Category: Politics

  • NYC Schools Delayed, And a Normal Schedule?

    Things have changed yet again in NYC when it comes to the public schools. Looks like the Mayor and the teachers have agreed to delay the start of school a week, and in person classes for 10 days. I think this is the right decision, as far as I hear from my teacher friends, the schools are not physically ready for students, and this delay will help get things ready. This doesn’t change our plans; we are going to continue with the remote learning for our kid, and then see if she will rejoin her class in November. Hopefully, this will make everything safer for the teachers, staff, and students.

    The wife’s new job is planning to open up their offices in October. The rule they will be following is that only 50% of the staff can be onsite at one time, which will mean that she will be in the office 2 days out if the week.

    Looks like we are slowing beginning to see what our Fall schedule will be like, and this also feels like for the first time we have a glimmer of the tiniest speck of a shard of light of having a small amount of normalcy.

    Not that I am holding my breath.

    But it would be nice.

  • Well-Read and Books on the Shelf

    Okay, one last thought that I had about the FaceBook argument. That guy kept asking me what conservative media I read, and I knew full well that it was a set-up question. No matter how many sources I named, he would say he read more, and hence was an expert, and thus my opinion was uninformed and invalid. I knew better than to play that game, but it did make me think about at what point does a person cross the threshold and become “well read?”

    There is the Malcom Gladwell rule/guideline of 10,000 hours of practice to become an expert. Does that apply to reading? Not reading up on a subject, because if you spent 10,000 reading about plumbing, you might not be an expert, but you would, or at least should, be very knowledgeable on the subject. But if you spent 10,000 hours reading, anything and everything, does that makes you an expert at reading?

    I don’t know where I was going with that…

    Being well read.

    Anyway…

    With all of the news interviews in people’s homes, the performance space in demand clearly has been a wall of books in an office setting. That is the “classic” sign of a well-read person. Some offices are a little too conspicuously clean and well organized, like the books are never touched. The offices I have enjoyed looking at are the ones where the books and papers are sort of stacked all over the place. Those are usually the offices of research doctors, and I want to believe that they just threw their books on the shelf when they are done reading it.

    I can admit that, since moving back from California, I only have about half of my books in the apartment, with the other half still in storage. We have one wall in the apartment that all the housed books live on. They are in no order, and just got thrown up there. It’s not author ordered, or even in some sort style of size of book color. We just them up there with the plan of coming back and put some order to it. That was seven months ago.

  • New Lease on Social Media Life

    I think I’m detoxing from FaceBook right now.

    As the handful of you know, I got it an online argument with a friend on FaceBook about voting and the Postal Service. I posted on here what I had said to the guy, and I knew full well that after the last post I was done with it, but he would post something trying to egg me on in some way. But I was done, I had said my peace, and I didn’t want to play anymore. To hold to that commitment, I couldn’t go back on FaceBook, read his response, and then, basically, state the vicious cycle all over again.

    So, I haven’t been on FaceBook for two days now.

    I have no idea what is going on in people’s lives, and I think I am okay with that. The pandemic has given me too much free time, and I have wasted a great deal of it looking online to see how other people were using their time, and most of them appeared to be very productive. (I know everyone lies on the internet.) It created a feeling in me that I wasn’t doing enough, which wasn’t helpful, and in and return, I let myself get discouraged making it more difficult to motivate myself. But I know fully that I was letting this happen, and choosing to be discouraged.

    And also, in strange way, getting my dander up about an issue, taking time to think out my response, and being honest that I am passionate about something that affects others, did make me feel more connected to the world. I’m not saying that I’m about to turn into a social media activist, because action in the real world is needed, not posting on a feed, but I need to get off my ass and help out in this world again.

  • I got Involved in a Facebook “Voting Fraud” Debate

    I know that you shouldn’t get involved in FaceBook debates, but it was about voter fraud, and it really rubbed me the wrong way. I also freely admit that responding to the “debate” just played into the host/trolls hands. Yet, I don’t feel like we can sit on the sidelines anymore…

    The Post:

    Say, let’s talk about that 381 page database that keeps being referred to. It is from the Heritage Foundation titled “A Sampling of Election Fraud Cases From Across the Country.” Here is the link to it:

    https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/whitehouse.gov/files/docs/pacei-voterfraudcases.pdf?fbclid=IwAR0kPCSmTRe6j8wTeMdI73IljE5xLkOQAk_L31lnbIBmh9Jnn5CJDt9Esvk

    There is an analysis of that database from The Brennan Center for Justice, a non-partisan law and public policy institute at NYU’s School of Law. The following link gives a quick summery of the Center’s findings on the Heritage’s database, as well as another link to full analysis, titled, “Heritage Fraud Database: As Assessment.”

    https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/analysis-heritage-foundations-database-undermines-claims-recent-voter

    I offer this information to help with the conversation/debate, as voting is the most important foundation stone in the institution of a democracy.

    Here is a sampling of their findings:

    “Among the examples in the Heritage document are a case from 1948 (when Harry S. Truman beat Thomas Dewey) and a case from 1972 (when Richard Nixon defeated George McGovern). Only 105 of its 749 cases came from within the past five years.

    In reviewing billions of votes cast, the Heritage Foundation identified just 10 cases involving in-person impersonation fraud at the polls (fewer than the number of members on the president’s Commission).

    The database includes only 41 cases involving non-citizens registering, voting, or attempting to vote over five decades, highlighting the absurdity of President Trump’s claim that millions of non-citizens voted in the 2016 election alone.

    Many cases highlighted in the database show that existing laws and safeguards are already preventing voter fraud — the ineligible voters or individuals engaging in misconduct were discovered and prevented from casting a ballot.”

    And then there is this quote:

    “This ‘database’ does not come close to being an actual study of election misconduct on which national policy should be based,” said Michael Waldman, president of the Brennan Center. “It is a grab-bag of cases, few of them recent, many irrelevant to the panel’s work. Waving around a stack of paper does not make it real evidence.”

    I found this information in less than five minutes of searching on the internet. In fact, it took me longer to type this up, than it did to find this analysis. Unfortunately, it is not 380 pages of “convictions” as has been claimed.

  • Cancel the Election? Just asking…

    So… Trump told the world that we should cancel the 2020 election, and then added some question marks at the end to make it a suggestion, something to think about.

    The President of the United States is a freshman in his first philosophy class. You know the guy. The one who says something really offensive and off the wall, but when you call him on it, he tries to flip it back at you. “What’s wrong with asking a questions? I thought we were open minded here.” So you’re the jerk now.

    Our President is a teen-aged deep thinker.

    This is what happens when the troll culture of an AOL chat room from late 90’s lands in narcissist 70-year old’s brain.

    I remember seeing this shit in 1996 when some guy in Alt-Rock AOL chat room was like, “Nirvana was over as a band in 1992, so what Kurt killing himself a bad thing?”

    Everyone goes ape shit in the chat room.

    Then the guy responds, “I’m just asking a question, you’re the one who can’t handle a debate. I didn’t say Kurt should have killed himself…”

    That crap…

    And was it a joke? Because that will be the other line used. “He was joking. Can’t you take a joke?”

    Fuck man, this is exhausting.

    Is anyone else exhausted?