In my work, I just spent the last few weeks writing a major proposal for services to a large state. The proposal was over 300 pages long, and here is a small section of clauses I needed to fill out. The column on the left shows my responses.
It’s a good thing that I am not under indictment on any felony charge, because if I were, my company would not be able to submit this proposal.
I could run for president, though.
On a recent trip to Washington, DC this week, as I boarded my American Airlines flight and walked back to my coach seat, I saw a face looking up at me that I recognized. He looked up, we locked eyes for a fraction of a second, and both abandoned it.
I sat down in the row behind him. It was the controversial Republican Congressman from Arizona, Paul Gosar.
I pulled up his Wikipedia page and remained entertained for about half an hour. Needless to say, I am not very aligned with his views. Remember, this is the guy whose own brothers and sisters endorsed his opponent in his re-election run, because they thought he was too much of a crackpot.
He spent the entire four hours of flying time hunched over his phone reading things, but also with some interludes paying Solitaire.
I always sit in the exit rows and the seat next to me was empty. I guess he could easily have ended up sitting next to me.
I have to admit, I do not know whether I would have had any conversation with him in that case. I normally do not engage with fellow travelers at all. Yes, I am that guy. But I don’t know if I could have held myself back.
I don’t think anyone else around us recognized him, and at the end, I walked off the plane in DC right behind him. He met somebody there, and I walked on. We never talked.
I have written several posts in 2015 with the subject of waste of food. Here are links to both of them:
Child Hunger and Banquet Food Waste
Today I received an email from a reader who works on a university project about world hunger, who asked me to attach this information to my posts.
You can find that information at this link: World Hunger Facts and Statistics as well as at the bottom of the two other posts.
It has been eight years since I wrote these posts, and things have not gotten better. Due to impending climate disaster, there will be millions of climate refugees searching for “higher ground” and there will be crop failures all around the world which will exacerbate hunger. I welcome the research, the activism and the initiative of the new generation and university projects like the one my reader quoted. She took the time to search old posts and contact the writers – that takes work, and I applaud it.
Thank you, Debbie.
For the last year we have been bombarded in the news with updates about how glaringly irresponsible Trump behaved with respect to classified documents, both during his presidency, and particularly afterwards.
Trump is the same person who, now six years ago, pushed hard on Clinton for, get this: using a private email server for classified correspondence. I believe that was a massively stupid move by Clinton in the first place. I am sure she has regretted that decision every day of her life since then, and it may well have been the catalyst for her to lose the race for the presidency in 2016. But all investigations have not resulted in any finding of wrongdoing with regard to classified documents.
That entire episode seems ridiculously miniscule compared to what Trump did with classified documents. And then Trump has the gall to refer to Clinton’s emails and her digressions in his own defense.
Then again, what I am really interested in is Hunter Biden’s laptop. Oh, yeah, naked pictures. Those will surely exonerate Trump.
I came across this 2009 post where I commented on Obama’s bow. Here it is again:
Obama’s Bow to Akihito – Norbert Haupt
I still stand by my comments.
In the interview of Mike Pence on the Kudlow show yesterday, Mike Pence made a truly frightening statement.
Mind you, before he got there he railed on about gas (and energy prices) being 60% higher than when he left office, and his answer is for the United States to become “energy independent.” No word about a major war in Ukraine that resulted in a global upset of the energy market. Does he really believe that starting up drilling again in Alaska, on federal lands, and offshore, would solve that problem? Does he really think we’re that stupid?
But I digress. He said that the “radical left” wants to keep God out of our lives. Hell yes they do, and I guess I am now also a “radical leftist” due to that attitude.
If you don’t want to watch the whole video (some of it is very painful to watch) you can scroll to 10:30 to listen to Kudlow’s introduction to the religious section, and at 11:10 Pence says it:
“The radical left believes that the freedom of religion is the freedom from religion.”
This is truly frightening to me.
Does that mean he thinks the government should have the right to push religion on me?
Which religion?
Jehovah’s Witnesses? Southern Baptism? Catholicism? Methodism? Mormonism? Islam? Hinduism?
Do I have the right to push any of these on him?
What his statement says to me is that he actually believes the government should be able to push religion on us. They could make is wear hijabs, or turbans, or yarmulkes. They could force us to waste our times attending their services. They could decide what we can eat and can’t eat.
Maybe he should go to live in Iran and see how that is working out for them.
Freedom of religion to me has always meant that the Hindus and Jews and Christians and Mormons and Muslims all get to do their thing, build their temples, proselytize, knock on my door to try to get me to join them, raise money, tithe people who want to pay, pray, and make excuses for systemic societal failures because “God works in mysterious ways.”
Just leave me alone, please!
Today I went sailing in San Diego Bay with family and friends. In the car on the way home, the conversation went to “the good life” we’ve all been blessed with. How our lives are safe, we have intact homes, enough income to eat every day, and we don’t have to worry about anything seriously threatening our safety and well-being.
