"I'm pro-life and I voted for Beto O'Rourke"

Destiny Herndon-De La Rosa penned an op-ed for The Dallas Morning News explaining why she voted for Beto O'Rourke for US Senator from Texas. I love Destiny, and not just because she was the only one who begged me "Please don't go" when I quit blogging in 2010. She's probably one of the few writers who could successfully coax me to come back. She's a terrific writer, but she is also open-minded enough to consider alternative viewpoints. How else could a pro-life feminist consider voting for Beto O'Rourke?

Anyway, so here I am back at the keyboard. Read her op-ed, then come back here and read my open letter to Destiny.

McCain's Memoirs

Senator John McCain was one of the most interesting, puzzling, confounding politicians of our generation. I'm not going to go through all the details. That's what Wikipedia is for. But consider these facts. In 2004 McCain was talked about as a vice presidential candidate on the Democratic ticket with John Kerry. In 2008, McCain himself picked Sarah Palin for his own vice presidential candidate. How can the same politician be both of those things? Like I said, confounding.

This is the kind of politician that I'd like to hear off-the-record explaining what he was thinking. But that just doesn't happen. Politicians are never off-the-record, at least not when they are still in office. Because John McCain died in office, he'll never get to write his memoirs free from the obligations of future political campaigns. That's a shame. On the other hand, perhaps I hold out too much hope for learning what made him tick from his memoirs. A politician's memoirs may be written after he no longer needs to worry about facing the voters, but there's another judgment he's campaigning for at the end of his life: his legacy. I guess that's why political memoirs are so often disappointing. McCain's probably would have been, too. We'll probably never know how he himself balanced the puzzling contradictions in his political career. How much was principal? How much craven political opportunism? Which was which?

Just Say NO to Concealed Carry

Do you wonder how much Facebook knows about you? Or just what it knows that leads to Facebook filling your feed with ads like this:

Say NO to sweaty holsters that print and hurt. Say YES to one that carries three extra magazines and can be worn with Gym Shorts. Fall back in love with concealed carry.

Rest assured that Facebook's algorithms can't be all that good that it thought I would be a good target customer for that ad.

---

P.S. The next ad Facebook decided to show me asked, "How much will a DWI cost me in Texas?" Does Facebook know something about me that I don't?

Dichotomous Thinking

It might not seem like it, but I often try to understand how people that I otherwise recognize as intelligent and educated can hold beliefs that I consider to be, for lack of a better word, wacko. What's the difference in how their mind works and how mine does that might explain the different beliefs we hold?

John Ehrenreich, in a Slate article ("White Evangelicals' Continued Support of Trump Feels Surprising. It Shouldn't.") offers a theory predicated on fundamental differences in how conservatives and liberals see the world. These differences are probably set very early in life and individuals (myself included) are probably powerless to do much about them. It's just the way we see the world.

Ehrenreich:

Conservatives also show a greater tendency than liberals toward dichotomous thinking and have a stronger need for certainty and cognitive consistency. ("I don't do nuance," George W. Bush famously told Joe Biden.) ...

Dichotomous thinking, a trait associated with conservatism, is equally central to evangelical thought: God and man, saved and unsaved, Christianity and secularism, abstinence or the devil, male and female, life begins at conception and not at some nebulous time between then and when consciousness and rationality emerge. There is no room for ambiguity.

I guess what I'm saying is that "I do nuance."

Don't Trust Anyone Over Thirty

A blogger I've admired for over a decade (I think it's been that long; my memory might fail me) has recently decided to scrub the Internet of all of her old opinions. I know, I know, foolish quest. The Internet is forever. Anyway, she posits a new law: "Nobody should be allowed to put any of their dumbass thoughts or feels on the internet until at least 30."

When I was young, a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, the campus anti-war movement had a rallying cry, "Don't trust anyone over thirty." I'm well past that milestone now, but I still think there's a nugget of wisdom there.

Wars are still started by old men but fought and died for by young men.

National debt is still piled up by old men but inherited by the next generation.

And absolute gun rights are enshrined and defended by old men but we bury the child victims that result.

Don't trust anyone over thirty. Still sounds good.

Jade Helm 15 Redux

Remember Jade Helm 15? Maybe you don't, at least if you're a relatively sane American not given to conspiracy theories. To refresh your memory, Jade Helm 15 was a series of joint military exercises conducted in the US southwest in 2015. The right wing went batshit crazy accusing Barack Obama of all sorts of evil motives. According to Wikipedia,  

 

Jim Shea of the Hartford Courant's wrote that the conspiracy theories included: a "psychological operation aimed at getting people used to seeing military forces on the streets" so that they do not realize when an invasion actually takes place.

Well, Jade Helm 15 came and went without a military coup. You might think that the right wing crazies will be ever vigilant against any new signs of the US military on the streets. Just kidding. In fact, President Donald Trump now wants the US military to conduct a grand military parade down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington DC. The generals are against it. The Democrats in Congress are against it. The Republicans in Congress are against it. The mainstream press is against it. You know who isn't against it? The right wing crazies. Apparently, being against military putsches isn't some kind of general principal with them, so important that they will protest the first signs of military on our streets. They are only against such operations if the black guy is in charge.

May I Have a Word: Shithole

Our current president has so normalized aberrant behavior that hearing him describe African countries as "shitholes" comes as no surprise. Republicans don't bat an eye, offering no comment (as long as he signs their tax cuts for the rich, they'll tolerate anything from him). Democrats are scandalized, not by his choice of language, but by his racism. And the White House itself flip-flops faster than one can keep up with, first offering no denial, then, wait for it, Trump himself denying he used vile and racist language. In other words, just another day at this White House.

Matt Schlapp: Trump absolutely didn't say Haiti was a shithole but if it turns out he did say it he was 100% right and he meant it in a beautiful, compassionate way and if you don't acknowledge Haiti as a shithole then really, you're the monster. And the media is the real enemy. https://t.co/2e6rL41kGE

— Jonathan V. Last (@JVLast) January 12, 2018

Mega Millions $450 million jackpot

The Mega Millions $450 million jackpot was won by one lucky person. Not me. I knew that before the drawing because I didn't buy a ticket. But after the drawing, I knew that I wouldn't have won because the numbers I would have picked weren't the winning numbers. You see, I always don't play the same numbers. Once again, the numbers I always don't play didn't win. Lucky me.

 

The average American spends about $200 a year on lottery tickets, although residents of some states spend far more. According to a study by LendEDU, the average Massachusetts resident spends $735 annually on lottery tickets, while those in Delaware or New York are likely spending about $400 a year, or $33 per month.
-- CBS News

So always never playing the same numbers saves me $200/year without ever missing out on the jackpot...yet.  ;-)