to guess the fifties. The world was bright then. Remember how the sun used to shine when you got up early in the morning before the rest of the family and realized it was a summer vacation day and you stood on the sidewalk and in front of you a whole world stretched out from sea to shining sea? And those were pretty good years for America. We were still basking in the glow of having kicked ass in WW II, our exciting automobiles were the biggest and the best.
Into this garden slithered the Red Menace, amazing the hysteria this provoked. From the floor of the sunny frontroom on Homan Avenue I analyzed the political cartoons on the front page, and decried those vile forces that were opposing brave Joe McCarthy.
But for all that, there wasn't much red menace in the hood, everything seemed pretty good. The way we went downtown in those days was we caught the 55th street bus and it went straight east to Wentworth or maybe Indiana then turned north to go where the tall buildings were. We would roll down out windows and stick our heads out, looking up at the big exciting buildings.
But before we got downtown, a little east of Western, things would change. Black people would be getting on the bus, they would be walking on the sidewalks. We would cringe in out seats as they began to fill the bus. The word in the hood was that they all carried knives. Their neighborhood was crappy and dirty compared to out neat rows of bungalow on top of bungalow. Why were things like this? It didn't seem right.
A lot of people think it was the assassination of Kennedy when things changed. Maybe, the early days of Kennedy there was a lot of enthusiasm, a lot of optimism, idealism, and then it was gone justlikethat. The unpopular war started soon afterwards. Some think Kennedy would have avoided it the way he avoided WW III in Cuba. Maybe, it's hard to tell. But LBJ went for it in a big way. Americans were no longer marching together with enthusiasm and optimism and idealism into the next decade, and I don't think we have since then.
The party in power always loses in the off year election, though sometimes by more and sometimes by less. Obama was clobbered in his last off years. A lot of people thought it was Obamacare. People hated Obamacare, and the reps fanned the flames, incessantly braying about it as it were. Now that they have seized the reins of power and can accomplish their sacred goal of abolishing ObamaCare, they discover that most people don't want to abolish ObamaCare and only like 17 percent like their own version of ObamaCare. Mitch and the boys are cooking up some hot mess in the senate which they will unveil quickly so that nobody gets a good look at it just before voting time. Those Republicans whose states are not ruby red will be thinking about their off year elections.
Well I reckon I have been hearing that the country is going downhill for decades, that would be six or seven of them. If I care to extrapolate, and I do, I would reckon that complaining about the country going downhill has been going on since, well I suppose 1796 when we at last had two decades of history to rub together.
I wonder what decade Beagles would choose that marked the point where the train of state went from rolling upwards or at least level to go down into that loathsome valley for decades. I'm going to guess the fifties. The world was bright then. Remember how the sun used to shine when you got up early in the morning before the rest of the family and realized it was a summer vacation day and you stood on the sidewalk and in front of you a whole world stretched out from sea to shining sea? And those were pretty good years for America. We were still basking in the glow of having kicked ass in WW II, our exciting automobiles were the biggest and the best.
Into this garden slithered the Red Menace, amazing the hysteria this provoked. From the floor of the sunny frontroom on Homan Avenue I analyzed the political cartoons on the front page, and decried those vile forces that were opposing brave Joe McCarthy.
But for all that, there wasn't much red menace in the hood, everything seemed pretty good. The way we went downtown in those days was we caught the 55th street bus and it went straight east to Wentworth or maybe Indiana then turned north to go where the tall buildings were. We would roll down out windows and stick our heads out, looking up at the big exciting buildings.
But before we got downtown, a little east of Western, things would change. Black people would be getting on the bus, they would be walking on the sidewalks. We would cringe in out seats as they began to fill the bus. The word in the hood was that they all carried knives. Their neighborhood was crappy and dirty compared to out neat rows of bungalow on top of bungalow. Why were things like this? It didn't seem right.
A lot of people think it was the assassination of Kennedy when things changed. Maybe, the early days of Kennedy there was a lot of enthusiasm, a lot of optimism, idealism, and then it was gone justlikethat. The unpopular war started soon afterwards. Some think Kennedy would have avoided it the way he avoided WW III in Cuba. Maybe, it's hard to tell. But LBJ went for it in a big way. Americans were no longer marching together with enthusiasm and optimism and idealism into the next decade, and I don't think we have since then.
The party in power always loses in the off year election, though sometimes by more and sometimes by less. Obama was clobbered in his last off years. A lot of people thought it was Obamacare. People hated Obamacare, and the reps fanned the flames, incessantly braying about it as it were. Now that they have seized the reins of power and can accomplish their sacred goal of abolishing ObamaCare, they discover that most people don't want to abolish ObamaCare and only like 17 percent like their own version of ObamaCare. Mitch and the boys are cooking up some hot mess in the senate which they will unveil quickly so that nobody gets a good look at it just before voting time. Those Republicans whose states are not ruby red will be thinking about their off year elections.
Monday, June 19, 2017
Still With the "THEY"?
For a guy who claims that he doesn't believe in THEM, Uncle Ken sure talks about THEM a lot. Once more, for the record, I never said that THEY put Trump in office, I just said "they", no caps, no bold type, just regular "they". What do you call it when you mean other people who are not us? Be that as it may, I have already conceded that they did not vote for Trump to make the Republicans look bad, they voted for Trump because they liked him, or at least disliked him less than they disliked Hillary. Maybe it was not accurate to call them protest voters if, by "protest voters", you mean people who vote for a candidate whom they don't expect to win. What I meant was that they were protesting the way the country has been going down hill for decades, to the point that they were willing to put a guy like Trump in there if that's what it took to reverse course. He seems to be doing it too. I saw on the news today that Trump has been methodically cancelling all the executive orders that Obama made. Good for him! Trump may be an asshole, but I'd rather see an asshole doing the right things than a nice guy doing the wrong things.
