Tag Archives: current events

Back / Bart to the Future

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Anyone who spends much time watching The Simpsons will likely agree that for 600 shows and counting, they’ve had the best writing in the history of television. Did you know that the show’s writers are sometimes prophetic? Sixteen years ago, in an episode called “Bart to the Future,” they showed us Donald Trump as president.

This shot from the episode shows Mr. Trump with a poster reading, “America you can be my ex-wife.” Think about that for a moment…

From "Bart to the Future" episode of the Simpsons, first aired March 19. 2000

From “Bart to the Future” episode of the Simpsons, first aired March 19. 2000

Homer is beginning to see what even those who voted for him will soon learn – that we’ve been screwed by a con man and pathological liar, who cares no more for us than he cared for the students at Trump University.

Voters had every reason to be angry with the status quo. When John Stumpf, the disgraced CEO of Wells Fargo, resigned with no jail time and $133 million, every working man or woman who is slipping further behind can see how those who play by the rules get shafted, and it is mainstream politicians of both parties who put the rules in place.

Donald Trump feigned concern for these workers just long enough to get elected. Union leaders aren’t stupid; five weeks before the inauguration, Richard L. Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO, said Trump’s cabinet appointments prove his campaign promises were hollow. Many other well meaning people who voted for the hope that Mr. Tump offered will learn soon enough they were conned. There won’t be much of a honeymoon.

Meanwhile, there is no room for compromise with evil and stupidity; it’s time for the majority of Americans who voted against our sociopathic president-elect to take a page from the Republican notebook, and prepare to defy and obstruct the incoming administration in every way we can.

When Barack Obama was elected, and the Republican party in seeming disarray, Mitch McConnell, senate minority leader, announced his party’s goal – to obstruct and insure that Obama was a one term president. It’s time for Democrats to adopt his playbook. The Tea Party taught us it doesn’t take that many people to stall a government.

sauron_blog

A good place to start is with this detailed outline, prepared by former congressional staffers, on how to influence members of congress: An Anti-Trump Guide.  The premise is simple – those who work closely with representatives report that they care about just one thing – reelection. The more personal our interaction, the better. None of them much care about social media or blogs. Personal emails are good, print letters are better, and best of all are direct questions at the public events and townhalls they host.

“Where do you stand on privatizing Social Security? Oh, so you really want to deliver seniors’ lifeblood to the tender mercies of the too-big-to-fail firms that gave us the great recession?”

Those who stood firm at Standing Rock remind us of the lessons of Gandhi and Martin Luther King – the power of non-violent resistance. The tech engineers and CEO’s who refuse to work on a Muslim registry are also exemplars, as is Jerry Brown, Governor of California, who vows that we’ll launch “Our own damn satellite,” if Mr. Trump succeeds in defunding NASA climate monitoring. We can honor the administration of the EPA, which refused to submit a list of their people who attend climate conference, and Leonardo DiCaprio, who has made himself a spokesman, not only for the science of climate change, but for the economic opportunities clean energy holds.

There’s a lot of damage that Mr. Trump’s ship of fools can do in the near term, but a battle is on for the soul of the nation. Few things are more important than insuring that the incoming government is thwarted at every turn, and voted out of office, in the disgrace it deserves, as soon as possible.

I want to apologize to someone, but I don’t know who

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“I cross the Green Mountain
I sit by the stream
Heaven blazing in my head
I dreamed a monstrous dream
Something came up
Out of the sea
Swept through the land of
The rich and the free” – Bob Dylan

Hungry Ghosts

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Section of Hungry Ghosts Scroll, Kyoto, late 12th c., Public Domain

Section of Hungry Ghosts Scroll, Kyoto, late 12th c., Public Domain

In traditional Buddhist cosmology, there are six major realms of existence. Only two of these, the human and animal realms, are visible. The other four, which include both heavens and hells, are not manifest to our physical senses. Unlike Christian heaven and hell, none of these are forever – the length of one’s sojourn depends on karma.

Many contemporary teachers, while not denying the metaphysical reality of these regions, focus on our inner “location” in the here and now. One who is filled with love and compassion dwells in heaven. The one seething with anger, red in the face, like a devil, at that moment experiences one of the hells.

Hungry ghosts have a region all to themselves; their dominant trait is insatiable craving. Hungry ghosts are depicted with huge bellies but tiny throats and mouths – desperate hunger and thirst that can never find relief.

“Never enough, there is never, ever enough,” is the mindset of hungry ghosts, both in the imagined subtle realm and in this world. Addictions and insatiable cravings of all sorts make us hungry ghosts. The pre-repentant Ebenezer Scrooge, the archetypal miser, is the best known western hungry ghost. Now, the Panama Papers reveal how widespread is this disease, and how it drives the leaders and elites in nations throughout the world. Nor do we, at least in “the free world,” get to sit back and righteously condemn “those bad people.” Not in Buddhist thought, at least, where everything is interconnected.

