life

The Dirtiest of Dirty Politics…

by MyBaconPress

Amy Acton. Have you heard of her? She’s running for Governor of Ohio. Her opponent is Vivek Ramaswampy, a brown man with a funny name who is nonetheless “acceptable” (that is, ‘one of the good ones) because he supports stupidity. Rampaswampy hired Acton’s mother to star in an attack ad against Acton. Acton’s mother says in the ad that Acton is a liar and should not be trusted. I presume this ad will hurt Acton’s campaign. I mean, her own mother?

The thing Ramaswampy and Acton’s evil mom left out? What Amy supposedly lies about. The details have come out, though. They kind of had to. Acton’s mom once married a pedophile. I know, that’s no big deal to cons, but decent people still have moral issues with it. Acton’s mom allowed her pedophile husband access to her young daughter, Amy, for a couple of years. He took advantage of said access and raped the young Amy on an ongoing basis.

Amy finally went to the cops and told them that the pedophile husband was molesting her regularly. An investigation ensued and charges were filed, not only against the pedo pervert, but against the mom as well. Amy’s mom and the pervert ran. They fled to another state because mom just knew the right thing to do in this case was protect the pedophile pervert instead of her own child.

The ad caused immediate outrage on the left. Once the background details came out, even some Republicans started questioning the ad and telling Ramaswampy to pull the thing. In steps the most infamous living pedophile in modern history, Donald J. Trump. We all know he has nothing against raping underage girls. He ran a child sex trafficking ring with his best friend Jeffrey Epstein for years.

47 says Ramaswampy should continue running the ad despite the fact that the ad mostly reflects the mom’s willingness to offer up her child daughter to a pervert in exchange for, what, a credit card? “Let me have a credit card and I’ll let you have my daughter.” Pretty sweet deal. Unless one is a decent person with a moral compass, which, pedos are not.

But there’s today’s GOP in a nutshell. Raping children is a nothing-burger. Ask them. They’ll tell you. Telling the cops you’ve been raped? Yeah, THAT’S the real crime in MAGA eyes. THAT makes you a “liar” and disqualifies you from office. The moral decline of the self-proclaimed moral majority hit the rocky bottom years ago – but the GOP gave them a shovel and they’ve just continued digging. They’re digging themselves straight to Hell, but at least they owned a lib for a moment…

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Neil Bush, brother to 43, has come out publicly as voting for Democrat James Talarico in Texas. He said he has issues with Paxton’s record and he likes the character of Talarico. It seems like he’s voting for the person he thinks best qualified for the job rather than sticking to loyalist party politics. That’s a fairly brave and definitely unusual thing in this day and age.

He’s not the only Bush to jump party ship, either. Barbara, daughter to 43, not the mom (who’s dead), contributed money to a PAC supporting Talarico, too. The Bushes once represented something of a dynasty in Republican politics. Moving to the Dems is a big deal. It says more about the failings of the GOP than it does about the Dems, but the failings of the GOP are legion and that leaves many voters with little choice…

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Okay, look. I know that these man-on-the-street interviews pick and choose to show the worst responses. That’s not a left game or a right game. That’s the man-on-the-street game. Ask 100 people how many states there are in the US. 97 of them say, “Fifty.” Show the other three. Aren’t they funny? Pretend those are the only answers you got.

But what if you ask 100 people how many states there are and only three of them say, “Fifty?” That really would indicate serious lack of knowledge, wouldn’t it? Recently, I’ve seen a spate of videos in which the interviewer asks the subjects to define communism. Person after person, they can’t do it. They know it’s bad, they just don’t know what it is. When the question is adjusted to define socialism, there’s still just crickets. They know to be afraid. They just can’t say what they’re afraid of.

Even Jarringly Dumb (JD) Vance tried to define communism as, “You want to replace American workers with foreign workers and you want boys to play in girls sports.” There’s even some truth to the part about replacing American workers with foreign workers. It’s just that the group doing that is the corporations that rely on H1B visas to bring in foreigners who will do jobs for less money. And, honestly, I’m not familiar with ANY definition of communism that includes sports on any level.

In the end, they tend to point to freedumb. After stammering a bit, that’s the best they can come up with. “I been free my whole life.” Uh-huh. Did you know? We live in the LEAST free, “free society” on the planet, largely because of widespread poverty and financial desperation, here in the “richest country on Earth™.”

They will eventually get to “free handouts.” Jordan Klepper from the Daily Show asks them about “free handouts” which they disavow, then asks if they’re looking forward to their free $5,000 checks 47 promised them but will never deliver. Oh, yeah, THAT free money is okay. It’s the socialist stuff that bothers them. Apparently, the “socialist stuff” is money that helps “THOSE people.”

