All the Democratic candidates accept the science behind anthropogenic global warming (AGW). They all accept it is serious, and something needs to be done. They accept that at least some of this something will need to come from the government. They accept that they need to say something about it to keep the base happy. Some of them think we have 11 years, some think we have fewer. The candidates who claim we are doomed and dramatic action is required get dismissed as apocalyptic naysayers. The ones who say we can make changes that create new jobs and keep the economy sound are dismissed as unrealistic, calling for expensive new programs that will raise our taxes.
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Another year over, and what have we done? Yes, 2018 is at an end. We can look back at the past, and forward to the future, and celebrate an arbitrary date chosen to begin a new year – January 1. People will make (and break) resolutions, promise things will be better in the new year, and proceed to do the same things the way they always do them, because the new year isn’t magic. There is no reason to expect things will change, because New Year’s Day is an imaginary day…oh, the day actually exists, but there is no reason to believe things start over that day. It’s really just another day to which we have chosen to add significance.
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I have noticed an interesting phenomenon of late (well, okay, that’s if “of late” means “the past 40 years”). Whenever I accomplish something, or do something that someone else admires, they are quick to tell me that they are “too busy” to do anything like that, but they really would if they had the time. The tone in which this is stated is designed to make a person who has just worked their ass off to accomplish something of merit feel like they have been sitting around all their life just trying desperately to fill time while their friend, colleague, or whoever happens to be speaking, has been working to make sure the world keeps running. In fact, I have discerned that the people in this world who accomplish the most are apparently only accomplishing stuff because they never do anything.
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I am not going to spend this day mourning the passing of yet another ex-presidents. Ex-presidents come and go, live and die, sleep and eat, and these are not points for me to mark. They are irrelevant.
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At a meeting today, I was listening to a millennial give a speech about important things. Really important things. And he had figured out they were important, which is sort of what he talked about at the beginning of his very important talk. He stated that his generation doesn’t know where rights come from. They just think they were part of the natural process, and that they will always be there. I sat up and took notice. Why? Because that is a phenomenon I have noticed myself. Not just about ordinary rights, either, like speech or religion or not having soldiers quartered in my home (I use that one every day, I tell you. Just yesterday, I had to turn away an army who wanted to camp out in my spare bedroom.) They don’t understand about the specific rights that pertain to them, the amount of work that went into gaining those rights, and the danger to those rights if we are not eternally vigilant. They have no idea that rights were not always there, or that rights could go away.
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There is a strange phenomenon that I encounter on a regular basis – people want to talk politics! Oh, wait, no, reverse that. I find it strange when people living in a democracy, or more accurately a democratic republic, say “I’m not political”. They clap their hands over their ears if you so much as mention the local school board election; if you get to the level of Senators or Presidents, they will rudely hum, sing, or burp until you stop. They treat you as a pariah, someone weird and out of touch, if you know who is running for the City Council, and if you can name both of your senators, you are regarded as ready for the insane asylum, complete with straight jacket. Don’t even get me started on what they want to do to you if you can name senators from other states.
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I’ve been feeling a bit peeved lately. It seems the pundits and political analysts are not reading my column! And they keep repeating the exact same things over and over, the things they’ve been saying for two years now. If they would read my blog, and understand it, they might not be getting things so wrong.
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Who the hell thinks it is okay to ask anyone to work 80 hours a week? What happened to the weekend? The evening? Sleeping? Eating? Why is no one questioning the bald statement that faculty are going to be working 80 hours a week without so much as a “say what”? Why is no one stopping to calculate what the hourly rate would be for an 80 hour week at the average professor’s salary and wonder why the highly trained, highly skilled professionals are being expected to work for so little compared to others with a comparable level of education and a similar skill set?
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There are a lot of people out there who need a lot of reality training. Take, for instance, this woman my mother met in the grocery store one day who said “What do we need farmers for? I get my food from the grocery store”. Or the women who constantly told my mother she was inferior because she was “just a housewife”. Or the….
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Does religious freedom mean the freedom to decide what kind of Christian you will be? Some people believe this – that religious freedom applies only to Christians. Others are somewhat magnanimous, extending that freedom to all the religious. Then there are actually those who think, gasp, that religious freedom extends to everyone, including the non-religious, and includes the freedom not to believe. (By the way, this is what the authors of the First Amendment believed, but you won’t find that in Scalia’s “original intent”).
