born to argue

I'm just reading along on Beagles's post, nodding now and then, quite so, I agree, yes, yes, and then I come across watermelon.  Watermelon? 

I was just a little kid, and it seems like it was some kind of joke inside a package of bubblegum it was like one of those Did you ever see things, and one of the things was Did you ever see a darkie who didn't like watermelon.  Oh, did they like watermelon?  I supposed I liked watermelon too.  What was so funny about it?  I suppose it was something like Did you ever see a woman who didn't like to shop for shoes?  And you kind of laugh because women do seem to be inordinately fond of shoes.  I guess it is making fun of women.


You could still make a joke to a woman about shoe shopping, she might get annoyed, but not too much, but if you are white and made that watermelon crack to a black person there would be some nasty repercussions.  On the face of it, it doesn't look that insulting, as Beagles notes, don't we all love watermelon a messy summertime confection where you can also spit out the seeds like little rockets?  But it has become very insulting.  Most people know this, and the black person to whom the crack is made would know this, and would assume you knew it, so the assumption would be that you are insulting him, and there it is.

And that bill straight ballot bill is about votes.  Right now the dems are against it because they think it will hurt them and the reps like it because they think it will help them.  If they thought the other way their positions would be reversed.


That whole thing about sin.  I've been over it before with Beagles, and it was a long and arduous trek and I am not sure that I was able to persuade Beagles who still claims never to have sinned (Ken Sin, to wit, knowing something is the wrong thing to do and doing it anyway), but Old Dog, maybe I could convince him, so I went through the whole thing again, painstakingly making my case, dropping in little tidbits about cheetos to keep it light and entertaining, and posted it with a modicum of satisfaction, and I thought I had done a pretty good job.

But the next morning I saw his post, and he had basically disagreed with everything I said.  It was like even as he was reading it he was making arguments against it.  What the fuck?  And then I realized that is exactly the same thing I do.

I don't know about you guys, but I think I was born to argue (actually I prefer the term discussion because I don't like shouting or calling names).  If I am sitting next to somebody in a bar and I say something and the person next to me disagrees I am a lot more interested than if they say they agree, because what kind of conversation can you have then?

Doing the Right Thing for the Wrong Reason

I don't think that Old dog was here yet when we last discussed this, so I'll go back and start at the beginning.

Early this year, the Michigan legislature and governor passed a law abolishing straight party voting. As far as I know, there was no groundswell of public opinion in favor of this measure. Indeed, most of us didn't even hear about it until after it was a done deal. I understand that the people of Michigan have voted down similar measures at least twice in the past, so this time they didn't let us vote on it. By tacking an appropriation bill onto it, they made the measure immune to being overturned by a referendum, so they must have suspected that the law would be unpopular. Some people mounted a court challenge, claiming that the law discriminated against Blacks, and they won the first round. The state filed an appeal, and a three judge panel ruled that the case did not merit consideration by the whole appeals court. The state appealed that decision and asked the court to grant a stay so that they could go ahead and print up the ballots, since this this was unlikely to be settled before the election. I read in the paper the other day that the stay was denied, so we will still be able to vote a straight ticket in this election, but the state has vowed to take it all the way to the Supreme Court, no matter how long it takes.

Some of the bill's opponents claim that it will make for longer lines at the polling place and inconvenience everybody regardless of race, color, or creed. The plaintiffs in the lawsuit, however, based their argument on discrimination against Blacks, and they won with it. According to our local paper, the latest ruling specifically stated that it was unfair to make Black people stand in long lines to vote, but it didn't say anything about White people standing in long lines, so I guess that's okay. Nevertheless, the effect of the ruling is that the lines won't get any longer for anybody unless the state ultimately wins the case. The state's main argument was that 40 other states already have this law, and that it will make for a more informed electorate. I don't know about the "more informed electorate" part, but the original trial judge declared that the fact that 40 other states have this law is "irrelevant".

