Political Vanity Update

  

So I emailed or used the website form to contact everyone running for Ohio governor asking for their position on sticking the governor's and lieutenant governor's names on highway signs (if you need a catchup on this saga, click here).

No one's replied back yet.  Given that enough time has reasonably passed for a reply, one can conclude that all of these candidates suck, though I'm sure if pressed some may claim the email got caught in the spam filter or whatnot.  However, clearly, if they don't care enough about a voter when they're begging for votes to at least send a form reply ("Thank you for bringing that matter to our attention.  We will consider it after doing further research" being the bare minimum of courtesy), then they certainly won't be responsive when they get into office, which doesn't inspire hope for the state government's future.  Nevertheless, I'll follow up with some phone calls if I feel ambitious.  It would be helpful, however, if others could join in.  Send them an email.  Give them a call.  Talk to them if you see them in person.  Tell them you want to see DeWine and Tressel as the last names on these signs and then you want the vanity overlay signs gone in 2027.  Otherwise, the campaigns assume it's just a piece of crank mail about an issue that no one else cares about, but I suspect the majority, if not vast majority, of voters would prefer not to waste taxpayer money on political vanity by manufacturing and installing metal signs with the names of politicians on them across the state.  Some may say this is just a small issue when the national government is in massive debt yet still finds the means to go around bombing and terrorizing people around the world, but that's exactly the point.  If government cannot even resolve a simple, small issue such as this one, what hope do we have of them solving any larger problems?

The answer isn't encouraging.  Anyway, on to the candidates.  At this point, they all deserve to get some birdpoop on the metaphorical highway signs with their names on it, so let's do it.  On the Republican side, there's Heather Hill, Casey Putsch, and Vivek Ramaswamy.  On the Democratic side, there's just Amy Acton.  Don Kissick is running as a Libertarian while Tim Grady is running as an independent.  Another candidate, Renea Turner, didn't get enough signatures, so she's out of the running this election year (unless she decides to run independently), so I didn't contact her.  The first thing you have to know is that all of these candidates must be slightly insane because American politics is fairly toxic these days, yet what else can we do?  It's a democracy, so I do appreciate them at least being brave enough to give things a go.  Most likely, the next governor will be Ramaswamy since statewide Ohio is essentially a one-party state, and he seems to have enough money to just buy the Republican nomination.  However, if Trump proves toxic enough, then he might even drag down the Ohio Republicans and, despite the general incompetence of Ohio Democrats, Acton might squeak into office, in which case we can all look forward to being welded inside our homes the next time a new virus circulates.

Yes, it's a depressing election already.  Back to the individual candidates:

Hill seems a longshot.  It's nice that the Republican field offers a choice at least.  Maybe she'll drop out and endorse Ramaswamy before the primary and get a position in his administration.  Sometimes that's what longshot candidates do.

Putsch, smelling like a true believer (however daffy the true beliefs), seems less likely to be aiming ultimately for a spot in the administration but even more of a longshot.  Still, if someone is technically on a ballot, anything is possible.  Most Americans only vote for stuff they see on tv though, which is why a lot of the time political positions in America can basically be bought.  If anyone ever complains about political candidates, point them to the lazy American voter.  Hill and Putsch both have websites; people could research them.

Ramaswamy seems like an Asian Obama.  He's well-spoken and somewhat of an outsider to Ohio state politics, but, as with Obama, don't expect much to change if he gets in.  Maybe he'll allow you to pay your income taxes in crypto currency or something, though that's already in the works.  He seems like a lock for the nomination because he's spending a lot of money to obtain it and seems likeable enough for an Ohio Republican state politician, which is somewhat akin to being more likeable than a head of rotting cabbage.  Alas, almost anyone would be an improvement over DeWine, who combined the worst of both Democrat and Republican (he'll postpone an election because he's worried over germs yet force a woman to bury her aborted fetus).  In any case, Ramaswamy's tied so closely to Trump though that I suspect Trump's unpopularity may sink his candidacy and we'll end up with the awfulness that is . . .

Acton might be the worst Democratic nominee in recent years (I remember her from the virus panic, and, yes, I also remember the time they ran the guy driving around without a driver's license), but she might end up winning by default because no one else bothered running and Trump sank the Repubs.

