Note: Blogger posted this prematurely, I was intending to post it on Sunday. I'm leaving it up since it's been up for a few hours, now. I'll edit it more tomorrow.
Many atheist-materialist-scientistic notions of"ethics" or ersatz, fake, synthetic morality will involve itself with absurd notions such as the one that would claim that you can get something like the obviously religious morality of the Golden Rule, loving your neighbor as you love yourself, equality, equal justice, providing for those in need and distress, etc. from natural selection when all of those are violations of the selfishness that is the aspect of natural selection that interprets animal behavior, including human behavior. I've given the formulas of that from Darwin and his entirely conventional scientific disciples over and over again. Selfishness, ruthless competition, trying to prevail in a struggle for existence, reproductive advantage, etc. are the essence of natural selection. It is in every single way the opposite of morality as derived from the Jewish religious tradition and as adopted and expanded by later Jews, Christians and Muslims.
That incompatibility was noted from the 1860s by both critics of Darwinism such as Frances Cobbe and scientific Darwinists enthusiastic to be let off from the morality of Christianity and Judaism. Assertions of the inequality of human beings, of the evil effects of allowing those deemed inferior to live and have offspring, of the evil of providing medical care, food, social services, to those deemed inferior or "weaker" the good that would come of genocide of groups ranging from the disabled and sick within racial and national groups to wiping out entire races, the victors stealing their lands and resources for themselves were all deemed good by Darwinists from Darwin on.
The idiotic patches of that by those who wanted Darwin for the damage they found he did to religion but without the more dangerous and unsavory aspects of the inversion of morality that it asserted as a law of nature were just that, idiotic and doomed to lose out to the more "scientific" views that, it is a fact, the Nazis put into effect in their genocides just as the conventional Darwinist biologist Vernon Kellogg warned that the scientist-military officers during World War One were asserting was the basis of their behavior in that war.
And if it isn't that complete idiocy, there is the other idiotic source of such phony morality, utilitarianism. Utilitarians assert that whatever is the ultimate source of the most happiness to the most people defines what is good, with modifications of the statement of that constructed as the problems with that basic claim are brought up.
The classic examples of problems with that involve one of the favorite contemplation of the utilitarian "ethicists" who should we kill. If every other person in the world would be made happier by the murder of every last Jew - Jews being a rather small minority of the human population - then certainly it would be moral to kill every last Jew, or Kurd, or Palestinian or you name it. Or just one child. What if sacrificing one child to the Minotaur a year ensured the happiness of the rest of the community then, certainly, under the general scheme of utilitarianism, that would be a good thing to do. Or to maintain one of a group in misery, to torture them to derive sadistic pleasure, etc.
But the problem of such phony materialist-atheist substitutes for morality are more basic than that. It requires that some calculation of competing levels of happiness both in terms of happiness and in how many people will be made happy that are impossible to define and certainly impossible to calculate in any real way. One of the things that critics of this absurd idea that is so widely held by the ironically self-entitled profession of "ethicist" have pointed out is that it is impossible to determine the outcome in the distant future of potential acts in the human present. If Adolph Hitler or Joseph Mengele had been murdered as children, what would the results for millions of people in history have been? If Charles Darwin had gotten drunk one night in college and broken his neck or been stung by a swarm of wasps and natural selection had not been invented A. R. Wallace not having the same influence with the right kind of people to get it adopted. Who knows what good or bad the descendants of children who died in childhood due to the British Poor Laws - which Darwin decried were too much aid to the least among us because it kept children of the poor alive long enough to have children - would have done if they had lived?
Utilitarianism is in the running as one of the stupidest philosophical positions ever to gain widespread adherence by people trained in philosophy in academic institutions, it is, as I noted this morning, at best, an idiotic and useless exercise in ivory tower speculation, at worst it turns into a program of promoting infanticide, active or passive, "doing or allowing" the performance of what are obviously and rightly considered evil acts.
I used to be indulgent of such nonsense out of the lazy, irresponsible habits encouraged modernist-scientistic libertarianism because it is impossible to come up with mathematical proofs in any of this - why they don't let that bother them about natural selection or utilitarianism is evidence of the comfort for their selfishness derived from those substitutes - the kind of cowardly refusal to assert the obvious truth that so often comes after the generally vile phrase "who is to say that . . . " "That" slavery is evil, that providing food and medical care and habitation to the destitute, the poor, to the other is good, that killing every last Jew or Indian or gorilla, is bad.
I can answer that, now that I've seen through these things, we are to say it.
We are to take the responsibility to assert the rightness of the Golden rule, of doing justice, of giving to the poor, of protecting habitats and wild animals of doing no harm. It is one of the just condemnations of modernism, of scientism of atheism that it denies that responsibility, that it lets us off the hook to make that choice. Without us making that choice, no one else can be depended on to make it either.
Saturday, February 15, 2020
Saturday Night Radio Drama - Philip Davison - Quiet City
In part a murder mystery, in part a comedy of terrors, Quiet City is also a séance of sorts, plus a rapid-fire farce (with a great many car-doors).
Enter (or exit) Richard Meadows, an apprentice adulterer who meets his premature end at the very start of play, yet lingers on to the close of business in a livelier, if lethal, presence as a poltergeist, a forensic phantom parsing his own assassination.
Cast ListCiarán Hinds played Richard, both naturally and preternaturally.
Deirdre Donnelly was Gloria, his present and past wife in excelsis;
Olwen Fouéré ... Virginia, who is anything but;
Patrick Dawson ... Virginia's partner and procurer;
David Herlihy ... the surly and churlish John;
Bryan Murray ... a sinuous sleuth whose charm disarms;
Michael James Forde ... an affable Anglo gigolo;
Áine Ní Mhuirí ... the dowager, more deft than daft.
Sound supervision was by Damian ChennellsProducer Aidan Mathews
Something a bit different, better than the same old, same old.
As They Say In Letterkenny
Someone's having a fit because I misattributed a show tune. As if that's going to keep me up nights.
The Total Futility And Absurdity Of Materialist-Atheist-Determinist Ersatz Morality
I run luke-warm and cold on the form of entertainment that debating is, I mean a real debate, not the food fights that are the debased form of "presidential debate" invented as a TV spectacle by the Kennedy campaign in 1960 and going generally down hill from that already low point.
No, I mean real debates in the structure of a debate in which the main substance is the presentation of detailed arguments by two sides on a fixed question. It can be fun and sometimes mildly informative but as a means of substantial engagement on an issue, it generally barely skims the surface and is more successful in presenting stage craft than informed argument. At best they are extended battling TED talks which might count as an even more degraded form, a shorter, more superficial mono-debate in which everything is as much of a set-up job as the presenter of one wants to make it. Generally they want to rig it more than Plato set it up for his Socrates. They aren't any way to form an informed opinion or adopt a difficult position on a complex issue - though their questions often pretend that's what the exercise does. No, for that you have to read books and follow up by reading what the arguments in them are based in and to think about them. Let's not forget thinking, though debates and TED style intellectualism do so often. And the result is often not fast or entirely unambiguous.
Which is, actually, my central point here as I'll argue in a minute.
Yesterday I listened to a debate between the Evangelical Christian apologist, brilliant intellectual and a man who I have profound disagreements with, William Lane Craig and the Yale Ethicist Shelly Kagan on the question of whether or not God is necessary for morality.
Both men are highly trained philosophers and a lot of the argument depended heavily on some very complex, technical aspects of formal, academic philosophy. I think it's largely due to the clear fact that Craig is a highly experienced and excellent debater that he made far more points than Kagan who seemed to get tied up less in philosophical complexity than the scientists who Craig often debates. But I also think it's because Kagan, an atheist had the inferior position to defend.
The first thing I thought while listening to Craig addressing Kagan's typical baroque, highly technical and hardly invulnerable assertion of how deterministic, materialistic atheism could generate moral positions that had some universal application in reality* - real enough to prevent the kinds of atrocities that the 20th century atheist-scientistic regimes which, no doubt, always hover over this question - was that the atheist attempt is doomed to utter futility in real life.
It is too complex for more than a few specialists in that area of philosophy to understand the arguments of someone like Shelly Kagan - the mass of humanity in which any moral action and refraining from immoral action will have to find the only reality that matters would never be likely to understand or be effected by such an "ethicist's" systems for constructing morality.
If theology can often get too complex to explain to most people, the kind of quasi-utilitarian claims and arguments that someone like Kagan makes which must meet the requirements of, among other things, Darwinian natural selection (which is a universal acid against any kind of moral protection against genocidal violence), materialist determinism (Kagan's position of having determinism compatible with free-will is, frankly, absurd) and a myriad of other a priori requirements of a good, Yale-based atheist-materialist-scientistic philospher to maintain their respectability means that any such system of morality will be as vulnerable to rejection as it is absurdly and impractically inapplicable in real life. It is an ivory tower system which may as well exist in a closed display case like the one Edward Albee made the center of his absurdist play, Tiny Alice.
I'll give you this passage discussing Kagan's disagreement with his fellow ethicists from that helpful source, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy in the article on the already abstruse topic, "Doing vs. Allowing Harm."
Even if Rachels were correct that Smith’s and Jones’s behavior is morally equivalent, we may not be able to infer the moral equivalence of killing and letting die in general (where other things are equal) from this. Shelly Kagan argues that this inference assumes that “if a factor has genuine moral relevance, then for any pair of cases, where the given factor varies while others are held constant, the cases in that pair will differ in moral status” (Kagan 1988). He claims, moreover, that this assumes the Additive Assumption, the view that “the status of the act is the net balance or sum which is the result of adding up the separate positive and negative effects of the individual factors” (Kagan 1988, 259). He raises several objections to the Additive Assumption. Firstly, one might describe a pair of cases that are exactly alike except that one is a killing and the other a letting die, where the first intuitively seems far worse than the second. If this pair of cases is as good as Rachels’ pair, then either the inference is valid in both cases—to prove the contradiction that killing is both worse and not worse than letting die—or it is invalid in both cases. Secondly, one might raise the rhetorical question: why addition—rather than, say, multiplication or some other function? Similarly, Kamm (1996, 2007) defends a Principle of Contextual Interaction according to which a property can behave differently in one context than another.
