This just in: The motive behind the action is what bothers me the most. Not the action itself.

Someone protests racial injustice by kneeling at a football game. Is this patriotic of anti-patriotic? I’m thinking its the former.

Here is my litmus test: What would a spy do?

A spy would never not kneel at the playing of the national anthem because that would draw attention to him. No, he will pretend to be a patriot and put his hand over his heart while the national anthem is playing. Good boy! Only someone that is secure in his or her position as a patriot dare to do something unexpected.

Are we not, after all, allowed to express ourselves? Are we not allowed to protest? That is what kneeling at a football game is. It’s a protest. In this case it’s a person saying, “We are not treating all Americans equally and I want us all to acknowledge that.”

Let’s try another…

I watched once as Donald Trump got up on a stage and stopped to hug an American flag. Patriotic? I think not. He is pandering to his base. BTW, pandering mean “catering to or exploiting another’s weaknesses.” A patriot wouldn’t cast doubt on an election with ZERO evidence to back him up.

I see Senator Munchin going against a bill that is filled with climate change initiatives. This same person make $500,000 a year off of his coal investments. He says, “We can’t afford it.” Well, the bill pays for itself so what is his real motivation?

Trump holds up a bible, upside down, after violently chasing peaceful protesters away that were standing where he wanted to stand. A man of God? Trump? Or is he once again pandering.

Trump once said, “If I ever run for president, I’ll do it as a Republican because they will believe anything.”

At least he got that right.

Mitch McConnell says he will not vote to raise the debt limit. Is it because he is concerned about the budget? Recall that the debt went up by $7.8 trillion during the time Trump was in office and Mitch not only did not oppose it…he help to do it. So, is he being responsible or is he letting Americans suffer for personal political benefit?

Republicans are up in arms about mask mandates saying, “It’s my body. I can do what I want.” They are also passing very restrictive abortion laws controlling the “body choices” of half the people in the country. Women can’t get abortions because old white men in Texas don’t want them to. Pandering to the evangelicals.

“We should stay in endless wars so that terrorists don’t come over here and kill us.” This is a very popular Republican position. And yet, far and away most terrorism is domestically grown. Uneducated white men blaming non-whites and non-Christians for their poor quality of life. They form “boy clubs with guns” and pat each other on the back as they plan their next assault on non-whites and those that oppose racism. If Republicans are against terrorism, shouldn’t they be against all terrorism ans not just against terrorist that won’t vote for them.

I see people do things all the time that I don’t agree with. “He’s using a 7-iron and I think he needs to use a 6-iron.” This never riles me up; even if it affects me directly. Everyone has freedom of choice and they don’t need to act like I wish they would.

It’s the hypocrisy that gets to me. The action that is publicly described one way that is actually motivated by something else. That something else is always hidden or disguised. It is so because it is dark. People don’t lie to hide their motives if they believe they are just. So when they do it, you know that they know they are being malignant.

Time to save the world.

Up, up and away…

Jim

This just in: I have a close friend that is a Republican. He is smart, well education and considers himself a patriot. However, when it comes to defending his party’s actions, his response is always something like “they all do it.”

Now, if this is true. If they are all basically alike, why not just toss a coin every election cycle and vote based on heads or tails. Why always vote the same way if “they all do it?”

I can’t answer this question and neither can he.

When I point out that gun legislation may reduce gun deaths he agrees and then says, “The Constitution does not allow for that.” It’s as if we can’t have seatbelt laws because The Constitution does not allow for that.

When I point out that QANON sent a guy will a gun to a pizza place because he thought Hilary Clinton was running a child porn ring in the basement, he says, “That’s not a Republican thing.” (spoiler, there was no basement)

We’ll maybe not but I’m not reading ANYWHERE about Democrats doing crazy stuff because QANON told them to.

QANON told Republicans to storm the capital and they did. It told women not to get vaccinated because it would make them infertile so they didn’t. It said the election was stolen and today, 72% of Republican still believe this!

Rudy Giuliani, who spewed the most “election was stolen” nonsense, recently, under oath, admitted that he thinks he got this from a post he read on Facebook but isn’t sure. He went on to talk about a reliable witness that he never met or interviewed. This witness and the Facebook post kept him in the news for months as he spewed lies as if they were facts.

Republican ran up a $7.8 trillion dollar debt in 4 years with nothing to show for it.

Republicans lied to get us into war in the Middle East and 20 years later we left and everything collapsed around our little sand castle government.

Republicans pass laws to keep non-white and non-Christians out of the country.