The funniest part about this communism that they’re SO afraid of but can’t define? Nobody, nobody, nobody is talking about bringing communism to America. Communism is as failed an idea as Free Market Capitalism. Neither system is the best for the largest number of people and both systems fail for the same reason: an inability to address greed.

But socialism? Socialism does just great, here in the US. Our best systems are our socialist bits. They’re SO successful, the One Percent has been attacking them for ninety years. The One Percent are scared the masses might eventually figure out there IS a better way and then act on it. Having seen my American brethren over the last, say, fifty years, I doubt there’s much chance American masses will ever figure out they’re being played by the One Percent.

I know plenty of smart individuals, but, as a group? Americans are dumber than a box of rocks. It really was news to me, how dumb we are as a group. I didn’t know. But MAGA has laid us bare. Exposed us. It’s rather embarrassing to be an American, these days. No smarts, no morals, no decency. That’s the long-term legacy of this once-great nation the GOP would have you leave behind and, dammit, they’re succeeding…

Clever, Not Intelligent…

by MyBaconPress

For various reasons, recently I’ve been contemplating the question of human uniqueness in the galaxy. There’s a possibility that we – humans – are the only, um, “intelligent” species currently in existence anywhere in the galaxy. That’s what we call ourselves, “intelligent.” I see a lot of room for questions. We call ourselves “intelligent” because we’ve decided the criteria to our own advantage. I guess that’s clever. I’ll keep using that description, “intelligent,” since there’s no one around to debate the point. Please just understand, I’m not convinced.

Personally, I don’t really accept that we’re the only. I’m also not a big believer in aliens visiting Earth. But they must be out there. The one fact I have – a thing I know for sure – is that life finds a way. One hears scientists speculate that they can’t see how life could exist in such-and-such an environment only to find such an environment, discover life DOES exist there, and then figure out how. They found a lichen that sucks moisture from rocks! Update the records.

I currently subscribe to the idea that there are other “intelligent” species out there. They rise to a certain technological level – about where we are right now, by the way – and then do something spectacularly stupid – confident, at the time, in their own intelligence. They either wipe themselves out entirely, or knock themselves back to their own Stone Age and have to start again.

But if it IS true that we, the species, are, in fact, the only “intelligent” species ever to rise to this level, we’re sure doing a lousy job of representing “intelligence.” I mean, if we ARE the singular example – and there’s no evidence of aliens elsewhere – don’t we have a high obligation to represent better than we’re doing? Don’t we have a moral obligation to be the best we can be? Is that how it looks to you?

We’ve put ourselves directly on a path to our own destruction. We KNOW it. We’re doing it anyway. “Well, sure, Dan, we ARE going to wipe ourselves out of existence day-after-tomorrow, but we really need to maximize shareholder value today.” That suggests we’ve been FAR to generous in our own description of ourselves. We’ve been, here it is again, clever, not “intelligent.” We find solutions to common problems and we use skills in practical ways. But do we have a high level of understanding and cognitive ability?

Would an intelligent species really just continue to abuse it’s own environment, ignoring each and every warning sign as it comes up? Would a genuinely intelligent species really risk wiping itself off the planet using weapons so powerful we can accomplish that feat by accident? No, there are many, many contraindicators regarding our own, self-described “intelligence.”

The current form of human has been around for something like 300,000 years. It makes sense that, early on, we might have settled differences by trying to kill each other. But 300,000 years later and we STILL haven’t figured out a better, more civilized way? How is that “intelligent?” What we DID was come up with better ways to accomplish the same old goal. Clever.

Early on, there weren’t enough of us to affect our environment. There are now, and we’re doing it. We know we’re doing it. We care, just not enough to stop doing it. It would be very inconvenient. A storm just passed over Michigan and the tornadoes that came with it killed at least six people. The storm-front was born down near Texas and maintained it’s strength as it crossed the continent into Michigan. That’s climate change. More powerful storms. We KNOW it.

We also know what causes it. I’m pretty sure an intelligent species would realize the situation, then seek and implement a better way. We even know the better way we need to pursue! Instead, we’re doubling down on the things we KNOW we need to stop doing if we want to survive this thing. That’s a pretty high stakes game we, the so-called “intelligent” species, are playing.

If we were intelligent, shouldn’t we have left the trappings of ignorance behind by now? Shouldn’t we learn from previous mistakes and find ways to keep from making them again? But we don’t do that. We just keep making the same mistakes, over and over again. That’s not intelligent. But we repeat those mistakes more efficiently and effectively, because we’re clever. Lovely.

As a species, we have (had?) tremendous potential. Unfortunately, our potential has been overshadowed by our application. While we call ourselves “intelligent,” we’re actively involved in exactly the kind of spectacular stupidity that will roll us back to our Stone Age or possibly wipe us out, entirely. Hey, at least we’ll be clever about it…