Just which would be killer do they suspect is going to wade through the arguments and sort out the conflicting opinions of experts about such things as "additive assumption" before they decide whether or not to kill someone?
And I think that is guaranteed to be the result of any atheist attempt to reconstruct something that we would generally concede to comprise superior moral behavior. Ineffective impotence that will always, in real life, favor the depraved.
That huge deal made by atheists in arguing this question, of whether or not such morality is possible without God, of those dear old atheist professors who are beloved figures of kindness and such people do exist, but life proves that in the wider real world to count on that is unrealistic and absurd.
In general life unless they lead by an example of moral behavior, their technical explanations coming up with a materialistic basis for their behavior is as likely to be contradictory as it is to be ineffective in having a general effect in the wider world. We shouldn't rely at all on the nice old atheist professor acting morally within his own sphere of experience extending beyond that. Depraved monsters can do that, too, certainly in regard to our own self. But also their extended connections. Even the most evil of Stalinist henchmen or Nazis knew when someone treated THEM well or in ways they, no doubt, felt to be unfair even as they tortured and murdered scores, hundreds and tens of millions And there are even those who were nice to their children and spouses and friends as they murdered thousands at their day jobs. Some of them held university professorships and were, no doubt, popular with at least their favorite students and many were doctors of medicine as they willingly, enthusiastically became figures within the killing industry.
I would guess that for a percentage of such lovable figures, who tested their actions against their a priori commitments to materialism, scientism, Darwinism, atheism, they'd be more likley to give up their morality in favor of some species of materialist depravity. Look at how many of Kagan's fellow atheist-university-based "ethicists" spend much of their time drawing up lists of people it's OK to kill based in the same kind of utilitarian notions. Even the ones who want to be nice to animals.
I wish there were some way to have heard a debate between Craig and my favorite atheist, Richard Lewontin, because I suspect Lewontin has a far deeper understanding of things philosophical than most atheists and, certainly, many of his fellow scientists. . I think he would have appreciated the ambiguities of his position better than even a Kagan did and far more than some of Craig's other atheist debate opponents. The confrontation of him and the biologist Lewis Wolpert was pathetic (Wolpert is a philosophical idiot who gets by on his dotty old professor act) and the one between him and the physics professor Bernard Leikind was even more of an embarrassment for the atheist. Clearly a preparation in post-WWII science doesn't require a high degree skill in logical argument.
One of the most impressive things Lewontin ever did was admit that his atheism is based in his a priori preferences and not in any essential position of science. We all have our own a priori committments on which we base our arguments. Clearly for an "ethicist" of the atheist variety their overriding such committment is to there being no God, their secondary one might, might be in promoting moral behavior. But their prime directive will always be to avoid anything that might imply that God is real or, to their secondary committment, necessary. That has been my general experience of reading, listening to, discussing things in any depth with any atheist who will engage on even the most modest depth on any issues - most of them are atheists on the same basis as sports or pop culture fandom, it doesn't go any deeper than that.
My a priori committment is to do unto others as you would have them do unto you at every level up to and including the commitment to egalitarian democracy and its universal spreading and environmental preservation. I find that God as the source of that is far more likely to produce a good effect in the world than any intellectual construction of an ersatz replacement based on some notion of science. I do fault Craig for missing a great opportunity to point out, in discussing the fact that under the atheist scheme of things in which morality is nothing but an (absurd and self-contradictory) assertion of natural selection and social convention that the Nazis were consistent with their own constructed code of behavior. He seemed to present that as an aberration of the thing Kagan was presenting when their genocideal behavior was founded securely in claims of natural selection as can be found in the entire literature up to and through the Shoah and the other mass killings of the Nazis. The mass murders were a product of the kind of thinking Kagan and his fellow atheist "ethicists" hold as their a priori commitment.
And I don't think the mass murder was, uniformly, an unleashing of a deep and abiding, historically conditioned hatred and love of cruelty. There are instances of death camp commanders punishing sadistic behavior by the guards, even, if my memory serves, of one being ordered to be executed by his commander on the basis of being sadistically cruel while murdering. What is to be made of that is certainly too long for this already long piece. You'd need a long series of books by many scholars to get a grasp of it. What is to be made of mass murderers with a sense of morality and, English doesn't provide any word I know except the totally inappropriate one "kindness" overridden by the "applied biology" of Nazism? You'd get nowhere near understanding of it in a debate though I'll bet the superficial members of the audience would guess they knew what it was all about. For the love of Mike, they would after a TED talk.
* I should point out that with Kagan and the other atheists I've listened to on this topic, they want to have it both ways, of claiming a commitment to the universality of morals while claiming that they have only a social and biological meaning. That, in itself, is a seld-defeating contradiction, which, for the modern atheist, will always be further defeated by one of their ultimate a priori commitments required for maintaining a reputable life in academia.
For anyone to claim such a thing based in natural selection is completely and absolutely absurd because natural selection is an assertion of competition within as well as among species for the personal advantage of individuals. Not even the ridiculous attempts to past various anti-competitive schemes to it can change the basic nature of natural selection. Darwin and his followers repeatedly, over and over again, up till right now argued that it is a struggle for existence which, again in obvious and complete double speak, produced superior individuals, the parents of today's and the futures species.
There is a reason that eugenic inequality has been ascendant since the 1970s, it is because the temporary suppression of such talk after the crimes of the Nazis were exposed was the aberration in an intellectual regime of Darwinism, which was guaranteed to be merely a temporary suspension of that logical conclusion of the theory, Darwinism will ALWAYS produce eugenics and eugenics will, ALWAYS devolve into schemes of who we are to kill. The theme song of Darwinism, if there should ever be one, is the Nazi, Rodgers and Hammerstein style waltz, "Tomorrow Belongs To Me.
No, I mean real debates in the structure of a debate in which the main substance is the presentation of detailed arguments by two sides on a fixed question. It can be fun and sometimes mildly informative but as a means of substantial engagement on an issue, it generally barely skims the surface and is more successful in presenting stage craft than informed argument. At best they are extended battling TED talks which might count as an even more degraded form, a shorter, more superficial mono-debate in which everything is as much of a set-up job as the presenter of one wants to make it. Generally they want to rig it more than Plato set it up for his Socrates. They aren't any way to form an informed opinion or adopt a difficult position on a complex issue - though their questions often pretend that's what the exercise does. No, for that you have to read books and follow up by reading what the arguments in them are based in and to think about them. Let's not forget thinking, though debates and TED style intellectualism do so often. And the result is often not fast or entirely unambiguous.
Which is, actually, my central point here as I'll argue in a minute.
Yesterday I listened to a debate between the Evangelical Christian apologist, brilliant intellectual and a man who I have profound disagreements with, William Lane Craig and the Yale Ethicist Shelly Kagan on the question of whether or not God is necessary for morality.
Both men are highly trained philosophers and a lot of the argument depended heavily on some very complex, technical aspects of formal, academic philosophy. I think it's largely due to the clear fact that Craig is a highly experienced and excellent debater that he made far more points than Kagan who seemed to get tied up less in philosophical complexity than the scientists who Craig often debates. But I also think it's because Kagan, an atheist had the inferior position to defend.
The first thing I thought while listening to Craig addressing Kagan's typical baroque, highly technical and hardly invulnerable assertion of how deterministic, materialistic atheism could generate moral positions that had some universal application in reality* - real enough to prevent the kinds of atrocities that the 20th century atheist-scientistic regimes which, no doubt, always hover over this question - was that the atheist attempt is doomed to utter futility in real life.
It is too complex for more than a few specialists in that area of philosophy to understand the arguments of someone like Shelly Kagan - the mass of humanity in which any moral action and refraining from immoral action will have to find the only reality that matters would never be likely to understand or be effected by such an "ethicist's" systems for constructing morality.
If theology can often get too complex to explain to most people, the kind of quasi-utilitarian claims and arguments that someone like Kagan makes which must meet the requirements of, among other things, Darwinian natural selection (which is a universal acid against any kind of moral protection against genocidal violence), materialist determinism (Kagan's position of having determinism compatible with free-will is, frankly, absurd) and a myriad of other a priori requirements of a good, Yale-based atheist-materialist-scientistic philospher to maintain their respectability means that any such system of morality will be as vulnerable to rejection as it is absurdly and impractically inapplicable in real life. It is an ivory tower system which may as well exist in a closed display case like the one Edward Albee made the center of his absurdist play, Tiny Alice.
I'll give you this passage discussing Kagan's disagreement with his fellow ethicists from that helpful source, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy in the article on the already abstruse topic, "Doing vs. Allowing Harm."
Even if Rachels were correct that Smith’s and Jones’s behavior is morally equivalent, we may not be able to infer the moral equivalence of killing and letting die in general (where other things are equal) from this. Shelly Kagan argues that this inference assumes that “if a factor has genuine moral relevance, then for any pair of cases, where the given factor varies while others are held constant, the cases in that pair will differ in moral status” (Kagan 1988). He claims, moreover, that this assumes the Additive Assumption, the view that “the status of the act is the net balance or sum which is the result of adding up the separate positive and negative effects of the individual factors” (Kagan 1988, 259). He raises several objections to the Additive Assumption. Firstly, one might describe a pair of cases that are exactly alike except that one is a killing and the other a letting die, where the first intuitively seems far worse than the second. If this pair of cases is as good as Rachels’ pair, then either the inference is valid in both cases—to prove the contradiction that killing is both worse and not worse than letting die—or it is invalid in both cases. Secondly, one might raise the rhetorical question: why addition—rather than, say, multiplication or some other function? Similarly, Kamm (1996, 2007) defends a Principle of Contextual Interaction according to which a property can behave differently in one context than another.