I did not own a television in the days of George Wallace, I was too busy establishing my real life after completing my military service. Maybe I wouldn't have voted for Wallace if I had seen him making a fool of himself on TV, but all I knew about him was what I had read, and I was favorably impressed. There was a lot of anti-Black sentiment in Michigan at the time, since they had recently burned, looted, and pillaged Detroit. I didn't care about Detroit myself, but I figured if they could do it in Detroit, they could do it anywhere. I kept my guns close at hand during the whole summer of '67. They were legally carried, unloaded and enclosed in their cases, but I could break them out in a minute if need be. I finally put my guns away in the closet after deer season, figuring that they wouldn't attack during the winter. Voting for Wallace in '68 was a no brainer for me, and I didn't know why more people didn't do it. As it was, Wallace took five states that time, more than any third party candidate has done before or since. He took Michigan in the primary of '72, and everybody said it was because of the crossover voters. I still didn't own a TV at the time, and the internet hadn't been invented yet, so I got my information the old fashioned way, from the guys at work and the guys in the bars who, in those days, were pretty much the same people.
I understand that Obama brought in a lot of new voters too, but he couldn't seem to motivate them to vote in the congressional "off year" elections. Whether or not Trump can do so remains to be seen. I think that most people vote the same way all their lives, and the elections are largely determined by who does and who does not show up to vote on the big day.
I did not own a television in the days of George Wallace, I was too busy establishing my real life after completing my military service. Maybe I wouldn't have voted for Wallace if I had seen him making a fool of himself on TV, but all I knew about him was what I had read, and I was favorably impressed. There was a lot of anti-Black sentiment in Michigan at the time, since they had recently burned, looted, and pillaged Detroit. I didn't care about Detroit myself, but I figured if they could do it in Detroit, they could do it anywhere. I kept my guns close at hand during the whole summer of '67. They were legally carried, unloaded and enclosed in their cases, but I could break them out in a minute if need be. I finally put my guns away in the closet after deer season, figuring that they wouldn't attack during the winter. Voting for Wallace in '68 was a no brainer for me, and I didn't know why more people didn't do it. As it was, Wallace took five states that time, more than any third party candidate has done before or since. He took Michigan in the primary of '72, and everybody said it was because of the crossover voters. I still didn't own a TV at the time, and the internet hadn't been invented yet, so I got my information the old fashioned way, from the guys at work and the guys in the bars who, in those days, were pretty much the same people.
I understand that Obama brought in a lot of new voters too, but he couldn't seem to motivate them to vote in the congressional "off year" elections. Whether or not Trump can do so remains to be seen. I think that most people vote the same way all their lives, and the elections are largely determined by who does and who does not show up to vote on the big day.
you can never have too much incessant braying
The Them I am talking about is The Them that worked to get Trump elected so that the big girl would win. Myself I don't believe They exist. The dems who would want their candidate to win have zero influence in the republican race, and the Republicans didn't want their candidate to lose.
I think crossover voting is mostly a myth, people talk about it but by and large they don't do it. They didn't find democrats voting in the republican primaries in the last election. They did however find a lot of new voters. Trump bragged, and some of the more simple-minded republicans were heartened, about all the new people entering the republican party, growing it as it were. But these new people weren't republicans they were Trumpists and had no allegiance to the GOP.
I remember watching one of primaries in New England in the heart of the winter. There was a polling place on some desolate stretch of snow and it was packed, people standing in long lines with sniffling noses while the highway behind them was a stretch of headlights glowing deep into the horizon. Ah, Americans turning out to vote, a Norman Rockwell crowd of clear-eyed Americans expressing their opinion at the polls. You know the pundits are always scolding us about how many people don't bother to express the right to vote, won for us on many a bloody battlefield. Well here they were, my heart beat with pride, and then I realized most of these guys are probably voting for Trump.
Stoopid Vikings, didn't even have enough sense to put horns on their helmets, it took some fancy pants opera stagers to make them look cool, long after they had given up raiding and settled into socialism,
Twice backed, damn, just as I was doubling down on my earlier, very clever (lots of very smart people say that I am the cleverest man in America), Idaho, Montana, potato, potana, Damn. The tater tot was a clever little afterthought though, wasn't it?
I don't know why Old Dog rails against incessant braying, without which the proud institute would be little more than a Consumer Reports on ice cream making machines. Speaking of braying, I expect that this Trumpian wake up call, will not wake up Americans anymore than shooting that second baseman in DC will bring all our politicians under the umbrella of civility.
This Wallace thing. Maybe Beagles voted for him because he was for state's rights or maybe he thought both McGovern and Nixon were commies, but I suspect that people of his ilk were way outnumbered by white people who did not like black people, and I'm sure that if had won one of his first orders would have been rolling back integration,
And I don't know about the protest vote, though I do think if Beagles had voted for Trump he would be in some inner turmoil. The idea that a protest vote has some effect on the pols seems weak, like they will look at a large protest vote and decide geez maybe they ought to change their ways. I don't include the Bernie vote in this because Bernie had a chance to win so I wouldn't count him as a protest vote
I think crossover voting is mostly a myth, people talk about it but by and large they don't do it. They didn't find democrats voting in the republican primaries in the last election. They did however find a lot of new voters. Trump bragged, and some of the more simple-minded republicans were heartened, about all the new people entering the republican party, growing it as it were. But these new people weren't republicans they were Trumpists and had no allegiance to the GOP.
I remember watching one of primaries in New England in the heart of the winter. There was a polling place on some desolate stretch of snow and it was packed, people standing in long lines with sniffling noses while the highway behind them was a stretch of headlights glowing deep into the horizon. Ah, Americans turning out to vote, a Norman Rockwell crowd of clear-eyed Americans expressing their opinion at the polls. You know the pundits are always scolding us about how many people don't bother to express the right to vote, won for us on many a bloody battlefield. Well here they were, my heart beat with pride, and then I realized most of these guys are probably voting for Trump.
Stoopid Vikings, didn't even have enough sense to put horns on their helmets, it took some fancy pants opera stagers to make them look cool, long after they had given up raiding and settled into socialism,
Twice backed, damn, just as I was doubling down on my earlier, very clever (lots of very smart people say that I am the cleverest man in America), Idaho, Montana, potato, potana, Damn. The tater tot was a clever little afterthought though, wasn't it?
I don't know why Old Dog rails against incessant braying, without which the proud institute would be little more than a Consumer Reports on ice cream making machines. Speaking of braying, I expect that this Trumpian wake up call, will not wake up Americans anymore than shooting that second baseman in DC will bring all our politicians under the umbrella of civility.