Democrats do non of this and yet I still hear “they all do it.”

Here is my theory: The Republican mind is one that wants American to return to the days of Mayberry RFD. Simple times. No rap music. Everyone goes to a Christian church on Sunday. The military is fresh off a win in WWII. Non-whites are kept in their own separate part of town.

In short, the future scares them so they try to stop it from happening. Thus…Conservatives.

A White, Christian country…run by white old men.

I don’t know about you but I’m not about to sit back and say, “Yep, I gotta get me some of dat.”

“They all do it” is code for “I’m a racist but I can’t admit it even to myself so I rely on this weak retort.”

When I see a Republican, I think, “I wonder if that person knows that their actions promote racism or are they openly racist?”

By the way, when a Republican reads this, they will explode. “How dare he say that. I know a black guy and I treat him like an equal.” Thus….not a racist? Me thinks thou doth protest too much.

Time to save the world.

Up, up and away.

This just in: I was a Republican until I started to follow politics. That’s when I noticed that I had been rooting for the bad guys my entire life.

It’s easy to get sucked in. Phrases like “Democrats want to make us a nation of socialists” or “Obamacare is a government takeover of healthcare” sound legit. The GOP specializes in these type of statements. They work because they sound good. They sound righteous. They sound like Republicans are saving us from something only they can see.

The truth is that the GOP is made up of con artists and has been so for decades.

Let’s take their main historic platform (I use “historic” because they have no platform today). They like to be the Party of Fiscal Responsibility. In other words they don’t waste money and they don’t overspend. If you look at the last 50 years, Republicans have contributed to about 90% of the current national debt. They do this by spending and then cutting taxes. During Trump’s reign, the national debt went up by $7.8 trillion. AND, there is nothing to show for it. No new bridges. No better healthcare. No better education. No new jobs. No surge in world peace. Nothing.

After 4 years of Trump, the bill is due. We are obligated as a country, to pay the debt.

What are the Republicans doing about this? They just voted to not pay the debt. As has been pointed out on nearly every news outlet (except Fox), this is like ordering a giant meal at a restaurant and then running out the door.

15 Nobel Prize winning economists signed a letter in favor of Biden’s huge spending bill. The Republican Party is against it. Why? Well, they have shown they are not afraid of spending but they only spend to enrich themselves or their donors. Biden’s bill is for American, not members of the Republican mafia.

I cannot think of a single time in the last 30 years where the Republican Party has made a sound economic decision.

This is a problem because Congress has 2 basic jobs: (1) make laws and (2) spend money.

As conservatives, they do their best to make time stand still of go backwards, thus, no laws. As for spending money, they are long-term failures. They would all be in jail except that they police themselves and continually find themselves innocent.

Time to save the world.

Up, up and away…

Jim

This just in: I just read a Washington Post Opinion that warned Trump was definitely going to be the Republican candidate for president in 2024.

I find this terrifying. Not because Trump is a disaster (he is) but because people vote for him. I recently saw a news show where the host was interviewing people on a tour of what was once Mayberry RFD. They were trying to reconnect with a past that they loved. A small town sheriff (Andy Griffin) and a small town of white, Christian people. The Apple Pie of Americana. When interviewed, they all were quick to say they loved their country. Then they continued talking. Turns out they think the 2020 election was stolen from Trump, citing one broadly discredited claim after another.

That is what I find terrifying. There are those that believe Trump was sent by God to lead us into the white supremist future where Christianity and the Taliban are indistinguishable and Putin only wants what is best for us.

I think I may be biased so I’m going to make an honest attempt to lay out what appears to be the national Republican platform:

1. Elections are all rigged. The evidence for this claim seems to rely entirely on the fact that Republicans keep losing.
2. Keep non-white people out of the country.
3. Base the government on the Christian bible (aka the White Taliban)
4. Fight COVID by simply denying it exists
5. Don’t teach black history because it makes white people feel guilty.
6. Ban LGBTQ because they fear they may be gay
7. Disregard ALL economic theory because it slows the self-enrichment of congress and their donors.
8. Fight Climate change by simply denying it exists
9. Keep non-Republicans from voting.
10. Pander to the single issue voter. For example, claim to be anti-abortion and you can get all of the Evangelical votes.
11. Discourage higher education because you don’t want people questioning your actions.
12. Get out of NATO because it make Russia happy.
13. Let Turkey kill our allies the Kurds because Trump has hotels in Turkey
14. Get out of trade agreements with non-white countries.
15. Feed the military war machine because they have the biggest lobbyist budget
16. Scrap all public healthcare because private healthcare has the second biggest lobbyist budget.