Just which would be killer do they suspect is going to wade through the arguments and sort out the conflicting opinions of experts about such things as "additive assumption" before they decide whether or not to kill someone?
And I think that is guaranteed to be the result of any atheist attempt to reconstruct something that we would generally concede to comprise superior moral behavior. Ineffective impotence that will always, in real life, favor the depraved.
That huge deal made by atheists in arguing this question, of whether or not such morality is possible without God, of those dear old atheist professors who are beloved figures of kindness and such people do exist, but life proves that in the wider real world to count on that is unrealistic and absurd.
In general life unless they lead by an example of moral behavior, their technical explanations coming up with a materialistic basis for their behavior is as likely to be contradictory as it is to be ineffective in having a general effect in the wider world. We shouldn't rely at all on the nice old atheist professor acting morally within his own sphere of experience extending beyond that. Depraved monsters can do that, too, certainly in regard to our own self. But also their extended connections. Even the most evil of Stalinist henchmen or Nazis knew when someone treated THEM well or in ways they, no doubt, felt to be unfair even as they tortured and murdered scores, hundreds and tens of millions And there are even those who were nice to their children and spouses and friends as they murdered thousands at their day jobs. Some of them held university professorships and were, no doubt, popular with at least their favorite students and many were doctors of medicine as they willingly, enthusiastically became figures within the killing industry.
I would guess that for a percentage of such lovable figures, who tested their actions against their a priori commitments to materialism, scientism, Darwinism, atheism, they'd be more likley to give up their morality in favor of some species of materialist depravity. Look at how many of Kagan's fellow atheist-university-based "ethicists" spend much of their time drawing up lists of people it's OK to kill based in the same kind of utilitarian notions. Even the ones who want to be nice to animals.
I wish there were some way to have heard a debate between Craig and my favorite atheist, Richard Lewontin, because I suspect Lewontin has a far deeper understanding of things philosophical than most atheists and, certainly, many of his fellow scientists. . I think he would have appreciated the ambiguities of his position better than even a Kagan did and far more than some of Craig's other atheist debate opponents. The confrontation of him and the biologist Lewis Wolpert was pathetic (Wolpert is a philosophical idiot who gets by on his dotty old professor act) and the one between him and the physics professor Bernard Leikind was even more of an embarrassment for the atheist. Clearly a preparation in post-WWII science doesn't require a high degree skill in logical argument.
One of the most impressive things Lewontin ever did was admit that his atheism is based in his a priori preferences and not in any essential position of science. We all have our own a priori committments on which we base our arguments. Clearly for an "ethicist" of the atheist variety their overriding such committment is to there being no God, their secondary one might, might be in promoting moral behavior. But their prime directive will always be to avoid anything that might imply that God is real or, to their secondary committment, necessary. That has been my general experience of reading, listening to, discussing things in any depth with any atheist who will engage on even the most modest depth on any issues - most of them are atheists on the same basis as sports or pop culture fandom, it doesn't go any deeper than that.
My a priori committment is to do unto others as you would have them do unto you at every level up to and including the commitment to egalitarian democracy and its universal spreading and environmental preservation. I find that God as the source of that is far more likely to produce a good effect in the world than any intellectual construction of an ersatz replacement based on some notion of science. I do fault Craig for missing a great opportunity to point out, in discussing the fact that under the atheist scheme of things in which morality is nothing but an (absurd and self-contradictory) assertion of natural selection and social convention that the Nazis were consistent with their own constructed code of behavior. He seemed to present that as an aberration of the thing Kagan was presenting when their genocideal behavior was founded securely in claims of natural selection as can be found in the entire literature up to and through the Shoah and the other mass killings of the Nazis. The mass murders were a product of the kind of thinking Kagan and his fellow atheist "ethicists" hold as their a priori commitment.
And I don't think the mass murder was, uniformly, an unleashing of a deep and abiding, historically conditioned hatred and love of cruelty. There are instances of death camp commanders punishing sadistic behavior by the guards, even, if my memory serves, of one being ordered to be executed by his commander on the basis of being sadistically cruel while murdering. What is to be made of that is certainly too long for this already long piece. You'd need a long series of books by many scholars to get a grasp of it. What is to be made of mass murderers with a sense of morality and, English doesn't provide any word I know except the totally inappropriate one "kindness" overridden by the "applied biology" of Nazism? You'd get nowhere near understanding of it in a debate though I'll bet the superficial members of the audience would guess they knew what it was all about. For the love of Mike, they would after a TED talk.
* I should point out that with Kagan and the other atheists I've listened to on this topic, they want to have it both ways, of claiming a commitment to the universality of morals while claiming that they have only a social and biological meaning. That, in itself, is a seld-defeating contradiction, which, for the modern atheist, will always be further defeated by one of their ultimate a priori commitments required for maintaining a reputable life in academia.
For anyone to claim such a thing based in natural selection is completely and absolutely absurd because natural selection is an assertion of competition within as well as among species for the personal advantage of individuals. Not even the ridiculous attempts to past various anti-competitive schemes to it can change the basic nature of natural selection. Darwin and his followers repeatedly, over and over again, up till right now argued that it is a struggle for existence which, again in obvious and complete double speak, produced superior individuals, the parents of today's and the futures species.
There is a reason that eugenic inequality has been ascendant since the 1970s, it is because the temporary suppression of such talk after the crimes of the Nazis were exposed was the aberration in an intellectual regime of Darwinism, which was guaranteed to be merely a temporary suspension of that logical conclusion of the theory, Darwinism will ALWAYS produce eugenics and eugenics will, ALWAYS devolve into schemes of who we are to kill. The theme song of Darwinism, if there should ever be one, is the Nazi, Rodgers and Hammerstein style waltz, "Tomorrow Belongs To Me.
Friday, February 14, 2020
McCoy Tyner Trio feat. Gary Bartz - Fly with the Wind
McCoy Tyner - piano
Gary Bartz - saxophone
Gerald L. Cannon - bass
Eric Kamau Grāvātt - drums
The Question Is . . .
"What do you think of Mike Bloomberg being in the race?"
Apparently not much because I haven't written about it. He's got several of the disqualifiers I've written about:
A. He's not really a Democrat.
B. He's too old.
C. He didn't get into the race soon enough.
D. He's way to the right of where I would want to have to vote, thought the one and only "candidate" still in the race I wouldn't vote for is the Putinesque weirdo Tulsi Gabbard. We've got one Putin puppet, replacing him with another would only mean she'd get a honeymoon while the media pretends she isn't one.
I certainly understand why the DNC and Democrats are taking him seriously, there are several billion reasons why. He's a billionaire who is, obviously, scared of a. Donald Trump destroying American democracy, b. Elizabeth Warren becoming president and proving she knows how to do what she said she intended to do. I don't know which one he worries about more except that Trump is already wreaking havoc and wrecking democracy. I don't like him, I didn't like him when he was Mayor of NYC, I'd have to hold my nose to vote for him but if he wants to save America from Trump, all I can say is he's not all bad.
I don't blame the DNC for taking advantage of the money advantage that real billionaires bring, it's not their fault that the Supreme Court and the civil liberties industry have opened up American democracy to that kind of destruction on the basis of "the first amendment". The "Handmaid*" idiocy that expected American fascism to come in on the forms of a fundamentalist bible-thumping preacher got it 180 degrees wrong, it came in on a legal theory dreamed up by fascists who use a cameo of James Madison as their logo.
If, by some miracle, Elizabeth Warren became president I would get 180% behind an effort to investigate federalist-fascism, its backers and its ideologues because they were such a huge part of bringing us past the brink of disaster. They have done everything the old commie hunters claimed to fear but which the old commies never had any chance of doing and, unlike those old commies, they're in control of the federal government., the executive, the Senate, the Supreme Court and a good part of the judiciary.
If you hear someone blaming the DNC for having to pay homage to the billionaires they're either igonrant idiots or liars or both. The play-lefty media you'll hear that from are both. It's the ACLU, Eugene McCarthy, a couple of liberal state parties in New York and Minnesota, the fascist James Buckley, etc. who deserve your blame. They helped create this corrupt pantomime of democracy, Democrats and some Republicans in the Congress tried to prevent it, it was the judiciary that guaranteed this corruption. They're having to do the best they can with the corruption the high-priests of the judiciary made this. If you want a clergy for facism to come from, it's the secular high-priesthood of the Supreme Court.
* Little did I know when I read that mildly entertaining thing that it would morph into the totally absurd thing it has become. I wonder if there's some other book of hers that Atwood wouldn't rather be known for. I'd read some others by her but I don't think I'm interested in looking at any more after Handmaid mania became a thing. I liked The Robber Bride a lot better. But the women in it are stronger so, ironically, it's not going to be TV-movie fodder in the same way. It's a lot funnier, too.
Apparently not much because I haven't written about it. He's got several of the disqualifiers I've written about:
A. He's not really a Democrat.
B. He's too old.
C. He didn't get into the race soon enough.
D. He's way to the right of where I would want to have to vote, thought the one and only "candidate" still in the race I wouldn't vote for is the Putinesque weirdo Tulsi Gabbard. We've got one Putin puppet, replacing him with another would only mean she'd get a honeymoon while the media pretends she isn't one.
I certainly understand why the DNC and Democrats are taking him seriously, there are several billion reasons why. He's a billionaire who is, obviously, scared of a. Donald Trump destroying American democracy, b. Elizabeth Warren becoming president and proving she knows how to do what she said she intended to do. I don't know which one he worries about more except that Trump is already wreaking havoc and wrecking democracy. I don't like him, I didn't like him when he was Mayor of NYC, I'd have to hold my nose to vote for him but if he wants to save America from Trump, all I can say is he's not all bad.
