Category: News

  • Day Off, Yesterday

    We moved again, to a bigger apartment this time. The extra space we have gained has come in the form of guest bedroom, that will also be used as an office. I had the day off from work yesterday, and I choose to take the day to set it up. I put all of my journals out, and pulled some books from one of the many box of books we have. In the roughest sense, I am ready to go. To go and start creating. I was ready…

    And then I took a lunch break, and never really got back to it.

    Part of what got me wrapped up was all the Trump/Squad racist garbage that couldn’t seem to ignore or get away from. It was all over the TV, and the internet, and all of my friends were up in arms on social media about the vile racist Trump is. And we all should be upset by the crap that man says as he is trying to be reelected by dividing and hating.

    And through all of this, I have this awful feeling that Trump will be reelected. Then I saw this in the Times this morning, and it didn’t make me feel better.

    That is the awfulness of Trump, and how effective he is at getting under everyone’s skin, and sucking the air out of every room. I had my own work to do yesterday, and I just got side tracked into thinking about how deeply racist this country is. Clearly, we as American’s need to keep working at the state of race relations, and inequality in this country. But, it won’t get better if Trump wins another term.

    And yet here we are…

  • Debate

    That happened last night. I watched 10 Democratic candidates, not really debate, just gave well-rehearsed sound bites a try for two hours.

    Yes, I am being very cynical about it.

    There is still a part of me that feels like this is too early for us to be talking about who the next President will be. The 2020 election should start in 2020. Having this being in 2019 just perpetuates the issue of the industrial complex of unending campaigning.

    But being cynical, I know that this system will not change. Money and politics have been locked together from the beginning.

    Yet, as I watched the 10 talk last night, it didn’t make me feel optimistic. Even if one of the 20 does defeat Trump, my fear is the actions of the next Republican who wins. The way I see it, it has been a slow descent for conservatives from Nixon to Trump. Each conservative has been a little worse. From Reagan’s welfare queen, to Trump’s everything awful that comes out of his mouth, and all the crap in between.  The next Republican will just try to dismantle whatever the Democrat did.

    This is the cycle we are in.

    I think the real problem, honestly, is that modern Conservatism, that came out of the 50’s and early 60’s is nothing but a reaction to liberal policies. Where are the conservative policies that move the county forward, other than cut taxes and regulations?

    The real debate is, Democratic ideas vs Stopping Democratic Ideas.

  • Another Billionaire Problem Solver?

    I have nothing personal against Howard Schultz. As far as I know, and I will give him the benefit of the doubt, is that he is a good husband and father and friend to all.

    But he is a businessman billionaire. And going into 2020, that is a huge albatross around his neck. Is he going to try and convince me that a billionaire businessman isn’t qualified to be president, so we should elect another billionaire businessman?

    That’s going to be a tough sell.

    He isn’t making his case any easier by going after Medicare for all. (The only point I will give him is that no one is addressing how to pay for it, and he is right to point that out.) But it is completely a false equivalency to compare national health care to the boarder wall.

    There is national healthcare in the world, it does work. And if he is really worried about the insurance industry going out of business, then he should look at Germany’s system of national and private healthcare.

    The boarder wall plays on some people’s hate and racism. That doesn’t work.

    But here is where he has already fumbled the ball; he is trying to defend health insurance companies over patients, because effectively, that is what he is saying. He isn’t even politically savvy enough to at least say that putting insurance companies out of business would unemployed so many people, and that isn’t fair. (That’s a good old solid Republican line…) If he is trying to run as a centrist, and trying to get middle America to vote for him, then he needs to understand that this part of the electorate is living paycheck to paycheck (government shut down just hammered that home) and their experiences with insurance companies is adversarial. People have an emotional response to insurance companies, and his first steps out of the gate shows that he doesn’t understand that.

    Don’t show up to the emotion fight with logic, because you will lose every time. You fight emotion with emotion, and logic with logic, and the best politicians know when each is called for in the argument.

  • Here We Go Again…

    Not that I claim I know more than everyone else, but I was not surprised that Trump gave in a stopped the government shut down just hours after Roger Stone was arrested. I pointed out that this is Trump’s behavior back on my January 10th post.

    The day started off with really, and I mean really, bad news for Trump; another person was arrested who took part in his campaign. There was no way the President could let the news cycle for this weekend be dominated with stories of the walls closing in on Trump, and what does Mueller have next up his sleeve? No, Trump had only one card to play today to stop the press from going nuts, and that was to end the shutdown. “Hey look, America! Another bright shiny object to obsess over for the next 24 hours, while you forget about all that really awful stuff!”

    And it will work. All the news about the Roger Stone arrest will just become background noise as the press and people start their stories about getting their checks back, and paying bills, and the wall fight that will be protracted for three weeks. And what does this mean for the State of the Union Address? Ahhh… Roger Stone who?

    Trump is a really awful president, (Only Trump could make James Buchanan look good) but he knows how to make the media do his bidding even when they don’t want to. It really is too bad, and we just can’t shake free from it.

  • That Possible Space Probe: Oumuamua

    This has been one of my favorite stories to read of late, and if you aren’t aware, please check the wiki page. Even The New Yorker did a story on it. I just find it fun that we can have a scientific debate on the physics of this object moving through our solar system, and from the data, it is possible that the object was created and sent by intelligent beings from another planet.

    That’s pretty cool.

    From what I can tell from the data, Oumuamua was in the Neptune distance from the Sun around 2014, and it will leave our system in the 2023 ballpark. So, if this thing was sent by an intelligent being, it sure isn’t in a hurry. I would think that if I could send a craft to, let’s say for the sake of argument, a neighboring star, that I would have a little speed to it, so I would be able to appreciate the discovery. But maybe it was built with the idea that the information would make it to the next generation. They have other things to do while they wait for the data. Maybe…

    Or, maybe they saw us, and don’t want to have any part it. Maybe, having studied how humans behave, the aliens realized it was better to slowly “ghost” out of the system, because humans quickly forget stuff that isn’t in their face.

    You know, like when you walk into a store, get greeted by an employee, but then you realize that you should leave, but you still go through the motions of looking at stuff, so the employee forgets about you and then you can leave.

    Again, if it’s intelligent life, they would know that about us.