The TMI War

 

This war in Iran will be a way different experience for those watching at home. This would be the first major American conflict where the other country’s civilian population has smartphones. We are going to see things that Trump doesn’t want us to see, the Ayatollah doesn’t want us to see, and that we don’t want to see. If you are already opposed to this war, it’s okay to take a mental health break from the Internet. There will be violent images that will trickle past any filters that Zuck and Musk can put up.

A lot of people aren’t going to be ready for what they are about to see. I’m used to seeing gory pictures from EMT classes, and I still might not be ready. We might get HD quality images of atrocities in our timelines. You might want an image blocker extension for your browser if you have to use the Internet after the next ground invasion.

Still, many people will look at their phones and see pictures and videos of dead and dying soldiers and civilians. Trump will not be able to hide how hideous war is, and he never had any idea of the hideousness that he himself hid from. (He was right to hide from the Vietnam War, his participation would have served no purpose.)

We might reach a point where too much information about war makes it politically unthinkable. This will bother the kind of man who thinks of war as being good for a society. The kind of man who insists that “hard times create strong men; strong men create good times, good times create weak men, weak men create hard times.” As to prove their point, they elected the softest man ever to stand behind a podium and went on to create the hardest of times in the post Cold War era. Do they propose to break the cycle by ending prosperity forever to ensure that every generation of men will be hard?

Some of us have spent the past four years watching what Ukrainian drones can do to Russian soldiers and vehicles. No leader will be able to start a war again unless he’s willing to let his voters watch that happen to his soldiers. Maybe that will be what creates a new cycle of peace.

Seriously, the draft is dead.

So people who know me know that I voted for Harris, and I think that Trump and Hegseth should be impeached. They should have been impeached for blowing up Venezuelan boats last year, and they definitely should be impeached for blowing Iranian school girls this year.

 But I need you all to understand that you don't have to worry about a draft. You might WANT to worry about a draft, because that places everything out of your control. It won't be your fault if you end up in the military, it won't be your fault if you get killed, but if you survive this war you didn't want and have some cool scars to show to potential sex partners, well that's still way more fun to think about than how to pay your bills next month, isn't it?

Young people should be worried about things like school, employment, and the upcoming midterm election. You still have control over the small things like your grades, job performance and how clean your room is. I think you should get involved in the upcoming midterm elections, but even if you refuse to get involved, it would still benefit you to understand how politics works.

Trump can be unpredictable. We can't be sure what he'll do next, but he is still constrained by certain realities. He isn't Thanos or anything like that. Legally he needs Congress to reinstate conscription and actually start drafting people. Even if he tried just signing an executive order, he'd still need Congress to fund a draft unless he intended to pay for it out of his own pocket.

Here are all the reasons why you won't be drafted.

1. The Pentagon doesn't want to draft you. Sorry, but you just don't have any skills that they are looking for. Your Call of Duty K/D ratio isn't going to cut it. The military would happily teach you those skills, but how well are you going to learn them if you don't want to be there in the first place? Historically, conscripts just didn't perform as well as volunteers. A draft is only useful if a military wants lots of infantry and doesn't care about how good they'll be in the field. Modern militaries care more about quality than quantity.

2. Congress doesn't want to draft you. This is a midterm election year. All members of the House and one third of the Senate are up for re-election and they know this is an unpopular war. They are funding it anyway, and they hope that their voters will care about things other than the war. A draft will make the war a much more important issue. It will make it harder to ignore the war. That is a big reason why they are making registration automatic, so that you won't have to think about it. As an American civilian, you can potentially lead a prosperous life without thinking about the Iran war at all. You shouldn't do that, but Congress is committed to giving you that option.

3. Trump's base doesn't want a draft. Seriously, who wants to be drafted? If you want to be in the military, you talk to a recruiter. You don't sit around the house and wait for them to make you go. So there are Trump supporters in the military, Trump supporters who would join but can't, and Trump supporters who just would rather finish college and work for Daddy than go serve overseas. And they don't see this as hypocritical. See, you have a fire department in your town. Do you support your fire department? Why don't you sign up to be a firefighter? Or maybe you are a firefighter. Do you support curbside trash pickup? Why don't you become a garbage collector? Because even if you think a war is just, the reality is that most people won't have to fight, and won't even be allowed to go even if that's what they want. And hawks tend to grasp this more than my fellow doves.

