Hello America, hello world

Dear reasonable people, sorry, our country has done something that didn't seem possible in electing such a person as T-rump president.  More than anything what this shows is that there is and always been an ugly side of the USA, and by ignoring most of the usual GOP talking points, and playing to a largely rural nationalism and giving them voice, it generated a very different voting demographic than past elections; thus the surprise.  Due to our crazy election system, even without winning the popular vote, T-rump won the election. Who knows what will happen as a result?  Having no political experience and no obvious political skills or aptitudes, everyone is left guessing about what actions he will take. If it is any comfort our government has not been good at, or even capable, of making major decisions in a hurry, or at all. So don't panic. Sorry that our politics will have an impact on so many other people in other countries.  Sorry that a person who has not earned any respect will have to be treated with some deference for diplomatic reasons. Personally there isn't much that could happen that will have much of an impact personally, but a number of likely happenings could have a considerable impact on young people and immigrants, and it is doubtful most of his supporters will get what they want or desire. Otherwise it's beautiful fall day, sunny, cool, colored with falling leaves.

It just might happen! Or not.

Hoo boy, what a possibility!  Tom Tomorrow really scared TPP with this one, but President Cruz is a possibility, however implausible. And a guy can dream, can't he?  And this is the country where anyone can be president, and anyone was, and the country did survive, didn't it. Thank you, Darth Cheney for holding it all together. And, yes, Democrats could be that inept. So you see, this could happen.
OK it's a double header of TT today in which the future of the next two years makes you want to cancel your newspaper, rip out your TV, and live in a cave.

American taliban in action

One of the USA's general problems is its smugness in thinking that WE are better than everyone else.  OK, the USA has things to be proud of, but WE ain't perfect either. Recent events have displayed this most succinctly. Various commentators have been chiding the Russians for their anti-gay policies, as if the USA was so superior, and at the same time AZ was passing a "we're legalizing religious bigotry bill". This perversion of the concept of religious freedom demonstrates something that TPP has said before, although maybe not here, if you give the USA's religious right political power, they'd quickly show the Taliban new tricks. Wonder if the ayatollah Brewer will sign this into law or not?  Then there's news of a corporal punishment bill in some other backward state charging forward into the past. So, to the rest of the world, sorry, some of us are very embarrassed by our fellow citizens and what passes for rationale political action, which is partly from people who actually "think" like this, and the rest of the GnOPe who would make a bargain with any devil for political purposes.  

80 years of wetness

80 years ago this week the 21st amendment was ratified which repealed the 18th amendment and the 13 year social experiment in the USA called prohibition ended.  Of course prohibition did not mean people quit drinking, it was just that the drinking was all illegal and the quality of booze was poor if not down right bad, and with limited supply to meet the demand, why there was a lot of money to be made if you didn't mind doing something illegal.  Where TPP grew up very fast boats were used to smuggle booze in from Canada by crossing Lake Ontario. The lesson of prohibition has not been learned.  The war on drugs in the USA has simply made a lot of criminals out of mostly marijuana smokers and some narcotic users.  In fact here is the one single thing where the hyper-patriots who always shout "USA is number one!" are actually correct.  Our country has more people locked up, incarcerated, per capita than any other country on Earth!  It's pathetic on so many levels.  Look how far down the list you find any other comparable countries like Britain or Canada, or Germany.  Yes, here in the USA people are still focused on punishment, the harsher and the longer the better, in spite of virtually all the data that says that doesn't work at all. So rather than treat addicts as being ill, the USA just locks them up as criminals.  Talk about cruel and unusual.  And then somewhere today, TPP read that Sweden is just closing its prisons because it has so few people to lock up.  TPP needs a cocktail, something made with Swedish vodka perhaps. 

Thank you Stanislav Petrov!