I don't blame the DNC for taking advantage of the money advantage that real billionaires bring, it's not their fault that the Supreme Court and the civil liberties industry have opened up American democracy to that kind of destruction on the basis of "the first amendment". The "Handmaid*" idiocy that expected American fascism to come in on the forms of a fundamentalist bible-thumping preacher got it 180 degrees wrong, it came in on a legal theory dreamed up by fascists who use a cameo of James Madison as their logo.
If, by some miracle, Elizabeth Warren became president I would get 180% behind an effort to investigate federalist-fascism, its backers and its ideologues because they were such a huge part of bringing us past the brink of disaster. They have done everything the old commie hunters claimed to fear but which the old commies never had any chance of doing and, unlike those old commies, they're in control of the federal government., the executive, the Senate, the Supreme Court and a good part of the judiciary.
If you hear someone blaming the DNC for having to pay homage to the billionaires they're either igonrant idiots or liars or both. The play-lefty media you'll hear that from are both. It's the ACLU, Eugene McCarthy, a couple of liberal state parties in New York and Minnesota, the fascist James Buckley, etc. who deserve your blame. They helped create this corrupt pantomime of democracy, Democrats and some Republicans in the Congress tried to prevent it, it was the judiciary that guaranteed this corruption. They're having to do the best they can with the corruption the high-priests of the judiciary made this. If you want a clergy for facism to come from, it's the secular high-priesthood of the Supreme Court.
* Little did I know when I read that mildly entertaining thing that it would morph into the totally absurd thing it has become. I wonder if there's some other book of hers that Atwood wouldn't rather be known for. I'd read some others by her but I don't think I'm interested in looking at any more after Handmaid mania became a thing. I liked The Robber Bride a lot better. But the women in it are stronger so, ironically, it's not going to be TV-movie fodder in the same way. It's a lot funnier, too.
Hate Mail
Give me a break. Nomiki Konst is an ideological hooker, trying to hook her star from, literally, from Joe Biden in 2015 to Bernie Sanders the next year. She's a light weight. If Sam and Michael are down to a middle-aged, ex-Young Turk staffer - I'd love to know why she was let go, but not enough to try to find out - like her they're getting down to the dregs. Her word against Joy Reid's. Yeah, right.
Fasten Your Seat Belts Nevada's Going To Be One Bumpy Ride - And Bernie Is Getting Ready To Ratfuck It For Trump Again
If, as we are being warned and as I was certain would happen, the Nevada caucus is another debacle, it should be the death of that anti-democratic atrocity. Perhaps this time it might be.
One thing I'm absolutely certain of, if anyone but Bernie Sanders comes out "the winner" in Nevada, the Bernie Bots, encouraged by the likes of Majority Report, In These Times* magazine will whip up the Bernie cult, again, risking them doing what they did in 2016, increase the chances of Trump having four more years to destroy democracy. Nothing less that the coronation of Bernie Sanders will prevent that and, sorry, but the chances of him being the nominee probably lessen from here on in. He's not even getting the numbers he got in 2016 so far and I doubt he's going to do well in the primaries held in the coming weeks.
The caucuses were the source of the bulk of Bernie Sanders' claimed wins the last time, and when he didn't, they were and are and will be the foremost generator of Bernie media conspiracy rumors and dark rumblings. I listened to Sam Seder and the idiotic dim wit he's promoting, Nomiki Konst going after Joy Reid over the fact that a lot of the worst of the fuck up in Iowa was due to "reforms" to make the process more "transparent" demanded by the Bernie Bots the DNC had on the committee to reform the system. Considering the hay Seder et al were making in whipping up a scandal over Buttigeig using the word "black" in front of a black audience, seeing these two white people going after Joy Reid a day later tripped the ol' irony meter.
I will note that in slamming him, they leave out the fact that Tom Perez tried to get rid of the caucuses, something he should have publicized far more than he did - the DNC is absolutely shitty about messaging but that's another post - and that if state parties wanted to, they could bypass mandated caucuses as a means of choosing delegates to their state and national conventions. The state legislatures of the various states have no say in how delegates are chosen. Something Konst misrepresents, I suspect because she knows the Bernie camp were instrumental in retaining them because Bernie Sanders would have disappeared in the early weeks of 2016 without the fucked up, anti-democratic caucuses and their little nook of the media would have had a lot less material to work with if there were clear and fast results such as you get with well run primary elections. Caucuses are ALWAYS FUCKED UP, ARE INHERENTLY ANTI-DEMOCRATIC, ARE ALWAYS OPEN TO INTERFERENCE.
I will state again something I noted as soon as I came back from my town caucus in 2016, that a lot of the Bernie supporters were people who I'd seen changing party registration, enrolling in the Democratic Party right before the caucus as was so stupidly allowed, here, some of whom I heard say that if Bernie Sanders didn't get the nomination they were going to vote for Jill Stein.
I was sitting with the sign-in papers right next to a Bernie Bot who had a petition for people to sign sitting right next to me. I heard a lot of these instant and temporary Democrats and what they had to say. If she hadn't been a woman, I might not have been able to resist punching one of them in the mouth as she darkly muttered, before it even started that the person who was convening the caucus was going to rig it for Hillary Clinton. I happen to have known the convener my entire life and you couldn't find a more honest or fair-minded person. That goddamend bitch didn't know him because she wasn't a Democrat and she was a new-comer in town. One who couldn't be bothered to find out who it was she was accusing of corruption. She is typical of the Bernie Bots around here who I've heard. They're the kind of people that Seder and Konst and Michael Brooks, etc. cultivate as their audience.
I'm telling you, if the Democratic left wants to ever win we are going to have to build a real, realistic left for the future that excludes these people. They are not anyone we can work with, they are not only undependable, they are treacherous.
* I really want to know who is backing their go-to guy, a foreigner from New Zealand, Branko Marcetic, who is writing hit pieces against Democrats in favor of Bernie Sanders, including Elizabeth Warren. I wonder why him doing that in INT and Jacobin (Geesh!, talk about the play-left) is not foreign interference in our elections. If it hadn't been working in concert with those who did it overtly to put Trump in office as I warned four years ago and if he wasn't doing it again, this time, I wouldn't even raise the suspicion that someone might be working to that end on the "left" through such "journalists". How about that for an alternative conspiracy theory to float? I'm beginning to think that a lot of those guys are assets of the Putin regime as we are now discovering so many were of the same gangsters when they called themselves Communists.
One thing I'm absolutely certain of, if anyone but Bernie Sanders comes out "the winner" in Nevada, the Bernie Bots, encouraged by the likes of Majority Report, In These Times* magazine will whip up the Bernie cult, again, risking them doing what they did in 2016, increase the chances of Trump having four more years to destroy democracy. Nothing less that the coronation of Bernie Sanders will prevent that and, sorry, but the chances of him being the nominee probably lessen from here on in. He's not even getting the numbers he got in 2016 so far and I doubt he's going to do well in the primaries held in the coming weeks.
The caucuses were the source of the bulk of Bernie Sanders' claimed wins the last time, and when he didn't, they were and are and will be the foremost generator of Bernie media conspiracy rumors and dark rumblings. I listened to Sam Seder and the idiotic dim wit he's promoting, Nomiki Konst going after Joy Reid over the fact that a lot of the worst of the fuck up in Iowa was due to "reforms" to make the process more "transparent" demanded by the Bernie Bots the DNC had on the committee to reform the system. Considering the hay Seder et al were making in whipping up a scandal over Buttigeig using the word "black" in front of a black audience, seeing these two white people going after Joy Reid a day later tripped the ol' irony meter.
I will note that in slamming him, they leave out the fact that Tom Perez tried to get rid of the caucuses, something he should have publicized far more than he did - the DNC is absolutely shitty about messaging but that's another post - and that if state parties wanted to, they could bypass mandated caucuses as a means of choosing delegates to their state and national conventions. The state legislatures of the various states have no say in how delegates are chosen. Something Konst misrepresents, I suspect because she knows the Bernie camp were instrumental in retaining them because Bernie Sanders would have disappeared in the early weeks of 2016 without the fucked up, anti-democratic caucuses and their little nook of the media would have had a lot less material to work with if there were clear and fast results such as you get with well run primary elections. Caucuses are ALWAYS FUCKED UP, ARE INHERENTLY ANTI-DEMOCRATIC, ARE ALWAYS OPEN TO INTERFERENCE.
I will state again something I noted as soon as I came back from my town caucus in 2016, that a lot of the Bernie supporters were people who I'd seen changing party registration, enrolling in the Democratic Party right before the caucus as was so stupidly allowed, here, some of whom I heard say that if Bernie Sanders didn't get the nomination they were going to vote for Jill Stein.
I was sitting with the sign-in papers right next to a Bernie Bot who had a petition for people to sign sitting right next to me. I heard a lot of these instant and temporary Democrats and what they had to say. If she hadn't been a woman, I might not have been able to resist punching one of them in the mouth as she darkly muttered, before it even started that the person who was convening the caucus was going to rig it for Hillary Clinton. I happen to have known the convener my entire life and you couldn't find a more honest or fair-minded person. That goddamend bitch didn't know him because she wasn't a Democrat and she was a new-comer in town. One who couldn't be bothered to find out who it was she was accusing of corruption. She is typical of the Bernie Bots around here who I've heard. They're the kind of people that Seder and Konst and Michael Brooks, etc. cultivate as their audience.
I'm telling you, if the Democratic left wants to ever win we are going to have to build a real, realistic left for the future that excludes these people. They are not anyone we can work with, they are not only undependable, they are treacherous.
