(This post was dashed off in the last ten minutes of the day, June 14, with the intention of adding an update below. You're now reading the June 15 version of what a day June 14 was.)
There are ordinary days...and nice days...and days when one big bad thing happens...and then there are days when it just seems as if badness is popping up all over, and even if none of it's all that bad, you wish you'd hidden under the bed instead of getting out of it.
This has been one.
Start with the blogger getting up around 4 a.m. to prepare for Wednesday Market in Wise County, thinking market buddy couldn't possibly just fail to show up since he was the one who invested in those marked-down Coca-Cola products. Heard a motor around 6:45 a.m. It turned out to be merely a low-flying plane. No pickup truck ever arrived. I waited and waited and waited and missed all chances (a) to spend a full day doing unpaid boring personal stuff I want to get done online, (b) to walk to the cafe before it became hot outside, (c) to walk to the cafe without the sun beating down right in my face, or (d) to catch a ride with anyone going to work.
Then as I walked down the road I heard black vultures squawking, which they don't often do, quarrelling with the crows about what had been covered in mown grass but not cleaned up at the site of a major traffic accident yeterday. One vulture swooped out toward me and circled right over my head. Ominous. I respect the neighborhood vulture family's place in the environment and usually like them, but not when they're in combat mode.
Then I got online, and, well, #Alexandria...so not the way I remember one of the nicest, prettiest, friendliest parts of Greater Washington. I spent a lot of time watching for updates on Twitter. Saw the London fire, saw the San Francisco murders.
Saw what I have in the way of a governor, obviously stunned like everyone else because I can't imagine any other way he'd be that stupid, trying to exploit tragedy for political gain.
Saw other ugly things I do not normally see on Twitter. Polite adults were flaming and sniping at each other; I suppose my comment on my governor's outbreak of foot-and-mouth-disease might have looked like a snipe, if not a flame, but !!! . People who usually tweet or retweet one or two things a day were following the news on Twitter and zapping those flames around. My Twitter stream (of things people/sites I follow have tweeted) is broad and moves fast, but it looked as if it were standing still because things were popping back up, retweeted by yet another Twit, every ten minutes.
It was a really weird feeling, hard to pinpoint. I don't feel that discombobulated merely because I woke up before daylight. I don't feel that discombobulated by people not wanting to work an outdoor market on days when it may be hot, rainy, or both by turns, nor by roadkill, nor by maniac outbursts of violence in places where I know people. It had to have been the combination.
I kept plugging away on the personal stuff, but by five o'clock I wasn't sure whether I was eager to go home or apprehensive about what else could go wrong...let's just say that all that went wrong in the evening was that it finally rained just as I was walking home.
Wednesday, June 14, 2017
Tuesday, June 13, 2017
The Sciences Must Feminize
In advance of National Bad Poetry Day, yes, but in light of these posts:
http://www.nationalreview.com/node/447445/print
and
http://www.nationalreview.com/node/448360/print
...I wrote this one several years ago, actually, as a reaction to one of Wendell Berry's essays (cited within the poem), and to a college teacher who railed about the damage female students were sure to do to the sciences by earning degrees in them. It seems timely. I agree with Ben Shapiro, cited above, that men in et per se aren't the problem; Bette Midler was clearly just reacting to shock, and should be left to recover in peace. (If you read through to the last verse, that's the conclusion of this Bad Poem.) But as long as college girls have to endure twaddle about the hazards of "feminization" of the professions for which they have more natural talent than the half of humankind that seems more likely to have been designed to take out the garbage, women need to keep thinking this kind of thoughts, too.
http://www.nationalreview.com/node/447445/print
and
http://www.nationalreview.com/node/448360/print
...I wrote this one several years ago, actually, as a reaction to one of Wendell Berry's essays (cited within the poem), and to a college teacher who railed about the damage female students were sure to do to the sciences by earning degrees in them. It seems timely. I agree with Ben Shapiro, cited above, that men in et per se aren't the problem; Bette Midler was clearly just reacting to shock, and should be left to recover in peace. (If you read through to the last verse, that's the conclusion of this Bad Poem.) But as long as college girls have to endure twaddle about the hazards of "feminization" of the professions for which they have more natural talent than the half of humankind that seems more likely to have been designed to take out the garbage, women need to keep thinking this kind of thoughts, too.
SCIENCE
Time to move on over, guys;
The sciences must feminize.
We have a clear and pressing need
for scientists who understand
why scientific work must heed
the claims of earth and sea and land;
committed to relationships
that partner with the air and soil,
and knowing how it feels to bleed
and stop short of apocalypse
and turn again with loving hand
to labor to rebuild the land
before their industry can spoil
the commonwealth for the sake of greed.
Time to move on over, guys;
The sciences must feminize.
The time’s come to recheck the math.
If one man with a tractor moves
the timber out in 26 days,
dooms other trees to utter waste,
carves gulches deep into the hill,
leaves wild things nowhere to graze,
makes this year’s woods next year’s landfill;
while three men with five horses take
the same job in 65 days,
don’t over-fertilize the path
down which each load of timber moves,
take out each old tree without haste,
on only eight trees leave a blaze,
kill just one living tree, and make
of that some thing that’s useful still,
how much more profitable proves
the way of patience than of wrath?
Time to move on over, guys;
The sciences must feminize.
It’s time for scientists who feel
the pleasure of submissive love
to call us back to what is real:
science beneath, and faith above.
Irreverence is proper when
we think of our own past mistakes,
but when we study Nature’s ways,
reverence is required then.
Splice unrelated DNA’s?
Such mania science must not heed.
The scientist, with a heart that aches,
ponders the question: if we feed
gene splicers to some maggots, raise
those maggots to mature flies,
and feed the flies to farm trout, then
are those trout poisonous to men?
Time to move on over, guys;
The sciences must feminize.
Men say they think in pictures, like
the oddest of the female kind,
yet also claim to suffer from
such linearity of mind
they can’t see the big picture. Numb
to applications while they find
out theories, they try to prove
no God exists, nor Right, nor Mind
to ponder just what does exist.
Their logic is like Dawkins’, blind.
If neither Theol., Soc., nor Psych.
can verify we live and love,
we take as given what they’ve missed:
there are things science cannot prove.
Time to move on over, guys;
The sciences must feminize.
We murder to dissect; likewise
we murder when we generalize.
Real science is not gender-bound
and can be practiced by Real Men
who’re not afraid of common ground.
(Where was Curie, without Pierre?
Why, even in the verse above
the numbers came from Wendell Berry.)
Still, present dangers warn us fast:
if we survive, we must improve
on sexist science of the past,
progress to systems that outlast
technologies from time before
limits to fossil fuels were found.
Science can still be done by men;
they must think more like women, then.
Time to move on over, guys;
The sciences must feminize.
.The sciences must feminize.
Penny Nance Accentuates the Positive: God Bless Texas
Shared by Penny Nance in the e-mail, not because you couldn't be on her e-mail list too if interested, but because it's a good example of positive, proactive, hopeful "conservative" thinking on an issue that...before you scream "Thirty-five hundred identified kits?", you need to know that there are almost twenty-eight million people in Texas.
"
God Bless Texas
Texas is a good example of a state that is proactively looking for ways to eliminate their “sexual assault DNA kit” backlog.
In 2013, the Department of Public Safety reported 20,000 untested rape kits. Lawmakers quickly acted to provide $11 million to address the issue.
Still, more than 3,500 of those identified kits remain untested — meaning they haven't been analyzed in more than five years.
So, a new bill HB 1729, would give those applying or renewing their driver’s license an option of donating $1 or more to help with the backlog.
There’s a cause I’d like to support!
This is the type of outside the box thinking we need to help with and put an end to the backlog forever.
Join us on the front lines. Help us defend victims of sexual assault at both the national and state level. Visit www.CapitolHillBrief.org today. To listen to today’s broadcast, click here.
"
Giving people a choice of which social issues they want to fund, rather than setting up a big ongoing tax fund that may keep sucking money for fifty years after the original need has expired, is one way to prevent a democratic society from going Broke...
"
God Bless Texas
Texas is a good example of a state that is proactively looking for ways to eliminate their “sexual assault DNA kit” backlog.
In 2013, the Department of Public Safety reported 20,000 untested rape kits. Lawmakers quickly acted to provide $11 million to address the issue.
Still, more than 3,500 of those identified kits remain untested — meaning they haven't been analyzed in more than five years.
So, a new bill HB 1729, would give those applying or renewing their driver’s license an option of donating $1 or more to help with the backlog.
There’s a cause I’d like to support!
This is the type of outside the box thinking we need to help with and put an end to the backlog forever.
Join us on the front lines. Help us defend victims of sexual assault at both the national and state level. Visit www.CapitolHillBrief.org today. To listen to today’s broadcast, click here.
"
Giving people a choice of which social issues they want to fund, rather than setting up a big ongoing tax fund that may keep sucking money for fifty years after the original need has expired, is one way to prevent a democratic society from going Broke...
Is the Huffington Post Biased?
Let's test. The correspondents whose e-mail appears below are defensive of a teacher at a church-sponsored school who exposed students to anti-Muslim wartime propaganda messages from many centuries ago. They want to use commercial pressure, in classic "conservative" style, to punish the Huffington Post for citing this teacher as a specimen of "hate and bias."
The position of this web site is that the Huffington Post ought to be aware that hate and bias are two different things. Bias is the obvious fact that your grandchildren are in a whole different class of cuteness and cleverness from everyone else's grandchildren. Hate is the desire to do harm to someone else's grandchildren. Duh. If the school advertises itself as a Catholic high school, then the students and parents are obviously paying for Catholic bias in everything, up to and including a bias in favor of vintage Catholic rules regarding the hem- and necklines of the cheerleaders' uniforms. Confusing that bias with hate is just plain wrong--ethically, and intellectually.