I guess that is enough of that. I don’t see any redeeming values in any of these and yet, all of them are undeniably Republican positions.

Republicans, when faced with the above issues, will tell you that its up to the States to address these issues. You might recall that States’ Rights was the South’s justification for the Civil War. That is their cover story even today so they can pretend it was not about slavery.

If this list works for you, great! Vote Republican.

It doesn’t work for me so…

It ‘s time to save the world.

Up, up and away…

Jim

This just in: The slow pace of progress is one of the top problems with our government.

In WWII, the aircraft carrier Yorktown entered Pearl Harbor needing about 6 months worth of repairs. It was so damaged that just getting rid of it was an option. However, in 4 days, it was back at sea, launching aircraft. This one event was a hidden turning point in the war in the Pacific. The Japanese saw the Yorktown and mistook it for the U.S. fleet since they were certain it couldn’t be the heavily damage Yorktown. This made the Japanese go in one direction while our actual fleet moved in for the kill. You may be familiar with this as The Battle of Midway.

The point is that we made a decision to do 6 months of work on an aircraft carrier in just 4 days. We had to do it so we did it.

As a country, or even as a species, we are capable of great things. All we need to do is make up our mind to do it.

This long preamble brings me to the topic of “pace.”

Let’s start with immigration.

If you were in South America and wanted to come to the United States, would your (a) file your paperwork and wait 10 years or (b) cross the border illegally. These are basically your two decisions. Our immigration system is so slow that it took my wife 2 years to get a green card AFTER we were married.

We need immigrants. We need the diversity they offer. We need the labor they offer. We need them at every level of our economy. Today there are about 2.5 million more job openings than there are job seekers. These openings represent lost economic growth.

To fix this, all we need to do is streamline the immigration procedure. Democrats aren’t really interested in fixing this because when Republicans are in control, Dems can blame them for being inhumane. Republicans don’t want to fix this because immigrants aren’t white.

What about White Collar crime?

Congress is filled with inside traders or people that misused campaign funds. If they were prosecuted quickly, this type of behavior would end. Instead, we get, “We are looking into it.” Trump commits one crime after another. He is personally responsible for tens of thousands of deaths ranging from the Kurds to the people next door that died needlessly from COVID. And what do we get? “We are looking into it.”

The slow pace of immigration causes immigration problems.

The slow pace of justice fuels injustice.

These are problems we can solve if we chose to. Right now, we are not choosing to.

Time to save the world.

Up, up and away…

Jim

This just in: I took my dog in to get a couple of vaccines today.

He didn’t say, “Hey! What in the hell do you think you are doing?”

He didn’t say this for a couple of reasons, the first being, that he is a dog. The second is that he naturally assumes that there is a reason for this and I’m the expert at what is best for his health.

I routinely take my dogs in for maintenance. I do this because I’m a good dog parent and I want them to live long and healthy lives.

However, today’s vaccine was not for this reason. Today’s vaccine was “mandated” by the kennel where he goes for play dates and sleepovers.

They say, “If you want your dog to come into our environment, he/she must have the following vaccines.”

Now, what I don’t do is say, “Hey you communist! What are you trying to do – take away my dog’s right to not wear a mask?” I don’t say this because I’m not a Republican and I also already understand quite well why they want my dog vaccinated.

I’m sure they want him to be healthy but that is not the reason.

What they want to do is ensure all of the other dogs will not get sick because my unvaccinated dog brought something into the kennel.

I understand this. You understand this.

Why don’t QAnon, Republican, Anti-vaxxers understand this.

Time to save the world.

Up, up and away…

Jim

This just in: After careful consideration, I have come to 2 conclusions. (1) I think the best evidence for the existence of God is that we seem to need for him/her/it to exist and (2) There is equal evidence that God exists and that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump.

“Heresy!” you say. “Burn him at the stake!”

I may be wrong here and feel free to change my mind. In fact, I want you to change my mind. But I doubt that you can. Not because I am stubborn but because the evidence simply does not exist.

You can point at a blade of grass and say, “Surely this exists because God made it so.” Perhaps you are right but I think its more likely that you think that God made that blade of grass so you can grasp onto something that shows he exists. The fact in that they blade of grass is an inevitable result of physics.

There are all kinds of fables and “eye witness” accounts of God doing this or that. There are far more instances of people taking these “events” and interpreting them in vastly different manners in order to support a certain perspective. The fact is that Jesus was “elected” to the position as “Son of God”. Look it up. Hell was invented to increase tithings.