* I really want to know who is backing their go-to guy, a foreigner from New Zealand, Branko Marcetic, who is writing hit pieces against Democrats in favor of Bernie Sanders, including Elizabeth Warren. I wonder why him doing that in INT and Jacobin (Geesh!, talk about the play-left) is not foreign interference in our elections. If it hadn't been working in concert with those who did it overtly to put Trump in office as I warned four years ago and if he wasn't doing it again, this time, I wouldn't even raise the suspicion that someone might be working to that end on the "left" through such "journalists". How about that for an alternative conspiracy theory to float? I'm beginning to think that a lot of those guys are assets of the Putin regime as we are now discovering so many were of the same gangsters when they called themselves Communists.
Thursday, February 13, 2020
McCoy Tyner - La Habana Sol
McCoy Tyner, Piano
Aaron Scott, Drums,
Avery Sharpe, Bass
About once every winter, when it's really cold and snowing I think of this. Today's the day.
We keep loosing our power. I'll post later
Wednesday, February 12, 2020
I'm old enough to remember the 1992 presidential election. Tom Harkin swept the Iowa caucus. Paul Tsongas narrowly won the most votes and split the delegates in New Hampshire a week later. Then Jerry Brown won in Maine, and Bob Kerry won in South Dakota.
Dr Jacquelyn Gill
Dr Jacquelyn Gill
The Atheist-Secular Play-Left Are Not Only Undependable You Can Only Count On Them Sandbagging The Real Left - Hate Mail
The Democratic Party has got to get shut of the atheist-secularist-play-left, based mostly in urban centers such as New York City and college towns, Madison being, for me, the quintessential example of that. The kind of thing that is so often composed, mostly, of the most callow of adults, those of college age and which, even when it's geezers doing it, caters to and attempts to harness those whose life experience leads them to be the most unrealistic. There are great things about the young but only when they do what the play-left doesn't want them to do, pursue what is possible and use the success in that to push on. And to know when that's not possible for now. Most don't, the play-lefty media doesn't want them to focus on that, they want the eyes and clicks of those who aren't mature enough to do that.
My brother regularly checks out the lunatic right-wing media to keep track of the insanity. I can't stomach that so I pay that same kind of attention to the play-lefty media who are as big a problem for the real left as the fascist right is for us. I look at the mags, The Nation, In These Times, The Progressive (don't get me started of fucking Madison) and the electronic play-lefty media, Democracy Now! ("or we'll fucking hold our breaths till we turn BLUE!") The Young Turks, Majority Report, etc. They never learn a thing as the current insanity among them over Bernie Sanders proves. I listened to some of Sam Seder and Michael Brooks and the even stupider Nomiki Konst and it was like the predictable, cyclic deja vu of every disastrous, counter-productive, Republican-fascist enabling attack by the play-left on the only left that's going to get elected and take power of the past fifty-two years.
No. They have not learned a fucking thing as their predecessors of the make-believe revolutionaries of Republican-fascist enablement I mentioned here last week, Al Lowenstein and his buddy Curits Gans never learned a fucking thing, as the ACLU never learns a fucking thing, as the people who run the secular-atheist-pseudo-left never learn a fucking thing. We've got to build a real, winning left that doesn't depend on them in any way because they have proven themselves, over and over and over again for more than a century to be not only undependable but fully and willingly and knowingly the enemies of real progress in the United States.
My brother regularly checks out the lunatic right-wing media to keep track of the insanity. I can't stomach that so I pay that same kind of attention to the play-lefty media who are as big a problem for the real left as the fascist right is for us. I look at the mags, The Nation, In These Times, The Progressive (don't get me started of fucking Madison) and the electronic play-lefty media, Democracy Now! ("or we'll fucking hold our breaths till we turn BLUE!") The Young Turks, Majority Report, etc. They never learn a thing as the current insanity among them over Bernie Sanders proves. I listened to some of Sam Seder and Michael Brooks and the even stupider Nomiki Konst and it was like the predictable, cyclic deja vu of every disastrous, counter-productive, Republican-fascist enabling attack by the play-left on the only left that's going to get elected and take power of the past fifty-two years.
No. They have not learned a fucking thing as their predecessors of the make-believe revolutionaries of Republican-fascist enablement I mentioned here last week, Al Lowenstein and his buddy Curits Gans never learned a fucking thing, as the ACLU never learns a fucking thing, as the people who run the secular-atheist-pseudo-left never learn a fucking thing. We've got to build a real, winning left that doesn't depend on them in any way because they have proven themselves, over and over and over again for more than a century to be not only undependable but fully and willingly and knowingly the enemies of real progress in the United States.
The "Reverend "Coach Doeth Protest Too Much, Ya Think?
What's most funny about "Rev" Coach Dave Daubenmire making himself temporarily infamous by suing Pepsi and the NFL over the hoochie coochie act of a couple of aging cheerleader types during the Superbowl halftime show is that the half-time show was an interruption in the barely concealed feast of homoerotic exhibition that American football is.
American football is first and foremost the way that nominally straight men get their homoerotic kicks while pretending that's not what they're doing. Gay men and women know better, though in most cases it's only the gay men who will admit it. American football is the thoroughly sublimated homoerotic lust that dare not speak its name. It is first and foremost an excuse for men to look at other men's overly ample, steroid and gluttony enhanced asses bent over in the most telling poses taken by men who then grope and slam other such men to the ground by jumping on them. That's why women who watch it watch it, that's something the gay men who watch it admit openly they watch it for. Is it any shock that football features so prominently in the nominally Catholic universities and colleges for which it should be banned as an obvious violation of the entire teaching of Jesus? Someone once told me the most vicious football coach they ever witnessed was a Jesuit. Coaches, some of them make out with the big money but all of them are there for the sexual aspect of it, even those who exclusively have sex with women.
On top of that the only reasons for it are for money to be made out of the conventionalized porn show that American football is - and considering how much porn sells, it's no shock that there's loads of money to be made from what is, otherwise, a less compelling athletic event than curling. Sex money and violence are the liturgy of American football, it is totally not anything to do with the Gospel of Jesus, the "reverend's" religion is neo-Paganism that calls itself Christianity.
I barely knew who the two women who got the revved up coach all hot and bothered are - I didn't know till looking them up that it's spelled "Jlo" - but what they did was no different in substance from what the cheerleaders on the sideline do every game. They're there to distract the audience from how boring football is.
Cheerleading is essentially a stripper act without taking the last stitches of skimpy, skin tight clothes off. And also part of the cover story denying the homoerotic feast of boy on boy booty that is football. Football cheer leading is a cover act so the guys can convince themselves that they're not there to watch a lot of men's asses encased in skin tight spandex, asses big enough to be visible from a distance. They're there for the same reason the beer is, that's there to help the guys deny what's going through their heads.
Why a football coach wouldn't have noticed the cheerleaders all these years, one who is now mounting a publicity laws suit over the half time show leads me to wonder what the coach was looking at instead of them, all those years on the field.
I don't know what denomination if any the Rev. is given his title by but it's got nothing to do with Christianity. I will note that in looking into him for about as much time as it's worth - less than 10 minutes - it notes he was disappointed in his 2010 congressional bid, no doubt as part of the billionaire financed, racist reaction "tea party" campaign of that year. Which is the only positive thing I found out about him.
Now we can forget about him, I hope.
Update: Apparently my most OCD troll has a lust for zaftig men's asses that dare not speak its name. Though he's shrieking about it a bit. I wonder if his girlfriend has a clue. He's expressed a love of sword and sandals movies in the past when I made fun of them. And in the typical way, he's the one accusing me of "projecting" which is just one of the limited ways of someone saying "I got nutthin'".
I've never been attracted to jocks, though there are a few baseball players from the pre-streoid era I found attractive. I've never liked them caponized. I'm not an ass man, whereas he's all ass.
American football is first and foremost the way that nominally straight men get their homoerotic kicks while pretending that's not what they're doing. Gay men and women know better, though in most cases it's only the gay men who will admit it. American football is the thoroughly sublimated homoerotic lust that dare not speak its name. It is first and foremost an excuse for men to look at other men's overly ample, steroid and gluttony enhanced asses bent over in the most telling poses taken by men who then grope and slam other such men to the ground by jumping on them. That's why women who watch it watch it, that's something the gay men who watch it admit openly they watch it for. Is it any shock that football features so prominently in the nominally Catholic universities and colleges for which it should be banned as an obvious violation of the entire teaching of Jesus? Someone once told me the most vicious football coach they ever witnessed was a Jesuit. Coaches, some of them make out with the big money but all of them are there for the sexual aspect of it, even those who exclusively have sex with women.
On top of that the only reasons for it are for money to be made out of the conventionalized porn show that American football is - and considering how much porn sells, it's no shock that there's loads of money to be made from what is, otherwise, a less compelling athletic event than curling. Sex money and violence are the liturgy of American football, it is totally not anything to do with the Gospel of Jesus, the "reverend's" religion is neo-Paganism that calls itself Christianity.
I barely knew who the two women who got the revved up coach all hot and bothered are - I didn't know till looking them up that it's spelled "Jlo" - but what they did was no different in substance from what the cheerleaders on the sideline do every game. They're there to distract the audience from how boring football is.
Cheerleading is essentially a stripper act without taking the last stitches of skimpy, skin tight clothes off. And also part of the cover story denying the homoerotic feast of boy on boy booty that is football. Football cheer leading is a cover act so the guys can convince themselves that they're not there to watch a lot of men's asses encased in skin tight spandex, asses big enough to be visible from a distance. They're there for the same reason the beer is, that's there to help the guys deny what's going through their heads.
Why a football coach wouldn't have noticed the cheerleaders all these years, one who is now mounting a publicity laws suit over the half time show leads me to wonder what the coach was looking at instead of them, all those years on the field.
I don't know what denomination if any the Rev. is given his title by but it's got nothing to do with Christianity. I will note that in looking into him for about as much time as it's worth - less than 10 minutes - it notes he was disappointed in his 2010 congressional bid, no doubt as part of the billionaire financed, racist reaction "tea party" campaign of that year. Which is the only positive thing I found out about him.
Now we can forget about him, I hope.