Kissick (doesn't seem to have a working Website yet--a clue perhaps he's not serious--and no, I'm not linking to fucking Facebook) and Grady not responding surprised me because I doubt anyone else even pays attention to them.  Ramaswamy's probably looking forward to sticking his name up across Ohio and Acton's campaign is probably incompetent in the grand tradition of Ohio Democrats, but I'm surprised not to have heard back from the minor Republicans and the independent guys.  It's not like these guys are busy dealing with other media.  Ohio newspapers are fairly moribund these days, so that's why you get perhaps the best 2026 Ohio gubernatorial race coverage on an obscure blog.  As Trump would say:  Sad.  That's Ohio for you though!

If politics make you cry and you need a laugh, then read my latest novel! 

2026 Ohio Governor's Race

  

No, the pair in the picture are not announcing a bid for governor and lieutenant governor of Ohio, USA, but it is a gubernatorial election year here, which means perhaps we can finally get rid of those stupid politician names on the welcome to Ohio highway signs.  It's been about 3 years since I ran a post about this issue on the blog (you can get caught up on the now-decade-long saga here).  Nothing good has happened in the meantime.  The funny cartoon I sent to my state rep and state senator at the time went unaddressed (both of them, Bride Rose Sweeney and Matt Dolan, kinda sucked anyway, so I wasn't surprised).  Ohio's lieutenant governor filled J. D. Vance's Senate seat, so they made the Ohio State football coach the new lieutenant governor (no, I'm not making this up--they seriously do this kind of dumb shit in Ohio--it's a bit embarrassing) and, of course, spent thousands of dollars probably to change the name on the highway signs.  Worse, Pennsylvania, probably fueled by that current governor's presidential hopes, stuck his name on welcome signs.

Sigh.  Well, let's see if any of the current candidates for governor will do away with the practice.  I'll keep you posted if I hear back from any of them.  Maybe I should hit up the new rep and senate candidates in my districts as well, but let's see how ambitious I feel this year.

If politics make you cry and you need a laugh, then read my latest novel!

Book Review: F==k Your Flag: The New Wave Of American Political Violence - Vol. 1 by Randall Fleming

 

One of the most fun zines of the 1990s was The Angry Thoreauan by Rev. Randall Tin-Ear.  I am happy to report that the former reverend is back and now writes books.  He was kind enough to send me his latest for review, and, as I expected, it's a very good read.  He takes as his subject the interesting subculture of right wing flags, primarily found in rural America, but something that can be found across the country if you look for it (the love rural America has for this urbanite is quite astounding).  Since it looks like Trump will be returning to the presidency (it's election night as I write this, so it's not official yet), it will be interesting to see if a left wing subculture of flags will develop as a resistance and that might be the subject of a sequel (I did see some Harris signs in Sandusky, Ohio this election season).  We'll see.  In any case, back to the current book.  It has many photographs of flags taken by Randall along with some excellent journalism.  I probably don't subscribe to the same cultural analysis results that Randall does (I find Trumpism more amusing than threatening), but he deserves an award for his journalism.  Anyone who reads this blog regularly or my novels probably knows that I occasionally grumble about the quality of journalism today (with some notable exceptions such as Glenn Greenwald, Greg Palast, and Matt Taibbi).  For example, the last time I bought a New York Times (earlier this year), one of the articles was one journalist interviewing another journalist in the newsroom.  I don't remember the topic since it was a few months ago, but it struck me as pretty bad journalism.  Instead of going out in the world and investigating something, the journalist was just going to interview his colleague on the topic.  There might be some occasions where that might be appropriate, but the topic of the article was not one of them.  It read instead as if the journalist was just too lazy to do any actual reporting.

Not Randall.  Apparently, the dude got shot at more than once taking his photographs.  And I can believe it.  I ran into those types when I worked for the Census, and I'm sure the folks who fly those flags have gotten more paranoid over the last few years since then.  Randall also digs into things, investigating for example the companies that manufacture the flags, which seem to be mainly made in China.  No one seems to want to answer any of his questions, but kudos to him for asking them and sniffing out when something seems rotten.  Randall's bullshit detector is working.  That is in stark contrast to most of today's "journalists" who seem content to parrot uncritically government authorities and corporate press releases.