When I first brought this issue up, Uncle Ken explained to me that the reason the law discriminates against Blacks is that most Blacks don't have the patience to go down the list and check each individual box on the ballot. If they can't vote a straight party, they will just vote for the top two or three offices and leave the rest of the ballot blank. The last article I read in our paper said something like that too, so it must be right. Well, as long as we're stereotyping, maybe the Blacks could be persuaded to vote the whole slate if the election clerks passed out free watermelon to everybody who promised to do so. Of course, many White people also like watermelon, so this would be a "win-win" for everybody. The state could fund the program with the money they save by not taking the case to the Supreme Court.

I won't be here tomorrow because we are going to visit our daughter in Charlevoix. See y'all Tuesday.

Rosebud

If "Decision 2016" was a movie made ten years ago, who would have been the director?  It wouldn't be a comedy, that's for sure.  De Palma, in his prime comes to mind, also Scorcese, Cronenberg, Eastwood, or Oliver Stone.  Shouldn't forget Bigelow; she's pretty good.  And if he was still alive, Kubrick.   Yeah, Kubrick, along the lines of Dr. Strangelove...

Or has the movie already been made, and it was called Citizen Kane?

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I keep forgetting that Uncle Ken grew up in the bungalow belt, and had to refresh my memory.  Very fascinating, and found a lot of stuff I didn't know.  Bungalows were, and still are, highly desirable.  The "Chicago Bungalow" is distinct in that it's gables are parallel to the street it faces, unlike all the other types of bungalow.  At least ten Bungalow Historic Districts have been established in Chicago.

Some salient quotes from various sources:

"The word bungalow comes from bungla", says Charles Shanabruch, Executive Director of the Historic Chicago Bungalow Association. "It was a type of housing that was first built in India for British subjects."

and

Later it became used for the spacious homes or official lodgings of officials of the British Raj, and was so known in Britain and later America, where it initially had high status and exotic connotations...

and

"For many Chicagoans, a bungalow was the first house and the only house they ever owned. They were the foundation for strong families and strong communities. And for those of us who were raised in them, bungalows will always occupy a place in our hearts."-Mayor Richard M. Daley

Quite a pedigree; I like "exotic connotations."  I remember my parents looking at bungalows when they decided to move back in '56; Mom had her heart set on one.  Alas, too pricey at the time, and they had to settle on the 3-flat I grew up in.  It may have actually cost more than a bungalow but it generated income, whereas a bungalow would generate none.  It took less than twenty years to pay off the mortgage, and their actual out of pocket expense was only $75/month.  Not a bad deal at all.

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This train wreck of an election cycle defies description and is becoming surreal.  Perhaps I'm reading too much into it, and our system of checks and balances will ensure that, regardless of the election's outcome, things will be okay.   I shall endeavor to remain optimistic in these troubled times; the sun will come up tomorrow, blah, blah, blah.

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Finally, rather than me yammering further about the Internet, here's a little link about us becoming "Meta-Ignorant." :
http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2016/07/the-internet-isnt-making-us-dumber-its-making-us-more-meta-ignorant.html?mid=fb-share-scienceofus

TL;DR   The final paragraph sums it up pretty well:

Today’s mediascape does not provide much guidance. It encourages us to create personal, solipsistic filters over information, making it unprecedentedly easy to gorge on news of favorite celebrities, TV shows, teams, political ideologies, and tech toys. This leaves less time and attention for everything else. The great risk isn’t that the internet is making us less informed or even misinformed. It’s that it may be making us meta-ignorant — less cognizant of what we don’t know.

quick fried to a crackly crunch in the proverbial handbasket

The last time I saw a photo of Beagles on facebook he had a bushy beard, small wonder because he hates Occam's Razor.  What's so hard to believe about Trump being a big fucking egomaniacal asshole.  I mean isn't that the guy you see every time you turn on the tv?  Of course he thought right from the beginning that he could win this thing, I mean isn't he the smartest, most capable, guy in the country?