The people of Iceland forced their Prime Minister out of office within 48 hours of the time the story broke. They did the same with the bankers in 2008. We, who have elected officials of both parties who tolerate bailouts and corporate shell games, are are not separate from the hungry ghosts who are fucking this world.

In his public discourse, Buddha never commented one way or another on metaphysical truths. There’s plenty to worry about here and now, he said. If greed locks us into the hell of the hungry ghosts, generosity, the mindset of Scrooge on Christmas morning, opens the gates of heaven.

Ratnasambhava, the primordial Buddha of "the wisdom of equality," manifests the virtue of generosity.

Ratnasambhava, the primordial Buddha of “the wisdom of equality,” manifests the virtue of generosity.

Perhaps there are no big or small acts of generosity. Our world, the people in it, and we ourselves, need nothing more urgently at this time.

Straight croissants

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Even to me, this title seems to refer to the sexual preference of breakfast pastries, rather than its real subject, their shape. This is because “croissant” is French for “crescent,” and who ever heard of a straight crescent outside of higher mathematics?

straight croissant 2
Well, our cousins across the water are embroiled in a debate on this very subject.

Tesco, the largest supermarket chain in Britain, will no longer sell curved croissants. Tesco croissant buyer, Harry Jones, spoke of “the spreadability factor.” Curved croissants typically require three strokes to cover their surface with jam, the preferred topping of most Brits, while a straight croissant can be covered by a single sweeping stroke, thus cutting the risk of sticky fingers or table cloths. (1)

As a veteran of many sticky finger incidents involving restaurant marmalade containers, I can attest a Daily Telegraph editorial is wrong: it is not necessarily safer to eat toast!

Discussions of ease of use and symbolism fail to consider health implications. French law declares that straight croissants must be made with butter, while the curved varieties can use margarine.

In a world where so many familiar structures are in flux, curved croissants are now one less thing we can count on.

I guess there’s no help for it. Benjamin Turquier, last year’s champion Parisian butter croissant maker, said “I can understand the importance of symbolism and tradition, but straight croissants are more practical to make.”

Sigh…we’ll just have to learn to deal…

The 2015 Pinocchio Awards

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pinocchio

The Washington Post released it’s annual Pinocchio Awards for the year’s biggest falsehoods. To no one’s surprise, the 2015 winners are all involved in politics. No one gets to feel smug; all parties and political persuasions were represented.

I’m sure lying politicians are as old as politics. What was disheartening this year was the blatancy of the lies. Fifty one years ago, Marshall McLuhan coined the phrase, “The medium is the message.” In 2015 we may have seen the ultimate corollary of that:  if you say it on TV with enough bravado, swagger, or apparent sincerity, some or many will believe you, regardless of facts. We, as a culture, prefer easy answers to truth.

Here are the winners:

Donald Trump for false and repeated assertion that he saw thousands of Muslims on TV celebrating the fall of the twin towers. Only in Trump’s fevered imagination did such an event play out.

Hillary Clinton for her defense of her husband’s signing of the anti-gay “Defense of Marriage Act,” with an assertion that it headed off an anti-gay marriage constitutional amendment. There may have been talk, but there was no momentum for such an amendment.

Donald Trump for his claims that immigrants commit more crimes than American citizens. While some on this list have cherry-picked their statistics, Donald apparently never looks at statistics at all.

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn) for saying in June that there have been 128 school shootings since Sandy Hook. His stats came from an anti-gun violence advocacy group with a flawed methodology that included suicides and accidents in the numbers.

Donald Trump for his claim that Obama wants to admit 250,000 Syrian refuges to the US. The number is 10,000 Syrians, and the US maximum figure for all refugees is 180,000 over the next two years.

"Freedom of Speech," 1943. In Norman Rockwell's America, truth and respect for all viewpoints mattered

“Freedom of Speech,” 1943. In Norman Rockwell’s America, truth and respect for all viewpoints mattered

John Kerry for claiming he and Al Gore organized the 1988 Senate hearings on climate change. He was not even there.

Mike Huckabee for stating that “global freezing” was a serious concern 40 years ago.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren ( D-Mass ) for proposed regulations for car dealership loans based on “wildly” exaggerated statistics.

Rudolph Giuliani, former NY City Mayor, for saying Obama has never called America a great or exceptional country. Apparently Mr. Guiliani has never listened to an Obama speech.

President Obama for “dubious” claims about the Keystone pipeline.

Sen Rand Paul (R-Ky) for claiming an elderly man was in prison for “putting dirt on his land,” when in fact he was convicted of mail fraud, conspiracy, and environmental violations such as selling land with illegal sewage systems that were likely to fail.

Democratic legislators: On the house floor, staged a demonstration of solidarity with a black youth, shot by a white police officer in an incident that various investigations determined was legitimate self-defense.

Sex Trafficking Statistics:  “There are not 300,000 thousand children at risk in the US, nor  100,000 children in the sex trade, nor is human trafficking a 9.5 billion dollar business, nor do girls become victims at an average age of 13, nor has the government arrested hundreds of perpetrators.”  All of these were claims made by “politicians, advocacy groups, and government officials” in 2015.