(The position of this web site is that, yes, the students should be aware that a Catholic "saint" said some very unpleasant, and debatable, things about the enemies of his church and country during a war, and they should be aware that the circumstances under which he said those things calls those things into question. Some things said by Martin Luther, by G.K. Chesterton, by Margaret Atwood about these United States (even if she used those remarks as evidence of a fictional character's deteriorating mental state), not to mention by people on all sides of the color and culture wars of the 1960s, were also very "polarizing" and frankly rude to various readers. This should not be a problem for students who belong in high school, though. At my school we were tested on identifying statements of alleged fact versus statements of opinion in grade six...this should still be a requirement for admission to high school. And, given that high school students can make this crucial distinction, they should not need to be "protected" from the hatespeech of bygone years. Whether it serves any useful purpose to require them to read ancient war propaganda is debatable, too, but I'm willing to leave that debate to the local community; it may relate to the local news the kids are reading.)
But, is the Huffington Post itself getting biased these days? Let's check. How are they handling the Mark Smythe story? (Mark Smythe is a Michigan farmer who, according to Breitbart, was banned from a market because--although he waits on market shoppers impartially--he refused to rent out his orchard for a same-sex wedding party.) Are they defending Smythe's freedom of association from religious persecution?
"
Allstate continues to be a leading advertiser at Huffington Post while blocking emails from Floridafamily.org action email server.
420 out of 439 (96%) companies have stopped advertising at Huffington Post in the thirteen months.
Allstate Insurance Company has advertised at Huffingtonpost.com longer than most of the other companies. Allstate continues to be a leading advertiser at Huffingtonpost.com. Florida Family Association had not targeted Allstate up until recently because the company has routinely blocked emails from the Florida Family Association office. Now Allstate is blocking emails that are sent through the Floridafamily.org action email server.
The Huffington Post’s most recent Islamophobia fake news targeted a Catholic High School teacher for sharing truthful statements with students that Saint John Bosco wrote about Islam. The Huffington Post has started a project called “Documenting Hate” which put pressure on a Catholic Diocese to terminate well liked teacher Mark Smythe for sharing factual Catholic teaching with students that was critical of Muhammad. In the case of the Huffington Post’s hit piece on Mark Smythe, the person who filed the complaint directly with the Huffington Post was not directly involved in the school. The Huffington Post article states “A concerned mother with a child in Smythe’s class gave copies of the reading assignment to a friend, who then sent the copies to The Huffington Post through the Documenting Hate project.” The Huffington Post writes regarding their “Documenting Hate” project“America does not do a good job of tracking incidents of hate and bias. We need your help to create a database of such incidents, so we all know what’s going on.” This project is certainly being used to push the Islamophobia false narrative.
Fourteen examples of Huffington Post’s Islamist propaganda articles are posted at the bottom of this article.
Why is it important to urge companies to stop advertising at Huffingtonpost.com?
• Islamophobia propaganda is the top tool Islamists use to influence Americans to ignore advancement of Sharia doctrine in the United States. Unfortunately, it intimidates people to the point of stifling free speech in a manner that hurts public safety. Labeling people or groups as Islamophobes is intended to influence them to stop criticizing Islam. Fear of being branded an Islamophobe played a role in suppressing communications that may have had different results for the lives of 63 people in San Bernardino and Orlando.
• One article wrongfully places the blame on Christians and Jews in a manner that creates contempt for Christianity and Judaism.
• The reports published by the news media do influence the political positions of the public. Huffingtonpost.com is one of the largest liberal progressive media outlets in America.
• Florida Family Association’s opposition campaign educates hundreds of officials at American companies about the harm caused by erroneous Islamophobia propaganda. The thousands of emails that company officials receive reveal that there are many Americans who find Islamophobia propaganda deceitful, harmful and offensive.
Allstate Insurance Company has advertised at Huffingtonpost.com since June 2016. Their advertisiements have increased during the past month.
Florida Family Association has prepared an email for you to send to encourage Allstate officials to stop supporting the Huffington Post’s Islamist propaganda with their advertising dollars.
Click here to send your email to Allstate officials. This email will open in your email browser unlike most email campaigns. This is because Allstate is blocking emails from Florida Family Association’s email delivery server. If the above link does not open in your email browser or if the email is returned to you please prepare an email using the suggested subject line, content and four email addresses provided below.
Suggested subject line:
Please stop supporting Huffington Post Islamist propaganda with Allstate advertising dollars.
Suggested content:
I am very disappointed that Allstate is advertising at the Huffington Post whose Islamist propaganda impairs public safety and is offensive to Christians and Jews.
Huffington Post articles defend the Muslim Brotherhood, fundraise for CAIR, blame Islamophobia for worldwide conflict with Muslims, and promote an anti-Semitic blog.
Please stop supporting Huffington Post Islamist propaganda with Allstate advertising dollars.
Email addresses
tom.wilson@allstate.com
matt.winter@allstate.com
sanjay.gupta@allstate.com
victoria.dinges@allstate.com
Here's the Breitbart story about left-wing haters who are actually doing harm to a Christian because he's acting on his beliefs, which ironically happen to be much, much milder than the view of homosexuality taken in Muslim countries...Breitbart stories aren't circulated free of charge in the e-mail, but I have to say that, for a Breitbart page, this one behaved well this morning. (Though it didn't behave equally well when I reopened it to share the link with you.)
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/06/04/christian-farmer-barred-michigan-market-views-gay-marriage/
Breitbart acknowledges a right-wing bias as readily as many Huffington Post writers acknowledge a left-wing bias, so I'd like to see how HP'ers might report the Mark Smythe story.
One more thought for "conservatives," for +Arianna Huffington , and for the Huffington Post: The way to get more of the type of content we want into web sites is to sponsor it. For example, if you think this web site is too political, or not political enough, or too religious, or too book-oriented, or whatever, the way to shape this web site in the direction you prefer is to sponsor more of the kind of content you prefer to see. More links? More recipes? More local tourist attractions? Click one of the links below, then follow instructions:
https://www.fiverr.com/priscillaking
https://www.patreon.com/user?u=4923804
And, can we do an Amazon link? I've not actually read this one; many books have been written on the history of book banning, and this is the one that floated to the top on Amazon today.
The position of this web site is that the Huffington Post ought to be aware that hate and bias are two different things. Bias is the obvious fact that your grandchildren are in a whole different class of cuteness and cleverness from everyone else's grandchildren. Hate is the desire to do harm to someone else's grandchildren. Duh. If the school advertises itself as a Catholic high school, then the students and parents are obviously paying for Catholic bias in everything, up to and including a bias in favor of vintage Catholic rules regarding the hem- and necklines of the cheerleaders' uniforms. Confusing that bias with hate is just plain wrong--ethically, and intellectually.
(The position of this web site is that, yes, the students should be aware that a Catholic "saint" said some very unpleasant, and debatable, things about the enemies of his church and country during a war, and they should be aware that the circumstances under which he said those things calls those things into question. Some things said by Martin Luther, by G.K. Chesterton, by Margaret Atwood about these United States (even if she used those remarks as evidence of a fictional character's deteriorating mental state), not to mention by people on all sides of the color and culture wars of the 1960s, were also very "polarizing" and frankly rude to various readers. This should not be a problem for students who belong in high school, though. At my school we were tested on identifying statements of alleged fact versus statements of opinion in grade six...this should still be a requirement for admission to high school. And, given that high school students can make this crucial distinction, they should not need to be "protected" from the hatespeech of bygone years. Whether it serves any useful purpose to require them to read ancient war propaganda is debatable, too, but I'm willing to leave that debate to the local community; it may relate to the local news the kids are reading.)
But, is the Huffington Post itself getting biased these days? Let's check. How are they handling the Mark Smythe story? (Mark Smythe is a Michigan farmer who, according to Breitbart, was banned from a market because--although he waits on market shoppers impartially--he refused to rent out his orchard for a same-sex wedding party.) Are they defending Smythe's freedom of association from religious persecution?
"
Allstate continues to be a leading advertiser at Huffington Post while blocking emails from Floridafamily.org action email server.
| Click here to send your email to Allstate officials. This email will open in your email browser unlike most email campaigns. This is because Allstate is blocking emails from Florida Family Association’s email delivery server. If the above link does not open in your email browser or if the email is returned to you please prepare an email using the suggested subject line, content and four email addresses provided below. Please consider posting a message at https://www.facebook.com/Allstate/ to urge Allstate to stop supporting HuffPost propaganda with their advertising dollars. |
420 out of 439 (96%) companies have stopped advertising at Huffington Post in the thirteen months.
Allstate Insurance Company has advertised at Huffingtonpost.com longer than most of the other companies. Allstate continues to be a leading advertiser at Huffingtonpost.com. Florida Family Association had not targeted Allstate up until recently because the company has routinely blocked emails from the Florida Family Association office. Now Allstate is blocking emails that are sent through the Floridafamily.org action email server.
The Huffington Post’s most recent Islamophobia fake news targeted a Catholic High School teacher for sharing truthful statements with students that Saint John Bosco wrote about Islam. The Huffington Post has started a project called “Documenting Hate” which put pressure on a Catholic Diocese to terminate well liked teacher Mark Smythe for sharing factual Catholic teaching with students that was critical of Muhammad. In the case of the Huffington Post’s hit piece on Mark Smythe, the person who filed the complaint directly with the Huffington Post was not directly involved in the school. The Huffington Post article states “A concerned mother with a child in Smythe’s class gave copies of the reading assignment to a friend, who then sent the copies to The Huffington Post through the Documenting Hate project.” The Huffington Post writes regarding their “Documenting Hate” project“America does not do a good job of tracking incidents of hate and bias. We need your help to create a database of such incidents, so we all know what’s going on.” This project is certainly being used to push the Islamophobia false narrative.