This Wallace thing. Maybe Beagles voted for him because he was for state's rights or maybe he thought both McGovern and Nixon were commies, but I suspect that people of his ilk were way outnumbered by white people who did not like black people, and I'm sure that if had won one of his first orders would have been rolling back integration,
And I don't know about the protest vote, though I do think if Beagles had voted for Trump he would be in some inner turmoil. The idea that a protest vote has some effect on the pols seems weak, like they will look at a large protest vote and decide geez maybe they ought to change their ways. I don't include the Bernie vote in this because Bernie had a chance to win so I wouldn't count him as a protest vote
Sunday, June 18, 2017
The Protest Vote
The more I think about it, Uncle Ken might be right about how Trump got elected. The crossover vote might have helped him in the primary, but that wouldn't have done him any good in the general election. I think what put him over the top then was the protest vote. Lots of times people don't vote for a candidate, they vote against the status quo. As it was in the days of George Wallace, there were people who believed the country had gone too far in one direction, so they voted for someone who promised to lead it the opposite way. It's a shame that they couldn't find a better person than Trump to be their standard bearer, but they may have felt he was the only one willing and able to do so. The Republicans ran moderate candidates for president two elections in a row, and they lost both times.
I was considering a protest vote for Trump myself until Uncle Ken pointed out that, in the unlikely event that Trump actually won, I would be kicking myself in the ass for the next four years. I ended up voting Libertarian, considering it a protest vote against both Trump and Hillary, so I got two protest votes for the price or one. Some people have long believed that there should be a way to vote for "none of the above", well this is it.
I was considering a protest vote for Trump myself until Uncle Ken pointed out that, in the unlikely event that Trump actually won, I would be kicking myself in the ass for the next four years. I ended up voting Libertarian, considering it a protest vote against both Trump and Hillary, so I got two protest votes for the price or one. Some people have long believed that there should be a way to vote for "none of the above", well this is it.
Dealing with it
Ronda Rousey, huh? T'wasn't me in deep appreciation at the Ten Cat, and Vikings didn't have horns on their helmets. I believe that myth began with the staging of an opera in the 19th Century and has become part of the cultural folklore. The last I've heard of Ms. Rousey is that she got her ass whupped in less than a minute at her last bout.
See now if I go to that Viking article I will have to read the whole thing to glean whatever point the Old Finn wants to promote...
No point is being promoted as such; it's a deep article and covers a lot of material, not all of which I fully understand. Any summary I make might not convey the true gist or have an unintended bias, and I see no point of introducing an additional layer of misunderstanding. Go to the source and read it yourself; we've discussed this sort of thing before.
And, Uncle Ken, as long as you mention fact checking, please explain what you mean about a "twice-backed" tater tot.
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In accordance with the election laws of this great nation, Donald J. Trump is the duly elected president, like it or not. His campaign proved his ability as a salesman even as he peddled his own brand of snake oil, appealing to a narrow base of voters who may have felt he had their best interests at heart, which is not the case. Trump did not appeal to their hearts or minds, but to their guts; his appeal was visceral. And much to their dismay, they will be among the first to feel the negative impact of Trump's poorly thought-out policies.
At the core, Trump has shown to care little of anything but Trump. He is a showman, a carnie, a huckster, a prevaricator of the first order and that will be his demise. The checks and balances will work, eventually, and his legacy will be that he gave this nation a painful wake up call.
The media coverage, both old and new media, is becoming an incessant braying of pundits, both professional and the losers sitting in their mothers' basements. It is shameful that the quantity of the speculation does not match the quality of the facts. The media coverage is starting to remind me of that line from Macbeth:
It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing.
-----
I don't know the demographic breakdown of Trump supporters,but I have to give them credit; they don't seem to talk out of both sides of their mouths, unlike some more liberal types that I have known. Support for many social programs, like rehab centers and halfway houses, runs strong with the more enlightened types unless they're built next door to them. As a city dweller, it's difficult to put one's self in the minds of the more rural types, but I try; different does not mean wrong. Unless you need to pin the blame on them, Them, or THEM.
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And speaking of the mystical "them," I wonder how they figure in the investigations that are "following the money." Nothing much has been written yet about the roles of the Mercers, the Koch brothers, George Soros, the Davos Group, the Bilderberg Group, the Tri-Lateral Commission, the Gnomes of Zurich or all the other players in the fever dreams of the tin-foil at brigade. It's the Russians! It's the Zionists! It's THEM! And never us.
See now if I go to that Viking article I will have to read the whole thing to glean whatever point the Old Finn wants to promote...
No point is being promoted as such; it's a deep article and covers a lot of material, not all of which I fully understand. Any summary I make might not convey the true gist or have an unintended bias, and I see no point of introducing an additional layer of misunderstanding. Go to the source and read it yourself; we've discussed this sort of thing before.
And, Uncle Ken, as long as you mention fact checking, please explain what you mean about a "twice-backed" tater tot.
-----
In accordance with the election laws of this great nation, Donald J. Trump is the duly elected president, like it or not. His campaign proved his ability as a salesman even as he peddled his own brand of snake oil, appealing to a narrow base of voters who may have felt he had their best interests at heart, which is not the case. Trump did not appeal to their hearts or minds, but to their guts; his appeal was visceral. And much to their dismay, they will be among the first to feel the negative impact of Trump's poorly thought-out policies.
At the core, Trump has shown to care little of anything but Trump. He is a showman, a carnie, a huckster, a prevaricator of the first order and that will be his demise. The checks and balances will work, eventually, and his legacy will be that he gave this nation a painful wake up call.
The media coverage, both old and new media, is becoming an incessant braying of pundits, both professional and the losers sitting in their mothers' basements. It is shameful that the quantity of the speculation does not match the quality of the facts. The media coverage is starting to remind me of that line from Macbeth:
It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing.
-----
I don't know the demographic breakdown of Trump supporters,but I have to give them credit; they don't seem to talk out of both sides of their mouths, unlike some more liberal types that I have known. Support for many social programs, like rehab centers and halfway houses, runs strong with the more enlightened types unless they're built next door to them. As a city dweller, it's difficult to put one's self in the minds of the more rural types, but I try; different does not mean wrong. Unless you need to pin the blame on them, Them, or THEM.
-----
And speaking of the mystical "them," I wonder how they figure in the investigations that are "following the money." Nothing much has been written yet about the roles of the Mercers, the Koch brothers, George Soros, the Davos Group, the Bilderberg Group, the Tri-Lateral Commission, the Gnomes of Zurich or all the other players in the fever dreams of the tin-foil at brigade. It's the Russians! It's the Zionists! It's THEM! And never us.