It all comes down to this…how do QAnon and Christians explain the unexplainable? It’s either with “That’s what they want you to believe,” or “God works in mysterious ways.”

Hey, QAnon (aka Republican), how do you explain that no evidence of voter fraud has been found?

QAnon (aka Republican), “That’s just what they want you to believe.”

See how easy that was to justify an unjustifiable position?

Let’s try another…

Hey, Christian, how do you explain why God allows a gunmen to do mass killings at a school?

Christian: “God works in mysterious ways.” or “God is testing your faith.”

Testing my faith??!! So he wants to know if I believe in him? Shouldn’t he already know that? He does? He just wants to to use my free will because he’s good guy…one that will smite me if I don’t use my free will in the way he wants me to? Really? People believe this?

Don’t get me wrong…well, if you think that I think QAnon is made up of idiots then you completely get me.

However, if you think I don’t believe in a god, you would be wrong. I just think that an entity capable of creating the universe has no need to act like an old jealous white man with low self esteem. And he/she certainly doesn’t need to work in “mysterious ways”.

My observation is that people that are hard-core belief system Christians are just like QAnon people. They are the same in two ways. First, both believe what they want to believe even in the complete absence of supporting evidence. Secondly, both are by far, members of the Republican Party.

Republicans governs with fear; just like organized religions. They do this because it works.

Alas…I find this greatly disappointing. The universe and whatever created it are so much more vastly interesting and inspiring that we could possibly imagine. It takes a small person indeed to use this for the spread of fear and an increase of control.

Time to save the world.

Up, up and away…

Jim

This just in: In the book Catch 22, Yossarian, a pilot that is terrified of flying in WWII is told that “So long as the front, represented by a strand of yarn on a board, is below a certain latitude, they will continue to bomb.” So Yossarian gets up in the middle of the night and simply moves the line of yarn. Problem solved.

A couple of days ago, the Texas governor performed a similar miracle. When confronted with the fact that the new anti-abortion law does not allow women that are raped to have abortions, he solved the problem by saying, and I’m not making this up, “Texas will eliminate all rapes in the state.”

I don’t know how he will move this “strand of yard.” Will they castrate every single male of “rape age” in the state? Will they rename rape as “Boys will be boys” or “You know she wanted it” and thus…no more rape.

Republicans do this a lot. It’s sort of like putting on Dorthey’s ruby slippers and then tapping the heals together as you make a wish.

Here are a few examples:

1. We are preparing evidence of voter fraud and you will see it in…2 weeks.
2. When we give billionaires a tax break, the economy will grow 5%
3. Right now we are preparing a tax cut for the middle class (Trump said this, surprising everyone in Congress since they had no idea what he was talking about)
4. Obama will take away your guns.
5. Biden will turn us all into Socialists
6. Climate change is a Chinese hoax
7. A marauding band of women and children are preparing to cross the southern border to take away your jobs and rape your women (it will always be called rape unless a white male does it).
8. Trump won the election…by a lot
9. The pandemic is a hoax…or over…or nearly over…or Bill Gates blah, blah, blah…
10. Aside from the $8 trillion dollars of overspending under Trump, we balanced the budget.
11. We need to die in the sand overseas so that the terrorist won’t come over here and rape.

This list can go on and on.

I often think the Republican position is based on Brandolini’s Law, also know and the Bullshit Asymmetry Principle. It goes like this: The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude larger than to produce it. In other words, they use very little energy to just make stuff up knowing that the opposition will never have enough energy to set the record straight in every case.

Stated another way: It is easier to fool people than to convince them they have been fooled. This is why Faux News is successful.

Republican officials also benefit from voters that grab onto the first thing that they hear that they “want” to be true and will not hear anything beyond that. You could say, “horse de-worming medicine works to cure horse worms” and they will stop hearing anything after “horse de-worming medicine works.”

Time to save the world.

Up, up and away…

Jim

This just in: Today, I thought I would list some of the benefits and downsides of the COVID pandemic.

The first, and easily the biggest, downside is that the dirty underbelly of America has been exposed. There are those that feed misinformation for no reason other than to watch in glee as the gullible rush to the trough to eat their fill. “Bill Gates has tracking devices in the vaccine!” they say. In response, millions of Americans that are carrying cell phones which track their every movement and thought say, “I’m gonna get me some horse de-wormer to protect my freedoms.”

