October, 2022 archive
A Hallowe’en Story: Trial by Ordeal 0
Not far from where I sit is a street named Witchduck Road, which ends at Witchduck Bay.
In my local rag, William Huber writes about the witch who was ducked.
The Long View 0
Methinks that the writer of a letter to the editor of the Cleveland Plain-Dealer makes a good point.
One Thing Is Not Like the Other Thing 0
Fetterman has a little trouble speaking from time to time.
He does not have trouble thinking.
Via Job’s Anger.
Fly the Fiendly Skies . . . 0
. . . but keep an eye on for those oxymoronic “responsible gun owners.” From The Roanoke Times:
Enough people have used the “I forgot it was there” excuse that TSA spokesperson Lisa Farbstein vented in a sarcastic July 1 tweet, “It’s time people stop claiming to have forgotten they had a loaded gun with them. They sure know where their cellphones are — just not their deadly weapons.”
“The Rent Is Too Damn High” 0
Thom takes a look at why the homeless population has exploded.
(It’s not the fault of the persons who have no places to live, but that should be no surprise to any thinking person. Unfortunately, we seem to have shortage of thinking persons, but that’s another story. No one–at least, no one whose mind is functioning, to borrow a phrase from my old doctor, “within normal limits”–wants to be without a place to live.)
A Tune for the Times 0
Mangy comments at the Youtube page:
Most of the reasons Trumpers give for admiring Trump are not based in reality. Despite what they may WANT to believe about Trump, he is not courageous and brave, he doesn’t care about the average person, he isn’t knowledgeable about the world, he is more a failure in business than a success, he was not in the top of his class in university, he does not know more than. the average person, and he is not motivated by any Christian principles. He IS what most would call a charlatan, a fake, a poser, a phony, a pretender, a BS’er, or a scam artist. This song tries to set the record straight for the benefit of those who are too blind to see what is right in front of their eyes in regards to Cheeto Jesus.
Twits on Twitter (Updated) 0
Rinse Cycle 0
PoliticalProf notes that there is a pattern in the misdirection playbook.
If One Standard Is Good, Two Must Be Better 0
Methinks David’s first caller has a point. (The second caller discusses the looming water crisis in the American southwest and is also worth hearing.)
Republican Family Values 0
The hypocrisy is not surprising. Hypocrisy has been with us since Eve lied about eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge, and “Republican family values” has never been any more than bait for the trap. The trap caught the “Christian right,” the scribes and pharisees of American Christianity.
What’s surprising is the absolutely unapologetic brazenness of it all and how it goes unnoticed has seemingly no effect on their dupes acolytes.
Gutting Out the Vote 0
Arizona right-wing extremists are mailing it in (and, in the process, dishonoring the memory of Benjamin Franklin).
Devolution 0
I like to listen to Old Time Radio (OTR for short).
“Old Time” is really not an accurate label, as it actually refers to a very short period in the 1940s and 1950s, when radio shows were syndicated on vinyl “syndication” disks or, later, on tape and, fortunately, were not copyrighted, as they were considered ephemeral (a few shows from the 1930s survive–a very few). (Maybe I’m showing my age, but when I hear “old time,” I think “centuries ago.”)
Fortunately, there are folks who have worked to make OTR available to us today. You can see my favorite OTR sites over there —-> on the sidebar.
Right now, I’m listening to a dramatization of Penrod by Booth Tarkington, a novel that I read several times when I was a young ‘un, back in the olden days, from the NBC University of the Air at The Old Time Radio Theatre.
And it led me to realize that there was a time when commercial AM radio actually contributed positively to the discourse, a time when it was not merely a vehicle for right-wing haters and 24-hour sports talkers.
Dis Coarse Discourse 0
At the Charlotte Observer, Alexis Giachetti offers three very simple pointers to avoid being fooled on the disinformation superhighway. In these days of fertile fabricators and loquacious liars, they are well worth your attention.
Here they are; follow the link for more details about each one:
- Verify before you share
- Watch out for red flags
- Learn to identify credible information
And remember, “social” media isn’t. And what it most isn’t is a reliable source of news.
