Author: Tom Fitzpatrick

Life

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I have no problem with Biden shooting down Chinese balloons. Shoot them all down. If the Chinese are stupid enough to fly them over the USA, then damn them. Boom. Boom. Boom. I say. Blow those balloons out of the sky.

On the other hand, I find the idea of shooting down UFO’s a little more disturbing. If they are indeed UFO’s, then these interplanetary travelers come from a more technologically advanced civilization and probably can wipe us off the planet without much effort. It seems a little dangerous and foolhardy to do so. Suicidal even.

It is also a great start to a science fiction movie.

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The Missouri Legislature voted down a bill that would ban 15 year olds and younger from carrying guns in public places. Gun Rights groups apparently see no limits on who should be allowed to carry a gun. I guess an unsupervised kindergartner can walk down the street with a loaded gun. That kindergartner might have a very good reason for having a loaded gun. How do we know? Why should we prevent a law-abiding six year old from exercising their 2nd Amendment rights? Everyone from birth to old age should just carry a gun and the world would be a better place.

Should everyone carry a gun? Should chronically depressed people carry arms? People with quick tempers? Psychotic people? Aren’t these Missouri Legislators the same people who think adolescents aren’t mature enough to make a decision regarding gender changing operations? If a kid isn’t mature enough to make a decision that requires consultations with doctors, lawyers and parents over a period of time, how can he be mature enough to handle a weapon that requires split second decision making in a crisis situation. There is a disconnect here this is startling.

Young people face all kinds of restrictions because there is an assumption that many underage people are immature for some adult responsibilities. A person has to be 21 years old, for example, to buy alcohol. If a 15 year old walked down the street, holding a bottle of gin, the police could arrest that child for breaking the law. Now there may be a perfectly good reason for that 15 year old to have a bottle of gin. He could be bringing it back to Mom and Dad. But because the state legislature of Missouri have decided that some people under the age of 21 aren’t mature enough to handle alcohol, all people under that age are banned. It is arbitrary. It is unfair to the under 21 who can handle alcohol reasonably. But for the safety of those under 21 and for the general public who might be adversely affected by drunk adolescents, an age barrier to alcohol purchases was made.

Everyone accepts these restrictions with nary a complaint. There may be disputes about where the line should be drawn (aged 21 or 18) but there isn’t much debate that no line should be drawn at all. Right now age, as seen by the majority of citizens in Missouri, is seen as a reasonable marker for this maturity. The same can be said for driving a car. Why then are 15 year olds who’s maturity to drink alcohol and to drive are suspect being allowed to walk the streets unsupervised by an adult with a loaded gun?

The Missouri Legislature’s action on this bill is depressing. If any restriction on gun ownership is seen as an attack on gun rights, then it is hopeless to think there is any meaningful middle ground out there. They are saying that people who are deemed insufficiently mature enough to make decisions regarding alcohol consumption and driving automobiles, are mature enough to walk down a street with an AK47. Why are they better able to handle weapons than a car and alcohol?

The thing here is I, by and large, have surrendered on gun laws. I don’t see the point if the 2nd Amendment trumps any restriction on a person’s capabilities to use guns. However, this law, to me, seemed like a no brainer. Why should an unsupervised 15 year old be walking down the street with a loaded gun. He can’t drive a car. He can’t buy alcohol. And, hey, I am to the point if he is accompanied by one of his parents or a guardian, I am perfectly willing to let him brandish his weapon. But, no, if this minor tweak of the law, which would give law enforcement in high crime areas some legal power to monitor underage gun use, is seen as an attack on the 2nd Amendment, there is simply nothing to talk about anymore. It appears that the gun lobby wants everyone armed from cradle to the grave — regardless of their ability to use guns, their maturity to make decisions and their rationality to use high caliber weapons. To the firing range we must all go.

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De Santis is worried about Drag Queens grooming children at Drag Shows so he is banning children from them. The press who live to spar with the Florida Governor have taken up his challenge. It has everything a good headline writer wants to see – sex, innocent children and controversy. Because other Republican governors have no better way to grab a nice juicy headline, they are using DeSantis method to get the attention they crave. They now are worried about Drag Queens and are banning children from attendance. Because Democratic leaders can’t stand when Republicans get headlines and they don’t, they have joined the fight in defense of Drag Queens.