I'm a Democrat today, but I was a Libertarian for a long time. I've posted multiple opinion pieces calling for an abolition of Selective Service. When I've done so, I've gotten more kudos from Republicans, and more pushback for other Democrats. Which is fine; I'm an old fart and this isn't a dealbreaker issue for me. For better or for worse, many Republicans don't have any problem supporting a war without participating directly. For them, it's like my point about the fire departments. Also, I think they grasp that a draft would result in lots of left wing young people receiving arms and military training, and I think they could do without that.

4. Trump's billionaire donors don't want a draft. Of course they are too old and rich to worry about themselves getting drafted, but they still don't want you getting drafted either. Of course they don't care about you as a person, but they want to be able to exploit your labor and sell you crap. Which is easier to do if you are in the US and not in the Middle East.

In fact, it was laissez faire economist Milton Friedman who convinced Nixon to end the draft in the 1970's. So any movement to bring back a draft is going to have a lot of right wing money fighting it.

The draft is dead.

 

The draft is dead. This death might be permanent.

By the end of this year, young men turning 18 will no longer have to register with Selective Service. Instead, registration will be automatic. Generation X had to register at the post office. Millenials and Gen Z could register online. Gen Alpha won’t have to do anything special, and many probably won’t know that they are registered.

Getting rid of Selective Service has been a pet issue of mine. On the one hand, I’m glad that young men won’t be penalized for noncompliance. On the other hand, conscription may be even less of a credible possibility for young men, so that’s one less of a reason for them to pay attention to politics.

It might seem like poetic justice for Nick Fuentes and Barron Trump to be drafted into the army and sent straight to the front. But that’s just now how the leopards choose which faces to eat. Fuel prices will go up, the economy will suck, and Iran might retaliate in ways we can’t predict. This war will suck for all of us and not just the people who voted for Trump. It’s not fair and it can’t be made fair, but that is how it is.

Conscription is an institution created by warmongers for the purpose of waging war. Peace activists should oppose the draft as a tool of war. We should refrain from saying “draft Barron Trump” because nobody should ever be drafted. No American should be forced to fight in Iran, because no American should be allowed to fight in Iran.

The draft and the current war have always been interconnected, but distinct issues. During the Iraq War, there were pro-war people who were anti-draft, and anti-war people who were pro-draft. Both sides understood the draft would make the war even more unpopular. But a young man who does not want to be drafted might be more motivated to support an anti-draft hawk candidate over a pro-draft dove. Because the issue of the war itself is more important than the draft in particular, we should resist the temptation to propose bringing back the draft. Yes, the thought of a drill instructor yelling at a squad of alt-right incels crawling through the mud is immensely gratifying. But fantasies often make for bad public policy.

For that matter, I refuse to call Donald Trump a “draft dodger”. He is a demented sexual predator who either belongs in a prison or a memory care ward, but at no point in his life did he belong in the Army. Avoiding military service was one of the best choices that he made.

The draft is dead, because not even warmongers have a use for it anymore. We can carry on the fight against dumb wars without it. We can talk about American military casualties, Iranian civilian casualties, higher gas prices, and higher inflation. We can even finally kill the blood-soaked myth that war is good for the economy. But let’s not get distracted by a draft that has no chance of happening.

History blindness.

 There are people who lack a sense of history. I'm not even talking about a lack of education: somebody who only watches TV can still grasp that there was a time before TV when people had to watch plays instead. I'm talking about people who don't seem to grasp that an era ended before a different era began.

Here are examples that I have observed from just talking to people. These are adults who are at least mentally sound enough to have gainful employment, and did not seem at all sarcastic when they said what they said.

1. I joked to a coworker that a different coworker was so old that she had a Confederate birth certificate. He looked at me and said "Really?" as if I was telling him a weird fact instead of a joke. A high school graduate should know when the Civil War happened and the limits of a human lifespan.

2. I was chatting with a coworker who was a Vietnam veteran. He told that he shook hands with a general and got rifle grease on his hands, and the general just laughed it off. I asked him if it was General Westmoreland. The vet confirmed that it was Westmoreland. Another coworker overhears this, looks at me, and asks "How old are you?" with a confused look on his face.

3. At a party, I was talking about a place that I used to work at. At that location, uranium was rolled into bars for the Manhattan Project, and workers had no idea that these bars were being used to develop the first atomic bombs. A woman asked "But you didn't have anything to do with that, right?"

4. A friend of mine was telling me about a guy in her gaming group. She said that he was in his 50's and had served in World War 2. This is especially egregious because I met her grandfather who raised her and had actually served in the Battle of the Bulge.