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It is common knowledge among theatre professionals that there are fewer good parts for women than for men. This is true not only in Shakespeare, but across the spectrum. Some may not be aware that, like in the movies, this increases with age. Middle aged women scarcely show up at all in stage plays; women seem to disappear between the ages of 35 and 65, when they are once again allowed as the voice of wisdom, someone to be mocked, or the kind and gentle old grandmotherly sort who picks up the slack when the younger woman’s mother (the you-know-what) runs out on her with the first trucker who accidentally slams the cab of his truck into the living room. And she takes the family dog, so everything is bad. That’s the woman we don’t usually see, or hear her side of the story, unless she comes back when she’s older, so that her now 20-something daughter can lambaste her with her awfulness and show the world how strong she is…oh, and reclaim the family dog.
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Journey with me for a minute. Imagine a place where men could come in the door with the necessary qualifications, score an interview, and land a job on their merits. Now imagine a woman with equal (or better) qualifications coming into that same job, and before she can possibly get the position, she must fellate the boss. She must expose her breasts to the grinning pervert sitting in the chair. She must allow him access to her vagina. She must…you get the picture. Need I go on? She is not allowed to succeed on her qualifications. She is only allowed to succeed if the boss gets adequate satisfaction from her sexual acts.
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The shunning of those who do not agree has a long history, dating back to as far as we have records. Refusal of service for those you dislike or disagree with has been on the Republican wish list for some time, and in a recent Supreme Court case, they got at least part of what they want (more on that in a later column!) when the court allowed a baker to refuse to make a cake for a gay couple. In addition, a number of so-called religious freedom acts have been enshrining the right of people to refuse service to those they disapprove of on religious grounds…usually same sex couples, but also women who want birth control, mixed race couples, trans-people, and any others who meet the definition of religiously unacceptable. Many on the left are using this as justification for refusing service – we’re simply doing to them what they have demanded. Just make it on religious grounds, some say. Others say they have an ethical imperative not to serve evil people.
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I was listening to a conversation this morning at breakfast, and I must admit, it made me cringe…uh, think. The young men were talking about a scientific study they had seen posted on Facebook, and what it meant. They were very earnest, and taking this very seriously, and I thought, oh, how nice, they’re interested in science. Actually, no, I didn’t. My thought process was quite a bit more complex, so it my take me a little work to move through the stages of the things going through my head.
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Hi, there, “coastal elites”. A message for you from flyover country. I’ve been living here for most of my life now (like, decades!) and I have been watching with fascination as the pundits have been fingering you for being out of touch, misguided, and contemptuous of those of us here in the heartland. I would just like to add my voice to the mix, as someone who has actually lived in flyover country (unlike most of the people writing the pieces about flyover country, who have mostly flown over, and decided to stop over for a night or two and talk to the first six people they met before they hopped back on the plane to write a piece about flyover country from the enormous experience they had just acquired).
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Let me state my position up front. I am against motherhood. I am not against mothers, unless of course it is lousy mothers, scary mothers, abusive mothers, hurtful mothers…but I realize that every one of us has at some point in our life had a mother, and that many of us love our mothers. We love them so much that we all get together once a year to erupt in a giant flood of love for our mothers, buying them cards and flowers, taking them out to dinner, and telling them how much we appreciate them. That’s good, because it will encourage Mother to keep doing all those things we appreciate but don’t mention for the rest of the year.
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You may have heard the different descriptions given of environmental scientists by the left and the right. The right prefers to describe the environmental scientists as Cassandras, mockingly pointing out that they spread a message of gloom and doom. The left prefers to paint them as Don Quixotes, misunderstood knight errants wandering the land in search of evil giants and damsels in distress. The preferred frame of reference you use in referring to this branch of science can immediately give away your political leanings.
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I was reading an article related to the Janus case – you know, the case working its way through the Supreme Court related to unions. The gist of the matter is whether unions can collect fees from non-union members to cover the costs of negotiations, since non-union members benefit from the negotiations. In the past, the Supreme Court has upheld this practice, and 21 states currently have that provision. This case is asking them to reconsider it, alleging that it is a violation of the free speech of non-union employees who might object to the political activities of the union. The money collected for the fees is supposed to be used solely for the purpose of negotiations.
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Next time, before you start that speech, I would like you to stop, take a deep breath, and think before you speak. Then, go ahead and wave your Constitution. Go ahead and read the First Amendment. Explain in all your usual detail about Jefferson’s letter to the Danbury Baptists, and give a full history of religious entanglement from the Greek pagans all the way through the Enlightenment – there is one member of the school board who will be pleased you learned your classics, anyway. But then, stop. Shut up. Sit down. Do not finish with your favorite flourish. Don’t acknowledge his right to raise his children the way he wishes, because that is a right that he does not – or at least should not – have.
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I do not think a week has gone by this past year (hardly a day has gone by) that I haven’t been enlightened and uplifted by some amazingly creative, intelligent, and insightful pundit telling the world what he, and he alone, had been clever enough to spot about the recent strange election – Hillary did it.
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