I found all of the book compelling reading, but the chapters I found most interesting were the ones on how the comic book character The Punisher's symbol has been adopted by militant second amendment types with Disney's acquiescence, the anti-Joe Biden flags (whatever happens tonight will at least result in us being free of that disaster soon), and the flags manufacturers possibly being linked to a subtle Chinese attack on America.  As Randall concludes, "These flags are cheaply made, easy to buy, and seemingly everywhere. If any Chinese import should have a heavy tariff (a burden that ultimately rests on the buyer), it should be this shit. There’s nothing patriotic about buying desecrated U.S. flags from a hostile nation that uses buyer data to further inflame American politics."

It will be interesting to see if this subculture continues to flourish.  I did see a firefighter version of the thin blue line (police state flag) Randall writes about.  This one had a red stripe instead of a blue one, so it appears the subculture continues to grow for the time being, something that Randall clearly thinks is not a good sign for the health of the country.

The book is available from https://metrohopbooks.com.

If you want to read something else after you read Randall's book, then my latest novel is available at https://www.wredfright.com/p/fast-guy-slows-down.html.  The new one, The Front Yard War, is almost done being proofread, so look for it soon as well.

City Council Cartooning

 

I've lived in my city three years now and figured it was about time I attended a city council meeting.  It was probably better than whatever was on television that evening, but it wasn't exactly exciting.  Still, it's a civic duty to keep an eye on government once in a while; otherwise, they'll get up to all sorts of mischief.  It seemed like the main work was done before I arrived, and the official meeting was mainly a formality where they'd vote rapidfire.  Mostly, it was groupthink at play because they all agreed on what they were voting for, except for approving the minutes when one council member abstained.  Overall, they seemed like a dutiful group of folks, though, like most local governments, they were overly involved in other people's business (much of the meeting was based around telling people how they could build their buildings--the anarchist/libertarian streak in me made my scratch my head; short of making sure a building doesn't collapse, let people design their buildings how they want).  They even had a section of the meeting open to the public.  Nobody had any comments that night, but there were only some city administration in attendance, me, one woman who had a business or something where she needed a zoning variance, one man who was pissed off apparently from the earlier meeting and stuck around to glower at the council the rest of the evening, and one other woman who probably either was a volunteer for The League Of Women Voters or a newspaper reporter (she seemed to be taking notes) there (yes, Americans get the democracy our lazy asses deserve).  I myself took very few notes, but I did do some sketching, which gave me a great idea.  I mean why pay for a model in your art class or pay a few bucks to attend a Dr. Sketchy event in a bar (admittedly, there's alcohol and the subjects being sketched are probably better looking) when you could just get some free models at the city council meeting?  I mean drawing essentially a series of old, white men isn't the most exciting sketch subject matter in the world (arguably, a bowl of fruit still life might be more interesting just for the color variation), but you can't beat the price for life drawing!  Plus if you take notes as well, then you can send your notes to the community newspaper, so the rest of the community has an independent report of what went on at the council meeting.  All those in favor of occasionally attending a council meeting just to do some cartooning, say aye!  The ayes have it!

For more fun, read my latest novel, Fast Guy Slows Down!

Your Predictions Were Wrong, But I Will Still Put You On Television And Let You Predict Some More

In October 2021, I saved an article about how we were through with the spread of Covid-19 because I wanted to see how the predictions bore out.  You can still read the article at https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/04/briefing/covid-caseload-retreat-us-cases.html.  I was curious to see how the predictions panned out.

They panned out badly.

For example, Big Pharma Pimp Scott Gottlieb predicted in the article that "I’m of the opinion that this is the last major wave of infection."

A month later the Omicron variant appeared and drove the case report to new highs.

Oops.

Well, Gottlieb did qualify his prediction with a "Barring something unexpected", but a new variant is hardly something unexpected when dealing with a virus.  Regardless, one would think the dude would lose some credibility by being so far off the mark.