Ruthlessness doesn't work

 So I see a lot of posts on Threads where MAGAhadeen are celebrating the destruction of boats. A couple thoughts. 

1. The war on drugs is an expensive mistake. If you actually care about saving addicts from themselves, focus on treatment and harm reduction, not incarceration.

2. Sinking a boat is only justified if that boat shoots at our people. Boats that try to run can be incapacitated by shooting the engine.

3. The only way to tell if a boat is a drug boat or a fishing boat is to board and inspect it. Because any commercially produced boat can carry both drugs and fishing gear. If you think a boat has illegal goods, you can signal it to stop, shoot the engine if it tries to run, arrest the crew, and seize the boat and its cargo.

4. Ruthlessness is a bad strategy in general. Imagine if a future Democratic president issued an executive order that required police to shoot anyone flying a Confederate flag or wearing a swastika. Most of these people cheering for exploding boats might squawk at the idea of 21st century Nazis being shot in the street. Because they already know where that slippery slope is headed: if I say that all fascists should be shot and I get to decide who is a fascist, then I can just say that anyone who says negative things about me is a fascist.

There are real world examples that prove my point. Germans who surrendered to the Soviets could expect to be sent to a gulag and possibly freeze or starve to death. Germans who surrendered to Americans could expect to sent to a camp in the US and get fed and even take correspondence courses for credit with German universities. So of course they fought hardest against the Red Army, and that's a huge reason why the USSR suffered more military casualties than all of the Axis powers combined. So even when you are fighting the most evil regime in history, it still pays to show compassion to men who can't fight back anymore.

My theory on Trump's endgame

One of the most famous line from Game of Thrones is "Tell Cersei I want her to know it was me."

If you haven't watched the show, Lady Olenna knows she's going to die anyway, so she admits to killing King Joffery, the least popular character on the show. This is relevant, because there are things that people do that they have to keep a secret, but still really want to brag about. They want for a time that is right, even if they have to wait for their deathbed.

My theory is that not only is Donald Trump a pedophile, he is proud of it and want to tell everyone about it.

Remember the 80's and 90's? Donald Trump used to. Back then, if you were gay, you often had to hide it, depending on where you live and the people around you. There were states where two men having sex could be charged with sodomy if they got caught. As a straight person, I would speak out against this injustice and people would accuse me of being gay. Other straight people probably felt the same way, but they didn't speak out because they feared risking their reputations and livelihoods. 

One argument against LGBTQ acceptance was that it would lead to a slippery slope: if gay people were accepted by society, why not accept adults who molest kids? Today, most of us believe that what consenting adult do is their own business, but children cannot consent to sexual acts.

But if a pedophile doesn't view his actions as wrong, then he might hope that his lifestyle might gain mainstream acceptance. He might test to see how other people feel about it by dropping hints. For example, he might talk about pardoning another pedophile, like Ghislaine Maxwell, and seeing how people would react to that.

And if people still don't like it, what could they do about it? Donald Trump could take a gun and sex with a little girl on Fifth Avenue and there is nothing we could about it besides impeach him again. Still, we should impeach him again.

When that fascist got fired

 Recently a fascist got fired for something he said on YouTube. I don't want to look up his name, and I don't want to make him even more famous.

Fascism is an ideology for losers. Julius Caesar standardized the calendar. Napoleon spread the metric system throughout Europe. All Hitler and Mussolini did was start and lose a world war.

But unemployment is a common problem for extremists on both the left and the right: employers prefer to hire moderates. It's challenging enough to get Democrats and Republicans to get along at work. Unless you are independently wealthy, maybe you aren't in a position to tell the world what to do.

We should be allowed to talk about suicide on social media

 First of all, I am fine and thank you for asking. I almost died from natural causes this year. Doctors and nurses put in a lot of time and effort to keep me alive, and my family and my insurance company spent more than six figures on my surgery and rehabilitation. I like being alive, like most people.

Suicide is a taboo topic on social media, to the extent that filters are employed that flag people who even use the word "suicide" in a post. On the one hand, this can deter people from advocating suicide, which is still a problem online. On the other hand, it stops people from seeking help, and it stops people from discussing how certain historical figures died.

The real motivation for these social media filters is that the topic of suicide makes people uncomfortable. If you are the type to use social media to share cat photos and pictures of your lunch while on vacation, then maybe Facebook should provide an option where such content is filtered out. But there are people out there who are hurting, and social media can be a resource where they can connect with people who know them and care about them. Maybe they don't feel comfortable calling 988 and talking to strangers. The algorithm should never stand in the way of people getting help.

