When given a moment to explain why he has stumbled so clumsily around the Trump problem he faces in this election, Paul Ryan talks of inclusiveness, a subject, about which his party knows nothing. The GOP is all about the exclusive few benefitting and the rest of the people getting screwed. He talks about not playing identity politics but his candidate, Trump, is only about identity. He knows nothing about issues; he can’t carry on an intelligent conversation about any of them. His limited abilities extend only to attacking other candidates and those who doesn’t agree 100% with him on any idiotic thing that stumbles into his warped mind.
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An interesting point that was raised on Bill Maher’s Real Time, was that sure, the younger generation is having trouble getting jobs, but they also manage to get all kinds of free stuff that their elders had to pay for.
I’m going to start with my pet peeve, music. There was a time when if you wanted to listen to music you bought a record, a tape or even a disc. You could listen to your hearts content and the artists who wrote, sang and played the music benefited from their work and were economically able to create more.
Then some sleazy genius decided that he could put all the music on the air free. He would not sell the music but he would sell advertising that accompanied it, thereby enabling him to claim that since he wasn’t selling the music, he owed no royalties to those who created it. Then some brain dead judge agreed with him and the music industry was destroyed. This was especially disastrous for young performers and writers because it drove many of them out of the music business at a stage of their career when they ere just developing their talents and their audiences. The result, a lesser talent pool and a less diverse music scene, but all the free music that anyone would want. Then again, you get what you pay for.
Now some old fart is going to pop up and say, yeah, but you used to go into those booths in record stores and listen for free. We did, but the purpose of those booths was for us to hear the music and buy it, which is what we did. At one point I had a record collection of over fifteen hundred records all of which I had purchased. Many people I knew had considerable larger collections. Nowadays kids have even larger collections, all of it acquired for nothing. How do the artists support themselves and their families? The slime that created this system doesn’t care as long as he gets to sell his advertising. The answer to the problem; a national boycott aimed at any product that advertises on any station that allows the free download of music while charging for advertising
Oh yeah, in answer to the obvious question, no I don’t write music. Never had the talent.
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The horrendous killing of a two-year old child by an alligator in Florida points up the stupidity of humans when faced with the ways of nature. I watched a clueless Alex Witt, interviewing a wildlife ranger who was trying very hard to explain to her that the State of Florida and many others were the natural habitat of alligators. They were there long before we were and they were so well adapted to their environment that there was no foolproof way to render them safe.
He explained to Witt that alligators coulkd climb fences and travel long distances on land. This makes them incredibly hard to keep under any kind of serious control. What the rangers are trying to do is keep the people under control, so they will not make themselves available as entrees for the alligators
This is often a very difficult problem, since people, as we all know, are brute stupid. This was proven at a Zoo in Cleveland recently, when a mother let her four-year old child worm through a fence and enter the gorilla compound. The unfortunate result of that encounter was that the gorilla was shot, even though all he wanted to do was adopt the child
The fact is that most of the canals and a large percentage of the ponds in Florida have from time to time been the habitat of alligators. This should tell people in that state that there is an element of danger in the place they have chosen to visit or live. That fact 7seems to have eluded many of them but then again you can’t fix stupid. Maybe the real solution is to move all the people out of Florida and just leave it to the gators.
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Fareed Zakaria had a very interesting interview with Vladimir Putin recently and Putin showed himself, as having a very deep understanding of the international situation. It is, in fact, probably a much better one than most western leaders and certainly most western politicians.
It has always been particularly easy for our politicians to red bait in order to push their various agendas, but in the recent noise in the Ukraine it was very obvious to any neutral observer that Russia was not initially at fault. Sure they pushed into Chechnya and made noise on the Ukrainian border but only after we instituted a coup against the Russian leaning government. If we had stayed out of Ukraine, Russia would never have had the excuse to go in. So whose fault was all that? It looks from here, like overly aggressive American foreign policy.
Putin didn’t say it in so many words but this column will. We have to learn to stay out of everybody’s business. We had no business backing the coup in Ukraine so we have no right to be condemning Russia for their moves, which never would have happened if we had respected their zone of influence.
This is not to say that Putin is a nice guy and a fair player. But he is, in effect, a very strong leader and would appear to have the good of his country as his goal. He doesn’t have a party so he is his own party and naturally does things that will advance his agenda, but he also functions in a way that advances Russia’s agenda as he sees it. That’s what a president is supposed to do. If we stopped worrying about Putin and cleaned up our own act, the world would be better off.
We have never had very favorable views of anyone advancing any agenda except ours, so we like to describe Putin as an aggressor. He plays the humble card very well in the interview, acknowledging that we are the world’s only superpower but we must be aware that Russia is also a very important nation. Even without the rest of the Soviet Union it is a huge landmass with an enormous population, a formidable military and the second biggest nuclear arsenal in the world. Maybe we should stop the bullshit and try, just a little, to keep Russia as a friend.
When asked about Syria, Putin has a very reasonable and intelligent approach. It is based on the idea that there must always be some kind of central authority, no matter what else is going on. He has seen what happened in Iraq and Libya and he understands that the same thing could happen in Syria. The country would then become an ungovernable non-country just like the above. Putin seems most, to fear chaos in that country and he is right. He fears that left to its own devices, the country will become ungovernable. He wants to use Assad as a base and then organize elections in which Assad has agreed to involve himself. Actually his approach is very middle-of-the-road and the best choice, from this point of view, as soon as ISIS can be driven out.
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Paul Ryan announced from the floor of the House that the sit-down by the Democrats who were trying to get a gun bill voted on was just a publicity stunt. Really? The moron actually recognized it as such. It only took the House voting on Obamacare over fifty times for Ryan to understand the futility of such a publicity stunt.
I say futility because, despite their good intentions, it was a futile move by the Democrats, except for the fact that it brought attention to the problem. Why do I say it’s futile? Because there is no way such a bill, harmless as it is, is going to pass this GOP congress. Anything that is done, before a Democratic congress is elected will be equally futile. The Right will never pass anything that will upset the gun manufacturers who pay for their yachts. If we can manage to elect a new congress with a Democratic majority, maybe we can forget about throwing out Obamacare 52 times and concentrate on important stuff like how to keep our kids from getting gunned down in the streets.
Between 80 and 90 percent of the American public want these restrictions on guns and the GOP congressmen just ignore them. Isn’t it time to show them what that costs? Isn’t it time to throw them all out in the street? You don’t want your kid to get shot? Vote for the guy who will try t prevent it, not the guy who ignores you for his profit.
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Mitch McConnell, despicable as he is, has one honest reaction in him and it is to not say that Donald Trump is qualified to be President. . This is a big deal. If the chief Democrat hater won’t back the Republican candidate, won’t say he’s qualified, that really puts the mark of Cain on Trump.
McConnell tries to draw a parallel between Brussels and our government in Washington. Really Mitch? The problem with our government is congress, which right now is Republican. Congress, that’s the clog in the governmental drain.
It was a sincere pleasure watching George Stephanopoulos skewer McConnell over and over; asking easy questions but still, ones that McConnell was not close to being up to answering truthfully. The basic problem for McConnell is that he is in the wrong about just about everything you can ask. McConnell couldn’t be dumber if he were twins.