Friday, June 16, 2017
The Illusion of Central Position
Just as there is no Society with a capital "S", there is no Them with a capital "T". There are lots of them with a small "t", just as there are lots of societies with a small "s". Each one of them probably thinks of themselves as the capital Them, but they don't call themselves "them", they call themselves "us", and they call us "them". I think what enlightened me on this was when I found out that most primitive tribal societies called themselves "The People", or "The Real People". The Valley People called their neighbors who lived in the mountains "The Mountain People", but the Mountain People didn't call themselves "The Mountain People", they called themselves "The People", and they called their neighbors who lived in the valley "The Valley People". The reason it took our people so long to figure this out was because most of them called these tribes by the names they learned from other tribes, not from the tribe in question. For instance: Our local indigenous people, the Anishnabe, were called "Algonquians" when we went to school because that's what the Iroquois called them, and the Iroquois made contact with Europeans before the Anishnabe did. I read somewhere that the Anishnabe name for the Iroquois translates as "Real Serpents", although the book didn't say what the name was in the Anishnabe language. I also don't know what the literal translation of "Algonquians" is, but I assume it wasn't any more complimentary than the Anishnabe name for the Iroquois. What complicates matters even more is that neither of these tribes had a written language, and the first Europeans they met were Frenchmen, most of whom couldn't even read and write in French, much less English. Nevertheless, the evidence suggests that we were not the first people to call other people "them".
That being established, we are still left with the question of who were those people that voted for Trump, and why. Since there were millions of them, I think it's safe to assume there was more than one group of them. I think it's unlikely that they all got together at a single meeting and planned the whole thing. I'm sure there were meetings (plural), attended by different groups (plural) of Trump fans, and people in each group thought of themselves as "us". I'm not sure what they called the people who attended different meetings, but I'm pretty sure they thought of the Hillary fans as "them". I also think it's reasonable to assume that some of the voters in the primaries were crossovers, at least in the states that have open primaries. I remember there was talk of crossover voters when George Wallace ran for president on the Democratic ticket back in '72. I wasn't one of them, I voted for Wallace because I wanted him to win. How's that for sticking it to the man?
That being established, we are still left with the question of who were those people that voted for Trump, and why. Since there were millions of them, I think it's safe to assume there was more than one group of them. I think it's unlikely that they all got together at a single meeting and planned the whole thing. I'm sure there were meetings (plural), attended by different groups (plural) of Trump fans, and people in each group thought of themselves as "us". I'm not sure what they called the people who attended different meetings, but I'm pretty sure they thought of the Hillary fans as "them". I also think it's reasonable to assume that some of the voters in the primaries were crossovers, at least in the states that have open primaries. I remember there was talk of crossover voters when George Wallace ran for president on the Democratic ticket back in '72. I wasn't one of them, I voted for Wallace because I wanted him to win. How's that for sticking it to the man?
paper, straw, and dead, tigers, dogs, and horses
Wiki says the term paper tiger comes from China, and it is what you call your enemy when you don't think his bite can match his bark. I think the expression called for here is a straw dog, also from China, where you use a weak form of your opponent's argument to demolish him in debate. To this menagerie we can add dead horse, which it feels like we are beating because we have gone over this material many times before, but, as one of my esteemed colleagues has pointed out, that has never stopped me before.
So if it wasn't Them who put Ttump in to help the big girl win, who was it? I don't believe it was the rank and file pulling the levers. They were mostly all republicans. Why would they want the big girl to win? It wasn't the dems, even though some foolish ones, such as myself, watched it happen happily assuming that this would ensure victory for the big girl, because what effect could we have over the republican primaries? So Who was it then? This has to be a group powerful enough to control the outcome of the republican primary, but too weak to effect the results of the general election. Seems like a group of power brokers to me.
Or, or, maybe it was the Russkies. But so far it doesn't look like they were up to their shenanigans during the primary, and they certainly would never want the big girl to win. But it's looking more and more like they were into it up to their elbows on Trump's behalf, and it is looking more and more like Trump's people were more than appreciative of the help..
I think we can all feel that stick it to The Man tide, I daresay, distinguished gentlemen such as ourselves have felt it from time to time, but outside of why now, which I simply blame on the internet, is the question of why this guy, why would anybody think that this guy, who looks an awful lot like The Man, would be chosen to stick it to The Man?
My main theory previous has been because he is obviously no politician. For some time I have thought why don't they pick a nice guy,, not a repellent guy, to stick The Man with. But the thing is all politicians pretend to be nice guys, none of them purposely puts on the guise of a big fucking asshole, so a guy who freely expresses his big fucking assholeness, why this is clearly not a politician.
But if you poke at this theory it is a little weak. Yesterday I read an article that seems to make more sense. It's anger. Everybody hates to be mad, or do they? There is a certain purposefulness in anger, a feeling that you are getting things done, that you have identified the enemy, that you are right, nay righteous, brother. It feels good. And that is why they like him. They, not Them who never liked him and only used him to help the big girl, and who now it appears that Beagles is denying the existence of. You know it wouldn't be a whole lot of trouble for the Russkies to slip a sub up the St Lawrence and into that river that drains from the top of Michigan to not far from the feehold and deliver a sack of money or vintage yellow beer for a certain freeholder to pretend he never heard of Them.
So if it wasn't Them who put Ttump in to help the big girl win, who was it? I don't believe it was the rank and file pulling the levers. They were mostly all republicans. Why would they want the big girl to win? It wasn't the dems, even though some foolish ones, such as myself, watched it happen happily assuming that this would ensure victory for the big girl, because what effect could we have over the republican primaries? So Who was it then? This has to be a group powerful enough to control the outcome of the republican primary, but too weak to effect the results of the general election. Seems like a group of power brokers to me.
Or, or, maybe it was the Russkies. But so far it doesn't look like they were up to their shenanigans during the primary, and they certainly would never want the big girl to win. But it's looking more and more like they were into it up to their elbows on Trump's behalf, and it is looking more and more like Trump's people were more than appreciative of the help..
I think we can all feel that stick it to The Man tide, I daresay, distinguished gentlemen such as ourselves have felt it from time to time, but outside of why now, which I simply blame on the internet, is the question of why this guy, why would anybody think that this guy, who looks an awful lot like The Man, would be chosen to stick it to The Man?