That made me think.
Say that a coup happened in the United States right now. A strongman took over our government by undermining its institutions, and by taking command of law enforcement and the military. It’s been done before in many other countries. If that happened, it would not take long before our way of life would collapse. Gangs would be marauding in our suburban neighborhoods, raping women, taking our food and valuables at will and threatening our lives.
Say you have a couple of small children, a six-month old baby and a three-year-old toddler. To keep them safe and give them a chance at a normal life, you pack up your SUV with the kids and a few belongings and you head up to Canada, where the government is still intact.
However, as you cross the border, you get arrested by the Canadian border authorities. They take away your baby and your toddler – who knows where to? – and without obtaining any information about how to find you and reconnect you with your children, they send you back – without your children.
That is what our American government did in 2017, when they sent political refugees back to Honduras, Nicaragua and all the other countries people were fleeing – only after they took away their children with no plan to ever give them back.
Do we really live in a safe country?
Somehow I am on Trump’s list of patriots. I get an email every day outlining some award, or opportunity to win a dinner with Trump, or a photo opportunity, or a golf date, like this one.
I kid you not, they come up with something different every day.
They promise baubles and they pander to my vanities. They tell me I am special. But there is never any substance, other than their obvious goal of extracting a maximum amount of money from me.
There is no objective. Trump is not running for any office. There is no ideology. There is no purpose. Trump is just trying to extract the maximum amount of money from the citizenry.
For example, the section below is an email I recently received – verbatim:
Friend,
Are you READY for the most EPIC experience with PRESIDENT TRUMP?
My father’s Trump Golf Classic is coming up, and he wants YOU to come. The moment our team told him about this upcoming event, President Trump was adamant you have the opportunity to experience it ALL.
This is an experience like no other, and my father wants to share it with you.
You need to ENTER NOW because spots are quickly filling up.
You have always been one of my father’s VERY best Patriots, Friend, so you deserve this exclusive experience. This may NEVER HAPPEN AGAIN, so you must HURRY. Contribute RIGHT NOW to enter for a chance to join my father on his FAVORITE golf course.
Thank you,
Donald Trump Jr.
Thank you for joining Team Trump. Thanks to your generous support, we’ll win BACK our Republican Majority in the House AND the Senate. To stay up-to-date on our latest efforts, President Trump needs you to sign up to become an Official Trump Text Member IMMEDIATELY.
TEXT TRUMP to 88022 to start receiving text messages from President Trump.
With the Supreme Court striking down Roe vs. Wade, things are changing in this country, for the worse, for the much worse.
But then again, we have observed this circus happening since 2016, where somehow we have let “conservative” values roll over our freedom. What did we expect? We have seeded the Supreme Court for years now just to make this happen, and it started with McConnell’s blocking the nomination of Merrick Garland. It’s ironic that these same “conservatives” are the ones who proclaim their freedom was taken away by an election that didn’t go their way.
The country is heading down a path of darkness forced by religious zealots. I have no problem with Christians being Christians, and Muslim’s being Muslims, as long as they stay out of interfering with my life and my freedom, all the rest of us who don’t buy into their delusions.
Here they have crossed this border. They are interfering, and that’s deeply disturbing.
What’s next?
How about we make all our women wear burkas because that makes us men feel better about the powers we have?
I hear their God hates genitals. Maybe we can bring in genital mutilation – of course for women only. And for witches.
Do you think I am angry?
You bet I am.
I found this sentence in an article in Salon discussing the January 6th Hearings:
…The main player in this scheme was Republican lawyer John Eastman, who appears to have been a Trump true believer (as well as a highly credentialed, conservative, constitutional scholar) who offered his services to serve Trump’s pre-fabricated conspiracy theory that the election had been stolen….
— Source: Salon
My question is this: How does a highly credentialed lawyer, constitutional scholar and Ph.D. believe that Trump was even remotely a competent president and it would have been good for the country to have him serve another four years?
Anyone?
All my adult life I have observed the quadrennial presidential elections. My chosen candidates did not always win. But I always enjoyed watching the festivities of the inaugurations. Invariably, some news anchor would comment that in this country, for over two hundred years, we have been able to witness the peaceful transfer of power. I remember bring proud of that, being proud of being a citizen of a nation that was founded on the principles of democracy and the peaceful transfer of power since the 18th century. There was no other nation like this on the planet, and there had never before been one.
We can’t say that anymore.
We can’t feel that way anymore.
That notion has been destroyed. And a little bit of our nation has died with it.
The clip on the left is from Time Magazine, April 25, 2022, page 6.
U. S. Representative Marjorie Taylor Green stated that “The American people are fed up with this over-dramatization of a riot.”
I can’t speak for the American people, other than I am one of them – ex pluribus unum.