Trump just likes violence.

I don’t fault Donald Trump for dodging the draft. That was a particularly foolish war, and nobody was morally obligated to participate. For that matter, I was 22 when 9/11 happened. I never bothered to visit a recruiting station either. I have respect for those who served, I just didn’t make that choice myself. Most Americans don’t. You don’t have to justify it by saying you would have lost control and punched the drill instructor.

But eventually men reach an age where they might dwell on the path not taken. War is like the hot crazy woman that we never worked up the courage to ask out. As if we could have changed her. Recently Trump has reconnected with her online. She sure changed a lot over the years, but she hasn’t exactly improved. He’s way too old to meet her in person, so he just flirts with her via DM’s and sends her gifts.

Trump loves violence like the Pope loves Jesus, but he’s just not a commitment kind of guy. Usually, state governors are more than content to handle civil unrest without federal aid, but Trump REALLY wants to stick his stubby fingers in LA. I can’t even imagine that he thinks this would help him politically; even if SCOTUS lets him run again, he has no shot at California’s electoral votes.

I will go as far to say that he likes being on the receiving end. (Don’t give him what he wants. I oppose the death penalty by both all levels of government and non-state actors.) Remember when he was almost shot in the head in Pennsylvania last year? That could have been avoided in a couple of ways. He could have not run for President, or he could have insisted on an indoor venue that would have been easier to secure. Presidents and presidential candidates should not hold outdoor rallies for the same reason they stopped riding in convertibles. I want Trump to live long enough to stand trial and serve out the sentence, but his choices do make me worried for his safety.

To all folks in LA, protesting is great but violence is not. Having said that, I feel that all law enforcement should wear clearly identifiable uniforms when making an arrest, have their faces visible or at least wear photo ID badges, and drive marked vehicles when making a traffic stop. There might be a murder case in the near future where the defendant will say that he didn’t know the victim was a cop and the jury just might believe him.

That time Trump got shot in Pennsylvania.

 Let's get a couple things out of the way. I have never voted for Donald Trump, and I never plan to. I oppose all political violence, whether it is against Trump or caused by Trump. Those are my opinions, and I know that not everyone reading this agrees with them. We live in an era where cold hard facts are treated like opinions. On July 13, 2024, Thomas Matthew Crooks shot Trump with a rifle before being killed by the Secret Service. The FBI and the Secret Service agree on that, and yet people think I'm an idiot for believing them.

Right-wing conspiracy theorists claimed that Biden was trying to have Trump killed. They seemed to have stopped saying this now that Trump is President and presumably has access to all the relevant files. 

Left-wing conspiracy theorists claim that Trump staged the whole thing. There is a picture of the bullet passing by Trump's head. Whatever else you or I think about Trump, I do think that he likes being alive and would NOT attend the rally if he knew his supporters were going to stage a shootout with live ammunition just to help him win Pennsylvania's 19 electoral votes.

One common argument is that an AR-15 round would have obliterated Trump's ear. This thinking is likely the result of a generation raised on first person shooter games where every shot that even touches a character's head results in a kill. Real life is a bit more complicated and unpredictable. The bullet grazed Trump's ear: it rubbed against the skin and removed enough tissue to cause the ear to bleed.

"How did his ear heal so fast?" It may have had stitches or it may have been cauterized for all I know. His hair and his hat tend to block the view of any possible scar tissue. I'm not a doctor and neither are most people reading this. Trump could provide us with answers by releasing his medical records. But why would he do that? We're wasting all this energy and bandwidth arguing about it, so it's smart of him to let us bicker.

It's understandable that people might have lots and lots of questions about an incident like this. But we can apply Occam's Razor here and come up with the simplest explanation: one lone nutjob tried to kill a Presidential candidate. It's always one lone nutjob, because normal people tend to like being alive and dislike killing. Normal people also talk too much to be an effective part of a conspiracy.

I do think that the Secret Service should have removed Trump from the stage as soon as Crooks was detected. That is an easy thing to say in hindsight, but the Secret Service tries very hard to avoid the appearance of interfering with presidential politics. Removing Trump from the stage before Crooks had the chance to fire off a shot might have been construed as trying to cause Trump to lose the election.

I also think that Presidents and candidates should avoid having rallies at open air venues. But I'm a safety first kind of guy.

Where did I go?

 So it's been about 10 months since I updated this blog. I'll give you a quick summary.

August 2024- I started pooping blood and losing weight even though I wasn't trying to lose weight. I go to a GI special and get a colonoscopy scheduled.

