Tag Archives: politics

Don’t Believe Ridiculous Ideas

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“Did you get your coffee at the espresso cafe next door?” I asked my hair stylist. Seemed like an innocent question, but she leaned down and whispered that she got her drink at Starbucks. “Is that a bad thing?” I asked? “Well, you know, Israel,” she replied. 

Now I was confused. What did Starbucks have to do with Israel? Do they have cafes in Israel? I know they have cafes in Saudi Arabia, and I suspect they have cafes in other Arab countries, though perhaps not Yemen. Perhaps they source something from Israel, though what would that be? 

Well, in any event, my hairdresser fits in well in Olympia. “Free Palestine” signs are everywhere. Every other woke cause is represented as well. I could switch hairdressers, but how far would I have to drive to find one who’d be even neutral on Israel? Maybe if the price of gas comes down? 

So mostly I keep my mouth shut unless there’s a chance of a real conversation, which usually there isn’t. But I do search for opportunities for genuine conversation. Which led me to our Senior Center. It’s just two blocks away and has a conversation group once a week. The group’s leader has a set routine: first, the word of the day, its history, its evolution; then, what’s happened on this date in history; and then current issues. 

Most of the current issues lately are Trump-related, and there’s a lot of grumbling. Today, we talked about the recent chemical spill at a Longview pulp and paper mill in which 11 people died. One member of our group had worked there during summers when he was in college. As bad as the incident was, it was an implosion of a tank instead of an explosion, which could have been much worse. It’s horrible to say that an event in which eleven people died could have been worse, but the environmental impact could have been much worse. In any event, no one had anything cheerful to say about that bit of news.

Discussion then turned to the war in Iran, which led to Hezbollah, which led to Israel. Turns out there’s another weekly event at the Senior Center, a history class that some attend. I haven’t attended that because it’s hard for me to do one regular activity a week, much less two. In any event, I won’t be going to the history class because in the discussion of Iran, Hezbollah, and Israel, people who do attend the history class claimed that Israel’s treatment of Palestinians is analogous to American history with Indians. Israelis are settler-colonialists, they starve the Palestinians, they bomb hospitals, and yes, if the New York Times says that Israelis train dogs to rape Palestinian prisoners, then it must be true. Genocide? True. Apartheid? True. Even Jews say all the bad things are true. So, it must all be true?

Jews are free to disagree with each other. Are Palestinians free to disagree with each other? No. They will get killed for saying things comparable to what Israelis say about their country. So the fact that some Jews say one thing and some say another proves nothing to me. Listen to all sides, please, before you take up arms.

Sorry, (not sorry) but I’m finished with that group. One new person said she taught Middle-East history at Baylor, so she knows what she’s talking about. Yeah, and every woke professor knows the truth about everything. So, no, I really don’t need to hear any more from these folks about Israel. 

If you have any room in your head for another point of view, consider reading this recent article from Quillette (Quillette has saved my sanity since it’s first appearance online with thoughtful journalism.) You can subscribe for free, but pay for a subscription if you can.

Anti-Zionism as Redemptive Racism by Shalom Lappin

Get Me Out of the Doldrums!

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Waiting, waiting, waiting. Activity occurs, but nothing is resolved. I have this wretched feeling of impending doom, but doom is never finalized. I could be a sailboat near the equator waiting for a wind strong enough to get me out of the doldrums in one direction or the other. Please, can we just move somewhere, anywhere, let’s get this settled. Either the US is finished or we can salvage our Constitution and use it to make some needed changes. 

Our Constitution has been amended and, theoretically, could be amended again. Some simple tweaks are being proposed, and I’m of the opinion that only very simple tweaks could possibly survive the ratification process. One tweak that I support has been proposed by David French. He’s a conservative NYT columnist. He’s also a graduate of Harvard Law and host with Sarah Isgur of the popular “Advisory Opinion” legal podcast sponsored by The Dispatch, a libertarian media organization. Despite my reservations about the NYT, I often learn things by reading and listening to French. 

Please read French’s column here (NYT) or this Daily KOS article here explaining his reasoning for this proposal. Essentially he wants to reinforce the original expectation that Congress should be the pre-eminent brach of government. He suggests replacing the first sentence of Article II in order to accomplish this. “Instead of declaring, ‘The executive power shall be vested in a president of the United States of America,’ it should read, ‘A president of the United States of America shall execute laws passed by Congress.’” There. That’s it. 

No more would a president be able to declare that he “can do anything he wants.” Yes, it’s hard to imagine that any tweak of the Constitution could address the myriad issues of our day, but I have to agree with French that clarifying the supremacy of Congress over the Executive Branch would be a welcome attempt to rebalance things. “No Kings!” No, I don’t love the current Congress, but perhaps if there was more clarity about the importance of their role in the great scheme of things, a few of them might get a spine. 