Say I took a crow bar, or a sledge hammer, or perhaps even a weapon, and I went down to my local municipal government building – and I am not even talking about the U.S. Capitol or any State Capitol. Then when I got to the locked door, I’d just beat it in. If there were security guards or police, I’d pepper spray them or beat them with the crow bar.
If I did that, chances are that I’d not survive, because I’d be shot down in hail of bullets. If I did survive, I’d rot in jail for the better part of a year until I got my trial, and then I’d lose and – at my age – spend the rest of my life in prison.
Now if I did this same thing along with the 2,000 people who have entered the Capitol on January 6, the whole thing would go away because it’s an overdramatization of a riot?
I am not buying it.
I am in favor of every one of those people that committed violence entering the Capitol that day to do their time.
Those in our government, particularly those elected officials, in the legislative and executive branch who incited this should also be held accountable.
Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence) is a doctoral student in astronomy. One night, when working with a telescope, she discovers a new comet. Researching the details with her professor, Randall Mindy (Leonardo DiCaprio), they come to the conclusion that the comet is larger than that of the Chicxulub impact event (see details here) that wiped out 75% of all flora and fauna on earth 65 million years ago. The problem is that the new comet is on its way to hit earth head-on in 6 months and 15 days.
The two understand that they have discovered a planet-killing catastrophe, and that mankind only has a little over 6 months to do something about it. They manage an audience at the White House with the help of the president’s chief science advisor, Dr. Oglethorpe (Rob Morgan). But when they arrive, President Orlean (Meryl Streep) is completely indifferent. Her political ambitions don’t allow the distraction of an imminent extinction event. Jason (Jonah Hill), the Chief of Staff who is also her son, even ridicules the astronomers and eventually they are sent away. Nothing will be done.
Thunderstruck, the scientists decide to turn the the media instead. They are invited to the popular morning show The Daily Rip, where they are also received as curious, cute scientists and not taken seriously. They are trying to make the world just “Look Up” and see what’s coming.
Don’t Look Up is a satire, of course, and it is extremely timely. It portrays a White House full of sycophants, staffed by nepotism, with a President who is completely self-absorbed and clueless. Facing a catastrophic event coming up, nobody wants to bother with it. The negative message it creates in social media is simply inconvenient. The industrial complex quickly figures out how they could possibly get very rich off of this, the danger and risk to the world be damned. Nobody takes the scientists seriously. They become the villains.
And that, my friends, is the state of our world today.
Enjoy a good laugh while you’re watching, and don’t worry that it will make you want to cry because of the insanity of it all.
Colin Powell passed away from cancer and complications arising from Covid-19.
Al the former presidents were there, but Trump was missing.
Here is Trump’s official statement:
Wonderful to see Colin Powell, who made big mistakes on Iraq and famously, so-called weapons of mass destruction, be treated in death so beautifully by the Fake News Media. Hope that happens to me someday. He was a classic RINO [Republican in Name Only], if even that, always being the first to attack other Republicans. He made plenty of mistakes, but anyway, may he rest in peace!
— Source
Colin Powell was a classy man.
He made a huge mistake under G.W. Bush when he propagated what he knew was a lie to the United Nations and the world. Yes, that was the mistake his legacy will, unfortunately, always be tarnished by.
But Trump’s statement shows what kind of man he is: One I would not want in my backyard BBQ party. He would not be worthy of sitting in the front row at this funeral.
Patriot
– a person who vigorously supports their country and is prepared to defend it against enemies or detractors.
On July 4th we see more American flags than usual, of course, and I have noticed that lately I have not reacted to seeing the flag with thoughts of patriotism, as one would expect. That’s because the flag is now often used by Trump supporters, calling themselves patriots, while flying huge flags on the backs of their trucks, at rallies or at stands where they sell Trump paraphernalia.
I am tired of reading about people, even in courts, calling themselves patriots for participating in the insurrection of January 6, 2021. I have displayed the definition of “patriot” at the top of this post.
We have a constitution, and a constitutional process. If we don’t agree with the interpretation of a law, or if we don’t agree with the outcome of an election, we can appeal to the judiciary. We can sue the various states, counties, or candidates, and if there was actual wrong-doing, we will win based on the evidence and that’s how we solve disputes in this country patriotically.
We don’t get to become vigilantes and physically and verbally attack journalists, political opponents, elected members of government or anyone else that does not agree with us. That is not patriotism, that’s assault. Its stands diametrically opposed to what is patriotism. It’s anti-patriotism.
When Clinton lost the election in 2016, and people complained, Trump supporters used to say “You lost the election, get over it and move on!” Move on the country did.
Trump lost the election in 2020 by a larger margin than Clinton lost it. It’s time to get over it and move on.
If there was wrongdoing, fraud, or anything else unconstitutional in the 2020 election, we can have recourse through the judiciary. That is the patriotic way to handle this.