September 2024- My diarrhea starts getting worse. The colonoscopy tests negative for cancer, but I'm told I have ulcerative colitis. Then on a follow up visit, they run a blood test and my blood sugar was at 400. I think that's as high as the meter goes, so it was probably higher than that. They tell me to go to the ER and I get told that I have type 2 diabetes, Crohn's disease, AND ulcerative colitis.

October 2024- I end up in the hospital again. I went to the hospital for some outpatient tests and they decided that I should be an inpatient. My numbers just looked that bad to them. A couple weeks later, I felt so sick that I called 911. It was a Sunday night, no walk-in clinics were open, so I decided to play it safe. I thought I was dying. The ER doc sent me home. I had to take an Uber. The ambulance ride was about $1500 after insurance. I asked my sister in Indianapolis if I could stay with her for a few days. I didn't even make it one night at her house before I had to go to the ER again. They told me I had salmonella.

November 2024- Still at my sister's house, still having diarrhea. I end up at the ER again and they tell me it's a respiratory  infection. I spent a few days wearing a nasal cannula.

December 2024- I keep hoping that I get to go back to work soon. The GI specialist tells me that I should be good to go back to work on January 20th

January 2025- I'm still pooping a lot and getting weaker. My feet were swelling due to dependent edema. If I wanted to cross my legs, I had to pick up my leg with my hands and drape it over my other leg. On January 14th, I had abdominal pain. I had a friend drive me to a walk-in clinic because I didn't think the ER would take me seriously. The clinic did some tests and told me to go to the ER. The ER sent me to an OR on the other side of town via ambulance. I was told that I had a perforated colon.

So they took out part of my colon and put in a stoma on my belly. I was so weak after my surgery that I couldn't walk. I was also on an NPO restriction: Nil Per Oral. That means I wasn't allowed to eat or drink anything for about a week. I got all my nutrients via IV. I didn't watch the Superspreader-In-Chief's inauguration, but I kept seeing him with that Air Force One cake on the news. I kept thinking how badly I wanted cake right then and there. By the end of the month, they let me eat solid foods again and I got transferred to physical rehab.

February 2[25-I get to go home, but I don't get to go back to work yet. I'm not supposed to lift anything over ten pounds and climbing the stairs is a challenge.

March 2025- I get to go back to work. I still have to poop into a bag on my belly. I still have to wear a glucose sensor and take insulin.

April 2025-There is a woman in my life who insists we are strictly platonic. I give her platonic foot rubs and platonic backrubs. I take her to platonic restaurants where we eat platonic food. She won't let me meet her other platonic friends because she doesn't want them to know how platonic we are. We spend more time arguing about petty stuff than I did with my ex-wife. But she still keeps coming over to my house to watch TV. This is like the friendzone but with extra responsibility. Her chief complaint about me is that she can't tell if I'm being sarcastic or autistic when I talk.

May 2025- I think I'm done with my latest novel. Before I start querying, I saw that I haven't updated my blog in 10 months. So here you go.

Could a future President tweet out child porn?

 The SCOTUS immunity ruling is REALLY bad. Consider that it applies to every president, not just Biden and Trump. Consider that it not only protects the President from being charged with a crime as a result of an official act, it also prevents official acts from being used as evidence.

This could incentivize criminals to run for President. Consider wealthy pedophiles like Jared Fogle and Jeffery Epstein. There has to be more of them out there, we just don’t know who they are yet. One of these perverts might get the idea that if he was President, then he could indulge his illegal fetishes with impunity.

Consider that the moment he files to run for President, most people are going to give a candidate a huge benefit of the doubt every time an alleged victim steps forward. Her word against his word. So he could make it all the way through a campaign and possibly even win the election before the public figures out that this guy belongs in prison.

But once his hand touches that Bible on January 20^th, he doesn’t need to hide who he is anymore. He could tweet out images of child porn and those tweets would be considered official acts. He couldn’t be charged with sharing the images, he couldn’t be charged with having them, and the images couldn’t be used as evidence of the abuse that took place. And as President, he could pardon other child pornographers.

Forget becoming a dictator. This court ruling could enable a President to single-handedly legalize child pornography. And we all have Donald Trump to thank for this ruling.

Candidates who get arrested during campaign

My best advice for political candidates of any party is to don't do the kinds of things that will get you arrested. On the one hand, it leads to increased earned media coverage and can energize your base. On the other hand, it doesn't sit well with swing voters.