I think such an amendment could shake things up enough to generate some activity in Congress which is moribund currently. And despite the many attempts to secure a permanent majority, it might some day be possible to elect people willing to think and act – as opposed to just grandstanding – once they get to DC. In any event we wouldn’t have a king. 

Your thoughts?

Near and Far

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I haven’t even tried to write a blog post in quite a while. We have been moving and downsizing, and I intersperse work with playing games on my phone. Five minutes of work, one hour on my phone. I “multitask” by listening to podcasts or videos while playing games. I could multitask by working and listening to the same things, but I don’t. Hence, no new posts in a while. But today is a new day!

The World

While my fingers have been lazy, the world continues to circle the drain with the occasional moment of optimism. Take the bombing of Iranian nuclear sites: Yea! Take the Skrmetti decision from the Supreme Court: Yea! Take the recent decision to sell arms to NATO so that NATO countries can give them to Ukraine: Yea! (So, yes, Trump found a way to make money off of the Ukraine war. At least arms will move to the good guys.)

Am I truly in favor of bombing Iran? Actually, yes. Iranian leaders are not good guys. Am I truly supportive of the Skrmetti decision? Yes, actually. I’d prefer that medical professionals avoid the need for such cases by taking a more cautious approach to youth gender medicine. But if the docs are going to swallow the lie that there is a consensus based on good evidence that puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones and surgeries!!!, yes, surgeries, are appropriate for teens who’ve had barely a whiff of counseling, then I support actions of legislators to rein in such practices. And no, that doesn’t mean I deny the right of trans individuals to exist, whatever that even means. 

And while we’re at it, yes, I continue to support the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish state (even though I’d prefer that all states be secular). There are plenty of Islamic states, Christian states, Hindu states, Buddhist states, etc. One Jewish state is fine with me. And no, the Islamic Jihadists who chant “from the river to the sea” have nothing positive to offer the residents of Israel or Gaza or the West Bank.

On the Homefront

Meanwhile, here at home, we caught Covid for the second time. No idea where, though the only time we’ve been indoors around lots of people was a trip to IKEA about the right number of days prior to testing positive. But I have to admit that we’ve not worn masks at the grocery store for several months. Frankly, I think lots of people who say they’ve caught a cold actually have Covid, but not many people are testing any more, and God knows, the government doesn’t care to track Covid any longer. We were not very sick, so we put our camping gear in the car and went off for a few days.

And meanwhile, we are getting older. A year ago, I was ready to give up camping completely. We had a tent that was easy to put up, but somehow bought the most difficult to assemble cots that have ever been invented. We finally donated the cots last spring and bought simpler ones. They worked well on this trip, but frankly, the need to get to the toilet in the middle of the night is the final nail in the coffin of our camping life. Also, it was hot, so hot that we couldn’t sleep well, so ugh. We will donate our gear and let some other happy campers enjoy it all.

We felt relieved to return to our air conditioned apartment. But, you know what? I was also thrilled to stand at the edge of the world, i.e. the Pacific coast, and just thrill to the sound of the waves and the sight of the misty islets just offshore. What must it have been like to be on those shores before Europeans or Russians arrived? Traveling by canoe when weather permitted, sufficiently isolated from neighbors to the north and south that native languages diverged into dialects. Salmon were never in such short supply that hunger was an issue. Good news: the 1974 Boldt decision that enabled the tribes to legally fish in traditional waters without harassment by the state has enabled them to gain an economic toehold such that they can rebuild their communities. La Push looks better than it did 50 years ago even though the Quileutes are not well situated for a casino.

We still have work to do to get settled in our new digs, but we are liking Olympia for its walkability, relative calm, and food options. We have a nice restaurant in our building and a new coffee purveyor which sells excellent pastries and quiche. But today we spent $30 on two espresso drinks and two slices of quiche, both excellent, but no, we cannot make that a daily indulgence. 

I’m wondering if anyone besides us has noticed that inflation has yet to be brought to heel. Washington has just added a new gas tax on top of previous gas taxes, so it’s rare to find gas under $4.00/gal, often it’s $5.00 or more. Has anyone noticed that the effort to empty the country of immigrants is resulting in horrific disruptions to agriculture and small businesses, and brought fear to families of immigrants everywhere. Maybe there were not millions of criminal immigrants out there after all? 

What’s weird is that I’m not opposed to everything Trump said he would do, but I truly do not like the way it is all playing out. Why is he so slow to recognize that Putin has no interest in being “reasonable?” What do you all think? Can we piece things back together again or is this ripping apart of government and institutions a permanent thing? I hate it. And I’m too old to do anything about it. Hope the youngsters are up for the challenge. 

