......................with the Babylon Bee one never knows.
Saturday, July 23, 2022
Martin Gurri............................
................talks presidential politics. Well worth your time. A few snippets:
Biden is entirely a creature of the party establishment, a politician devoid of hard edges, known to drift safely within the mainstream of elite opinion. He was chosen as a last-gasp backstop to block the anti-establishment Bernie Sanders in the 2020 primaries and to defeat the detestable Trump. These tasks he accomplished. Quite naturally, he’s looking for gratitude—particularly now, when his fortunes are at a low ebb. Though it’s easy to forget this, Biden is president. He has revealed his intention to run for a second term. He believes he has earned the right to the establishment’s support.
He may not get it. Institutional loyalty has been bred out of contemporary elites. Most Democratic grandees are cut from the same cloth as the president: All that matters is staying at the top. From their perspective, Biden was the right tool to accomplish this purpose in 2020 but may be totally wrong for 2024. After all, he’s polling behind Trump. The holocausts a vengeful Trump might wreak on Democrats, if returned to power, can justify any number of betrayals. . . .
Even if the president steps down, there’s still the vexing question of choosing his successor. Historically, Democratic presidents have been succeeded as party chief by their vice presidents: That was the case with Hubert Humphrey, Walter Mondale, Al Gore and, of course, Biden himself. The difficulty is that the current incumbent, Kamala Harris, has actually failed at the job of vice president and is even more unpopular than Biden. Harris seems unable to utter a word in public without delighting the meme-makers of the internet. However, in a caste obsessed with identity, can tradition be overturned to deny a female “person of color” her shot at the top spot? That would not be a good look.
Behind Harris, ambition runs high but presidential timber gets scarce. Members of the cabinet, like Pete Buttigieg, are lightweights already tarred with failure. Elizabeth Warren crashed and burned early in her last try at the nomination. Gavin Newsome, governor of California, is the white, male equivalent of fellow Californian Kamala Harris. Bernie Sanders is about to turn 800. We can gauge the desperation of the liberal flock by current whispers that maybe, just maybe, this is finally Hillary Clinton’s turn. Clinton is the worst politician of recent times—but she’s competitive with this bunch.
The best hope for Democrats in this bleak landscape is the second coming of Trump. Despite improved polling numbers that, at 42 percent approval, make him the “most favorable” political figure in the country, the former president strongly unites and galvanizes the opposition while having the opposite effect on his own party. Like Biden, Trump would enter the contest burdened by an immense weight of baggage. Like Biden, he would be an old man seeking redemption rather than a fresh face on the offensive. And if Biden can be said to bar the way to more attractive Democratic candidates, Trump does much the same to Republicans: He’s too volatile to embrace but too important to ignore.
For all this, Democrats remain terrified of Trump and are spending vast amounts of energy plotting his destruction. Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s January 6 production in the House, for instance, is an attempt to persuade the public that the most important issue confronting it lies in the past: namely, Trump’s supposed machinations to engineer an “insurrection” against our democratic system. This is futile stuff: Trump’s popularity has actually increased during the hearings. Opponents have never learned that attention is the helium that lifts this strange political mutant above the competition.
Yet Trump also is stuck in an ungainly posture that looks backward to the 2020 election. He’s no longer interested in making America great but in proving himself to be the greatest winner of all time. The Democrats would make 2024 about January 6, 2021; Trump insists that it should be about November 3, 2020. Meanwhile, the public is wholly concerned with bread-and-butter issues and has shown no interest in making the next presidential contest an exercise in the interpretation of history.
Friday, July 22, 2022
Fifty years ago.............................
Unlearning..............................
The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.
Toffler wrote Future Shock in 1970. I remember reading it, but that's about it. One of these days I'll check it out from the library to see how well it has aged.
Reading.........................
I'm not sure I ever would have learned to read if it weren't for the heroes I met and saw in comic books. Regular books couldn't hold my attention at all, but my fascination with comics drove me to keep pushing myself until I could read their stories without waiting for someone else to read them to me. I would read them by flashlight under my covers late at night. Those stories gave me hope that one person could overcome impossible odds.