I have voted for three candidates who got arrested during their campaigns. Even though it didn't stop me from voting for them, I would have preferred they didn't do the things that led to their arrest.

First up is Michael Badnarik (L), who ran for President in 2004. He got arrested for trespassing when he showed up uninvited at a debate between George W. Bush and John Kerry. To be sure, he would have lost the election anyway, so this publicity stunt could be seen as a calculated risk or a Hail Mary play, depending on who you ask. Personally, it's not my style of campaigning because I like sleeping at home every night. But I voted for him because I was a yellow dog Libertarian at the time.

Matt Kelty (R) was arrested during his Fort Wayne mayoral run in 2007 for lying on his campaign finance forms. His perp walk was on the news. I voted for him anyway because I was mad about the proposed ballpark in downtown Fort Wayne. He lost in a landslide. After the election, he plead guilty to the felony charges but didn't have to do any time. But his status as a felon prevents him from serving in state or local elected office.

Tom Henry (D) was the one who beat Matt Kelty in 2007 and became mayor. He soundly defeated three other Republicans in 2011, 2015, and 2019. In 2022, he announced that he was running for a record fifth term as mayor of Fort Wayne. Then he got in a crash and wrecked his city-issued Chevy Impala. He had been drinking and blew a 1.5, so he was arrested for DWI. But he accepted responsibility, pled guilty to the charges, and paid for the damages. With the case behind him, Henry was re-elected, but by his lowest margin of victory in a mayor's race. It hurt him politically, but he survived the election. Sadly he died of cancer this year.

So getting charged with a crime isn't necessarily a dealbreaker for many voters, but it doesn't help a campaign either.  Candidates with criminal charges should either resolve the charges before the primary or drop out of the race altogether. Serving in elected office is a privilege, not a right.

Don't give Trump money

I don't believe in vote-shaming. If you voted for Trump, that is your business. If you feel like telling me that you are planning on voting for him again, whatever. Just don't give him your money. Going back when he started those photo ops wearing that stupid red hat, his early fans were saying "At least he won't have to raise money to campaign!" Maybe he didn't have to, but he did anyway. To be clear, all competitive Presidential candidates are wealthy, and also raise campaign funds. Trump isn't special because he's rich, he is special because he has name recognition. I grew up in the 1980's, and I knew who Donald Trump was before I knew who Bill and Hillary Clinton were. I also knew who Saddam Hussein was, so don't confuse fame with virtue here. For the past 40 years, in order to be a successful Republican presidential candidate, you have to have been famous during the 1980's. This is the real reason Ron DeSantis' campaign went nowhere: he was just some elementary school kid back then. Maybe they'll run Alf next.

Anyway, he has been successfully sued for over $450 million dollars this year. There are other lawsuits that might push that total over half a billion. Trump's net worth is $2 billion, so imagine giving away 1/4 of everything you own to people you don't like very much.

I'm trying to put myself in MAGA's shoes, and imagining that happening to a celebrity that I like. Remember when Katy Perry got sued over Dark Horse? Well it got overturned on appeal. But this was probably the one celebrity court case where I felt bad for the wealthy defendant. I dealt with it by focusing on my own real life, and not sending money to Katy Perry so she could pay her bills.

Contributing to a political campaign is one thing. It's actually illegal for candidates to use campaign funds to pay off a personal lawsuit unrelated to a campaign. (Which means Trump will probably try to do that anyway.) So people are taking the extraordinary step of setting up GoFundMe accounts to raise money so Trump can pay off E Jean Carroll and the state of New York.

If you are the kind of guy who has to wait until pay day to have spending money, you shouldn't send any of it to Trump. If you have any credit card debt, you shouldn't send any money to Trump. If winning $50 on a scratch off ticket gets you excited, then you shouldn't send any money to Trump. If his vast wealth can save him, so be it. If he slides into bankruptcy, that is something you need to make peace with. You need to look after you.

To put $450 million in perspective, the Trump campaign spent $774 million trying to get Trump re-elected in 2020. So figure his campaign would have to raise that much for a competitive campaign. So imagine all the money you donated in 2020 that you won't get back, and now you have to donate all that again plus way. way more money. The MAGA folk are talking about raising over a billion dollars for a candidate who couldn't win an election back when he was still President. All of you should be saving your money and energy for whatever comes next.

My wife left me.

We are still married, for now. I'm adult enough to know that As her husband, I believe that her happiness is as important as my own. And yet she isn't happy, and I want to address it.