Fourteen examples of Huffington Post’s Islamist propaganda articles are posted at the bottom of this article.
Why is it important to urge companies to stop advertising at Huffingtonpost.com?
• Islamophobia propaganda is the top tool Islamists use to influence Americans to ignore advancement of Sharia doctrine in the United States. Unfortunately, it intimidates people to the point of stifling free speech in a manner that hurts public safety. Labeling people or groups as Islamophobes is intended to influence them to stop criticizing Islam. Fear of being branded an Islamophobe played a role in suppressing communications that may have had different results for the lives of 63 people in San Bernardino and Orlando.
• One article wrongfully places the blame on Christians and Jews in a manner that creates contempt for Christianity and Judaism.
• The reports published by the news media do influence the political positions of the public. Huffingtonpost.com is one of the largest liberal progressive media outlets in America.
• Florida Family Association’s opposition campaign educates hundreds of officials at American companies about the harm caused by erroneous Islamophobia propaganda. The thousands of emails that company officials receive reveal that there are many Americans who find Islamophobia propaganda deceitful, harmful and offensive.
Allstate Insurance Company has advertised at Huffingtonpost.com since June 2016. Their advertisiements have increased during the past month.
Florida Family Association has prepared an email for you to send to encourage Allstate officials to stop supporting the Huffington Post’s Islamist propaganda with their advertising dollars.
Click here to send your email to Allstate officials. This email will open in your email browser unlike most email campaigns. This is because Allstate is blocking emails from Florida Family Association’s email delivery server. If the above link does not open in your email browser or if the email is returned to you please prepare an email using the suggested subject line, content and four email addresses provided below.
Suggested subject line:
Please stop supporting Huffington Post Islamist propaganda with Allstate advertising dollars.
Suggested content:
I am very disappointed that Allstate is advertising at the Huffington Post whose Islamist propaganda impairs public safety and is offensive to Christians and Jews.
Huffington Post articles defend the Muslim Brotherhood, fundraise for CAIR, blame Islamophobia for worldwide conflict with Muslims, and promote an anti-Semitic blog.
Please stop supporting Huffington Post Islamist propaganda with Allstate advertising dollars.
Email addresses
tom.wilson@allstate.com
matt.winter@allstate.com
sanjay.gupta@allstate.com
victoria.dinges@allstate.com
Floridafamily.orgEmail: ffa@floridafamily.org
Florida Family Association, Inc.
P.O. Box 46547, Tampa, FL 33646-0105
Telephone 813-690-0060
"Florida Family Association, Inc.
P.O. Box 46547, Tampa, FL 33646-0105
Telephone 813-690-0060
Here's the Breitbart story about left-wing haters who are actually doing harm to a Christian because he's acting on his beliefs, which ironically happen to be much, much milder than the view of homosexuality taken in Muslim countries...Breitbart stories aren't circulated free of charge in the e-mail, but I have to say that, for a Breitbart page, this one behaved well this morning. (Though it didn't behave equally well when I reopened it to share the link with you.)
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/06/04/christian-farmer-barred-michigan-market-views-gay-marriage/
Breitbart acknowledges a right-wing bias as readily as many Huffington Post writers acknowledge a left-wing bias, so I'd like to see how HP'ers might report the Mark Smythe story.
One more thought for "conservatives," for +Arianna Huffington , and for the Huffington Post: The way to get more of the type of content we want into web sites is to sponsor it. For example, if you think this web site is too political, or not political enough, or too religious, or too book-oriented, or whatever, the way to shape this web site in the direction you prefer is to sponsor more of the kind of content you prefer to see. More links? More recipes? More local tourist attractions? Click one of the links below, then follow instructions:
https://www.fiverr.com/priscillaking
https://www.patreon.com/user?u=4923804
And, can we do an Amazon link? I've not actually read this one; many books have been written on the history of book banning, and this is the one that floated to the top on Amazon today.
Friday, June 9, 2017
Happy Post: I.G.A. Roasted & Salted Pumpkin Seeds
This web site has not featured a happy product review, books apart, for a long time. Well, here is one.
Yesterday I went to the Independent Grocers Association store, all the way down the state line, because that was the closest store running a good sale on small bottles of Coca-Cola products. I wanted to sell cold drinks in the Friday Market this morning.
As local lurkers may have noticed, the owner of the cooler didn't show up again. She's not old, but has been ill. Pray for her. So once again what I had for sale were warm drinks. Last week I found a sale on Pepsi products, stayed with them until they actually started to feel warm, and took them home and drank them before they could deteriorate from the heat. Today I found a sale on Coke products, and people snapped them up before the chilly fog even lifted.
Anyway, while in the I.G.A. store, I dillydallied about waiting for a relative to load up a cart, in hopes of getting a lift home--which I did--and I found a whole rack of off-brand snacks, including ridiculously overpriced nuts, standard-priced candies, and a really good price on roasted and salted pepitas.
I've not seen roasted and salted pepitas in a U.S. supermarket before. They've not really achieved mainstream snack status in the Eastern States. I've seen Badia brand raw, green, unsalted pepitas--which are scrumptious, having a flavor of their own that's different from nuts or sunflower seeds, and good all by itself without any salt or other additives--and David brand pumpkin seeds in the big white outer shells, which I've never risked trying. I don't like peanuts "salted in the shells" and don't imagine I'd care for pumpkin seeds prepared that way either.
Recently, GBP having finally run out of pumpkinseed meal for my cats, I'd shared a pack of pepitas with them. They did figure out how to chew them properly, but the litter box showed that they swallowed an awful lot of those expensive, tasty snacks whole. I don't own a blender or grinder, or want one, and was not exactly looking forward to grinding my own pumpkinseed meal for the cats.
Much as the cats have learned to like pumpkinseed meal on their canned cat treats. Much as all outdoor cats need occasional pumpkinseed meal treats. Cats can benefit from the same proteins and minerals humans get from pumpkin seeds, but a lot of the internal parasites cats pick up from rodents don't tolerate pumpkin seeds.
Anyway, I bought a package of roasted and salted pepitas. Well, I'm human, with teeth designed for grinding, and I'm used to eating pepitas raw. But what I noticed right away was that being roasted in oil had softened the seeds even further. It gave them a gratifying crunch, but it made them easier to chew.
I said, "Heather! Kitty-kitty-kitty! Have I ever found a treat for you!" I ran a handful of pepitas under water to get the salt level down where a cat could stand it.
Heather agreed that they were a treat. Cats' teeth aren't designed for grinding things that are naturally thin and flat, like pepitas, but the softer, oilier shells of the roasted kind crunched just right for a cat.
I'm not going to post a picture, or even a description, of the contents of the litter box this morning. Let's just say they were gratifying.
For myself...the price is about the same, Badia being a name brand and the I.G.A. special being unadvertised, and I'd probably pick the raw pepitas next time.
Since I'll probably continue buying pepitas to share with the cats, any time I'm in (or passing by) the I.G.A. store, I'll probably pick the roasted, salted pepitas every time I have a chance.
I'll probably have to give the cats their treat first in order to get the package inside and eat any pepitas for myself, and since the cats don't enjoy taking worm medicine and do enjoy eating pumpkin seeds, that's a clear gain. (They'll still get worm medicine occasionally, but less often.)
This post was mainly about I.G.A. Can it have an Amazon book link? Well, if we count Kindle "books" as books, here's one some readers may enjoy:
![Texas Jack's Famous Pumpkin & Pumpkin Seed Recipes: (36 Recipes For Delectable Pumpkin & Pumpkin Seed Treats) by [Waller, Dennis]](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51CeqabtBoL.jpg)
Yesterday I went to the Independent Grocers Association store, all the way down the state line, because that was the closest store running a good sale on small bottles of Coca-Cola products. I wanted to sell cold drinks in the Friday Market this morning.
As local lurkers may have noticed, the owner of the cooler didn't show up again. She's not old, but has been ill. Pray for her. So once again what I had for sale were warm drinks. Last week I found a sale on Pepsi products, stayed with them until they actually started to feel warm, and took them home and drank them before they could deteriorate from the heat. Today I found a sale on Coke products, and people snapped them up before the chilly fog even lifted.
Anyway, while in the I.G.A. store, I dillydallied about waiting for a relative to load up a cart, in hopes of getting a lift home--which I did--and I found a whole rack of off-brand snacks, including ridiculously overpriced nuts, standard-priced candies, and a really good price on roasted and salted pepitas.
I've not seen roasted and salted pepitas in a U.S. supermarket before. They've not really achieved mainstream snack status in the Eastern States. I've seen Badia brand raw, green, unsalted pepitas--which are scrumptious, having a flavor of their own that's different from nuts or sunflower seeds, and good all by itself without any salt or other additives--and David brand pumpkin seeds in the big white outer shells, which I've never risked trying. I don't like peanuts "salted in the shells" and don't imagine I'd care for pumpkin seeds prepared that way either.
Recently, GBP having finally run out of pumpkinseed meal for my cats, I'd shared a pack of pepitas with them. They did figure out how to chew them properly, but the litter box showed that they swallowed an awful lot of those expensive, tasty snacks whole. I don't own a blender or grinder, or want one, and was not exactly looking forward to grinding my own pumpkinseed meal for the cats.
Much as the cats have learned to like pumpkinseed meal on their canned cat treats. Much as all outdoor cats need occasional pumpkinseed meal treats. Cats can benefit from the same proteins and minerals humans get from pumpkin seeds, but a lot of the internal parasites cats pick up from rodents don't tolerate pumpkin seeds.
Anyway, I bought a package of roasted and salted pepitas. Well, I'm human, with teeth designed for grinding, and I'm used to eating pepitas raw. But what I noticed right away was that being roasted in oil had softened the seeds even further. It gave them a gratifying crunch, but it made them easier to chew.