My favorite superheroes growing up were the X-Men, not because they were the strongest, but because they were misunderstood and weirdly different. I felt I could relate to them. They were mutants, they didn't fit into society, and people who didn't understand them shunned them. That was me, minus the superpowers. The X-Men were outcasts, and so was I. I belonged in their world.
-Jim Kwik, Limitless: Upgrade Your Brain, Learn Anything Faster. and Unlock Your Exceptional Life
I never had a problem reading as a youngster, but comic books were a staple anyway. I remember reading by flashlight too. Amazing how much pleasure 10 cents could bring. Never was an X-Man fan, but here are a few of my favorites:
If you don't check out..................
.........................The Art & Artist blog from time to time, well you should. Looks like a labor of love to me.
Thursday, July 21, 2022
Chart of the day.............................
In the history of man, most serious progress can be traced to increased supplies of inexpensive energy. Making energy expensive in the United State to "save the planet" seems foolhardy when you look at this:
source and larger image may be found here
A suggestion.............................
If you are interested in the little ways in which the world works, there is considerable value to be found in reading Morgan Housel's latest post.
It might sound crazy, but once you understand the basic principles of your profession, you might gain more expertise by reading around your field than within your field. Connecting dots between fields helps you uncover the most powerful forces that guide how the world works, which can be so much more important than a little new detail that’s specific to your profession.
Checking in......................................
.............................................with Jim Rohn:
You must take personal responsibility. You cannot change the circumstances, the seasons, or the wind, but you can change yourself. That is something you have charge of.
If you don't like how things are, change it. You are not a tree.You don't get paid for the hour. You get paid for the value you bring to the hour.
Success is nothing more than a few simple disciplines, practiced every day; while failure is simply a few errors in judgment, repeated every day. It is the accumulative weight of our disciplines and our judgments that leads us to either fortune or failure.
If you don't design your own life plan, chances are you'll fall into someone else's plan. And guess what they have planned for you? Not much.
Learn to work harder on yourself than you do on your job. If you work hard on your job you can make a living, but if you work hard on yourself you'll make a fortune.
The only thing worse than not reading a book in the last ninety days is not reading a book in the last ninety days and thinking that it doesn't matter.
The book you don't read can't help.
Learn how to be happy with what you have while you pursue all that you want.
Fifty years ago.....................................
a matter of practice........................
Our true home is the present moment. The miracle is not to walk on water. The miracle is to walk on the green earth in the present moment. Peace is all around us—in the world and in nature—and within us—in our bodies and our spirits. Once we learn to touch this space, we will be healed and transformed. It is not a matter of faith, it is a matter of practice.
the simple act.....................
Ignorance does not yield to attack, but it dissipates in the light, and nothing dissolves dishonesty faster than the simple act of revealing the truth. The only way to enhance one's power in the world is by increasing one's integrity, understanding and capacity for compassion.
Wednesday, July 20, 2022
Fifty years ago...........................
1972 was a mixed bag, musically and otherwise. Check out Any Major Dude With Half A Heart as he offers Volume 2 of his mix of 1972's best music.
Strive....................
'We must strive to be like the moon.' An old man in Kabati repeated this sentence often... the adage served to remind people to always be on their best behavior and to be good to others. He said that people complain when there is too much sun and it gets unbearably hot, and also when it rains too much or when it is cold. But, no one grumbles when the moon shines. Everyone becomes happy and appreciates the moon in their own special way. Children watch their shadows and play in its light, people gather at the square to tell stories and dance through the night. A lot of happy things happen when the moon shines. These are some of the reasons why we should want to be like the moon.
Consciousness......................
You develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it. From out there on the moon, international politics look so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, ‘Look at that, you son of a bitch.'
Power..........................
We do not need magic to transform our world. We carry all the power we need inside ourselves already.
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