I was talking about his surrogates a couple posts ago, about how they are a bunch of nobodies with no reputation to worry about.  Before the the Cheeto Bandito's trip south of the border, they were all over on what the quick fried to a crackly crunch cheese character was going to do with the eleven million.  About half of them were sure he was going to deport them and the other half were like well it's something he will have to think about but it will be very humane.  Then the word went out Trump was going to make a definitive statement and you could hear a sigh of relief, as much as these characters have any real human emotions, go up from them and they could just say, we'll have to wait until Mr Trump, they all call him Mr Trump, makes his statement.

So would he be the quick fried to a crackly crunch, or would he be the soft baked to a delicate crunch, or maybe he would be the xxtra flamin' hot.  Excuse me, in the course of internet research I have been visiting cheeto sites, and it's hard to do that early in the morning without getting your head turned around, and without getting a little hungry too.  And the big day came and he said he would deport them and a few minutes later said that he'd think about it.  So, um, there.

There is that old nostrum where if your candidate loses you can spend the next four years while the other candidate leads us down to hell in a handbasket hooking a thumb into your suspenders and saying proudly, I didn't vote for him, but of course you are still going down to hell in a handbasket with everybody else.



One big difference before the internet was you had the morning paper, and that was the news since sometime very early in the morning, and then maybe you saw the noontime news on tv and that was the news up till then, but being tv it was pretty short and actually half of it was weather.  Then the afternoon paper, then the evening news, and just to keep you tossing and turning through the night there was the ten o'clock news.  The thing is at each of these occasions you got the news up to that time and you could sit and digest it and cogitate upon it for a time.  Anymore there's newer news every time you look at the computer, and there is really no reason to cogitate on it because newer news will be there the next time you look at the screen.  It makes it hard to make decisions that you will have to remake in favor of newer news five minutes hence.

Is Trump For Real ?

In the beginning of the current election cycle, which seems like 20 years ago, although it's probably not, I was of the opinion that Trump was in there for the sole purpose of helping Hillary win. I thought of this all by myself, and then I read someplace that other people had thought of it before I had. Some were calling him a "Trojan Horse", and others said that he was running a "false flag campaign". Ken and I discussed this, and Ken convinced me that I was wrong, but now I'm not so sure. Trump seems to be deliberately trying to lose the election, like Old Dog said. The amazing thing is that he's gotten this far. There must be a lot of people out there who are just as goofy as he is. Some time ago, somebody on Face Book said that, even if Trump loses, we will still have to live among all the people who voted for him.

Another possibility is that Trump originally ran as a spoiler to keep Cruz from getting the nomination. Maybe he didn't count on winning it himself and was just trying to siphon off enough votes so that Cruz wouldn't get it. When Trump did win the nomination, it might have inspired him to go for the gold.

Given the choice of candidates, I wonder if lots of people will just stay home on election day, which would be fine with me. Last presidential election I waited in line over an hour to vote. That's the longest I have ever waited, and I have voted in every election since 1968. It didn't do me any good, though, because Obama won anyway, but at least he didn't do it with my vote, or because I failed to vote.

It's here someplace

Honey Locust, that's the one.  Thanks, Mr. Beagles.

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I read recently that everyone born after 1985 has always had the Internet, and make of that what you will.  I do know that digital tools and media have affected the way I think, and not always for the better.

Uncle Ken can read an article in the Trib, I could read the same article online but the experiences are vastly different although the content is the same.  The level of engagement is different, and that matters in how we remember things.  I'm looking at the same little screen that I read a lot of other stuff on, and he has a nice discrete physical object spread out on a table, or perhaps folded to be held in hand.  He can put it aside for later perusal and easily recover it.  Unless I bookmarked the page I may never find that article again; it happens.

There was I time when I printed out tons of stuff, mostly technical,for later reading.  Now I bookmark pages I think may be useful, but that has it's own flaws.  Links die, images aren't cached, and the full content may never be restored in it's original form.  It has been said that once something is online it will be around forever, on some server, somewhere.  That may be true, but it's also likely that it will never be found by me.