I said, "Heather! Kitty-kitty-kitty! Have I ever found a treat for you!" I ran a handful of pepitas under water to get the salt level down where a cat could stand it.
Heather agreed that they were a treat. Cats' teeth aren't designed for grinding things that are naturally thin and flat, like pepitas, but the softer, oilier shells of the roasted kind crunched just right for a cat.
I'm not going to post a picture, or even a description, of the contents of the litter box this morning. Let's just say they were gratifying.
For myself...the price is about the same, Badia being a name brand and the I.G.A. special being unadvertised, and I'd probably pick the raw pepitas next time.
Since I'll probably continue buying pepitas to share with the cats, any time I'm in (or passing by) the I.G.A. store, I'll probably pick the roasted, salted pepitas every time I have a chance.
I'll probably have to give the cats their treat first in order to get the package inside and eat any pepitas for myself, and since the cats don't enjoy taking worm medicine and do enjoy eating pumpkin seeds, that's a clear gain. (They'll still get worm medicine occasionally, but less often.)
This post was mainly about I.G.A. Can it have an Amazon book link? Well, if we count Kindle "books" as books, here's one some readers may enjoy:
Thursday, June 8, 2017
We're Here, We're Conservative, Get Used to It (Clearer, and Longer, Updated Version)
(Edited because it went live in an unfinished form...the family who run the Family Bakery Cafe have a family reunion coming on, and wanted to close the cafe early yesterday, while I was still writing.)
Here's a new book link--Correspondents' Choice; I have (as yet) no way of knowing how helpful it may be, but I'd like to encourage anyone out there who finds it helpful to share it with me...
Amazon Associates don't get free books, and this web site has yet to achieve financial security.
However, this web site has been Goaded Beyond a Breaking Point.
Some of you may remember how, about a year ago, I (Priscilla King) lost a steady writing job because I couldn't do content that I felt would "be polarizing" about last year's presidential debacle. In real life I've not been trained to "polarize" people, nor have I noticeably done that. In real life--admittedly more because of my complexion than because of my actual personality or character, but still--I've been consistently steered toward diplomatic more than campaigning circles.
I think of myself, despite what I see as appalling abuse of a good word, as "liberal." As distinct from, and sometimes opposed to, left-wing.
I do not think of myself as primarily a political creature. I do not think of this web site as primarily a political blog, although the correspondence from elected officials isn't going away. What I'm about is writing, books, and writers. All of them. Including the ones who disagree with me about religion or politics, because a Real Liberal may disagree with what you say but will always defend your right to say it.
I don't think it's possible for a book not to say anything about its author's worldview. (If it really tries, a book may succeed in not saying anything coherent to anybody; that's what we call a bad book.)
It's possible for a fictional book to be dominated by its authors' opinions to the point that it loses credibility. I personally like G.K. Chesterton's "Father Brown" detective stories--but I like them because they're pieces of Chesterton wit, not because they're detective stories. As detective stories they fail, because there's no suspense once you've figured out that, if a crime has been committed (and sometimes, by way of surprise, it only seems as if one has), you know the non-Catholic character "dunnit." Sometimes we're even told that how Father Brown solved a mystery was that he'd heard a character's confession. Give us a break. These stories work as op-eds-in-narrative-form but they fail as mysteries.
A better example of how a fervent Christian might write detective stories was Dorothy Sayers. Like Chesterton and Arthur Conan Doyle, she started with a likable detective--some critics wondered whether Lord Peter Wimsey was the son she wished she'd had. He was a shellshocked veteran, gradually recovering from post-traumatic stress as the series progressed, using his detective work to help other people and his ability to help them cope with his PTSD. Sayers' mysteries weren't exactly "cozy" but neither were they "hard-boiled." They're saturated with Christian humanitarian feeling. Neither Sayers, nor Wimsey and his friends, nor readers, can ever forget that each victim was a person who might have suffered and was probably missed. And Wimsey was educated in a time and place when education involved mandatory classes in (Christian) "Religious Knowledge" as well as a body of "English Literature" that included many Christian religious works. He talks like a Christian. Yet Sayers insisted that Wimsey was only Christian in the cultural sense, that he had no real faith of his own. Readers suggested that she make him a Christian. She refused. Wimsey kept struggling (believably) with his feelings without seeking comfort in religion, and he kept working with sincere Christians and insincere Christians and lapsed Christians, and aristocrats, and working men, and lesbians, and mad artists, and advertising people (like Sayers), and convicts, and every other kind of people you meet in real life. You know how a Lord Peter Wimsey story is going to end if you happen to share the odd bit of knowledge Wimsey uses to solve the mystery--what's missing from somebody's toolbox? You can't predict how the story is going to end based on whether characters are "nice" or religious or similar to Sayers in any way.
Does that mean these novels were written "just for entertainment"? Sayers wrote things that sound as if she thought they were, and felt guilty about them--and yet they say several things that she seems to have believed: that each individual life matters, that "nice" people aren't necessarily better human beings than less attractive people, that rich people shouldn't avoid fraternizing with poor people...
Here's another detective story that has stuck in my mind, although I can't say it's especially well written or find anything Christian about it:
The opinions The Silence of the Lambs contains may not be specifically Christian, but if they're not what Harris believed while he was writing it, he ought to be ashamed of himself; the novel certainly contains opinions. It says that young women are brave and tough, that the FBI is a respectable part of the U.S. government, and most emphatically that even serial murderers may be worth feeding; and other things.
I wish I could now say something about what Hope Clark's detective stories say. (I wish I'd read them, but nobody's been paying me enough to buy them as new books, nor has anyone sent me a copy of them as secondhand books, and I'm already enjoying enough of her e-newsletters for free that I refuse to request a free book.) She says they're "just for entertainment." I don't think that's true; if it were, they wouldn't be entertaining, and nobody would bother to print them. For starters all successful murder mysteries always say that (a) murder is wrong and (b) murderers will be caught. Then, the better they're written, the more they add to that primary message; the more they express what the author believes. Not in the sense of being predictable, but in the sense of showing thought and high-quality work...
But I've been kicking the Big Lie that Refuses to Die around for some time now--the lie that all "conservatives" are haters, or, more specifically, the kind of people who think that persons of color are inferior and should have to sit at the back of the bus. This web site has consistently kicked that lie at every opportunity, from the beginning, when we started publicizing Tea Party groups organized by members of ethnic minorities and even by Democrats. (For the record, the first Tea Party link I ever found was on a Democrat's web site, although I never went back and linked to it from this web site; for the record, Karen Bracken used to be, and Charlotte Iserbyt remained, Democrats.)
Over the weekend I felt an especially strong urge to kick that Illiberal Left lie because this was the weekend when I finally got through a stack of old printouts and really read a Democratic Party poll site's findings about where that party stood, early in ex-President Obama's first campaign. It was illuminating. There was a wide and consistent split between what the D's called liberals, meaning Illiberal Left yuppies, and the majority of actual Democrat voters, whom the D's classified as "conservative Democrats" and government-funding-dependent Democrats. (Apart from their preference to maintain and expand welfare handout programs, the funding-dependent Democrat voters' positions on some questions skewed to the right of the Republicans surveyed.) Also, relative to the left wing of the Democratic Party, both Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton had to be classified as, really, wingnuts. Actual Democrat voters remained the party of people like Molly Ivins, Jim Hightower, John Holt, Karen Bracken, and the relative this web site has nicknamed my "Aunt Dotty." Obama and Clinton represented those people perhaps a tiny bit better than they represent Grandma Bonnie Peters (a lifelong Republican)--but not much.
I don't identify as any kind of Republican, certainly not an angry one...but Would youall really like to know how it was possible for a heroine like Hillary to lose to the Orange One?!?! There, I'll stop yelling now.
In real life I've not found it especially hard to get along with Democrats. I've voted for more Republicans than Democrats, but I've found it possible to work with Democrats; I was happily married to one. I own several books by self-proclaimed Democrats, some of which I bought new to show respect.
So when I went so far as to reply to Hope Clark's e-newsletter, and she replied to my e-mail, I was quite disappointed that (for her) it doesn't work both ways. She just wanted to huddle together with people who agreed with her, whose books were "just for entertainment." She was absolutely sure that nobody who'd ever expressed opinions different from hers could have written anything "for entertainment." Even people who expressed opinions similar to hers overtly were "loud" and needed to be ignored until they gave up and left "the sane people," apparently meaning sneaking left-wingers, to reconcile their (minuscule) differences...
Mercy, Percy. I hope that's not what she actually meant to say, but that's what all the crybully types wailing about all of us mean, racist Republicans (all alike, of course) do consistently say, isn't it?
Then I checked in on Twitter this morning, and my Twitter feed was full of sour, angry Republican reactions to all the hate the D's have been dumping on the R's (and other non-Left types) for so long. Lots of hostility about Trump and Comey. Eric Trump said, presumably out of context, that Democrats aren't people and lots of R's were joking, I hope, that they agreed...I don't think I've ever seen so much angry-sounding Republican discourse. I'm not bothered when people express fear, sorrow, gloom, or malaise, but I am when they start going back and forth with anger. Lighten up, Republicans, you're starting to sound as bad as Democrats.
Well...this web site refuses to become a hostility dump site. This web site has a founding member who is a Republican, and in other action on this web site I just received an update from Grandma Bonnie Peters, age 82.
She's working again.
She's failed to break through the discrimination against people over age 80 at the Wal-Mart that wasn't built within easy walking distance from her house until she passed age 80.
Her vision has deteriorated enough that she's no longer able to drive.
So she's painting houses...because, although she qualified for a disability pension and was living on one for about a year post-bronchitis, she no longer considers herself disabled and wants a job!
