The Nature of Things

"...it will go the way it always goes in the press when it all comes out: it will have been my fault, all of it because men's crimes are always ours in the final analysis, aren't they, Mr. Strike? Ultimate responsibility always lies with the woman, who should have stopped it, who should have acted, who must have known .                                         - A female client speaking to detective Cormoran Strike in Lethal White by Robert Galbraith I had actually intended to use that quote from Lethal White in my review of the book last week, but then I forgot. However, it sure seems to fit here . Our current president is very, very concerned about young men at this time in America; it is a very scary time for them, he says. His words have inspired all kinds of responses on social media as well as in the real world. Here is just one of those responses. A young woman called Lynzy Lab S...

I've never actually thought of reading as a revolutionary act but perhaps that's what we have come to in this time of know-nothingness. At least someone in San Francisco seems to think so . A mystery benefactor there has been paying for copies of 1984 by George Orwell, The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood, and In the Garden of Beasts by Erik Larson to be given away to interested readers with the admonition "Read up! Fight back!"  On Friday night, 50 copies of 1984 were bought from Booksmith, a bookstore in the Haight-Ashbury district, and placed on a table with a sign reading: "Read up! Fight back! A mystery benefactor has bought these copies of 1984 for you if you need one." The books were quickly snapped up, and then the anonymous donor bought copies of Atwood's and Larson's books, which also quickly disappeared. The bookseller has said that this random act has inspired others to follow suit in this "fruitful, constructive form of r...

Hat tip to cartoonist Tom Tomorrow and Daily Kos . Click on the image for easier viewing.

One of the most annoying things about this presidential campaign, or politics in general in this country, is the false equivalence between the two sides that the media has invented, and that has become an ingrained part of our national consciousness and vocabulary. How often have you heard, "Both sides do it!"? But, in fact, both sides don't do it, and pretending that two things are equal doesn't make it true. Facts are still facts, even in 2016. Jen Sorensen's four-panel cartoon skewers the utter ridiculousness of the concept. Two. More. Weeks.

You know what pisses me off about the 2016 presidential campaign? A lot of things, actually. But there is one thing in particular that I feel the need to rant about today. Throughout the campaign, I've heard and read journalists considered (at least by themselves) to be knowledgable about such things describe the election as a choice between "the lesser of two evils." Thus do they normalize a completely unqualified and clueless candidate the likes of which this country has never before seen and - please God! - never will see again. Not only do they normalize him, they set this man who is the worst that America has to offer, a man who personifies misogyny, racism, privilege, and anti-intellectualism, on the same level with a candidate who is intelligent and qualified, perhaps the most qualified candidate who has ever sought the office, at least in my lifetime. This is a woman who has spent her entire adult life working to make the world more just, equal, and caring for pe...

Political cartoonists can get across their points very succinctly. A few frames of a good cartoon can be more effective than thousands of words. Here's a case in point: Jen Sorensen explaining how even the most innocuous action Hillary Clinton takes becomes - in the minds of her haters, at least - a "scandal."

In this blog, I typically write about whatever I happen to be thinking about on that particular day. Thus, the blog serves as a kind of diary, and it is interesting from time to time to look back at what was on my mind five years ago, six years ago, etc. Today, I'm looking back five years and I find once again that the more things change, the more they remain the same. Five years ago, Paul Ryan of Wisconsin was being lauded by the Washington Beltway press as the serious, intelligent, wonky Republican, a "Young Gun" savior for a party that seemed to be veering out of control. The basis of all this dewy-eyed "analysis" was the budget that he had just presented. When he introduced his "budget," he said that it was not a budget but a cause. As details of his opus became clear, it was obvious that the cause was Ayn Randian . Ryan remained true to his primary political influence.  As House Speaker today, he still remains true to it and he's still presen...

What a week.  The execrable Palin family is crowding into our consciousness once again, with the matriarch leading the way with her word-salad endorsement of Donald Trump for president and her blaming President Obama for her son's drunken domestic violence. Personal responsibility, anyone? The presidential campaigns are heating up which means that the nonsense meter is rising higher. The National Review has belatedly decided that maybe it has been a mistake for conservatives to clutch the viper Trump to its bosom. Trump supporters have responded as Trump supporters do. On the other side of politics, some liberal voices like Ta-Nehisi Coates and Paul Krugman have had the temerity to criticize some of the pronouncements and policies of Saint Bernie, generating frothing at the mouth and some truly unhinged attacks by his supporters who believe that the man can do and say no wrong.  Enough! Let's take a break from all that. Here's an emotional and intellectual palate cleans...

Hat tip to Daily Kos and Tom Tomorrow for the cartoon and to Donald Trump and company for the idea behind it.

What is the most dangerous group, the one most likely to commit acts of terrorism in America? One guess. Hat tip to Daily Kos for the cartoon.

"This Week in Birds" is taking a Thanksgiving vacation and will return next week. Instead, this week on the eve of the big conference on climate change in Paris, I am rerunning a post that I did in April 2012. It concerned a New York Times poll that found that a majority of Americans believed that global climate change was affecting the weather. However, the comments from Times readers about the story told a very different tale of climate change denialism. Three-and-a-half years later, has anything changed? Is there any more acceptance of the truth of human-caused climate change and the urgency of taking action to stop it? Well, certainly not in Washington where denialism still prevails in Congress.  *~*~*~* April 18, 2012 Climate change affecting the weather? Ya think? Headline in The New York Times today:  In Poll, Many Link Weather Extremes to Climate Change . The story under the headline relates how  a large majority of Americans believe that this year’s unusually...