Update: Apparently my most OCD troll has a lust for zaftig men's asses that dare not speak its name. Though he's shrieking about it a bit. I wonder if his girlfriend has a clue. He's expressed a love of sword and sandals movies in the past when I made fun of them. And in the typical way, he's the one accusing me of "projecting" which is just one of the limited ways of someone saying "I got nutthin'".
I've never been attracted to jocks, though there are a few baseball players from the pre-streoid era I found attractive. I've never liked them caponized. I'm not an ass man, whereas he's all ass.
You Cannot Sustain That Kind Of Economic Injustice Over Time And The Way It Turned Out Is That Jerusalem Was Destroyed - I Needed A Little Brueggemann To Put Things Into Perspective
The title of the sermon is Covenant As An Alternative To Pharaoh.
In Flux Maybe Flucked - Thoughts About Yesterday's Primary
The good news from yesterday's New Hampshire Primary is that Democratic participation was higher than the record 2008 season, which shows what I've been harping about, primaries are far more democratic than the anti-democratic caucus. It's disgusting that the modified Yankee-swap game of caucuses are legal to make any political decision in a democracy. So there is hope of voter activation against Trump that Iowa's dismal performance had the media talking down last week. Iowa, or at least Iowa Democrats, are certainly better than their caucus led people to talk about them. They should prove it by getting rid of the caucus and adopting a really democratic primary process.
What they mean otherwise, damned if I know except it's clear the voters, so far, have rejected Biden, the one that the polls and the media had marked as the unbeatable one who this was to lose. Well, he lost it, apparently. He will hold on till after South Carolina which, I hope, is the end of his political career. I cringe to think what will come out of his mouth in the meantime.
Another thing that is clear, is that a majority of the voters want change, whether that is in the utterly disastrous form of Bernie Sanders who just about certainly will not be president but who proves he is willing to put Trump in that office, again, or in the longest of shots on the other end of the age demographic, Pete Buttigeig who will almost certainly not this time become the first openly gay president.
I will not hide my fear that those two men and the people behind them are an ever more definable disaster for Democrats, the choice of the unrealistic idealists. In the case of one, the kind of person who is wildly popular among the college-kids but who will not sell in almost every state in the nation, in the case of Bernie Sanders, someone far more suitable to play that role than George McGovern was in the closest example from history. Sanders has far more baggage to sink his chances than McGovern did and McGovern was far more accomplished than Sanders.
That Sanders' majorities this time are far smaller than the numbers of votes he lost by last time, that has me far more skeptical of his chances than I was in 2016. If he is the nominee, I am expecting 1972 only far, far worse, this time. Nixon faced a Democratic congress and a Supreme Court not packed with actual fascists. Democrats have got to get shut of the play left that is stupid enough to hitch its wagon to Bernie Sanders. It has needed to all along, the real left will have to find a way to win without it, they are too unreliable and too prone to being led down the path to disaster.
In the case of Buttigeig, I'm afraid that there are too many people who support him who like that woman in Iowa, don't know the first thing most of us heard, that he is, in fact, a gay man married to another man AND WHO ON THAT ALONE WANTED TO TAKE HER VOTE BACK. And if there are those among his supporters, there are a very large number of voters, especially concentrated in enough states, who know it and would not vote for him on that basis, he has far more of a potential to drag down Democrats all down the ticket due to the fact that Republican-fascists will guarantee there is no one who doesn't know that most obvious feature of his identity.
Why my favorite candidate, Elizabeth Warren isn't going farther is a mix of Bernie Sanders ruining her chances - the chances of someone without his baggage and who could win the election - and, I suspect, her decision to go with mainly small-donor support instead of going for the big money. The civil-liberties industry and the Republican-fascists have made big-money corruption an inherent part of American politics using "the First Amendment" to destroy electoral democracy.
Being a fan of history who is now old enough to have read a bit of that as it was happening, I'm remembering that it was that jackass hero of the play-lefties, Eugene McCarthy who, finding out that the voters didn't have the same inflated view of his greatness as he figured he was entitled to, was an enemy of getting big money out of politics, joining up with the ACLU and a few of the putative "liberal" state parties and the fascist Buckley to get Buckley v Valeo through the court, making the protection of electoral democracy impossible. You can thank that dream candidate of the largely college-town - lefty-magazine based, secular-left c. 1968 - until Bobby Kennedy decided to take over that wagon - as one of those who have gotten us here. The secular-atheist-college town-lefty media have proven themselves, over and over again, to be friggin' stupid. That is a left the Democratic Party, the party that has some chance of winning elections and governing, the real left, has to get shut of. They are idiots who never, ever learn a single thing. They have had us in the political wilderness for a half a century and they want to stay there. We can't afford to waste any more time on them.
What they mean otherwise, damned if I know except it's clear the voters, so far, have rejected Biden, the one that the polls and the media had marked as the unbeatable one who this was to lose. Well, he lost it, apparently. He will hold on till after South Carolina which, I hope, is the end of his political career. I cringe to think what will come out of his mouth in the meantime.
Another thing that is clear, is that a majority of the voters want change, whether that is in the utterly disastrous form of Bernie Sanders who just about certainly will not be president but who proves he is willing to put Trump in that office, again, or in the longest of shots on the other end of the age demographic, Pete Buttigeig who will almost certainly not this time become the first openly gay president.
I will not hide my fear that those two men and the people behind them are an ever more definable disaster for Democrats, the choice of the unrealistic idealists. In the case of one, the kind of person who is wildly popular among the college-kids but who will not sell in almost every state in the nation, in the case of Bernie Sanders, someone far more suitable to play that role than George McGovern was in the closest example from history. Sanders has far more baggage to sink his chances than McGovern did and McGovern was far more accomplished than Sanders.
That Sanders' majorities this time are far smaller than the numbers of votes he lost by last time, that has me far more skeptical of his chances than I was in 2016. If he is the nominee, I am expecting 1972 only far, far worse, this time. Nixon faced a Democratic congress and a Supreme Court not packed with actual fascists. Democrats have got to get shut of the play left that is stupid enough to hitch its wagon to Bernie Sanders. It has needed to all along, the real left will have to find a way to win without it, they are too unreliable and too prone to being led down the path to disaster.
In the case of Buttigeig, I'm afraid that there are too many people who support him who like that woman in Iowa, don't know the first thing most of us heard, that he is, in fact, a gay man married to another man AND WHO ON THAT ALONE WANTED TO TAKE HER VOTE BACK. And if there are those among his supporters, there are a very large number of voters, especially concentrated in enough states, who know it and would not vote for him on that basis, he has far more of a potential to drag down Democrats all down the ticket due to the fact that Republican-fascists will guarantee there is no one who doesn't know that most obvious feature of his identity.
Why my favorite candidate, Elizabeth Warren isn't going farther is a mix of Bernie Sanders ruining her chances - the chances of someone without his baggage and who could win the election - and, I suspect, her decision to go with mainly small-donor support instead of going for the big money. The civil-liberties industry and the Republican-fascists have made big-money corruption an inherent part of American politics using "the First Amendment" to destroy electoral democracy.
Being a fan of history who is now old enough to have read a bit of that as it was happening, I'm remembering that it was that jackass hero of the play-lefties, Eugene McCarthy who, finding out that the voters didn't have the same inflated view of his greatness as he figured he was entitled to, was an enemy of getting big money out of politics, joining up with the ACLU and a few of the putative "liberal" state parties and the fascist Buckley to get Buckley v Valeo through the court, making the protection of electoral democracy impossible. You can thank that dream candidate of the largely college-town - lefty-magazine based, secular-left c. 1968 - until Bobby Kennedy decided to take over that wagon - as one of those who have gotten us here. The secular-atheist-college town-lefty media have proven themselves, over and over again, to be friggin' stupid. That is a left the Democratic Party, the party that has some chance of winning elections and governing, the real left, has to get shut of. They are idiots who never, ever learn a single thing. They have had us in the political wilderness for a half a century and they want to stay there. We can't afford to waste any more time on them.
Tuesday, February 11, 2020
Someone Thinks I'll Get Upset If They Diss The Vatican? More Clueles Than Clouseau
Oh, please. I've been more critical of the Vatican than all of the NYC-Upper Mid-Western University town, Seattle area dolts at Duncan's put together, more critical because my criticism is based on current reality, not uninformed bigotry taken in during childhood, the childhood they continue in into their senectitude. That's one of the things about that place, they are totally conventional bigots of their kind and that kind hasn't much developed since about 1957. Many of the worst bigots I've ever heard have been from that milieu.
I think Duncan is a good example of how among that kind education doesn't mean learning to think and learn new things, it means reciting the rote crap that will get you recognized as part of the clique. Learning stuff is like work, too much like it to take with him and his seniors play group. I knew that kind of thing a bit from the time I spent in universities but it wasn't till going online and reading the unfiltered ersatz thinking of hundreds and thousands of such types that I really understood it was a widespread form of chosen debility. It's kind of like smoking or drinking or binge watching crap shows on whatever venue they're using for that, these days. If they weren't so lazy they'd go haunt casinos like more ambitious degenerated geezers.
I think Duncan is a good example of how among that kind education doesn't mean learning to think and learn new things, it means reciting the rote crap that will get you recognized as part of the clique. Learning stuff is like work, too much like it to take with him and his seniors play group. I knew that kind of thing a bit from the time I spent in universities but it wasn't till going online and reading the unfiltered ersatz thinking of hundreds and thousands of such types that I really understood it was a widespread form of chosen debility. It's kind of like smoking or drinking or binge watching crap shows on whatever venue they're using for that, these days. If they weren't so lazy they'd go haunt casinos like more ambitious degenerated geezers.