I'm having trouble understanding why she left. There is a communication issue, to be sure. Here is a story about why I love her.

She bought tickets online for a movie with her money. We got to the theater, and the doors were locked. There must have been a staffing issue with the pandemic. Mistakes happen. We go back the next day, and I insisted on getting a refund for the tickets. She didn't want me to bother the theater employees, even though we were clearly in the right. She would have preferred to eat the cost of $30 in wasted tickets rather than cause a moment's inconvenience to a service worker. Regina is the anti-Karen. and that is what I love about her. I still got her money back. I just showed them that we bought tickets for a day that they were closed, and they didn't fight us about it. They gave us movie passes, and we used them to watch the movie.

I like to think that she is learning to stand up for herself.

How to react when they want to do something dumb?

Sometimes a loved one wants to make a life altering decision, like taking up an expensive hobby, moving to a different state, or making a career change. And then I'm presented with three options.

1. Try to talk them out of it. (Their response is that I am trying to kill their dreams. Never mind that this is one of multiple conflicting dreams and goals that they presented to me within a short time frame. I am the Dreamkiller.)

2. Encourage them in their passion. (Tomorrow, they're going to say that I'm pressuring them into doing something that could ruin their life. As if I have something to gain by them failing.)

3. Leave it completely up to them. (Obviously it's clear to them that I don't care about anything they have to say.)

It's even more fun when they bring up, say, becoming an astronaut even though they have never been on a plane because they are afraid to fly. And now it sounds like I'm mocking them, but they never had any serious plans towards becoming an astronaut so why did they bring it up, so yeah, I guess I am mocking them.

And now they are going "I NEVER SAID I WANTED TO BE AN ASTRONAUT" and of course you didn't, because this story isn't about you in particular. It's about a lot of people I know who dream way, way too big. Like maybe the schools should stop with "anybody can grow up to be President" nonsense and just go with "anybody can grow up to be stable adults who pay their bills and don't have some kind of crisis every month".

Gosh, I probably should update this blog more.

 All these hopes and dreams that I have, all that require daily maintenance, and being a semi-pro blogger is one of them. There are challenging things going on in my personal life, but I shouldn't share too many details. It would be my luck if people chose this moment in time to take an interest in this blog at a time when I decided to share too much.

It's really all about abortion for the GOP base

Yesterday, I wrote a diary that wondered why Republicans were so loyal to such a nakedly corrupt, immoral man. I went to bed, woke up, and it finally hit me. It is all about abortion for them. For 50 years, they couldn’t do anything about it. Then this promiscuous charlatan comes along and beats Hillary Clinton. Just as the sinking of the Titanic was a miracle for the lobsters in the kitchen, Trump’s victory looked like divine intervention for those who think God cares about US politics.

Since I’m a man, I’ve had the luxury of taking my time to come around to the realization that a fetus only matters if its mother says that it matters. Abortion can be a unpleasant subject to think and talk about, so that’s why a lot of people come to the wrong conclusion about it, even if they aren’t particularly religious.  To be sure, there are atheists and agnostics who oppose abortion too, (and whatever their religious beliefs are, their secular belief that abortion should be illegal is still wrong.)

So if you are a person who sincerely (but incorrectly) believes that abortion is murder, that can float to the top of your political priorities. You can rationalize anything, including violence, if it causes fewer abortions to take place. You stop caring about things like the economy, the justice system, and national security. Everything else can be dismissed as a distraction, or be exploited in order to distract others.

Consider the topic of vaccines. If you care about fetuses, then you should care about the health of pregnant women. Maybe you might not support vaccine mandates, but you still might be making PSA’s about how pregnant women should consult with their doctors about vaccines, and how the rest of us should get vaccinated to protect pregnant women.

Except now there is a huge overlap between the anti-vax and anti-abortion crowds. The common factor is a misunderstanding of biology, and a weaponization of that misunderstanding.

Trump gave the anti-abortion crowd three Supreme Court justices. No matter how delusional they are about everything else, they know that TFG played a role in overturning Roe V. Wade. They would follow him off a cliff for that alone. If we can win the debate on abortion, then that guts the GOP base. 2024 could be a fun year.

Why I'm not going to watch that video

I'm not going to watch your video. You aren't the first person I'm saying this to, but you won't be the last either so I'm writing this so I don't have to repeat myself. Don't be deluded into thinking that you won our little Internet debate. Feel free to think that I'm just a tool of the corporations, the Deep State, or whoever you think the bad guys are. But I bet you are never going to watch all of the January 6th Committee hearings either.