Yell at me in the comments if you like. I’m up for it.

ChatGPT is Dumber Than I Thought

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Artificial Intelligence is biased. This has been true for as long as AI has been around. AI is programmed by biased humans, relies on biased sources, and has no independent, skeptical brain with which to judge the mass of data it accesses.

Lord knows, we want to believe artificial intelligence. It would be so much easier to ask one source that has scoured the web for information than to do the scouring ourselves. But I’ll describe one query I made today and you can judge the credibility of ChatGPT for yourself. 

Over the weekend, there were reports about Israeli soldiers firing into crowds at an aid distribution site and killing 31 civilians who had come to get food. That’s a horrific claim. If you are already anti-Israeli based on pictures of dead children in Gaza, you’ll likely believe this claim. But I find it hard to believe without a LOT of evidence simply because the IDF has no incentive to kill Gazan civilians. Israel’s PR problems could not be worse as it is; an incident such as this could only reinforce the anti-Israel voices around the world. 

So, this morning I began searching for information about this report. I was disappointed to find that ChatGPT considered the Hamas Health Ministry a credible source. (Remember that report that Israel fired on a hospital in Gaza and killed 500 people? Turned out to be a rocket fired by a jihadi group within Gaza that misfired and landed in a hospital parking lot killing no one. That report was from the Gaza Health Ministry.) My AI friend also considered UNRWA a credible source, and the UN in general, both of which are 100% biased against Israel. 

Israeli sources say that the IDF is investigating, and I’m confident that it is. An incident such as this, if it were true, would be a terrible setback for Israel’s efforts to find a way to distribute aid that bypasses Hamas. And bypassing Hamas is critical to finding a way out of this war.

I am worried. We have tools that could be immensely helpful to people who are trying to learn the truth about various reports that appear in the news or on the web. But the simple fact is that these new tools are simply expert at gathering and sharing biased reports that do not lead us to the truth. Where is the judgement that is essential in any search for truth? That judgement resides in us!

Remember the famine that occurred in Ukraine in the 1930s? The New York Times opted to believe a compromised reporter who accepted whatever the Kremlin said and did not report the story. Meanwhile, an independent journalist risked his life to find out the truth about Stalin’s cruelty. Decades later, serious scholars have unearthed the truth. Watch the movie, Mr. Jones, or read books by Anne Applebaum (Red Famine) or Timothy Snyder (Bloodlines) for more information.

We cannot wait decades for people to accept the truth about Hamas. It is not a credible source for information about Gaza. It is a terrorist organization that seeks the destruction of Israel.

Humpty Trumpty Sat on a Wall. Humpty Trumpty . . .

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Of all the craziness emanating from the White House this year, the one thing that has truly surprised me is the executive orders relating to big law firms. Trump has stripped security clearances from several firms, restricted their access to federal buildings, and ordered that no federal agency can do business with them. All of this because these targeted firms have worked on behalf of Democrats or others who have challenged Trump’s actions. 

Surely this is illegal? Isn’t it? I guess we will find out. Some of the firms have buckled under the pressure and made deals, generally involving a lot of pro bono work for clients Trump cares about. Frankly, I’m shocked that any law firm would hesitate to sue Trump. But I guess that if competitive firms and circling your partners and employees like vultures checking to see if they can pick off some of your best and brightest, if your treasured clients are hesitant to do business with you in the Trump era, then the illegality may not be your top concern.

Or maybe this isn’t illegal. Surely, everyone deserves a lawyer if you find yourself in court, but perhaps you’re not entitled to very high priced lawyers. And, honestly, how could I feel sorry for the most expensive lawyers in the country? Actually, I don’t. It’s just that if Trump can target these big, pricy law firms and get away with it, then why would any lawyer defend clients on any issue that might offend Trump? 

Many of Trump’s actions have prompted legal challenges; some challenges have merited restraining orders; some are on appeal. But it will take a while (months? years?) before we get final words of wisdom. Meanwhile, we live in a waiting game, just as we do with tariffs. Yes, tariffs have been announced, but not all have gone into effect. For many items, the impact will only be felt when new shipments of whatever arrive on our shores. Again with the waiting game. 

Trump’s decisive actions have not led to immediate changes except with regard to layoffs of federal employees. The people losing their jobs will feel the effect immediately. But again, when research contracts are terminated, only those in the midst of clinical trials will feel anything. I can’t imagine being part of a clinical trial and having it terminated just because The Doge said so! The rest of us will never know which research was never completed. 

My question: Will the effects of Trump 2.0 be felt convincingly by 2026 and 2028 so that we can vote our way out of this chaos?