A win has been my ability to adapt my job so that I don’t have to travel so much. I went from flying 120,000 miles a year to ZERO and yet, my business never faltered.

A loss has been the need to wear masks nearly everywhere. I understand and support the need to wear masks, constantly wash my hands, maintain social distance and get vaccinated. However, I don’t have to like it.

A win was the lack of traffic. I could drive through downtown San Francisco faster than I could walk the same route. This was new. However, this is starting to fade as traffic resumes.

A loss is the isolation from each other. This ranges from isolation from my neighbors to empty seats at the Olympics.

A win is the newfound joy of things I once took for granted. Sitting at an outside cafe sipping coffee and watching the world go by…what a great thing!

A loss, not one I experienced directly, is the loss of income for those people in jobs that were curtailed or completely eliminated because of the pandemic.

A win is my house. We re-did everything. 2 years ago we were thinking about moving; having had enough of the wildfire smoke and power shutdowns. However, now the house looks like new and we don’t plan on leaving any time soon. There is a show called Love It or List It. We decided to Love It.

A loss was I didn’t get to see my family. My only grandson is now 2 years old and I haven’t seen him since he still had that new car smell. At one point I hadn’t seen my mom for 18 months. We missed a Christmas and a Thanksgiving. My wife didn’t see her family for nearly 2 years.

A win is my weight. When I was traveling a lot, I was eating out a lot. Since the pandemic, I’m mostly home where my wife keeps an eye on my diet. I’ve lost about 10 pounds.

And finally I circle back to the biggest loss, that slice of the American public that “did Facebook research” and determined vaccines are dangerous, elections are fraudulent and any other bit of conspiracy theory nonsense that crosses their biased news feeds.

This “biggest loss” is the worst because it is not a product of the pandemic. The pandemic merely allowed us to “look behind the curtain”. There, we found a mirror and what we saw…was disappointing and…persistent. We will still be this…thing….when the pandemic is far in our rear view mirror.

Time to save the world.

Up, up and away…

Jim

This just in: I struggled with the title of this post. Part of me wanted to point out the close partnership between Republicans and misinformation. Part of me wanted to point out their lack of ANY platform. In the end, I decided Hypocrisy is their closest and most accurate descriptor.

Let’s start with abortion. My opinion is that they should be allowed. I have 3 main reasons for this: (1) The Constitution says so, (2) Women bear the burden and it is their body and (3) Making them illegal has no impact on the total number of abolitions; it just increases the number of “alley” abortions which puts the woman’s life in danger.

The Republican view: God made me do it. God wants me to be against abortions because he loves life. God loves life so I love life. Although I like freedoms, I only like them when they impact me. “me” being a white, male Republican legislature in Texas.

The sanctity of life and the value of freedoms is their rallying cry; as if the other party doesn’t like these things. “Vote Republican because we love puppies!!” tells their sheep that to not vote Republican is to not like puppies.

The sanctity of life ends, apparently, at birth. At that instant, the Republican Party mantra becomes, “Keep your lazy hands off of my stuff!” Speaking of abortion, the new Texas law prohibits abortion for rape. Texas justifies this by saying, “We will end all rape in Texas.” (note: Texas leads the nation in rape cases) They say, “You have 6 weeks to get an abortion” apparently unaware that 90% of women are unaware that they are pregnant at 6 weeks.

The appreciation of liberties ends once you want something different from what they want. You want same sex marriage, they will legislate against you. You want gay rights? They will legislate against you. You want to end the pandemic by using science? They will legislate against you. You want to save the planet for our children’s children? They will legislate against you. You want everyone to have the right to vote easily? They will legislate against you. You want fiscal responsibility? They will sell you on the scam known as Trickle Down economics. You want to get out of endless wars? They will sell you fear.

You want the truth? The Republican Party will give you propaganda.

I was watching Morning Joe this morning and they had on the Georgia Lt. Governor, a Republican. He actually said the following, “Americans support Republicans on 9 out of 10 issues.” There are two things that are really weird about this: (1) I can’t name a single Republican issue unless its pro-guns and anti-abortion and (2) I can’t think of a single issue that Americans favor the Republican position over a Democrat position.

One last note on this abortion issue. I am not a woman but I believe that a woman that chooses to have an abortion does so after giving it an agonizing mental debate. It is not, “I think I’ll go buy some shoes and then get an abortion on the way home.” It is not easy and it is a decision that they know they will carry with them their whole lives. I trust them to make a decision that is right for them.

I trust them to make the decision that is right for them.

Time to save the world.

Up, up and away…

Jim