There is a need to replace that ugly, inaccurate image of Republicans as Nazis (several Republicans personally killed Nazis) with the image of the actual Republican at this web site: a stooped, plump, perky, white-haired 82-year-old who would rather earn her own money doing honest work than be "taken care of" by social workers.
There's an actual need for friendly, goodhearted, fiscally conservative, socially liberal content on the Internet these days.
No, that kind of content is not what an unprejudiced reader would necessarily consider "dominated by politics"--although it's congruent with a reality-based political mindset. In real life GBP doesn't talk much about politics. She's more likely to talk about her grandchildren, her flowers, her church, what her younger friends are doing, how well her same-age friends are holding up, what she's been cooking and eating lately, any correlations she's noticed between what she's eaten and any symptoms she's noticed, and even new books when she's been able to read one, than about politics. I don't even know how she voted last November. I know she's a Republican because she doesn't want people trying to take care of her and keep her "free from want, free from fear." (Maybe mutual protection from those things with a close friend, but not some sort of "social program.") She wants to be free to protect herself from "want" and "fear."
I've not even been reading much of what I classify as political news lately. It's not been about issues; it's been about the personalities of people I don't know. I consider that gossip, and I consider its dominance of so-called political news an unhealthy sign in a democratic country, because only in a monarchy should "who" questions displace "what," "how," and "why" questions. This week Popvox reported that the U.S. Congress agreed to "condemn the terrorist attacks in Manchester in the strongest terms...express heartfelt condolences, and reaffirm unwavering support for the special relationship between" the U.S. and the U.K. Not much room for disagreement there, although it leaves room for debate about follow-up. I myself have been thinking more about the effect the cool wet weather is having on the raspberries than about politics. However, like GBP, I still want my government to get out of the way and let me protect myself from "want" and "fear."
I believe everybody has the right to be heard...including the far-right Lord's Covenant Church, although yesterday on Twitter I caught myself calling one of them down for digging up that old Cold War rhetoric. I remember Sheldon Emry, not as a hater, but as an elderly minister who shared a lot of fears that were sort of outdated even in the 1970s. But...The Bible Says Russia Will Invade America and Be Defeated? Meh. I don't know that it says that. Daniel himself didn't know that it said that. Wouldn't have known, if living. The biblical book of Daniel ends with a lot of reported prophecies of a future Daniel claimed he himself couldn't explain, as in Daniel 12:8-9, copied from www.kingjamesbibleonline.com:
"
And Daniel also admitted he'd been ill at the time, for whatever that may be worth. I do know that the dear old L.C.C. expected the Cold War to heat up within their lifetimes, and that's not what happened. So I see no particular benefit in trying to revive a war that stayed "cold" while it lasted and is, thank goodness, over (for now). We do not need more lists of movie producers to shun because they were Eastern European and/or Jewish.
We just might, however, need to start shunning the people who want to hush up all "political" content that might amount to dissent from the globalist agenda of the totalitarians manipulating the left wing of the Democratic Party. I would never suggest that we boycott all books, movies, magazines, web sites, etc., produced by Democrats. (In fact I recommend that we support the good ones...produced by what that ten-year-old site called the "conservative" Democrats.) But considering all those Internet pundits who recommend that we suppress "political" thought in order to be popular (with them), and Hope Clark's startling confession that she was refusing to read a friend's well reviewed novel because the friend had expressed "political disagreement," and Chuck Wendig's hostility to my post in January that very respectfully and supportively disagreed with one of his...and considering Al Gore's horrible version of The Future
for the Internet...I wonder whether we need to start asking our favorite Democrats to show their truly liberal support for, shudder, quake, "conservative" ideas. And people. Do we need "litmus tests" of their views on un-American censorship?
Are people prejudiced against me because I've been doing something to meet the need for nice, cheerful, sometimes "conservative" content? Is that why this web site isn't receiving better funding? (I hate to stereotype all Republicans as the kind of people who can't bring themselves to admit that anyone who deserves funding really needs funding, but if the shoe fits...)
Well, if it is, it is.
We're here! We're conservative! Get used to it!
And don't forget to fund it. "Conservative" Americans don't think of ourselves as embattled, because what most of us are saying, most of the time, is in fact congruous with what the majority of Americans (including the majority of Democrats, if they've not consulted the latest party line) are saying. But, in cyberspace and on television, we've always been treated like a minority, and we're likely to become a persecuted minority--we're not talking about the same Democrats who used to have a dream of little children from both sides playing in the same parks, in case anybody has failed to notice this. We need to develop within ourselves the kind of loyalty that allowed the Old Left to achieve majority status in the television industry.
https://www.patreon.com/user?u=4923804
Here's a new book link--Correspondents' Choice; I have (as yet) no way of knowing how helpful it may be, but I'd like to encourage anyone out there who finds it helpful to share it with me...
Amazon Associates don't get free books, and this web site has yet to achieve financial security.
However, this web site has been Goaded Beyond a Breaking Point.
Some of you may remember how, about a year ago, I (Priscilla King) lost a steady writing job because I couldn't do content that I felt would "be polarizing" about last year's presidential debacle. In real life I've not been trained to "polarize" people, nor have I noticeably done that. In real life--admittedly more because of my complexion than because of my actual personality or character, but still--I've been consistently steered toward diplomatic more than campaigning circles.
I think of myself, despite what I see as appalling abuse of a good word, as "liberal." As distinct from, and sometimes opposed to, left-wing.
I do not think of myself as primarily a political creature. I do not think of this web site as primarily a political blog, although the correspondence from elected officials isn't going away. What I'm about is writing, books, and writers. All of them. Including the ones who disagree with me about religion or politics, because a Real Liberal may disagree with what you say but will always defend your right to say it.
I don't think it's possible for a book not to say anything about its author's worldview. (If it really tries, a book may succeed in not saying anything coherent to anybody; that's what we call a bad book.)
It's possible for a fictional book to be dominated by its authors' opinions to the point that it loses credibility. I personally like G.K. Chesterton's "Father Brown" detective stories--but I like them because they're pieces of Chesterton wit, not because they're detective stories. As detective stories they fail, because there's no suspense once you've figured out that, if a crime has been committed (and sometimes, by way of surprise, it only seems as if one has), you know the non-Catholic character "dunnit." Sometimes we're even told that how Father Brown solved a mystery was that he'd heard a character's confession. Give us a break. These stories work as op-eds-in-narrative-form but they fail as mysteries.
A better example of how a fervent Christian might write detective stories was Dorothy Sayers. Like Chesterton and Arthur Conan Doyle, she started with a likable detective--some critics wondered whether Lord Peter Wimsey was the son she wished she'd had. He was a shellshocked veteran, gradually recovering from post-traumatic stress as the series progressed, using his detective work to help other people and his ability to help them cope with his PTSD. Sayers' mysteries weren't exactly "cozy" but neither were they "hard-boiled." They're saturated with Christian humanitarian feeling. Neither Sayers, nor Wimsey and his friends, nor readers, can ever forget that each victim was a person who might have suffered and was probably missed. And Wimsey was educated in a time and place when education involved mandatory classes in (Christian) "Religious Knowledge" as well as a body of "English Literature" that included many Christian religious works. He talks like a Christian. Yet Sayers insisted that Wimsey was only Christian in the cultural sense, that he had no real faith of his own. Readers suggested that she make him a Christian. She refused. Wimsey kept struggling (believably) with his feelings without seeking comfort in religion, and he kept working with sincere Christians and insincere Christians and lapsed Christians, and aristocrats, and working men, and lesbians, and mad artists, and advertising people (like Sayers), and convicts, and every other kind of people you meet in real life. You know how a Lord Peter Wimsey story is going to end if you happen to share the odd bit of knowledge Wimsey uses to solve the mystery--what's missing from somebody's toolbox? You can't predict how the story is going to end based on whether characters are "nice" or religious or similar to Sayers in any way.
Does that mean these novels were written "just for entertainment"? Sayers wrote things that sound as if she thought they were, and felt guilty about them--and yet they say several things that she seems to have believed: that each individual life matters, that "nice" people aren't necessarily better human beings than less attractive people, that rich people shouldn't avoid fraternizing with poor people...
Here's another detective story that has stuck in my mind, although I can't say it's especially well written or find anything Christian about it:
The opinions The Silence of the Lambs contains may not be specifically Christian, but if they're not what Harris believed while he was writing it, he ought to be ashamed of himself; the novel certainly contains opinions. It says that young women are brave and tough, that the FBI is a respectable part of the U.S. government, and most emphatically that even serial murderers may be worth feeding; and other things.
I wish I could now say something about what Hope Clark's detective stories say. (I wish I'd read them, but nobody's been paying me enough to buy them as new books, nor has anyone sent me a copy of them as secondhand books, and I'm already enjoying enough of her e-newsletters for free that I refuse to request a free book.) She says they're "just for entertainment." I don't think that's true; if it were, they wouldn't be entertaining, and nobody would bother to print them. For starters all successful murder mysteries always say that (a) murder is wrong and (b) murderers will be caught. Then, the better they're written, the more they add to that primary message; the more they express what the author believes. Not in the sense of being predictable, but in the sense of showing thought and high-quality work...
But I've been kicking the Big Lie that Refuses to Die around for some time now--the lie that all "conservatives" are haters, or, more specifically, the kind of people who think that persons of color are inferior and should have to sit at the back of the bus. This web site has consistently kicked that lie at every opportunity, from the beginning, when we started publicizing Tea Party groups organized by members of ethnic minorities and even by Democrats. (For the record, the first Tea Party link I ever found was on a Democrat's web site, although I never went back and linked to it from this web site; for the record, Karen Bracken used to be, and Charlotte Iserbyt remained, Democrats.)
