Category Archives: Current Affairs

Two Election Comments — Bear With Me

Now, here in Carolina we currently have a redhot race for the U.S. Senate seat currently held by Richard Burr, a faceless Republican known mostly for saying little, collecting millions from coal companies, and being the best friend & defender of torture in the U.S. Senate.

Burr’s challenger is former state Senator Deborah Ross. A year ago, when she announced, few gave the little-known Ross much of a chance against Burr.

But that was before Donald Trump turned the state into a purple battleground, and before the federal courts threw out most of the vote suppression tools the right-wing legislature had enacted to hold down Democratic voting. Now the polls are very close, and Burr’s attack ads are getting down & dirty.
This is Burr’s big attack ad. Note the three key elements: pro sex offender; ACLU Lawyer; — and in the background, where many might miss it but the base won’t, is the visage of a presumably predatory male of dark hue and evil intentions.

How down & dirty? Just a couple days ago, the senator unveiled a saturation attack ad against Ross that uses three magic, time-tested, silver bullet Democrat-destroying elements: “pro-sex offenders” and — wait for it — “ACLU.”

But there’s more: in the background, an ominous dark-skinned male visage.

For the GOP & further right base in NC, any of these is a killer; the combo adds up to a go-for-broke, four-pronged assault. And the ACLU thing, at least, is true, Ross did work there, from the mid-’90s til 2002 when she ran for the legislature.

That’s fine with me — hey, I’m a proud ACLU contributor/member. But this is still North Carolina . . . .

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Harry’s Razors: Not Making the Algorithmic Cut

Pervasive: Sirius/XM is an example of how Orwell’s 1984 Big Brother society is growing, its tendrils silently stretching & enfolding us like those of the morning glory vines that are taking over the little garden plot outside my kitchen door.

The network knows & tracks everything I listen to, and (besides turning it over to the NSA & whoever other real Spooks want it) uses this “data” to pursue its real goal, that is, selling me stuff. And to do that it sells the data to others likewise tracking me, including the New York Times.

Nothing new or surprising here; part of today’s totally quotidian. And the demographics seemingly make good sense: a Times reader who listens to an earnestly thoughtful show on politics: should be prime for “quality,” somewhat-above-middlebrow products.

Now the limitations part: the product in question is a razor; Harry’s razor, to be specific. Take a bow, Harry:

Harry seems determined to make me a customer: the ad usually pops up several times in each day’s Times, in different shapes & with varying copy. As I say, this has been going on for weeks.

And with each appearance, it reinforces my bemusement. That’s because of how, despite all the impeccable logic applied by the various marketers involved, assisted by their expertly high-tech algorithms, the ad is an utter misfire: I am just not a candidate for Harry’s merchandise.

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A Concentration Camp in California: The Past Haunts the present — And sketches the future?

Ten thousand of them were packed into a camp called Manzanar, in the remote Owens Valley of California. Owens Valley could be a good definition of the “middle of nowhere.”

It’s almost 120 miles north of Death Valley in California, and 100-plus from the eastern entrance to Yosemite. This is the Owens Valley. It’s home to bands of Paiute-Shoshone Indians, some hardy fruit farmers, cattle ranchers, and not much else on two legs.

From here it’s 336 miles to San Francisco, 226 to LA, and almost 250 to either Reno or Vegas. “Manzanar” is Spanish for apple orchard.”

This is high desert, nearly 4000 feet, so it’s hot in the summer, freezing and snowy in winter, and whipped by strong winds at any season. Twenty miles or so west are the Sierra Nevada mountains, usually capped by snow and fantastic slow-swirling cloud formations.

Conditions were tough in the camps. Legal challenges to the internment were turned aside, even by the Supreme Court. Most Japanese-Americans were kept in the camps until late 1945, when the war ended.

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A Note To Angry/Sad Bernieites

Through the spring of 1968, it seemed as if our insurgency had a chance. But instead, history and the machine intervened: history in the form of an assassin’s bullets which killed Bobby Kennedy in California, just after he’d won the state’s Democratic primary and was poised to overtake McCarthy and snatch the Democratic nomination.
The machine was that mostly faceless gaggle of party regulars and bosses like Mayor Richard J. Daley of Chicago, who seemed to revel in the head-busting that his cops were giving the punks like me outside.
By the time it was all over, Eugene McCarthy had faded, Humphrey had the nomination, and I was sick in my heart and soul.
I was, I vowed, not going to vote for Humphrey, who had not yet found the cojones to speak out about ending the Vietnam War. Even if that meant turning over the White House to the likes of Richard Nixon. (I didn’t really hate Nixon then, mostly just disdained him; but he soon enough earned as much hate as I could manage, notwithstanding he, like me, was a Quaker.)
Andrew Young, who brought us a mantra we didn’t want to hear.

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Top Ten Reasons Why This Berniac Is Happy Today:

8. Because the chances of beating Trump are now better than they were yesterday.

7. Because the chances of flipping the Senate are also better.

6. Because ditto the House.

5. Because Bernie’s impact on the Dems’ platform has started conversations which will move toward big shifts on some key issues.

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