Monday, February 10, 2020
I Will Vote For Whoever Gets The Democratic Nomination But Elizabeth Warren Is The Best Candidate In This Race
I have about given up any hope that the self-designated left will ever grow up, I've been waiting for decades for even the hardest of experience to show that they will and every single time they get a chance to show that, they prove themselves ready to take of on some quest, obvious at the start of it to have the slightest of hopes of succeeding, and I have never, once, seen one of those get to where it was going, they always get knocked off before they make contact with that first windmill. They were bad enough when such a left lived mainly through small-circulation journals, mostly centered in New York and other large cities, some of it coming from the artificial hot houses of unreality that college based "radicalism" is. None of it accomplishes much other than damage the real left that can win office, take control of government and do good things.
This one we've got this year, the collective airing of the secular, play-lefties daddy issues in the Bernie Sanders sequel may count as the stupidest of them, yet. He is:
A. Very likely to die before the election, having recently had a heart attack in his late 70s. If he does so after becoming the nominee or right before election day, then what? Our elections system doesn't make any kind of provision for that.
B. He is very likely to have his past as a supporter of Marxism used to red-bait him out of contention - what they did 48 years ago to George McGovern who had never gave the fascists the gift that Bernie's self-generated CV is for them.
And if it's not that there's the corpus of his stream-of-consciousness bull shit writing and babbling.
C. It's almost not worth bringing it up, since Bernie Sanders never will be elected president, but once he was in office the astro-turf "Tea Party" effort against him would make the one mounted to sink the Democrats and to effectively make him a lame duck from day one is a sure bet. As RMJ pointed out, if, as would be likely, a Bernie Sanders candidacy would ensure that Mitch McConnell would remain running the Senate, his appointments would almost certainly not be approved, certainly none of his judicial appointments.
And that's only the beginning of the total idiocy of the Bernie Sanders re-run that has the devotion of so many, especially the callow young who are, as it turns out, a pretty unreliable base for making change or even keeping what we've got.
I have similar qualms about a Pete Buttigeig nomination, though in that case it's a matter far more of him being a gay man than anything in his quite conventional CV that would give the Republican-fascists their best material. If Bernie Sanders at the top of the ticket would damage the chances of Democrats farther down the ticket, I think Buttigeig there would have a, perhaps, less damaging effect but it would have a very real one. Remember that stupid woman who, immediately after supporting Mayor Pete in the caucus was informed that he's a gay man married to a man and she wanted to take her vote back? Well, there are plenty more of that kind out there and those who would never support him because he's gay and they knew enough to know that.
I reject Biden for many of the same reasons I reject Sanders, who adds in his inability to not say and do incredibly stupid stuff while campaigning. It's like he has an irresistible inclination to say and do stupid stuff, especially stuff that will damage his standing with women, members of other minorities, especially those whose support is not optional for the Democratic Party. Joe Biden is a typical straight-white-male of his generation for whom straight-white-men are the default person that they think about and about who his concern is focused. He's something like Barack Obama for whom that default person was a person of wealth and power and influence and fame. Especially if they were Republicans. Biden has proven himself incapable of getting past the same mindset he had when he chaired the Senate Judiciary Committee that gave us the smearing of Anita Hill.
There is no candidate who the Republicans will not go after but the one who has proven that she can handle herself well under such attack is Elizabeth Warren. I will focus on her instead of Bernie Sanders and his cult who are hell bent on destroying her chances as they cling to their Bernie. But where do they go if Bernie Sanders has another heart attack and has to leave the race? Apparently the idiots never thought of that.
I will say that after their recent crap, the secular-play-left is dead to me. Even if we have some miracle and Elizabeth Warren becomes president with a Democratic Congress, I hope she does so without the help of the play-left so she can totally ignore it. They're mostly a bunch of middle class to affluent, straight, white-guys or women who are associated with the same mindset, though interestingly few of those, considering. That they are really not part of the reliable Democratic base is not really that surprising. We should build the Democratic Party of the future counting on getting shut of them, entirely. They've done nothing but damage us.
This one we've got this year, the collective airing of the secular, play-lefties daddy issues in the Bernie Sanders sequel may count as the stupidest of them, yet. He is:
A. Very likely to die before the election, having recently had a heart attack in his late 70s. If he does so after becoming the nominee or right before election day, then what? Our elections system doesn't make any kind of provision for that.
B. He is very likely to have his past as a supporter of Marxism used to red-bait him out of contention - what they did 48 years ago to George McGovern who had never gave the fascists the gift that Bernie's self-generated CV is for them.
And if it's not that there's the corpus of his stream-of-consciousness bull shit writing and babbling.
C. It's almost not worth bringing it up, since Bernie Sanders never will be elected president, but once he was in office the astro-turf "Tea Party" effort against him would make the one mounted to sink the Democrats and to effectively make him a lame duck from day one is a sure bet. As RMJ pointed out, if, as would be likely, a Bernie Sanders candidacy would ensure that Mitch McConnell would remain running the Senate, his appointments would almost certainly not be approved, certainly none of his judicial appointments.
And that's only the beginning of the total idiocy of the Bernie Sanders re-run that has the devotion of so many, especially the callow young who are, as it turns out, a pretty unreliable base for making change or even keeping what we've got.
I have similar qualms about a Pete Buttigeig nomination, though in that case it's a matter far more of him being a gay man than anything in his quite conventional CV that would give the Republican-fascists their best material. If Bernie Sanders at the top of the ticket would damage the chances of Democrats farther down the ticket, I think Buttigeig there would have a, perhaps, less damaging effect but it would have a very real one. Remember that stupid woman who, immediately after supporting Mayor Pete in the caucus was informed that he's a gay man married to a man and she wanted to take her vote back? Well, there are plenty more of that kind out there and those who would never support him because he's gay and they knew enough to know that.
I reject Biden for many of the same reasons I reject Sanders, who adds in his inability to not say and do incredibly stupid stuff while campaigning. It's like he has an irresistible inclination to say and do stupid stuff, especially stuff that will damage his standing with women, members of other minorities, especially those whose support is not optional for the Democratic Party. Joe Biden is a typical straight-white-male of his generation for whom straight-white-men are the default person that they think about and about who his concern is focused. He's something like Barack Obama for whom that default person was a person of wealth and power and influence and fame. Especially if they were Republicans. Biden has proven himself incapable of getting past the same mindset he had when he chaired the Senate Judiciary Committee that gave us the smearing of Anita Hill.
There is no candidate who the Republicans will not go after but the one who has proven that she can handle herself well under such attack is Elizabeth Warren. I will focus on her instead of Bernie Sanders and his cult who are hell bent on destroying her chances as they cling to their Bernie. But where do they go if Bernie Sanders has another heart attack and has to leave the race? Apparently the idiots never thought of that.
I will say that after their recent crap, the secular-play-left is dead to me. Even if we have some miracle and Elizabeth Warren becomes president with a Democratic Congress, I hope she does so without the help of the play-left so she can totally ignore it. They're mostly a bunch of middle class to affluent, straight, white-guys or women who are associated with the same mindset, though interestingly few of those, considering. That they are really not part of the reliable Democratic base is not really that surprising. We should build the Democratic Party of the future counting on getting shut of them, entirely. They've done nothing but damage us.
Stupid Mail
It being winter and needing distraction from politics, from time to time, I've been watching some of the Youtubes in the sister channel of The Periodic Table of Videos, the Numberphile. Which is fun, though sometimes the arguments they go through tax my ability to follow them in a video format. A lot of that is better read than heard.
Listening to one of them a while back I suddenly wondered if mathematicians would ever be so cluelessly arrogant to claim that they knew more than a tiny fraction of what there was to know about numbers, if there are any counterparts in the far more precise and exacting science of mathematics to physicists who claim that they're on the cusp of having a universal theory of everything to do with the physical universe, the kind of guy like Stephen Hawking or Sean Carroll who get loads of attention for such claims which, when you look at them with even a modest degree of skepticism, it turns out they're claims are pretty silly.
I was thinking about the question that Carroll wanted to ignore the obvious answer to, that physics, cosmology has no theory of everything about even a single electron in the universe, there is not even a single electron that physics can know comprehensively, exhaustively, completely, there is not a single electron that physics can know everything about. It can't even know everything they can think of to want to know about it at any given second if its existence, as noted here, that was one of the most important discoveries of physics in the early 20th century, the time of those whose shoulders Hawking and Carroll rest on. It's like those discoveries of the inability of science to know anything completely don't matter to them in their quest for glory.
Anyway, I would guess that there isn't a mathematician who would claim that mathematics knows anything about any number, even one, even zero that is anything like a comprehensive view of the properties and characteristics of the number are. Mathematicians tend to deal with philosophical issues at a far deeper and more sophisticated level than those in the physical sciences - they have to. I would guess that every single advance in pure mathematics adds to the complexity of every number, certainly every one relevant to the argument in that advance. I would guess that those implications include the number one, though I'd probably have to ask a number of mathematicians who might or might not agree with that idea. I can't think of how any advance in pure mathematics wouldn't add to the complexity of every number which would have to be included in its enclosed universe of relationships. And physical objects are far less knowable than mathematical objects. There are few, if any, statements of physics which have the same level of proof that is typical of mathematics. Eddington, in his Swathmore Lecture of 1929 noted:
The physicist who inveighs against the lack of coherence and the indefiniteness of theological theories, will probably speak not much less harshly of the theories of biology and psychology. They also fail to come up to his standard of methodology. On the other side of him stands an even superior being – the pure mathematician – who has no high opinion of the methods of deduction used in physics, and does not hide his disapproval of the laxity of what is accepted as proof in physical science. And yet somehow knowledge grows in all of these branches. Wherever a way opens we are impelled to seek by the only methods that can be devised for that particular opening, not over-rating the security of our finding, but conscious that in this activity of mind we are obeying the light that is in our nature.