My main theory previous has been because he is obviously no politician. For some time I have thought why don't they pick a nice guy,, not a repellent guy, to stick The Man with. But the thing is all politicians pretend to be nice guys, none of them purposely puts on the guise of a big fucking asshole, so a guy who freely expresses his big fucking assholeness, why this is clearly not a politician.
But if you poke at this theory it is a little weak. Yesterday I read an article that seems to make more sense. It's anger. Everybody hates to be mad, or do they? There is a certain purposefulness in anger, a feeling that you are getting things done, that you have identified the enemy, that you are right, nay righteous, brother. It feels good. And that is why they like him. They, not Them who never liked him and only used him to help the big girl, and who now it appears that Beagles is denying the existence of. You know it wouldn't be a whole lot of trouble for the Russkies to slip a sub up the St Lawrence and into that river that drains from the top of Michigan to not far from the feehold and deliver a sack of money or vintage yellow beer for a certain freeholder to pretend he never heard of Them.
Thursday, June 15, 2017
What Power Brokers?
Now they are power brokers? Where did that come from? All I said in the beginning was that they put Trump in there to help Hillary win, and it backfired on them. Just "they", no bold type, no capital letters. I never said it was a big international conspiracy, or a secret cabal, or anything like that. I seem to remember reading something once about the paper tiger device. I think it comes from India or someplace else where man eating tigers used to be a problem. If the villagers were unable to effectively deal with a marauding tiger, they would make a paper tiger upon which they would vent their rage and frustration. So it is said, even unto this day that, when a person attacks an argument that his opponent never made, he is using the paper tiger device.
Granted, I used to be a card carrying member of the John Birch Society, but that was a long time ago. I have explained, more than once, on this forum, that I no longer believe that they are all in it together, but I still believe that they are all in it. Everybody wants to stick it to the man, but they can't even agree on which man to stick it to. If, as Uncle Ken said, some of the same people who voted for Obama also voted for Trump, it would seem to indicate that they can't even make up their individual minds about which man they want to stick it to. Apparently they don't care who they stick it to, as long as they stick it to somebody. Well this time they stuck it to themselves. Good for them!
Granted, I used to be a card carrying member of the John Birch Society, but that was a long time ago. I have explained, more than once, on this forum, that I no longer believe that they are all in it together, but I still believe that they are all in it. Everybody wants to stick it to the man, but they can't even agree on which man to stick it to. If, as Uncle Ken said, some of the same people who voted for Obama also voted for Trump, it would seem to indicate that they can't even make up their individual minds about which man they want to stick it to. Apparently they don't care who they stick it to, as long as they stick it to somebody. Well this time they stuck it to themselves. Good for them!
How about that Ronda Rousey?
I have noticed those Hep C commercials and their stress on us old farts. like here is something especially for us because we all marched against the war together and we all listened to Country Joe and the Fish together and now we can all take their Hep C medicine together because we all used needles to inject illegal drugs together. Back in the day I remember there was some talk of Hep C in relation to needles, but I haven't heard much about it since then until these commercials.
Well haven't people been using needles all along? I reckon they have, and I reckon those people use the Hep C medicine, but maybe not enough of them, so now the marketeers see a new group of consumers in those of us old farts who messed with needles in the day but dropped the bad habit and now lead perfectly respectable lives. That's why they show the oldsters in the commercial wandering around through a redwood forest walking tall and clear-eyed.
How about that psoriasis commercial where it acts like the psoriason has been shunned by society but now has the strength of mind to step forward and take the medicine and can now join the mainstream world and leave the leper colony? Anymore you don't just take medicine to get well, you take it as a bold step to actuate your reality, some shit like that.
See now if I go to that Viking article I will have to read the whole thing to glean whatever point the Old Finn wants to promote, which is probably just a part of the article, so why doesn't the Old Finn, who has read it and knows, just write out those points in the univied halls?
Nephew, grand-second-in-law-twice-removed nephew, potato, red-skinned-Irish-twice-backed tater tot. I was hoping the mention of Ms Rousey would get this staid stuck-in-the-mud forum, into a little more exotic territory. I swear the old Finn was sitting there in his horned hat speaking Viking when she lit up the screen of the staid stick-in-the-mud Ten Cat.
Yeah that shooting has hijacked the news. Okay it is a big deal, but the facts aren't that many and are all known so why go on and on and on about it? All they are doing is asking politicians and other pundits what they think of it, and what they think of it, as the Onion trenchantly pointed it out, is that it proved whatever point the pol or pundit wanted to make. At the ending they all murmured piously that they hoped it would bring us all together, which of course it won't.
Those people, those people who voted for Trump, not Them, the power brokers Who influenced those deplorables to vote for Trump in order to advance the chances of the big girl, I believe generally wanted to stick it to the man. A lot of them were previous Obama voters, who I guess they also thought would stick it to the man, albeit more gently with Change we can believe in, and Yes we can (whatever those meant), Even those of us (and he knows who he is) who thought Obama was a wild-eyed commie would have to concede that he always behaved well and worked towards something he believed in, unlike the cranky baby now in the high chair. Anyway they still take polls, they come out about once a week like always. They almost always ask the Trunpists why they love him and invariably they answer because they trust him to do whatever and that is the extent of their beliefs.
Fact and spell-checked and now I have only to think of a title, something to catch the attention of my colleagues. Whatever shall it be?
Well haven't people been using needles all along? I reckon they have, and I reckon those people use the Hep C medicine, but maybe not enough of them, so now the marketeers see a new group of consumers in those of us old farts who messed with needles in the day but dropped the bad habit and now lead perfectly respectable lives. That's why they show the oldsters in the commercial wandering around through a redwood forest walking tall and clear-eyed.
How about that psoriasis commercial where it acts like the psoriason has been shunned by society but now has the strength of mind to step forward and take the medicine and can now join the mainstream world and leave the leper colony? Anymore you don't just take medicine to get well, you take it as a bold step to actuate your reality, some shit like that.
See now if I go to that Viking article I will have to read the whole thing to glean whatever point the Old Finn wants to promote, which is probably just a part of the article, so why doesn't the Old Finn, who has read it and knows, just write out those points in the univied halls?