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Don't know what to make of the Big Cheeto's recent Mexican excursion.  He gives a mild, almost deferential and positive little talk there, and returns to the US, ranting like a loon.  It's like he's trying too hard to lose the election; he didn't plan on winning but wanted to enhance his "brand."  Maybe he will try shooting someone on Fifth Avenue.

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Since none of us seem to be feeling old enough, here's the newest Beloit College mindset list: https://www.beloit.edu/mindset/

Beware of false pundits.

verifying the truth

I suppose Old Dog has a point in calling Honey Hair (that sounds kind of affectionate doesn't it?  Imagine it said with dripping sarcasm) more of a liar than the big girl in that lying consists not only of telling an untruth, but of knowingly doing so.  If I had a faulty tape when I measured my tree and my height of fifty feet was wrong, that does not make me a liar.

The big girl when confronted with an ugly truth, threads her way through it, rearranging things so that it does not look so ugly, so in that sense she is more of a liar because she is working hard at it, though I expect once she has rearranged things, she may well have convinced herself that what she is saying is true.

HH, on the other hand just spouts whatever happens to be on the top of his head at the time, and he probably believes whatever he is saying at the time.  There are times though when he is confronted with what he says, the cheering muslims on the rooftops for instance, and must suspect that it is not true.  In these cases he doubles down by saying something like he saw it, it must be true, or everybody (the swamp internet) is saying it, so it must be true.  Surely he knows he is lying at this point.  But maybe not.  He has been surrounded by yes men all his life, maybe he is a little like the guy in Plato's cave having seen mere illusions all his life and having no knowledge of rock hard reality.

You'll note that I pick up on relatively small things in HH's utterances, the rooftop muslims, rather than the bigger issues like say the Mexican murderers and rapists,  The thing is surely there are some rapists and murderers, so what is the percentage of rapists and murderers that justifies calling the whole group rapists and murderers?  Well that's a matter of opinion.  It's like if I said I have a tall tree in my backyard.  If some guy pays a visit and says it doesn't look tall to him, well we can discuss that.  But if I say it is fifty feet tall, and a guy shows up with a tape measure and it's really only forty feet tall, well then I have broken the surly bonds of truth.

What difference does it make how tall my tree is?  It makes all the difference in the world.  Well not my tree, specifically, but all the things in the world.  There is matter and energy and space and time and the laws that govern them and that's all there is in the universe.  Well there's us, but we are just matter and energy, except for the fact that we seem to think that we are alive, but that is something completely outside the scope of today's discussion,  And I kind of know that if I see a tree so do you, and if you say it's not there I can lead you to it and bang your head against it and you will; have to admit that it was there.  From these mundane markers of reality we build the bigger facts of our world.

Like for instance the Magna Carta was signed in, whenever it was signed.  We can argue about whether this was a big moment in democracy or not, but we can all agree on when it was signed.  Well not Old Dog.  Old Dog sez well sure I read that somewhere, but how do I verify that.  Well he can read various accounts and see that they all agree on that date,  He can read accounts from the original sources.  He can visit the rare book room and read the original sources themselves, he could visit where it took place, he could see the Magna Carta itself..  If there were tests on the inks we could review them.  Well he can't do all that, he has all his own whizbang experiments in his mad (but gentleman) scientist's lair in his apartment.  But other people can, and certainly there are some who have and the date of the Magna Carta remains undisputed.  Well if you poke around long enough in the swamp internet I am sure you can find somebody who disputes it, but if you look at their site I assure you that their sources will be lacking.  You know it's like you have just finished reading the article on the Magna Carta in the Encyclopedia Britannica at the Ten Cat bar and then in breezes that guy who shows up with the pool scores and a motor mouth and he says "I happen to know, that thing was signed in 1952."  Who you gonna believe.

Witness wiki which we generally accept because we know all sorts of people read it and review it and if there are any glaring mistruths in it, they will be corrected.

Every morning about five the newsperson drops a Trib and a Sun-Times outside my door, but today, for reasons unknown, they also left me a New York Times, so I have some reading to do this morning and will adjourn myself now, and will continue this discourse on Friday.