DeSantis is a clever fuck. He set his little trap — just trying to defend the children of Florida — and, of course, instead of ignoring the bastard taunt’s and waiting for a better fight to engage in, the press and the Democrats go all in on the wrong issue. They will fight to death to ensure that children can see Drag Shows.

Before people get all bent out of shape, yes children should be able to go to Drag Shows if their parents want them to. I don’t have a problem with it. Yet, until DeSantis made this an issue, I doubt very much that many children were going to Drag Shows in the first place. And, if the child’s experience is anything like my experience of Drag Shows, most children will become bored with them after the small amusement of watching a man acting as a woman wears off. It isn’t child’s entertainment but not particularly dangerous either. On the other hand, banning children from drag shows isn’t likely to affect the Drag Queen’s pay nor the child’s education. It is a minor issue at best, so why has it become the hot topic of the week.

It is based on the false notion that an adult can imprint a sexual identity on a child. Drag Queens and Gays, who can’t have children of their own (which is also not true), have to find children they can groom into future Drag Queens and Gays. This isn’t happening and, even if they were, trying, the Drag Queens would lose. Nobody can guide a child into their sexual identity. We know this to be true because society, with the support of the family, the church and the community, has been unable to change people with homosexual feelings into heterosexuals for thousands of years.

So the concern for a child having a once off experience at a Drag Show and then having their whole sexual identity shaken to the core is dubious at best. This is particularly true for the 90% plus children who are identify as heterosexuals. For them, the worst case scenario would be a bit of resentment for wasting their sweet time on something that they will never use again — kind of like their feelings towards Geometry and English Grammar.

But DeSantis, at very low cost to himself, has positioned himself on the side of parents and children and the Democrats with six feet four blue haired Drag Queens with a two day beard. Drag Queens weld little power in the Republican electorate and, more importantly, large swaths of the party despise them. It is a smart move which engages the Republican base while doing little to no harm with people who are potential voters. Think about the average voter here, the ones who have never been to a Drag Show, they might be left with the question of why do Democrats want my kid to see a drag show?

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I struggle with White Privilege and White Guilt because a lot of White people think there is no reason for it. The Civil Rights movement won the battle. It is illegal to discriminate against anyone — Black, Brown or White. Now, can you kindly stop talking about it.

Why stop talking about? Do we stop talking about other historical events? Say the Revolutionary War, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Civil War (battles only) and any other historical event. We don’t. Why is it so important for people to stop talking about Racism?

I was reminded of the reason the other day when a friend posted the following picture to Facebook.

The picture of Black teenager surrounded by a crowd of angry White women reveals everything. White people don’t want to think of Grandma as some racist thug. They want to think of her baking apple pies and reading bedtime stories. Don’t you dare take that memory away from me. The truth here is very difficult for white people because our ancestors are the villains. And that means acknowledging that Grandma might have been a racist thug.

The founders of the country, by and large, shared this prejudice. Anyone studying this country’s history needs to study this. An ideology of racial superiority was created that enabled white people to enslave Blacks and deprive them of their rights. This too is important to study. Millions of White people for hundreds of year either actively stopped Black people from being treated as their equals or did absolutely nothing to change this situation. This means, particularly for any white whose family arrived before 1965, that unless their family were known civil rights activists, their family is in some culpable in this racist enterprise. To understand our history, this too has to be examined.

I know for certain that my ancestors, all who arrived before 1870, are suspect. I know of no civil rights activists in my family’s past. I have no record of them being KKK members or belong to any racists organization so they are in that large group of Whites who did absolutely nothing to help Blacks win their rights. Their silence allowed racism to flourish. Why were they silent while Blacks were lynched and deprived of rights? This is a question worth pursuing. This means looking at racism and how it affected White people’s behavior.

It is painful. I get why people don’t want to look at it. It doesn’t fit into our nice tidy story of hardy European immigrants braving the Atlantic and hostile natives to settle our country. But, unfortunately, that story, in no way, will help you understand American History.

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I have a trick ankle that can give out for no good reason, so, even though I enjoy history, climbing through an ancient pile of rubble* presents a unique problem for me. I want to see the rubble but I also don’t want to break any bones while imbibing my whim. Even as a young man of 17, when climbing the temple steps in Teotihuacan in Mexico I saw the danger. These steps might have been suitable for the ancient Aztecs but are impossible for the modern foot. They simply do not accommodate the entire foot. This required me to either angle my foot in such a way that my foot would fit on the entire step or only using only half of my foot to push up to the next step. Either practice could easily collapse my ankle, sending me tumbling down the stone edifice. The further up the stairs I got, the more terrified I became as I stupidly turned around to see how far I’ve climbed and saw the distance I would fall. Long enough to break a lot of bones and maybe even kill me.

