How can you trust non-gardeners?

Can you trust someone who has never gardened or even grown a plant?  It takes a certain amount of mental and emotional maturity to appreciate something as subtle as a plant (which one colleague suggests explains some zoologists), and it takes a good deal of patience and care to nurture a seed into a plant that flowers and eventually produces fruit.  It is no surprise to many of us that there is nothing quite like a garden-ripened, sun-warmed, fresh-picked tomato.  Tomatoes from most groceries, and those served in your average restaurant, are merely similar in color and shape.  How many of our politicians, largely rich, urban folk, would know a good tomato if they ate one?  In addition, some of them, being mostly lawyerly, might even argue that good in this context doesn’t matter.  But it does because it says a great deal about their values and discernment of subtleties!  A really good tomato is something the little person can have, can grow, for themselves, something better than the 1% have, something the 1% don't even know about.  So why trust someone who can’t accept even such a simple truth as a ripe tomato?  Could our current president even recognize a tomato plant?  Does he even eat tomatoes that have not been turned into ketchup?  So why trust this guy with any of the many more important decisions that need to be made?  TPP hazards to say that gardeners are a largely ignored demographic, and gardeners should rise up and oppose putting such ignorant people into office.  Perhaps a gardening quiz can be administered to test for fitness to hold office and make wise decisions about things that really matter, like when things need pruning (sorry Chauncey, Being There). What’s the best tomato you’ve ever eaten?  How do you grow nice lettuce? It matters; now answer the question!

Avoiding the unpleasant

It's human nature, so we all do it.  And a steady diet of unpleasantness begins to depress TPP.  In terms of nature, 2017 has been great, a good spring. But the news, mostly from Washington DC has been most depressing. How does somebody so remarkably unqualified in so many ways become president? The answer itself is also depressing; it means qualifications don't mean a damn, and the 'Mercan public is poorly prepared to evaluate candidates using the various forums provided.  Presently our duly elected President is doing his best to demonstrate how poorly qualified he is and in so many ways to occupy a position of power and responsibility.  All these demonstrations connect back to his peculiar narcissistic personality, his lazy, untrained intellect, and his history as a privileged rich person.  And even more depressing, his term has another 3.5 years to go! TPP takes small pleasure in the most obvious fact, which is having the office which he coveted does not seem to giving our President great satisfaction because the job is much harder, much different, than he thought, and his gaffes provide everyone with opportunities to criticize his performance, something someone so thin-skinned doesn't like. Our President actually generally predicted that many such errors would take place, but not by himself, but by his opponents.  To bad he is incapable of learning from his own criticisms.  So sorry world, we knew his budget stuff would be bad, we knew his healthcare stuff would be bad, we knew his administrative style would be bad, but that was before his foreign policy and diplomacy kicked into gear. So many potential disasters and all in a little more than 100 days!  And sane people keep asking, how bad could it get? 

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.

Lack of good political choices

Bronco Bama has been a rather disappointing president, but TPP must consider the alternative.  Would the use of drones or the status of unofficial wars (only congress can declare war) improve by switching presidents.  No.  Would that Obama had done more about the environment and global warming, but will this get better if we switch presidents?  You must be kidding!  The GnOPe is the party that has forsaken science and reason for an alternate ideological reality of their own construct.  The economy has been slow to improve, and would tried and failed GnOPe strategies make things better?  Not for 99% of us.  And while mulling this entire thing over, there was a new Mittens ad where he advocated himself as a supporter of bipartisanship, and that was it.  It reminded TPP that the GnOPe was obsessed with obstructing Bronco Bama at every turn, opposing every action, finding fault with every single thing the man did, indeed, demonizing the very man at every step with a venom that usually is associated with out and out hatred, a President who made the mistakes of trying to find compromise and consensus, of conceding way too much to people who were bound and determined to stop his every action, and now Mittens claims the fault was Obama’s!  After opposing Bronco Bama at every turn, then claim BB wasn’t able to accomplish very much, while knowing full well why, and then saying, so vote for us.  Do people actually fall for this?  Well, that was just too much for TPP, the last straw in a not very nice campaign all the way around.  According to PolitiFact, 41% of Mittens’ rated statements were mostly false, false, or pants on fire (9%).  Now of course all politicians mess with the facts, so to be fair, Bronco had 28% of his rated statements ranked mostly false, false, or pants on fire (2%).  It’s a pretty big difference especially in the out and out falsehood category.  You get some idea of the GnOPe mentality when NJ Gov. Crusty was chastised by his own party when he and Bronco were actually just doing their jobs following Sandy’s arrival rather than playing politics.  This epitomizes the neocon attitude that it’s all politics, all the time, no matter what, and that, my friends, means the GnOPe really doesn’t care about you or me, or what’s really good for the country,  or the world.  And to some extent that goes for the Hemicrats too.  So while not really happy, my mind is made up.  Green Party!  Yea!