Nephew, grand-second-in-law-twice-removed nephew, potato, red-skinned-Irish-twice-backed tater tot. I was hoping the mention of Ms Rousey would get this staid stuck-in-the-mud forum, into a little more exotic territory. I swear the old Finn was sitting there in his horned hat speaking Viking when she lit up the screen of the staid stick-in-the-mud Ten Cat.
Yeah that shooting has hijacked the news. Okay it is a big deal, but the facts aren't that many and are all known so why go on and on and on about it? All they are doing is asking politicians and other pundits what they think of it, and what they think of it, as the Onion trenchantly pointed it out, is that it proved whatever point the pol or pundit wanted to make. At the ending they all murmured piously that they hoped it would bring us all together, which of course it won't.
Those people, those people who voted for Trump, not Them, the power brokers Who influenced those deplorables to vote for Trump in order to advance the chances of the big girl, I believe generally wanted to stick it to the man. A lot of them were previous Obama voters, who I guess they also thought would stick it to the man, albeit more gently with Change we can believe in, and Yes we can (whatever those meant), Even those of us (and he knows who he is) who thought Obama was a wild-eyed commie would have to concede that he always behaved well and worked towards something he believed in, unlike the cranky baby now in the high chair. Anyway they still take polls, they come out about once a week like always. They almost always ask the Trunpists why they love him and invariably they answer because they trust him to do whatever and that is the extent of their beliefs.
Fact and spell-checked and now I have only to think of a title, something to catch the attention of my colleagues. Whatever shall it be?
Wednesday, June 14, 2017
Who Elected Trump?
I did not vote for Trump, Uncle Ken did not vote for Trump, Old Dog did not vote for Trump, none of us voted for Trump. Therefore, they must have voted for Trump. Of course all of them didn't vote for Trump, some of them voted for Hillary, some of them voted for third party candidates, and some of them didn't vote for anybody. Speaking for myself, we voted for third party candidates. I wouldn't say that they voted for third party candidates because I am included in the group. When speaking to you guys, I wouldn't say that they voted for Hillary, I would say that you guys voted for Hillary.
I doubt that all of them voted for Trump for the same reason. Some of them might have actually liked him, as incomprehensible as that may seem to us. Some of them might have wanted to "stick it to the man", as Uncle Ken has suggested. As many contexts as there are for the word "man", I think it's reasonable to assume that the man they wanted to stick it to was the Republican man. Well, that was just in the primary. In the general election, some of them might have wanted to stick it to the Democrat man, and some of them might have wanted to stick it to all men regardless of race, color, or creed. With all the polls that were taken before the election, were there any polls taken after the election? I have read about how a certain percentage of Blacks, Whites, women, and other sub groups voted, but I don't recall anybody asking them why.
I doubt that all of them voted for Trump for the same reason. Some of them might have actually liked him, as incomprehensible as that may seem to us. Some of them might have wanted to "stick it to the man", as Uncle Ken has suggested. As many contexts as there are for the word "man", I think it's reasonable to assume that the man they wanted to stick it to was the Republican man. Well, that was just in the primary. In the general election, some of them might have wanted to stick it to the Democrat man, and some of them might have wanted to stick it to all men regardless of race, color, or creed. With all the polls that were taken before the election, were there any polls taken after the election? I have read about how a certain percentage of Blacks, Whites, women, and other sub groups voted, but I don't recall anybody asking them why.
Boom or bust
Another annoying television commercial has been in heavy rotation, but it's specifically targeted to the Baby Boomers. Did you realize that we are at risk for Hepatitis C? Me neither. I had to dig a little to get the skinny on this health threat and it seems a bit alarmist to me. Sure, Hep C may not have dramatic symptoms and can be inactive for decades but unless you've had a blood transfusion or shared needles with your druggie pals back in the day there is minimal risk. I suppose any backroom tattoos could be a risk factor, too.
I wonder about those commercials for other prescription medications. Is it a plot by Big Medical/Big Insurance to get otherwise healthy people to become hypochondriacs? As we age we can become less mentally astute and I think we may succumb to the power of suggestion. There is a pill for everything, I guess, except common sense.
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The recent discussions of the English language remind me of an article (from 2015) that I read recently It goes on at length on why the English language is so strange and difficult to learn compared to other tongues. Plenty of blame to go around with all the different sources for our vocabulary (German, French, Greek, Latin, et al.) but what surprised me was the influence of the Vikings. It may be of more than passing interest, and you can find it here: https://aeon.co/essays/why-is-english-so-weirdly-different-from-other-languages
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Perhaps I didn't make myself clear. I don't have a nephew named Rocco. The lad in question is the son of my brother-in-law's nephew. Apologies are humbly offered for the lack of clarity
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As I suspected, that testimony by the Attorney General was a big nothing. The pundits seems mixed in their opinions, but I haven't followed it too closely. No big winners or losers, so I'll call it a draw. If I hadn't nodded off during the proceedings I might have a different point of view. I bet the closed-session testimonies are a lot meatier and I'm surprised nothing has leaked so far.
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And talking about Baby Boomers, today's big story is the Bernie supporter, aged 66, who took fifty potshots with a rifle at a group of Republicans, hitting one (not fatally). I bet he was off his meds.
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I find it more difficult to come up with a good subject title than it is to write the whole damn posting. After the short discussion of the Paris Accord I was going to use "We'll always have Paris," but then I thought, no, too obvious. And then Mr Beagles used it, so I had to smile. Great minds think alike.
I wonder about those commercials for other prescription medications. Is it a plot by Big Medical/Big Insurance to get otherwise healthy people to become hypochondriacs? As we age we can become less mentally astute and I think we may succumb to the power of suggestion. There is a pill for everything, I guess, except common sense.
-----
The recent discussions of the English language remind me of an article (from 2015) that I read recently It goes on at length on why the English language is so strange and difficult to learn compared to other tongues. Plenty of blame to go around with all the different sources for our vocabulary (German, French, Greek, Latin, et al.) but what surprised me was the influence of the Vikings. It may be of more than passing interest, and you can find it here: https://aeon.co/essays/why-is-english-so-weirdly-different-from-other-languages
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Perhaps I didn't make myself clear. I don't have a nephew named Rocco. The lad in question is the son of my brother-in-law's nephew. Apologies are humbly offered for the lack of clarity
-----
As I suspected, that testimony by the Attorney General was a big nothing. The pundits seems mixed in their opinions, but I haven't followed it too closely. No big winners or losers, so I'll call it a draw. If I hadn't nodded off during the proceedings I might have a different point of view. I bet the closed-session testimonies are a lot meatier and I'm surprised nothing has leaked so far.