Over the weekend I felt an especially strong urge to kick that Illiberal Left lie because this was the weekend when I finally got through a stack of old printouts and really read a Democratic Party poll site's findings about where that party stood, early in ex-President Obama's first campaign. It was illuminating. There was a wide and consistent split between what the D's called liberals, meaning Illiberal Left yuppies, and the majority of actual Democrat voters, whom the D's classified as "conservative Democrats" and government-funding-dependent Democrats. (Apart from their preference to maintain and expand welfare handout programs, the funding-dependent Democrat voters' positions on some questions skewed to the right of the Republicans surveyed.) Also, relative to the left wing of the Democratic Party, both Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton had to be classified as, really, wingnuts. Actual Democrat voters remained the party of people like Molly Ivins, Jim Hightower, John Holt, Karen Bracken, and the relative this web site has nicknamed my "Aunt Dotty." Obama and Clinton represented those people perhaps a tiny bit better than they represent Grandma Bonnie Peters (a lifelong Republican)--but not much.
I don't identify as any kind of Republican, certainly not an angry one...but Would youall really like to know how it was possible for a heroine like Hillary to lose to the Orange One?!?! There, I'll stop yelling now.
In real life I've not found it especially hard to get along with Democrats. I've voted for more Republicans than Democrats, but I've found it possible to work with Democrats; I was happily married to one. I own several books by self-proclaimed Democrats, some of which I bought new to show respect.
So when I went so far as to reply to Hope Clark's e-newsletter, and she replied to my e-mail, I was quite disappointed that (for her) it doesn't work both ways. She just wanted to huddle together with people who agreed with her, whose books were "just for entertainment." She was absolutely sure that nobody who'd ever expressed opinions different from hers could have written anything "for entertainment." Even people who expressed opinions similar to hers overtly were "loud" and needed to be ignored until they gave up and left "the sane people," apparently meaning sneaking left-wingers, to reconcile their (minuscule) differences...
Mercy, Percy. I hope that's not what she actually meant to say, but that's what all the crybully types wailing about all of us mean, racist Republicans (all alike, of course) do consistently say, isn't it?
Then I checked in on Twitter this morning, and my Twitter feed was full of sour, angry Republican reactions to all the hate the D's have been dumping on the R's (and other non-Left types) for so long. Lots of hostility about Trump and Comey. Eric Trump said, presumably out of context, that Democrats aren't people and lots of R's were joking, I hope, that they agreed...I don't think I've ever seen so much angry-sounding Republican discourse. I'm not bothered when people express fear, sorrow, gloom, or malaise, but I am when they start going back and forth with anger. Lighten up, Republicans, you're starting to sound as bad as Democrats.
Well...this web site refuses to become a hostility dump site. This web site has a founding member who is a Republican, and in other action on this web site I just received an update from Grandma Bonnie Peters, age 82.
She's working again.
She's failed to break through the discrimination against people over age 80 at the Wal-Mart that wasn't built within easy walking distance from her house until she passed age 80.
Her vision has deteriorated enough that she's no longer able to drive.
So she's painting houses...because, although she qualified for a disability pension and was living on one for about a year post-bronchitis, she no longer considers herself disabled and wants a job!
There is a need to replace that ugly, inaccurate image of Republicans as Nazis (several Republicans personally killed Nazis) with the image of the actual Republican at this web site: a stooped, plump, perky, white-haired 82-year-old who would rather earn her own money doing honest work than be "taken care of" by social workers.
There's an actual need for friendly, goodhearted, fiscally conservative, socially liberal content on the Internet these days.
No, that kind of content is not what an unprejudiced reader would necessarily consider "dominated by politics"--although it's congruent with a reality-based political mindset. In real life GBP doesn't talk much about politics. She's more likely to talk about her grandchildren, her flowers, her church, what her younger friends are doing, how well her same-age friends are holding up, what she's been cooking and eating lately, any correlations she's noticed between what she's eaten and any symptoms she's noticed, and even new books when she's been able to read one, than about politics. I don't even know how she voted last November. I know she's a Republican because she doesn't want people trying to take care of her and keep her "free from want, free from fear." (Maybe mutual protection from those things with a close friend, but not some sort of "social program.") She wants to be free to protect herself from "want" and "fear."
I've not even been reading much of what I classify as political news lately. It's not been about issues; it's been about the personalities of people I don't know. I consider that gossip, and I consider its dominance of so-called political news an unhealthy sign in a democratic country, because only in a monarchy should "who" questions displace "what," "how," and "why" questions. This week Popvox reported that the U.S. Congress agreed to "condemn the terrorist attacks in Manchester in the strongest terms...express heartfelt condolences, and reaffirm unwavering support for the special relationship between" the U.S. and the U.K. Not much room for disagreement there, although it leaves room for debate about follow-up. I myself have been thinking more about the effect the cool wet weather is having on the raspberries than about politics. However, like GBP, I still want my government to get out of the way and let me protect myself from "want" and "fear."
I believe everybody has the right to be heard...including the far-right Lord's Covenant Church, although yesterday on Twitter I caught myself calling one of them down for digging up that old Cold War rhetoric. I remember Sheldon Emry, not as a hater, but as an elderly minister who shared a lot of fears that were sort of outdated even in the 1970s. But...The Bible Says Russia Will Invade America and Be Defeated? Meh. I don't know that it says that. Daniel himself didn't know that it said that. Wouldn't have known, if living. The biblical book of Daniel ends with a lot of reported prophecies of a future Daniel claimed he himself couldn't explain, as in Daniel 12:8-9, copied from www.kingjamesbibleonline.com:
"
And I heard, but I understood not: then said I, O my Lord, what shall be the end of these things?
9And he said, Go thy way, Daniel: for the words are closed up and sealed till the time of the end.
"And Daniel also admitted he'd been ill at the time, for whatever that may be worth. I do know that the dear old L.C.C. expected the Cold War to heat up within their lifetimes, and that's not what happened. So I see no particular benefit in trying to revive a war that stayed "cold" while it lasted and is, thank goodness, over (for now). We do not need more lists of movie producers to shun because they were Eastern European and/or Jewish.
We just might, however, need to start shunning the people who want to hush up all "political" content that might amount to dissent from the globalist agenda of the totalitarians manipulating the left wing of the Democratic Party. I would never suggest that we boycott all books, movies, magazines, web sites, etc., produced by Democrats. (In fact I recommend that we support the good ones...produced by what that ten-year-old site called the "conservative" Democrats.) But considering all those Internet pundits who recommend that we suppress "political" thought in order to be popular (with them), and Hope Clark's startling confession that she was refusing to read a friend's well reviewed novel because the friend had expressed "political disagreement," and Chuck Wendig's hostility to my post in January that very respectfully and supportively disagreed with one of his...and considering Al Gore's horrible version of The Future
for the Internet...I wonder whether we need to start asking our favorite Democrats to show their truly liberal support for, shudder, quake, "conservative" ideas. And people. Do we need "litmus tests" of their views on un-American censorship?Are people prejudiced against me because I've been doing something to meet the need for nice, cheerful, sometimes "conservative" content? Is that why this web site isn't receiving better funding? (I hate to stereotype all Republicans as the kind of people who can't bring themselves to admit that anyone who deserves funding really needs funding, but if the shoe fits...)
Well, if it is, it is.
We're here! We're conservative! Get used to it!
And don't forget to fund it. "Conservative" Americans don't think of ourselves as embattled, because what most of us are saying, most of the time, is in fact congruous with what the majority of Americans (including the majority of Democrats, if they've not consulted the latest party line) are saying. But, in cyberspace and on television, we've always been treated like a minority, and we're likely to become a persecuted minority--we're not talking about the same Democrats who used to have a dream of little children from both sides playing in the same parks, in case anybody has failed to notice this. We need to develop within ourselves the kind of loyalty that allowed the Old Left to achieve majority status in the television industry.
https://www.patreon.com/user?u=4923804
If the Man Doesn't Ask, and Pay, Is It a Date?
Full-length posts are on again, temporarily, due to sponsorship. If you want to read full-length posts here rather than merely keywords, please make sure this site remains adequately sponsored. You may sponsor the site by sending U.S. postal money orders to P.O. Box 322, Gate City, Virginia, 24251-0322, or by paying online here:
This one was composed some time ago, and is being posted just in case
anyone was honestly confused by the following Opigram opinion shared at Yougov.com:
“I've
been engaged for 10+ years because I've met only one man I've liked since my
husband died. Coffee dates aren't worth leaving the house for and when guys
think "dates" mean lunch I'm forced to educate them about my celiac
gene. Bottom line: to make dating fun again, don't think of it as dating until
you know what you can really enjoy doing together. And if the man doesn't ask
and pay, as far as I'm concerned it's not a date.
8
PEOPLE
STRONGLY DISAGREE
12
PEOPLE
MILDLY DISAGREE
21
PEOPLE
MILDLY AGREE
28
PEOPLE
STRONGLY AGREE
”
Yougov welcomes your
opinions too. You can join Yougov without a referral link, but both you and I
gain points toward a payout if you use this one:
Anyway, someone replied,
“Meaning?” Some trolls posted more overtly trollish replies that aren’t worth
mentioning, but it occurs to me that that opinion could use a little
clarification. Some of The Nephews are, in fact, nieces; some of them are
starting to date. So:
Men are the ones who are
wired to pursue—women, or success, or money or whatever else. Women may do the
pursuing, if it’s terribly important to them to be seen with someone who has a
certain look or degree or income, but in my observation they regret it. Men who
think they’re the objects of desire aren’t motivated to pursue the women who’ve
pursued them. Sometimes that leaves them motivated to pursue different women,
even after they’ve said yes to women who proposed marriage.