Already the 2016 presidential campaign is well under way which has had me thinking back to the last campaign in 2011-12 and how the media covered it.  There is a strong belief among conservatives that the mainstream media is always against them and that the way they write and talk about things is invariably slanted toward the left. An actual review of that coverage in 2011 told quite a different story. I suspect a similar review conducted in 2015 would show much the same thing.  For example, that well-known "liberal" media outlet The New York Times has yet to write a positive news story about Hillary Clinton. Indeed, one could make a pretty strong argument that, for whatever reasons, the paper has engaged in a vendetta against her. At the same time, the Times generally seems to be straining to report positive things about the Republican candidates. I wrote the following post on October 17, 2011 after the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism release...

I have lived in Texas for forty years, during which time I have given birth to two full-blooded Texans. And still, I have a hard time thinking of myself as a Texan.  In fact, I don't think of myself as a Texan. I think of myself as an American. My discomfort with being labeled a Texan has everything to do with the political image and leadership of this state where paranoia and a sense of superiority and privilege run deep. It has nothing at all to do with the ordinary people of Texas who are friendly, helpful, and good neighbors to have.  With that in mind, I have been somewhat bemused but not really surprised by the actions of those said politicians this week - the week of the Great Texas Flood of 2015. Keep in mind these are the same leaders who were last seen assigning the State Guard to keep an eye on a U.S. military training exercise called Jade Helm because it was seen as a potential move by that dastardly Obama to "take over" Texas. (Never mind the fact that ther...

It was the moment that many of us had been waiting for since 2008. Hillary Clinton finally made it official. She is running for president. I wonder about the analysis, the thought process that went into her decision. Surely, she, of all people, knows what she is facing over the next nearly eighteen months. Her enemies will be throwing every piece of shit they can put their hands on at her. She will be called everything from a liar to a murderer. She will be deemed too old, too ugly, too fat, too female, (and, also, not female enough) too shrill, and all those other adjectives that ignorant people routinely throw at women in the spotlight to try to shame them and bring them down. Her hairstyles and her clothes will be scrutinized and criticized endlessly. God forbid she should ever wear a scrunchie! But she knows all of this because they've already been doing it to her. They've done it now for the more than thirty years that she has been in the public's eye. Yet she is still...

So Ted Cruz and Rand Paul are running for president. At least there will be plenty of material for the late night comedy shows. They will soon be followed by a whole parade of candidates. The Republicans will probably have at least a dozen hopefuls to choose from before the dust from the stampede settles. The Democrats' choice looks like it will be considerably narrower. As for third party candidates, who knows? We still have about fifteen months to winnow them all down and make our decision. In the U.K., the political campaign is now winding down. It only lasts a matter of weeks and the election that will decide who becomes Prime Minister is only a month away. Wusses! In this country, we endure almost two full years of jockeying and campaigning for the presidency. Now that requires stamina! Maybe we should just turn the whole thing over to our cats. Henri, the Depressive Realist, would certainly agree. The only thing is, I'm pretty sure most cats are anarchists.

Have you heard about this letter to the editor from a Canadian citizen in British Columbia? It's been making a bit of a stir on the internet this week. It might be a bit difficult to read in that format, so here is the text: "Many of us Canadians are confused by the U.S. midterm elections. Consider, right now in America, corporate profits are at record highs, the country's adding 200,000 jobs per month, unemployment is below 6%, U.S. gross national product growth is the best of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries. The dollar is at its strongest levels in years, the stock market is near record highs, gasoline prices are falling, there's no inflation, interest rates are the lowest in 30 years, U.S. oil imports are declining, U.S. oil production is rapidly increasing, the deficit is rapidly declining, and the wealthy are still making astonishing amounts of money. "America is leading the world once again and respected internation...

All the political pundits are busily explaining to us exactly what last Tuesday's election means. All the right-wingers are vociferously gloating about the "permanent" majority they have achieved in the Senate and the House. President Obama's policies are thoroughly repudiated by the American people, they say. Well, maybe. Just about one-third of registered voters turned out to vote in this election and, of that number, just over half - something like 17% of the nation's voters - gave the Republicans their victory. That is the tsunami, the earthquake, the tidal wave that they are crowing about.  Seventeen percent somehow does not seem like that big a mandate to me, but then what do I know? I'm not a pundit and I don't live inside the Beltway, so I can't claim any secret pipeline to the brains of American voters that allows me to interpret just what their votes mean. I did see one bit of analysis of American elections that seemed to make sense to me. No...

Election Day in America and the headlines are thoroughly depressing. The chance of having an outcome that makes us a better country seems remote at best. We've done all we can do to affect the election so let's forget all about it for a few minutes. That's what cat videos are for. Enjoy!

For the past several months, among my first tasks each day, after feeding the cats and the fish, has been to go to my computer and dump all my email, which mainly consists of hundreds of begging letters. Well, maybe I exaggerate a little, but only a little. The requests for money by individual politicians, as well as the political parties and their various supporters, have been particularly obnoxious during this season. The insidious ways they try to get you to look at them - the all lower case subject lines, the hashtag subject lines, and, lately, the doom and gloom subject lines ("There's zero chance...," "We're doomed...") - are particularly insulting to anyone who respects the language, not to mention truth-telling. I have made my usual donations to the party and candidates of my choice, but it wasn't because I was swayed by their awful emails. Based solely on them, I wouldn't have given a dime to anyone. So, one more day to endure all of this an...