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And talking about Baby Boomers, today's big story is the Bernie supporter, aged 66, who took fifty potshots with a rifle at a group of Republicans, hitting one (not fatally). I bet he was off his meds.
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I find it more difficult to come up with a good subject title than it is to write the whole damn posting. After the short discussion of the Paris Accord I was going to use "We'll always have Paris," but then I thought, no, too obvious. And then Mr Beagles used it, so I had to smile. Great minds think alike.
Dat's Da Man
I do indeed speak of the man in the street, but he's just walking along State Street or Ashland Avenue or wherever, he's not a part of a group that thinks up Rube Goldberg stunts to put people in power. Back in the day, there was Man, like Oh, Man, whuzzup Man, which was not the same as The Man.
I was thinking that the expression The Man predated hippies. I was remembering The Midnight Special by Johnny Cash, which I think was before the sixties and where if you complained about no food in your pan you got in trouble with the man. But internet research reveals that this song goes past Leadbelly into the foggy ruins of time. I love those old blues songs where nobody knows who wrote them and sometimes a phrase will drift in and out of songs and really make no sense but when the old Delta guy is banging his geetar and spitting out the words they are like the truest words ever spoken, oh Man.
Yonder comes Miss Rosie. How in the world do you know?
Well, I know her by the apron and the dress she wore.
Umbrella on her shoulder, piece of paper in her hand,
Well, I'm callin' that Captain, "Turn a-loose my man."
Why is she wearing an apron? Why is she carrying an umbrella? Don't matter Man, she's come to turn-a-loose her man,.
But anyway that phrase about The Man goes back to at least 1905, and it seems likely that the phrase was picked from this song to become a popular hippie phrase. It sounded so cool Man, to be talking about The Man putting his heel across across your neck, Man. But The Man was like the police, the gummint, the people in power. They never acted shadowy, they did not use misdirection, they were right in your face Man,
I was happy to see Trump win the nomination. I watched every debate and came away with a smug smile because after that outrageous performance how could anybody elect that clown? Still, if the big girl had to lose, I'd rather she lost to Trump than say Cruz. I hate to imagine a unified republican party in power. As some said about Trump, at least he is erratic, I would rather have Trump as the kidney stone in the urethra of the Republican party than have them peeing freely on us.
I never cared much for the word establishment. It was not a word that we used among ourselves, it was a word that the establishment put in our mouths when they put actors playing us on their tv shows or in their movies (Why is it on tv shows and in movies? No wonder English is so hard to learn). I notice now that the Trumpists rail against the establishment a lot. They are kind of like later day hippies, except that they don't believe in peace or love.
Before I make a posting I reread what I've written for typos and to see if it makes any sense (not well enough according to some, so be it), and I try to think of a title. I was thinking I'd respond to Beagles' title by using Dat's Da Man, but Da Man is not at all the same as The Man. You know I'm going to use it anyway because I don't have all morning, but once again no wonder it is so hard to learn English. It's a wonder we can write it,
I was thinking that the expression The Man predated hippies. I was remembering The Midnight Special by Johnny Cash, which I think was before the sixties and where if you complained about no food in your pan you got in trouble with the man. But internet research reveals that this song goes past Leadbelly into the foggy ruins of time. I love those old blues songs where nobody knows who wrote them and sometimes a phrase will drift in and out of songs and really make no sense but when the old Delta guy is banging his geetar and spitting out the words they are like the truest words ever spoken, oh Man.
Yonder comes Miss Rosie. How in the world do you know?
Well, I know her by the apron and the dress she wore.
Umbrella on her shoulder, piece of paper in her hand,
Well, I'm callin' that Captain, "Turn a-loose my man."
Why is she wearing an apron? Why is she carrying an umbrella? Don't matter Man, she's come to turn-a-loose her man,.
But anyway that phrase about The Man goes back to at least 1905, and it seems likely that the phrase was picked from this song to become a popular hippie phrase. It sounded so cool Man, to be talking about The Man putting his heel across across your neck, Man. But The Man was like the police, the gummint, the people in power. They never acted shadowy, they did not use misdirection, they were right in your face Man,
I was happy to see Trump win the nomination. I watched every debate and came away with a smug smile because after that outrageous performance how could anybody elect that clown? Still, if the big girl had to lose, I'd rather she lost to Trump than say Cruz. I hate to imagine a unified republican party in power. As some said about Trump, at least he is erratic, I would rather have Trump as the kidney stone in the urethra of the Republican party than have them peeing freely on us.
I never cared much for the word establishment. It was not a word that we used among ourselves, it was a word that the establishment put in our mouths when they put actors playing us on their tv shows or in their movies (Why is it on tv shows and in movies? No wonder English is so hard to learn). I notice now that the Trumpists rail against the establishment a lot. They are kind of like later day hippies, except that they don't believe in peace or love.
Before I make a posting I reread what I've written for typos and to see if it makes any sense (not well enough according to some, so be it), and I try to think of a title. I was thinking I'd respond to Beagles' title by using Dat's Da Man, but Da Man is not at all the same as The Man. You know I'm going to use it anyway because I don't have all morning, but once again no wonder it is so hard to learn English. It's a wonder we can write it,
Tuesday, June 13, 2017
Who da Man?
Uncle Ken is critical of my use of the word "they", yet he talks about "the man in the street". I seem to remember that Uncle Ken once asserted that some people voted for Trump because they wanted to "stick it to the man". I also seem to remember that, back in the 60s, Uncle Ken and his ilk used to refer to the police as "the man". If all these men are the same man, then this guy must really get around. If they are not the same person, then why does Uncle Ken use the singular "man" instead of the plural "men"? Of course, Uncle Ken is not the only person who does this. Lots of people refer to "the White man" or "the Black man". At least when I say "they", everybody knows that I don't think there's only one of them.
I never said that the people who put Trump in office were a "specific, if unnamed, cabal of powerbrokers." All I said was that they nominated Trump to help Hillary win, and it backfired on them. I seem to remember that Uncle Ken was happy to see Trump get the nomination because he thought it would turn the White House and the Congress over to the Democrats. Could it be that he was the only person who believed this? Not bloody likely!