But nothing exceeds the pure terror of the Acropolis which combines uneven rocky pavement with terrifying heights. If I could take my time, focus on each step and climb, I think I would have been fine. The Acropolis, however, has the added danger of knowledge hungry tourists. There is a sort of pathway to the top but it is strewn with large rocks and small ones and it is all up. The further you go, the longer the fall. This is daunting enough but then you add hundreds of tourists racing around me with only one thing on their mind — getting to the top before I did. Somehow the beauty of the Acropolis is enjoyed much more if you get to the top before a struggling old man. Once I get to the top there is no time to rest enjoy the beautiful view and the old rubble. The pathways going from ruble to rubble are rocky and uneven. There are unsecured stones and pillars laying this way and that. I am questioning whether it is worth the possible danger to my body to see the ancient world. Although I did think of my million dollar idea while thinking about it — a stand renting football helmets and pads for worried travelers would give those people an added measure of security.

*Thanks to Ted Shifrin for correcting my spelling of rubble. I had ruble.

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I avoid talking about Donald Trump because he, in my opinion, is a narcissist. As long as people are talking about him, he is happy. It doesn’t matter if they say good things or bad things as long as they are talking about him. But occasionally he says something that irritates me so much, and so obviously wrong, I have to point it out in the futile hope that the people who voted for him will finally come to their senses.

So here goes. In a recent speech, Donald Trump claimed he could end the Russian war immediately with two words. So end it, I say. Why wait? Say the two magic words he thinks will end. But no, Trump is waiting. He is saving this information for a future when he might be President.

There is a lot wrong here. A secret plan is all well in good but if Trump keeps it a secret it is impossible to determine whether he even has a plan at all. It’s all locked away in his head. There is no way to determine whether he knows what he talking about or is full of shit. Not telling anyone what you are thinking is game playing at its worst. He is being positively useless it ending the war while pretending to have superior knowledge about what can be done. Thanks for absolutely nothing.

Then there is the idea that he can end a bloody and costly war with two little words and won’t do it because there is nothing in it for him. Thousands of people will die, billions of dollars will be wasted fighting the war and rebuilding the Ukraine, millions of displaced people will remain refugees while he sits on his surefire solution to a complicated problem. Not too surprisingly, his Republican allies are silent while they are trying to make cuts to balance the budget. If he could end the war, as he says he can, wouldn’t that save the American taxpayer billions and help cut costs in the budget. Of course, they would rather grumble about Medicare and Social Security. Again, thanks for nothing.

Trump needs to stop sulking and spill the beans or keep his big trap shut. But saying you can stop and war and then doing nothing is heartless and unforgivable. People are dying here.

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I have a trick ankle. It even gives out on me when I am standing still. For most of my life, it was a minor nuisance and hasn’t stopped me from traveling the world. Indeed, I have taken spills at many of the great tourist destinations with the attendant scrapes and bruises that accompany such tumbles. These were minor inconveniences and well worth suffering through to see the wonders of the world. I have reached an age when I can say I have see a lot of the world and I am now more worried about my bones than seeing the great sites. I have had to make some difficult decisions.

Uneven pavement is one of the gravest dangers for people with a trick ankle. The cobblestone street is, by far, the most uneven pavement known to man. Why people think cobblestone streets are charming is beyond me. I see a mine field. Any misplaced step on an awkwardly placed stone can send me tumbling to the rocky pavement below. There is a hugely different experience between you body falling on stones and falling on asphalt. Before I can cross a cobblestone street, I study it to find the flattest possible path across. Invariably I didn’t study the street hard enough because I find myself stranded in the middle of the road facing horribly mismatched stones and wonder what next.

Why cities continue to use these death traps is a mystery to me. Where is the charm? It is a bunch of stones, of various sizes and shapes, thrown down onto a street (see below). Why is this charming? I have been told it is history. Cobblestone streets are a part of history. Well, so are outdoor toilets and I don’t hear people clamoring to keep them to preserve the historical integrity of the neighborhood. After streetlights and electricity were integrated into the modern city, concerns regarding historical integrity were abandoned years ago. So why not consider cobblestone streets the outhouses of roads and apply a thick coat of asphalt to make these roads more walkable and safe.