This does not mean that
women can’t get to know men who interest them, without pursuing them or being accused of it. We can get to know
them at work, at school, at church or in all kinds of social groups. We can
even set up opportunities for them to ask for a Real Date. I merely think men
need the experience of having done the asking, in order to be motivated to make
the Real Date worth either party’s time.
According to Emily Post,
even in the Victorian Era, young ladies were
always entitled to decide when
they wanted to go to various events...as it might be when a young man wasn’t
sure that he could afford, or that the girl or woman would enjoy, the event in
question. All a girl had to do to satisfy Victorian standards of propriety was
make it clear that her interest was in the cultural event itself and not in
being alone with the guy. This was traditionally done by acquiring at least
three tickets. (The young lady could buy them herself, or let a sympathetic
older person make a present of them.) A Victorian young lady would ask an older
female friend to go with her first, and could then announce to a male friend
that “We have an extra ticket for X.
Would you like to go with us?”
Then, of course, it was
up to him to decide whether to repay this general social invitation with
another general social invitation, or a display of more personal interest. In
the Victorian Era this would probably not have been what today’s young men
would call a Real Date, either. The difference between Victorian and modern
courtship is that proper Victorian parents didn’t allow their children, even
“children” of twenty-five or thirty who were living “properly” at home, to
spend time alone with people of the
opposite sex before the engagement was announced. The Victorian young man could
show personal interest by inviting the woman to the theatre, but he still had
to buy a ticket for at least one older woman as a chaperone.
Today young women can
invite men to do all kinds of things that give us a chance to observe their
personality and character, and give the men a chance to ask for a Real Date. In
most places society won’t even flap and squawk if we invite them to be alone
with us in our homes, as long as their known job skills make it reasonable to
imagine that they could help mend
things or do chores; though, if unpleasant results occur, people will still say
that allowing an alleged repairman to be “behind closed doors” with us in our
homes was a Bad Idea. We might just happen to acquire only two tickets—look at
all the contests that offer tickets for two people as prizes!—and, even if
we’re alone with young men in private cars, few people still believe there’s
any great need for a chaperone.
But I still maintain that
this kind of thing should take place
strictly “in the friend zone.” Women ask men to repair things because we want
those things repaired, and it’s still a good idea for relatives to be in the
house while they’re there. Women buy extra tickets to concerts, etc., because
we want to support our favorite musicians, etc.; if we could invite fifty
people to the concert instead of just one, we’d probably do that. We can hope that these social encounters with
men will provide Bonding Moments on the strength of which they’ll start
pursuing us. Often that happens.
We can just save
ourselves a lot of heartache if we remain mindful at all times that a man doing
something that he’s been asked to do is radically different from a man who’s
asked for the privilege of doing the same thing. As long as we’re asking, we’re
not being courted. Don’t call it a date (unless you also refer to “dates” with
the dentist) and don’t act as if it were one, until the man is doing the
asking.
As for paying...when
people like each other they should be able to find all kinds of ways to be
together without either of them having to pay for anything. I’ve never felt
favorably impressed by a man spending a lot of money on corporate commercial
“entertainment” options. Only in corporate-produced fictional romance is hiring
a limousine “more romantic” than riding the bus, if a city bus is available; in
real life walking together provides more opportunity for private conversation
and even hand- or arm-holding. A poor man can
make himself as lovable as a rich one, if he tries.
In theory, I suppose,
once in a while, if the woman were the one who’d always wanted to ride in a
limousine, and the man wanted to be with the woman but would be just as happy to
spend that time hiking or gardening or playing chess, it might seem
reasonable for the woman to pay for the limousine. In my experience, I’m the
frugal one who’d rather do something that doesn’t cost money, so if the man
wants the movie or the restaurant meal or whatever, he’s paying for all of it. I don’t know firsthand how
much damage it does to a relationship if the woman pays for even one evening
“out.” But my guess would be that it does some damage—reparable or not. Paying
is part of pursuit. If the woman pays for dinner at a special overpriced
restaurant, on some subconscious level the man has to be thinking “Now she’s pursuing me!” Although he may feel delighted for the moment, this is not the
basis for a long-term bond.
It would be a good thing
for society if boys who had ever prevailed on girls to pay for even one movie
ticket, even once, all resolved to demonstrate that now they were going to
prove themselves worthy of that favor by becoming those young women’s faithful
husbands for life. If they all understood, agreed, and acted on a rule like,
“Even if the feeling of ‘erotic love’ fades and she starts to ‘feel like a
roommate,’ I will remain faithful to marriage, avoid even looking at other
women on those days when my wife ‘feels like a roommate,’ and be a good
‘roommate’ until the ‘feeling’ of being a bridegroom comes back—which, if I
rule out pursuing any other woman as an option, I understand that it eventually
will do. I understand that a woman
taking even one step toward me does not mean
that I can take her for granted and let my emotional ‘feelings’ set me off in
pursuit of a different woman.”
It’s even possible to
visualize some alternative world—some world that might seem radical-feminist to
us—where men would ever behave that
way, if women and older men all worked together to hold them to that sort of
rule, if men known to have cheated on their wives were automatically distrusted
and shunned by society, if mothers of children automatically had control of any
property the fathers of those children might have possessed or acquired, if
society agreed to any number of other ways to promote male chastity rather than
positively admiring male unchastity. Nobody can say that it’s even impossible
for that kind of society to come to exist in our world, where many people do
admire, and even reward, men who cheat.
I know there are women
who may say they’re willing to pay for some of the entertainment, even for “an
equal share” of the entertainment, without expecting any commitment of that
kind in a “dating” relationship. I suppose some of them believe that, but I
suspect they really mean either (a) that they want to stay “in the friend zone”
or (b) that they’ve soaked up some sort of male-authored ideas before they’ve
learned much about what they want.
If
a woman starts avoiding other men and holding hands with one man, even if
hand-holding is as far as the physical intimacies go, in 99 cases out of 100
she really wants that man to be her faithful husband for life. Maybe at the
moment when she’s so eager to pay for the movie, she’s just competing against
another woman who’s unwilling or unable to pay, but if she kisses the man good
night after watching the movie, she wants him to respond like the heroes of her
favorite fictional romances...and she’ll be bitterly dissatisfied when he does
not. She’d do better either to wait for the man to buy the ticket, or to accept
that he prefers to buy tickets for someone else and let some other man start
buying tickets for her.
In the world where we
actually live, I think women are better off adhering to the rule that Real
Dates don’t have to involve any payment, that dates for walks in the park and
free concerts and family parties are as “real” as dates for movies and
restaurant meals...but, if payment is involved, the man asks and the man pays.
Spending money on a man is like running a wool sweater through the dryer. It
may not destroy him, but he’ll never be the same.
Do men need further inspiration? Probably not, if they're seriously pursuing one woman, but this site needs an Amazon link so here's the newest book by the expert on "How to Be Romantic":
Morgan Griffith on Veterans' Medical Care
From U.S. Representative Morgan Griffith, R-VA-9:
"
June 5, 2017–
Veteran Care
We honor those who have served our country on Veterans Day, but year round we should appropriately honor the veterans who are deserving our respect and gratitude. As a part of that respect, they deserve the quality health care from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) they were promised. These men and women put their life on the line for us. They deserve a VA health care system that is dependable, efficient, and top of the line.
President Trump picked Secretary David Shulkin to lead the VA and improve veteran care. Secretary Shulkin has made it clear that he is not satisfied with the status quo.
He is a doctor. Before serving the VA, he held chief executive positions at various health care centers. Highly regarded in the private sector, he earned a reputation for driving down costs and focusing on patient centered care. He left his highly-compensated, private sector job to serve those who served our country. As he has done throughout his career, he continues to see patients so he doesn’t lose focus of the priority of improving care. Now he does this at the VA hospitals.*
Secretary Shulkin recently met with a group of us in Congress and explained he wants veterans to have options. He is not interested in privatizing the VA, because he believes the VA can provide care for the unique mental and physical issues that veterans encounter, in a way that can’t be found in the private sector. He wants veterans to choose the VA because of its quality.
He envisions an improved Choice program. In a recent C-SPAN interview he said, “We need to make sure the Choice program not only continues, but it works better for veterans. And we know it hasn’t worked the way we wanted it to work. It’s too complex, it’s too hard to use.”*
With this improved competition from the Choice program, Secretary Shulkin believes that the VA will necessarily have to increase its customer service and competitiveness compared to outside programs. And he fervently believes the VA can do this. He wants veterans to choose to go to the VA, instead of having no option but the VA.
Secretary Shulkin told us he believes certain aspects of care might be able to be outsourced to the private sector. For example, providing veterans with eye glasses.
He discussed with us a situation that he has been made aware of, where in some situations, to get a simple pair of eye glasses, veterans are required to make up to three visits, wait three weeks, and then be issued a standard black pair of glasses.
It’s hard to believe this is the type of service we provide to our courageous service men and women. And instead of having every aspect of veterans’ care done at the VA, like eyeglasses, we should have our VA hospitals focused on dealing with traumatic brain injury, PTSD, and state of the art artificial limbs.
As a sign of positive change coming to the VA, in April, Secretary Shulkin launched a new website called Access to Care. (www.accesstocare.va.gov) This is a public posting of wait times and other data for every VA facility in the country. The website allows patients to compare facilities, with features such as ‘How Quickly Can My VA Facility See Me?’ or ‘How Does Care in My VA Facility Compare to Other Hospitals in the Area?’
This is a significant effort to increase transparency and hold the facilities that are not meeting expectations responsible.
Congressman Phil Roe, who represents East Tennessee, is Chairman of the Committee on Veterans’ Affairs. Phil is working hard to get legislation passed to improve the VA. This year, we have passed a number of bills relating to VA reforms, in May alone we passed seven of these bills. The legislation expands access to care, provides better service, and demands more accountability. We have sent them to the Senate for the Senate’s approval.