I have heard in the news multiple times that the "Republican Establishment" did not want Trump to win the nomination. This sounds more like a specific cabal of powerbrokers, although not an unnamed one. We used to talk about the Establishment back in the 60s, but apparently there is more than one of them too. Like I previously said, they may not be all in it together, but I'm pretty sure that they're all in it.
I never said that the people who put Trump in office were a "specific, if unnamed, cabal of powerbrokers." All I said was that they nominated Trump to help Hillary win, and it backfired on them. I seem to remember that Uncle Ken was happy to see Trump get the nomination because he thought it would turn the White House and the Congress over to the Democrats. Could it be that he was the only person who believed this? Not bloody likely!
I have heard in the news multiple times that the "Republican Establishment" did not want Trump to win the nomination. This sounds more like a specific cabal of powerbrokers, although not an unnamed one. We used to talk about the Establishment back in the 60s, but apparently there is more than one of them too. Like I previously said, they may not be all in it together, but I'm pretty sure that they're all in it.
the inmates are steering the jolly ship of state?
One of the things I like about the Ten Cat is that the sound is never on for the tv sets and they are only on for sports events. As soon as the event is over the bartender clicks them off. Well not exactly, some games are on sports channels and before and after the games there is a sort of sports gossip going on and sometimes that it is allowed to linger and that's how it happened that one night (might have been in October), Old Dog might have been there, I'm not sure, we learned about Ronda Rousy, the female kickboxer, ultimate fighter, sensation. What reminded me of this event is Old Dog's mention of his nephew with his cool name, Rocco Ronzi. Maybe the two of them should get together and with Ms Rousy in the family the next time I disrespectfully disagreed with Old Dog he could just suggest that I speak to Ronda about that, and then I would see that he was right after all.
There has always been something salacious about women fighting. There used to be something called G. L. O. W. The Gorgeous Ladies Of Wrestling. But that was wrestling and it was more stupid and funny than sexy, although the ladies were babes. Well I see that I am getting a little off the high path of The Institute here. Wasn't one of the correspondents here going on and on about Nicki Minaj's fake butt about a year ago? Really.
Back to the subject of They, I think there is a difference between they say, where they stands for basically the man in the street, and They are running Trump in order to help Hilary, where They is a specific, if unnamed, cabal of powerbrokers. It's that unnamed thing, it's what makes conspiracy theories so hard to combat, if there were specifics to the plot they promote they could easily be disproved, but they are generally so vague that they can't easily be refuted. Not that being refuted ends them, they just roll along.
But speaking of they say, this is one of Trump's favorite tropes, whenever he wants to back up his lies he simply says he is repeating what they say, sometimes he dresses up them as 'smart people' or 'smart lawyers,' Did anybody catch yesterday's meeting of his cabinet where he brought in the cameras to record each and every one of them (I think Mattis was an exception) outdoing the other in proclaiming what a great honor it was for them to serve this great man?
Did you see Schumer's response to that? How about the Covfefe Act: Communications Over Various Feeds Electronically for Engagement, which would preserve the presidential tweets for posterity? Oh what laughs we have as the ship of state goes over the falls.
I hadn't heard the term Streisand effect before, but I am familiar with the phenomenon.. But it's not like Donald is any kind of strategist. I notice that the guy who wrote The Art of the Deal is on CNN now. He was no fan of Trump but he did it for the money, thinking he would have a series of interviews with Trump and use them to write the book, but then discovered that Trump was incapable of doing an interview over five minutes because that is as long as his attention span lasts. Trump is simply a guy with no discipline who has been surrounded by yes men all his life and that completely describes his behavior.
I think this Sessions thing will be a bust in that he will just refuse to answer questions that he doesn't feel are appropriate like those three clowns who were interviewed just before Comey. But I'll probably watch anyway because I just can't look away. Just can't.
And then there is Dennis Rodman. Is he an agent of Trump? Is he being used by Them? Is he one of Them Himself? I am thinking of the inmates running the asylum effect.
There has always been something salacious about women fighting. There used to be something called G. L. O. W. The Gorgeous Ladies Of Wrestling. But that was wrestling and it was more stupid and funny than sexy, although the ladies were babes. Well I see that I am getting a little off the high path of The Institute here. Wasn't one of the correspondents here going on and on about Nicki Minaj's fake butt about a year ago? Really.
Back to the subject of They, I think there is a difference between they say, where they stands for basically the man in the street, and They are running Trump in order to help Hilary, where They is a specific, if unnamed, cabal of powerbrokers. It's that unnamed thing, it's what makes conspiracy theories so hard to combat, if there were specifics to the plot they promote they could easily be disproved, but they are generally so vague that they can't easily be refuted. Not that being refuted ends them, they just roll along.
But speaking of they say, this is one of Trump's favorite tropes, whenever he wants to back up his lies he simply says he is repeating what they say, sometimes he dresses up them as 'smart people' or 'smart lawyers,' Did anybody catch yesterday's meeting of his cabinet where he brought in the cameras to record each and every one of them (I think Mattis was an exception) outdoing the other in proclaiming what a great honor it was for them to serve this great man?
Did you see Schumer's response to that? How about the Covfefe Act: Communications Over Various Feeds Electronically for Engagement, which would preserve the presidential tweets for posterity? Oh what laughs we have as the ship of state goes over the falls.
I hadn't heard the term Streisand effect before, but I am familiar with the phenomenon.. But it's not like Donald is any kind of strategist. I notice that the guy who wrote The Art of the Deal is on CNN now. He was no fan of Trump but he did it for the money, thinking he would have a series of interviews with Trump and use them to write the book, but then discovered that Trump was incapable of doing an interview over five minutes because that is as long as his attention span lasts. Trump is simply a guy with no discipline who has been surrounded by yes men all his life and that completely describes his behavior.
I think this Sessions thing will be a bust in that he will just refuse to answer questions that he doesn't feel are appropriate like those three clowns who were interviewed just before Comey. But I'll probably watch anyway because I just can't look away. Just can't.
And then there is Dennis Rodman. Is he an agent of Trump? Is he being used by Them? Is he one of Them Himself? I am thinking of the inmates running the asylum effect.
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