I think Eddington was being way too optimistic in his idealistic view of the people who do science, their modesty in making claims for the scope of what they claim is not generally in evidence. Absurdly bold and unsupported claims are more typical, especially as the nature of what is claimed becomes more obviously tenuous and speculative, whether that be the, at best, quasi-science of psychology or the absurdly ambitious claims of theoretical cosmology, especially those which abandon anything but the pretense of being based on observation of nature. They are more like the worst of theologians who make similar bold and unevidenced claims than they are a mathematician who has to back up his claims with tight arguments and who never can forget that they base their work on axioms which cannot be proven. The best of theology is both rigorous in its methods and humble in its claims. Though as those who slam theology almost never have read much if any of it, they wouldn't know that.
I will note that Eddington is reputed to have spent a good part of his last years trying to come up with his own Fundamental Theory which is, today, generally considered to have been a breakdown in his previous habits of skeptical judgement about his assumptions.
You got that, Bunky? No, I didn't think you would.
Listening to one of them a while back I suddenly wondered if mathematicians would ever be so cluelessly arrogant to claim that they knew more than a tiny fraction of what there was to know about numbers, if there are any counterparts in the far more precise and exacting science of mathematics to physicists who claim that they're on the cusp of having a universal theory of everything to do with the physical universe, the kind of guy like Stephen Hawking or Sean Carroll who get loads of attention for such claims which, when you look at them with even a modest degree of skepticism, it turns out they're claims are pretty silly.
I was thinking about the question that Carroll wanted to ignore the obvious answer to, that physics, cosmology has no theory of everything about even a single electron in the universe, there is not even a single electron that physics can know comprehensively, exhaustively, completely, there is not a single electron that physics can know everything about. It can't even know everything they can think of to want to know about it at any given second if its existence, as noted here, that was one of the most important discoveries of physics in the early 20th century, the time of those whose shoulders Hawking and Carroll rest on. It's like those discoveries of the inability of science to know anything completely don't matter to them in their quest for glory.
Anyway, I would guess that there isn't a mathematician who would claim that mathematics knows anything about any number, even one, even zero that is anything like a comprehensive view of the properties and characteristics of the number are. Mathematicians tend to deal with philosophical issues at a far deeper and more sophisticated level than those in the physical sciences - they have to. I would guess that every single advance in pure mathematics adds to the complexity of every number, certainly every one relevant to the argument in that advance. I would guess that those implications include the number one, though I'd probably have to ask a number of mathematicians who might or might not agree with that idea. I can't think of how any advance in pure mathematics wouldn't add to the complexity of every number which would have to be included in its enclosed universe of relationships. And physical objects are far less knowable than mathematical objects. There are few, if any, statements of physics which have the same level of proof that is typical of mathematics. Eddington, in his Swathmore Lecture of 1929 noted:
The physicist who inveighs against the lack of coherence and the indefiniteness of theological theories, will probably speak not much less harshly of the theories of biology and psychology. They also fail to come up to his standard of methodology. On the other side of him stands an even superior being – the pure mathematician – who has no high opinion of the methods of deduction used in physics, and does not hide his disapproval of the laxity of what is accepted as proof in physical science. And yet somehow knowledge grows in all of these branches. Wherever a way opens we are impelled to seek by the only methods that can be devised for that particular opening, not over-rating the security of our finding, but conscious that in this activity of mind we are obeying the light that is in our nature.
I think Eddington was being way too optimistic in his idealistic view of the people who do science, their modesty in making claims for the scope of what they claim is not generally in evidence. Absurdly bold and unsupported claims are more typical, especially as the nature of what is claimed becomes more obviously tenuous and speculative, whether that be the, at best, quasi-science of psychology or the absurdly ambitious claims of theoretical cosmology, especially those which abandon anything but the pretense of being based on observation of nature. They are more like the worst of theologians who make similar bold and unevidenced claims than they are a mathematician who has to back up his claims with tight arguments and who never can forget that they base their work on axioms which cannot be proven. The best of theology is both rigorous in its methods and humble in its claims. Though as those who slam theology almost never have read much if any of it, they wouldn't know that.
I will note that Eddington is reputed to have spent a good part of his last years trying to come up with his own Fundamental Theory which is, today, generally considered to have been a breakdown in his previous habits of skeptical judgement about his assumptions.
You got that, Bunky? No, I didn't think you would.
Sunday, February 9, 2020
About The Oscars - Not A Surprise
Don't know, don't care, won't see them. Don't care if you are pissed that I don't care. Hollywood is a town whose biggest industry is lies and illusion. Maybe I'll post a radio play every day this week - having missed this weekend. Sorry, that snow-ice mix we got is hell to move.
I know someone who used to clean house for one of the voting members of The Academy, he told her he often never saw any of the movies he voted on but he knew which ones his friends in the business had a connection to and which ones his enemies did. He said not an inconsiderable percentage of "The Academy" never saw the movies they voted on. It's as big a fraud as their product is. Not a surprise.
Update: I love offending the childish pieties of the atheist-play-left. There's nothing that pisses them off like dissing the movies and crap-kulcha. They're children, they never grow up.
I know someone who used to clean house for one of the voting members of The Academy, he told her he often never saw any of the movies he voted on but he knew which ones his friends in the business had a connection to and which ones his enemies did. He said not an inconsiderable percentage of "The Academy" never saw the movies they voted on. It's as big a fraud as their product is. Not a surprise.
Update: I love offending the childish pieties of the atheist-play-left. There's nothing that pisses them off like dissing the movies and crap-kulcha. They're children, they never grow up.
Stopping The Steining Of America
Light out of the Iowa debacle is that Tom Perez is saying the repeated screw-ups of state Democratic Parties running elections - uh, caucuses - is calling into question the wisdom of leaving those to the states. Which, in 2020, I'd say that's proven to be the opposite of wisdom. Too many states put the nomination in the hands of screw-ups, idiots and people who are more likely to generate conspiracy theories than transparent processes.
Democratic elections are important enough so people and state parties that screw up this badly should not get a second chance. Let them bring their, um, talents, to something far less important.
The Democatic National Committee, the Democratic Party, should have uniform standards requiring:
A. paper ballots on which first, second and third choices are listed, using rank-choice voting to determine a clear winnner. Ballots would be collected and counted, all of them, by an independent party with no ties to any one with an interest in the election, tthe process observed by designated people from the different campaigns, the ballots retained for as long as necessary to quell rumor mongering.
THE FORM OF THE BALLOT SHOULD NOT CHANGE SO PEOPLE WILL GET USED TO IT. I still like the idea of using a computer to make sure that different candidates appear at the top of the ballot the same number of times so as to lessen the effect of order on the results.
B. that the process be open only to registered Democrats who were registered voters and declared Democrats of sufficently long standing to be issued a ballot.
C. I would prefer that whatever method is used that it be the method proven to get the largest vote turnout, as of now that would be voting by U.S. mail. Ballots should be sent to only registered Democrats to be filled out and sent back by mail post marked by a set date.
D. Keeping the election separate from the internet is essential, The State Party should call the conveners to get the results of their local caucuses, that way the Republican-fascist ratfuckers won't be able to jam a phone line as they did in Iowa. The internet should have no part of any election, anywhere, it is not reliable or safe and apparently can't be made so.
I'm kind of a nerd of long standing on this issue, I've been railing about it for decades. This is the short form of my arguments.
My friend who is convening the idiotic caucus in my town told me that the meeting the state party set up to train people on how to run the stupid thing went better than he had thought. He said that Democrats in the legislature were working on rewriting the state law that requires a caucus for a party to retain official party status in my state. I'm hoping to see the end of it within my lifetime. I should live so long. I'm hoping to see them die out completely after the Iowa disaster and the one I'm expecting in Nevada. If there's something Democrats didn't need this week it's what happened in Iowa. And the last thing we need is to give the Bernie Bots a reason to try to sink Democrats' chances with their rumor mongering. The play-lefty online media is dead to me. They are all Jill Steins. They are the enemies of democracy.
Democratic elections are important enough so people and state parties that screw up this badly should not get a second chance. Let them bring their, um, talents, to something far less important.
The Democatic National Committee, the Democratic Party, should have uniform standards requiring:
A. paper ballots on which first, second and third choices are listed, using rank-choice voting to determine a clear winnner. Ballots would be collected and counted, all of them, by an independent party with no ties to any one with an interest in the election, tthe process observed by designated people from the different campaigns, the ballots retained for as long as necessary to quell rumor mongering.
THE FORM OF THE BALLOT SHOULD NOT CHANGE SO PEOPLE WILL GET USED TO IT. I still like the idea of using a computer to make sure that different candidates appear at the top of the ballot the same number of times so as to lessen the effect of order on the results.
B. that the process be open only to registered Democrats who were registered voters and declared Democrats of sufficently long standing to be issued a ballot.
C. I would prefer that whatever method is used that it be the method proven to get the largest vote turnout, as of now that would be voting by U.S. mail. Ballots should be sent to only registered Democrats to be filled out and sent back by mail post marked by a set date.
D. Keeping the election separate from the internet is essential, The State Party should call the conveners to get the results of their local caucuses, that way the Republican-fascist ratfuckers won't be able to jam a phone line as they did in Iowa. The internet should have no part of any election, anywhere, it is not reliable or safe and apparently can't be made so.
I'm kind of a nerd of long standing on this issue, I've been railing about it for decades. This is the short form of my arguments.
My friend who is convening the idiotic caucus in my town told me that the meeting the state party set up to train people on how to run the stupid thing went better than he had thought. He said that Democrats in the legislature were working on rewriting the state law that requires a caucus for a party to retain official party status in my state. I'm hoping to see the end of it within my lifetime. I should live so long. I'm hoping to see them die out completely after the Iowa disaster and the one I'm expecting in Nevada. If there's something Democrats didn't need this week it's what happened in Iowa. And the last thing we need is to give the Bernie Bots a reason to try to sink Democrats' chances with their rumor mongering. The play-lefty online media is dead to me. They are all Jill Steins. They are the enemies of democracy.
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