I already have a pretty good idea of what the video is going to say. Maybe it might have something that I haven't heard before, or maybe this a Rickroll or whatever the kids are doing these days. Even if that video is the only way to learn the secrets of Life, The Universe, And Everything, those secrets shall remain unknown to me because I will not watch that video.

You could type out what relevant facts are in that video, and I might read them. But I suspect your real goal is to increase the viewcount of that video and help the people who made it. Or maybe you knew I was going to refuse to watch that video, and you want to be able to say that I'm biased and closed minded. Maybe you're closed-minded because you think everyone who doesn't have time or cellular data to watch your video is closed-minded. Why don't you go outside and touch some grass?

As I am typing this, I have the day off. And obviously my Internet works. Now would be a very convenient time for me to watch videos. But I'd rather be watching Star Trek and writing this than watch your video. Maybe that's a poor use of my time, but suggesting videos to me is an absolute waste of your time, because that's just not going to lead to a desirable outcome.

I have watched a LOT of videos before I wrote this. Far too many of them contain a Gish Gallop. They say a bunch of things that sound like facts because they have big words and statistics. But you didn't bother to double check any of them, so why should I bother to hear them in the first place?

Joe Biden for President

 

I’m 44 years old. I have voted in every Presidential election since 2000. Next year I’m going to vote for Joe Biden for the first time.

As a former long time member of the Libertarian Party, I get that many people have grievances with the way things are. In the past, when there wasn’t a Libertarian on the ballot, I usually voted against the incumbent, whether he was a Republican or a Democrat.

I’ve had three previous opportunities to vote for a presidential ticket with Joe Biden’s name on it in the past. In 2008, I voted for Bob Barr because Senator Barack Obama, Senator Joe Biden, and Senator John McCain all voted for the TARP bailout. We were told that this was necessary to prevent a recession, but that recession happened anyway. We can have a long discussion about whether this was the right thing to do at the time, and what to do next time a similar crisis happens, but my stance is that successful banks don’t need to be bailed out, and unsuccessful banks don’t deserved to be bailed out.

In 2012, I voted for Gary Johnson because I wanted marijuana to be decriminalized. I don’t smoke, drink, or use drugs myself. But the war on drugs has had a huge negative impact on my family, friends, classmates, and neighbors. Thankfully, Joe Biden’s stance on this has evolved.

In 2020, I voted for Jo Jorgensen because I was a long time Libertarian Party hack. However, the Libertarian Party has been since been hijacked by alt-right, antivax lunatics. I am the same guy that I was 20 years ago. The Libertarian Party has gotten worse, but Joe Biden has gotten better. He now supports marijuana legalization, marriage equality, and opposes the death penalty. As Libertarians, we used to lose elections proudly because we held these stances when they were unpopular. Right now, Joe Biden is heavily favored to win the 2024 election. But heavily favored candidates can still lose if people are complacent.

Here are the two main reasons why I am voting for Joe Biden:

1. He completed the withdrawal from Afghanistan. Some might argue that this war could have ended better, but when would it have ended? At what point would the ending be psychologically satisfying for all concerned? Every war involves loss of life and equipment right up until the end. If Biden loses, people will say it was because of the withdrawal, and that could mean the next war won’t end.

2. Nobody running against him really has anything to offer.

RFK Jr is running on an antivax platform. Vaccines are why we are living longer healthier lives in the 21 century. For decades, they weren’t even controversial. Red states and blue states alike require vaccines for schoolchildren. Today, some adults understandably resent feeling pressured to take a new vaccine. For some people, this might be the first time in their adult lives when someone suggests that they should get vaccinated. The bottom line is, vaccines work but you don’t have to get a shot if you don’t want one. If your boss fires you for not getting a shot, you should have no trouble at all finding a new job when the unemployment rate is less than 5%.

Donald Trump is a domestic terrorist and a foreign intelligence asset. When his supporters were storming the Capitol, he could have stopped the attack right away by going on TV and Twitter and telling them all to leave federal property. The people who planned and carried out that attack expected him to stay in office as a dictator.

Ron DeSantis is waging an idiotic culture war against one of the largest private sector employers in his home state. If you’re going to fight Disney, fight them for the right reasons.

Folks, things like vaccines, racism, and election results shouldn’t even be controversial. Every candidate on the ballot should acknowledge that vaccines work, everyone is equal, and Biden won the 2020 election. Since Joe Biden is the only presidential candidate who believes all of those things, I have to default to him as the only acceptable choice for President.