On this date in 1983 the world "dodged a bullet".  The USSR defense's warning system recorded multiple ICBM launches in the USA, and the Soviet's had a launch on warning rule, a cold war rule too very much like the doomsday machine featured in Dr. Stangelove, a great cold war movie.  However, Lt. Colonel Petrov decided that these were false warnings and stopped the "retaliation" strike.  TPP too clearly remembers the Russian-Cuban missile crisis of the 1960s and our school days' "duck and cover" drills which we called kiss-your-ass-goodbye drills.  In those days TPP actually helped people build bomb shelters in their basements.  Everyone was just sure there was going to be a nuclear war, and these two events are as close as the world ever came.  On the whole Petrov should be made an international hero of world peace.  More on the story at Treehugger and Dr. Strangelove movie pics too!  Image of a USA nuclear test blast in the south Pacific (bikini atoll?).  Man, that would really ruin your beach vacation.

How to bring me down

A beautiful, although dry, Saturday is happening outside. What could possibly bum me out so bad?  It's been quite a long time since TPP thought about any of this, but a review of the new book "Kill anything that moves" was depressing.  The Vietnam War was a war fought by my generation; friends died over there, but we all knew that what was happening to the Vietnamese was even worse, much worse.  But you hate to keep thinking about horrible things.  If this book is true, and no reason at present to think it isn't, then this war was ever worse than our worst impressions.  How can TPP not read this book?  TPP narrowly missed getting drafted; he was just a few weeks to young and was not draft age until after he was in college, and then a couple of years later, he won the draft lottery.  Lucky.  Nonetheless Vietnam was burned into your brain, and a lot of people turned to drugs to stop thinking about it.  Still books like this have to be written and read least we forget, and least we ever begin to think it wasn't so bad.  Crap.  It was.

USA's science in trouble

When so many of your elected representatives refuse to accept science as a very successful way of knowing how can it be anything of a surprise when science funding slumps?  Here's a story about how bad things are for bio-medical researchers.  Colleagues who have worked on panels that determing the rankings say that as many as 50% of all grant submissions are for science that should be supported, but the percent of grants being funded is one-fifth of that.  And if you think things are tough for these bio-medical guys at NIH, no more than 5% of evolution and ecology grants get funded by NSF.  Fortunately for some of us, our research is cheap so we can keep going by funding our own research, but it's students who get stiffed.  It just costs too much to feed them!  They need to do summer field work, but there's no money to pay them; TPP doesn't need it for himself.  And compared to the cost of bio-medical research, us ecologists are "dirt" cheap.  This is why TPP has sought a patron of botany to help out but all for naught so far probably because my organism isn't cute enough.  So our greatest patriots, people who love the USA more than we do, our GnOPe, want to diminish the one thing where the USA really was number 1, science. 

Lincolnland 47th – one of least corrupt states!!!

How can our dear state of Lincolnland be one of the least corrupt states in the USA? What an outrage! Our state has more politicians in prison than any other state, well, except maybe New Jersey. And we rank only 18th in racketeering and extortion! This state elevated racketeering to an art form! Does the name Capone ring a bell? Let's face it, this ranking can’t be true, so how did anyone decide Lincolnland was 46th in the nation in fraud, 50th in the nation in forgery and counterfeiting, and 51st, dead last, in embezzlement? 51st! How can you be 51st out of 50? What we beat out DC? No way DC beats Chicago at anything (especially hockey!)!! Did the citizens of Linconland give back their pay because they took long coffee breaks rather than steal money from their employers? Well, we won’t stand for this! Who do they think they’re dealing with!
It helps you understand this travesty if you see what they are using for data. These rankings are based on the number of arrests for forgery, racketeering, fraud, and embezzlement. Duh! 46 states have arrested more people for all these crimes over the last 10 years or so and so theose states are more corrupt? You must be kidding! All those crooks are still running around free here in Lincolnland you morons! No one arrested them! Apparently our state doesn't arrest anyone for embezzlement. These other states are cleaning house; our crooks are still cleaning up. You idiots have got the rankings exactly backwards! And when you realize that, it puts Lincolnland in 3d place just about where it belongs! After all, New Jersey has to have something to brag about.