I’d love to feel smug and wag my finger at the politicos, but I can’t.  To paraphrase the Master whose birth we celebrated yesterday, “Let he who lives without falsehood cast the first aspersion.”

Politicians behave like this because it works for them, it gets them elected and reelected. For that, We the People are responsible.  We can do better than this…

American Tragedy of Greek Proportions?

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The word, “tragedy,” is one of those words, like “awesome” that overuse has drained of meaning. It parallels the way overload has numbed us to the realities behind the headlines, so that our horror, just three years ago, over Sandy Hook has become a shake of the head and a, “Shit, not again,” as we grab our busy morning coffee. And maybe look over our shoulder at the sound of a backfire. And even listen to morons who say, “This is a hunting state,” as if that has anything to do with anything.

Yes, when I lived in Oregon, not far from Roseburg, you would sometimes see cows in the outlying fields, with COW written in big red letters during hunting season, by farmers who had no great trust in the wisdom of “hunters.” But that is another story.

To once more quote the great Walt Kelly, and Pogo, his voice, “We has met the enemy and he is us.”

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Since the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting on December 14th, 2012 over 80,000 people in the US have been shot dead. There have been more than 140 school shootings over that span of time, and more mass shootings this year (298) than there have been days on the calendar (293).

There have been 1,516,863 gun-related deaths since 1968, compared to 1,396,733 cumulative war deaths since the American Revolution. That’s 120,130 more U.S. gun deaths than U.S. war deaths. And that’s including the use of the most generous estimate of Civil War deaths, the largest contributor to American war deaths.

And even though homicides represent a minority of all gun related deaths, with suicides comprising the biggest share, that’s still a lot of people shot and killed with guns. According to CDC data, 63 percent of gun-related deaths were from suicides, 33 percent were from homicides, and roughly 1 percent each…

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Does daylight savings time save energy?

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Public Domain

Public Domain

Ok, now that daylight time is here for us in the new world, and coming in a few weeks for the EU, it’s time for a pop quiz: who invented daylight savings time?

Yes, fellow Googlers, it was Benjamin Franklin who reasoned it would save candles in the colonies. It was not mandated in the US until we entered WWI, when the intent was to preserve resources.

According to Scientific American, the first study of the effectiveness of daylight savings time was conducted in the 70’s, during our first “oil crisis.” The same article notes that a study in Indiana in 2006, the year that state mandated daylight time in all rather than just some of its counties, showed an increase in energy usage.

Similar results were seen in California in 2007, when daylight time was lengthened by four weeks. California Energy Commission researchers found an energy savings of only 0.2% with a margin of error of 1.5%. Changes in air conditioning patterns as well as the pervasiveness of electronic controllers in homes and businesses are possible causes of the flat or negative results.

I, for one, enjoy the light in summer evenings. Farmers dislike daylight savings time, for it disrupts their schedules. Sports enthusiasts favor it. In the late ’90’s, for instance, representatives of the golf industry said daylight time earned them and extra $400 million in fees each year.

For it or against it, the odds of it’s changing are practically non-existent. Unless you live in Arizona, you’ve lived with it all your life. Besides, there are more pressing issues for Congress to fail to act on than this.

Daylight time is one of those things, like the Superbowl and plum blossoms, like St. Patrick’s day, and the start of baseball season, that signal the coming of another spring and summer. I’m not inclined to complain too much if that costs me an hour of sleep.

Andrew Bacevich on “An Extraordinary Opportunity for Congress”

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Andrew Bacevich

Those who follow this blog will know the high regard in which I hold historian Andrew Bacevich. In a 2012 review of his book, The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism, I mentioned a few of Bacevich’s credentials:

Bacevich, a Viet Nam veteran, retired as a colonel after 23 years in the army. He holds a PhD in American Diplomatic History from Princeton and taught at West Point and Johns Hopkins before joining the faculty at Boston University in 1998. In March, 2007, he described the US doctrine of “preventative warfare” as “immoral, illicit, and imprudent.” Two months later, his son died in Iraq.”

On February 14, Bacevich posted a brief article on Moyers & Company that I’d love to see more widely read. He likens the current administration’s middle-eastern initiative to Nixon’s 1970 “incursion” into Cambodia and says:

“How did we arrive at this predicament? Where exactly are we headed? What is the overall aim? How will we know when we have succeeded? What further costs will the perpetuation of the enterprise entail?

Back in 1970, when the predicament was the Vietnam War, those questions demanded urgent attention. Today, the enterprise once known as the Global War on Terrorism, now informally referred to as the Long War or the Forever War or (my personal preference) America’s War for the Greater Middle East, defines our predicament. But the questions remain the same as they were when Cambodia rather than the Islamic State represented the issue of the moment.

So President Obama’s requested Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) could not have come at a more propitious moment. The proposed AUMF presents the Congress with an extraordinary opportunity — not to rubber stamp actions already taken, but to take stock of an undertaking that already exceeds the Vietnam War in length while showing not the slightest sign of ending in success.”

Read it, and instead of weeping, pass it on.