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When Paul Pelosi was attacked by a home intruder in October there was some speculation in the Conservative gutter press that he was having a homosexual assignation with the intruder. This speculation was just that — speculation. The police never said sex was involved. Paul Pelosi certainly did not nor did Pelosi’s attacker. But some conservatives never let facts get in the way of malicious speculation. If a Pelosi was involved, there had to be something rotten and, brave souls that they are, they weren’t afraid to speculate how rotten it was.

Amazingly these fevered fanatics, with absolutely no tangible evidence to support them, spun a scandal worth spreading in the press. Pelosi was attacked. He must have deserved it. Pelosi lives in San Francisco a known gay mecca. If San Francisco is in the story, something gay must be afoot. Then Pelosi was in his underwear. Why was Pelosi so scantily clad? Their argument boiled down to a San Francisco man dressed in his underwear was attacked by another man. For them, this screams Gay. Gay. Gay. Based on this slim gruel, they created a lover’s quarrel that ended badly. While wallowing in this sexual scandal they created, they also down played the possibility that the attacker had any political motive even though there was far more evidence to support this version. The attacker is nudist. He is a vegetarian. He lives in the Bay Area. He couldn’t possibly be a right-wing nut.

The conservative press worked on this version of the story. Pelosi was complicit in the attack because he was on the prowl for illicit sex. If Pelosi was made to look guilty of some sin then the attack, while unwarranted, happened because he was looking for sex outside of his marriage. There is, of course, no evidence to support this version. These stewards of morality hinted that maybe if you are looking for sex on the dirty streets of San Francisco, you might deserve what happens to you. The story became Paul Pelosi’s sex life instead of a right-wing nut job attacks Paul Pelosi.

A very crafty move and, in this particular case, it was factually wrong. There is no evidence that any of their story was true. The explanation that the police and Pelosi gave at the time looks to be true. The police recently released the tapes of the attack. The video shows the attacker spewing anti-Pelosi rants. And, if this wasn’t convincing enough, then the attacker proudly goes on Fox News to brag about the attack. From this new evidence, it sounds like the attacker did have political motives for his actions and not personal ones. You would think that would end any further speculation about what happened to Pelosi. And you would be wrong.

Charles Glasser, in his analysis in the conservative blog Instapundit, still maintains nothing refutes the possibility of Pelosi being involved in an affair with his attacker. The attackers diatribe against the Pelosis is ignored while, for some reason, Glasser wants to know more about why Pelosi is in his underwear. It that really that shocking? The attack happened in the early morning. If you broke into my house at 2AM in the morning, you would definitely find me in my underwear. Why does Glasser need more explanation? Why isn’t “I just got out of bed to find out what all the noise was about” enough?

Glasser chooses to believe the speculation while ignoring the facts. He still wants to pursue the sexual encounter story even though there is little evidence to support this story while completely ignoring the plentiful supply of facts that supports that a nut job fueled by right wing hate rhetoric took a hammer to Pelosi’s head. I am not sure why anyone would want to argue about this anymore. Nancy Pelosi is no longer the speaker. This, at best, is a side show. But conservatives can’t quite bring themselves to follow this route. They need to keep the dubious story in play because the truth would raise questions about the violent nature of some individuals on the Republican right wing. This would force them and the press into a different conversation, one they definitely don’t want to have. Better to make Pelosi a closeted gay adulterer than tell the truth.

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Michael Walsh, conservative columnist, believes that a repeal of a number of Constitutional Amendments needs to take place in order to save the republic. The 19th Amendment which gave women the right to vote is one of the amendments Walsh would like to repeal. In Walsh’s mind, the republic has fallen apart since women received the franchise. Walsh is, or at least I hope, is trolling his audience but it is difficult to discern if this is true because he goes all in for repeal. He wants to limit voters along the lines of ancient Greece and Rome which boils down to two groups — men who have served in the military and male property owners. This, of course, deprives a lot of people the franchise – all women and men who don’t own property — well over fifty percent of the present voting population.

Why Walsh would propose such a repeal is a bit mystifying. Most importantly, it is hugely unpopular. Since women presently have the vote and make up more than 50% of the population, how would this even be enacted in the present system? His very vague plan is that women will willingly surrender the vote when they all have a strong man to care for them. He also dredges up the old canards that women are too fickle and too emotional to be given such an important privilege. For proof of these weaknesses, he goes, again, back to ancient Rome. The Sabine women who were carried off by the Romans interceded to stop the war between their new husbands and their old families. Why women don’t have the sense to leave their kidnappers and rapist to return to their families. Men would never do that.