I will continue supporting Chairman Roe and Secretary Shulkin in their mission to improve the VA. We owe this to our veterans.
If you have questions, concerns, or comments, feel free to contact my office. You can call my Abingdon office at 276-525-1405 or my Christiansburg office at 540-381-5671. To reach my office via email, please visit my website at www.morgangriffith.house.gov. Also on my website is the latest material from my office, including information on votes recently taken on the floor of the House of Representatives.
"
"
June 5, 2017–
Veteran Care
We honor those who have served our country on Veterans Day, but year round we should appropriately honor the veterans who are deserving our respect and gratitude. As a part of that respect, they deserve the quality health care from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) they were promised. These men and women put their life on the line for us. They deserve a VA health care system that is dependable, efficient, and top of the line.
President Trump picked Secretary David Shulkin to lead the VA and improve veteran care. Secretary Shulkin has made it clear that he is not satisfied with the status quo.
He is a doctor. Before serving the VA, he held chief executive positions at various health care centers. Highly regarded in the private sector, he earned a reputation for driving down costs and focusing on patient centered care. He left his highly-compensated, private sector job to serve those who served our country. As he has done throughout his career, he continues to see patients so he doesn’t lose focus of the priority of improving care. Now he does this at the VA hospitals.*
Secretary Shulkin recently met with a group of us in Congress and explained he wants veterans to have options. He is not interested in privatizing the VA, because he believes the VA can provide care for the unique mental and physical issues that veterans encounter, in a way that can’t be found in the private sector. He wants veterans to choose the VA because of its quality.
He envisions an improved Choice program. In a recent C-SPAN interview he said, “We need to make sure the Choice program not only continues, but it works better for veterans. And we know it hasn’t worked the way we wanted it to work. It’s too complex, it’s too hard to use.”*
With this improved competition from the Choice program, Secretary Shulkin believes that the VA will necessarily have to increase its customer service and competitiveness compared to outside programs. And he fervently believes the VA can do this. He wants veterans to choose to go to the VA, instead of having no option but the VA.
Secretary Shulkin told us he believes certain aspects of care might be able to be outsourced to the private sector. For example, providing veterans with eye glasses.
He discussed with us a situation that he has been made aware of, where in some situations, to get a simple pair of eye glasses, veterans are required to make up to three visits, wait three weeks, and then be issued a standard black pair of glasses.
It’s hard to believe this is the type of service we provide to our courageous service men and women. And instead of having every aspect of veterans’ care done at the VA, like eyeglasses, we should have our VA hospitals focused on dealing with traumatic brain injury, PTSD, and state of the art artificial limbs.
As a sign of positive change coming to the VA, in April, Secretary Shulkin launched a new website called Access to Care. (www.accesstocare.va.gov) This is a public posting of wait times and other data for every VA facility in the country. The website allows patients to compare facilities, with features such as ‘How Quickly Can My VA Facility See Me?’ or ‘How Does Care in My VA Facility Compare to Other Hospitals in the Area?’
This is a significant effort to increase transparency and hold the facilities that are not meeting expectations responsible.
Congressman Phil Roe, who represents East Tennessee, is Chairman of the Committee on Veterans’ Affairs. Phil is working hard to get legislation passed to improve the VA. This year, we have passed a number of bills relating to VA reforms, in May alone we passed seven of these bills. The legislation expands access to care, provides better service, and demands more accountability. We have sent them to the Senate for the Senate’s approval.
I will continue supporting Chairman Roe and Secretary Shulkin in their mission to improve the VA. We owe this to our veterans.
If you have questions, concerns, or comments, feel free to contact my office. You can call my Abingdon office at 276-525-1405 or my Christiansburg office at 540-381-5671. To reach my office via email, please visit my website at www.morgangriffith.house.gov. Also on my website is the latest material from my office, including information on votes recently taken on the floor of the House of Representatives.
"
Wednesday, June 7, 2017
Have I Finally Found a Hateful Tea Party? Links and Keywords
To unlock the whole post, follow instructions here:
https://www.patreon.com/user?u=4923804
Gadsden flags
T.E.A. Party
Tea Partiers who self-recruited from the Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, and Green Parties
pathologically hostile, possibly violent Tea Partier
how to recognize her
Bill O'Reilly
Fox News
Yankee magazine
John 8:44
Nazional Sozialism
Democratic Party site's analysis of "political controversy" from early in Obama's first campaign
Hope Clark's newsletter
Psychology Today
not marching in parade as "microaggression"
Chicago Bears
https://www.patreon.com/user?u=4923804
Gadsden flags
T.E.A. Party
Tea Partiers who self-recruited from the Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, and Green Parties
pathologically hostile, possibly violent Tea Partier
how to recognize her
Bill O'Reilly
Fox News
Yankee magazine
John 8:44
Nazional Sozialism
Democratic Party site's analysis of "political controversy" from early in Obama's first campaign
Hope Clark's newsletter
Psychology Today
not marching in parade as "microaggression"
Chicago Bears
Jim Geraghty on Warmist Hypocrisy
From an e-mail from Jim Geraghty...
"
Glenn Beck's chapter on this topic is older data, but not, apparently, outdated by fresher information yet. What a pity. If those making the noise about global warming had been listening to themselves, it would have been outdated.
"
For years, professor Glenn Reynolds, a.k.a., the Instapundit, has examined high-profile climate-change activists and responded skeptically, “I’ll believe it’s a crisis when they start acting like a crisis” — i.e., they believe the problem can only be solved with punitive measures like higher energy costs, but refuse to make any discernable sacrifices themselves.
There’s no shortage of glaring contradictions. When the Paris Conference certified itself as carbon-neutral, they didn’t count the carbon emissions of the 40,000 attendees traveling to and from the conference. One round-trip flight from New York to the West Coast or Europe has a warming effect equivalent to two or three tons of carbon dioxide per person. Richard Branson, who owns an airline, spoke at a march about climate change recently. Self-described environmentalist Leonardo DiCaprio continues to crisscross countries in his private jet. Al Gore made $500 million selling his television network to Al Jazeera, a network owned and funded by the Qatari royal family, which enjoys the world’s third-largest oil and natural gas reserves. Gore has a giant home in Tennessee, although maybe not as big as Thomas Friedman’s 11,000-square-foot mansion in Maryland; he wrote in one of his books the construction of the giant house “prevented it from being redeveloped into a subdivision of a dozen more houses.” He’s willing to live in luxury to avert the carbon footprint of those other families.
The celebrities are the most glaring examples, but you can find non-famous cases of environmentalist hypocrisy, too. Residents of Park Slope, Brooklyn, filed a lawsuit against a bike lane. Cape Cod, Mass., residents fought the construction of a wind farm off the coast. Berkeley, Calif., residents fought the establishment of bus-only lanes on roads.
Now, in the years and years Americans have been debating climate change and what to do about it, have you ever heard an environmentalist say, “You know, you’re right. We really do look like we’re not practicing what we preach. We really do look like we’re telling other people to make sacrifices we’re not willing to make ourselves. The glaring hypocrisy of these figures really undermines the message we want to communicate”? If so, please point out those statements; I haven’t found many.
Environmentalists and climate-change activists know that a lot of people on the right see them as egregious hypocrites, and they don’t care. To them, this is getting wrapped up in petty details; when the core of your argument is “the fate of the planet and humanity itself is at stake!” you can hand-wave away a lot of the details.
Environmentalists fume at the average voter’s inability to see the big picture and the long-term consequences. They think Americans are insufferably entitled, way too focused on their own individual material and financial circumstances, unwilling to see how their decisions collectively impact everyone else, and stubbornly resistant to data, numbers, and bad news. They insist that the collective shrugging belief that someone else will solve the problem someday is willful blindness. They fume that the status quo is one of worsening circumstances, but moving so slowly and gradually that most people can ignore it. By the time the crisis is really visible, it will be too late; the only way to mitigate the problem at that point will be drastic, unpopular action and widespread sacrifice. They believe that whatever pain they’re proposing now, it’s exponentially milder than the pain that awaits us if we do nothing.
Perhaps we should have a little sympathy. When they talk like this, they sound a lot like us conservatives when we talk about the ticking time bomb of our entitlement programs and the need for reform.
"Glenn Beck's chapter on this topic is older data, but not, apparently, outdated by fresher information yet. What a pity. If those making the noise about global warming had been listening to themselves, it would have been outdated.
Thursday, June 1, 2017
Buying from the Wish List
Amazon's not making it easy for me to use the giftcards people have sent. Microsoft is not making it easy to keep my state-of-the-art-in-2009 computer working. Guess what, Microsoft...if this computer fails, I will not own another one. This one was a gift, but even if someone offers me a computer with Windows 10 on it as a gift, I won't be using it. I don't like or trust Windows 10. I won't use a computer that offers only "cloud storage," because I don't trust "cloud storage."
Go ahead and destroy the Internet if you like, Microsoft. I actually earned more money without it; I'll be delighted to watch the whole Internet fad crash...because people aren't going to spend money online if we're not earning money online, and we're not going to be online if our information can't be kept out of "the cloud."
Anyway, I'm online now, and here's how I'm using the giftcards:
I once passed up an opportunity to buy the first ten issues of Knitter's secondhand for, as I recall, two dollars each. The shopkeeper warned me I'd regret this. She was right. The value keeps escalating.
Go ahead and destroy the Internet if you like, Microsoft. I actually earned more money without it; I'll be delighted to watch the whole Internet fad crash...because people aren't going to spend money online if we're not earning money online, and we're not going to be online if our information can't be kept out of "the cloud."
Anyway, I'm online now, and here's how I'm using the giftcards:
I once passed up an opportunity to buy the first ten issues of Knitter's secondhand for, as I recall, two dollars each. The shopkeeper warned me I'd regret this. She was right. The value keeps escalating.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