There are many problems with Walsh’s argument but I will stick to two. He provides no evidence that women are too emotional and too fickle to vote. Or that men only vote based on cold hard data and never let their emotions guide them. He bases is case on old stereotypes about women rather than, how shall I put this delicately, cold hard data. Given his supposition is based on the rational thinking man deserves the vote, he might have, at the very least, thrown is some data that proves his point. He doesn’t. In fact, his is an emotional response to how women vote instead of an exercise in rational thinking. Women vote Democratic and he doesn’t like it. Not liking something without data is just a tantrum but certainly not a demonstration of a reasonable being.

Then Walsh assumes that men took their role as husband and father seriously in the good old days. They didn’t. Women had husbands who drank their wages away, husbands who disappeared when they couldn’t fulfill their responsibilities, husbands who didn’t work and expected their wives to fulfill both roles as the provider and the family caretaker, and husbands who stiffed their wives on alimony and child support. Since some men failed in their obligations, women were left at the mercy of the men who ran the country. Given the male’s unemotional and rational approach to government, this meant very little help for any woman unfortunate enough to marry a loser. They should have made a wiser decision before walking up the aisle. At this point, many women reasonably, I dare say, decided to seek political power as a way of offsetting the feckless behavior of their husbands.

What Walsh really wants is to limit the franchise to people who vote Republican and eliminate potential Democratic voters. This can be clearly seen in the comments section of Instapundit where I initially found Walsh’s article. Again, probably more trolling done here, but the commenters want to limit the vote even further than Walsh. One person wants to eliminate all unmarried voters since they have no children and thus have no stake in the future. Another person shows in color coordinated blue and red maps that if voters were limited to white males that the Republicans would win every election.

What is missing here is how conservatives and Republicans might make their case to the wider franchise. Walsh and his commenters are admitting that they only appeal to white male voters and given up on persuading women to vote Republican. Instead Walsh proposes limiting the franchise to voters who already vote Republican. Given that women are so emotional and fickle, I find it difficult to understand why these superior male minds can’t come up with a scare tactic that will push these thoughtless creatures into voting Republican. What is more baffling is that they aren’t even trying very hard to persuade women to vote differently. Really, if you can’t outsmart people who you believe to have a weak and irrational mind, what good is your superior intelligence in the first place?

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If you needed another example of the criminal malpractice of the present media networks, I give you George Santos. Why are they still talking about him? He is unimportant and his reputation is ruined. The only thing that could possibly revive his career now is if the press continual spotlighting of him creates sympathy among the perpetually persecuted wing nuts on the Republican right. The press is doing everything it can to make this possible.

Santos, a freshman congressman with little political power, may have been an important story as long as Republicans defended him. Once he was unmasked as a serial liar, most Republicans, at least the establishment ones, have abandoned him. The Republican leadership may allow him to stay the next two years in order to keep their slim majority but Santo himself is done. Any future opponent for his house seat, Republican or Democrat, will have ample examples of his perfidy and the voters of his district can remove him from his position.

Yet the media headlines his every lie as if the already multiple lies they have revealed before weren’t enough to convince the public he is a liar. Santos said this, Santos said that, every lie he utters makes a new headline with talking head round tables outraged at his brazen inability to tell the truth. For a business that runs on trying to capture the public’s attention with the new and the sexy, this seems like a peculiarly boneheaded move. There is nothing new about it and Santos is far from sexy. Why bother to read every new outrageous lie? I am convinced. Tell me something I don’t already know but Santos is no longer worth my time.

The Santos story is easy pickings. Santos, narcissist that he is, will continue to talk. If he talks, he will be lying. The average high school news reporter can google the information and discover the lie. Why the media has latched onto this story like a dog with a bone is a mystery. Their continued interest and piling on of Santos, they risk making him sympathetic to the already prodigious number of media haters. The enemy of my enemy and all that, see Donald Trump if you are interested in more details.

Worse, Santos is a distraction from more important issues. There can only so many headlines, so many talking head roundtables. If they are all talking about Santos, they aren’t talking about inflation or the Russian war or the meth epidemic or any of the million and one bigger problems than George Santos.