Ah, but you see, we live in Joe Biden's America, where incompetence gets rewarded apparently, so a year later, Gottlieb was still appearing on CBS's Face The Nation, pimping for Big Pharma, and having his arse kissed by mainstream media (note in the appearance linked here [no human besides me also apparently read the transcript since it has items such as "faith in the nation" on it--she's saying "Face The Nation"] how he doesn't talk about how adding the Covid-19 vaccines to the childhood immunization schedule allows the pharmaceutical companies, primarily Pfizer and Moderna, to continue to be shielded from liability for vaccine-caused injuries/death once the vaccines' emergency authorization expires, which, call me cynical, probably explains more about the rush to put them on the childhood schedule than just getting indigent kids access to the vaccines--you can read more about that here).

The article's writer, David Leonhardt, fared about the same, writing, "Whatever the next few months bring, the worst of the pandemic is almost certainly behind us." 

Actually, the worst was ahead as far as cases went, though we can be somewhat charitable to Leonhardt in that deaths in the winter of 2021-2022 didn't quite reach the height of the deaths of the winter of 2021-2022.  He also seemed to think that the Covid-19 vaccines worked, writing, "Of the more than 700,000 Americans who have died from it, nearly 200,000 probably could have been saved if they had chosen to take a vaccine."

Yet, the vaccines weren't even approved in the States until mid-December 2020, by which point about 300,000 Americans had already died, and that's leaving aside the problems with categorizing deaths as caused by Covid when the person may have been infected with Covid but really died of something else (such as a gunshot wound), so Leonhardt is arguing that half of the 400,000 Americans who died of Covid from mid-December 2020 to early October 2021 could have been saved if they had taken the vaccine.  It's not clear where he gets those numbers from, but it hardly matters, as it soon became obvious that being vaccinated did nothing to prevent transmission and infection.  The best he could argue would be that vaccination prevented death, but on a statistical basis Covid-19 already had a case fatality rate of something akin to the flu even before the vaccines and that has not substantially changed since (you can read a debunking of a similar claim here).  At the time of the writing, it was already clear that the vaccines weren't what was hoped for (they have subsequently looked much worse as now people with multiple boosters are more likely to get infected and the mRNA vaccines seem to have serious side-effects including death), so Leonhardt should have known better even then.

So did Leonhardt have to eat crow or find a new job?

Nope, a year later he was still at The New York Times offering the same level of dumb commentary such as this one:  https://twitter.com/DLeonhardt/status/1578392908297904133.  I mean call me crazy but I suspect the main reason that there's more deaths in Republican counties than Democratic counties is because people in rural counties (which skew Republican) are on average older than people in urban counties (which skew Democratic).  Someone should let Leonhardt know that older people die on average sooner than younger people do.  We could also let him know that viruses tend to spread faster in urban areas (which is why the virus deaths early on are concentrated in Democratic counties; the virus took longer to reach the rural areas).

Admittedly, predicting the future of a virus is difficult, but maybe the lesson is that one shouldn't act like one knows stuff one doesn't, or, worse, like some of these public health folks and panicked journalists have done, lie (reading books such as The Real Anthony Fauci, Pandemia, Gone Viral, and A Plague Upon Our House make it hard to take seriously anything coming out of a government agency or mainstream media where the virus panic is/was concerned).  It's no wonder trust in public health and mainstream journalism continues to decline.  At some point this must be mended.  A good start would be holding people accountable for their work.  If the boneheads making the predictions in this article aren't apologizing and trying to do better, then they shouldn't still be plaguing us with their ill-informed opinions and trying to mandate vaccines that don't work on children and promoting other daft ideas.  Instead, they're still shoved down the public's throat while anyone who is actually closer to reality gets treated like a dissident if not insane conspiracy theorist by people who don't also critically think and just pass on wholesale the opinions and talking points they get programmed with (American liberals unfortunately have been even more prone to this than American conservatives were in the last few years, which is unfortunate because in the past the liberals were usually a bit brighter; now, they seem to want to outcrazy the conservatives, all while trying to tell us how the conservatives are crazy).

Sigh.  I won't make any predictions on things actually changing for the better, but I sure hope they do.  Maybe if we all work together and more people start thinking for themselves, they will.

My latest novel, Fast Guy Slows Down, doesn't feature any predictions that I recall, but it does feature some laughs.

Governor's Names On Highway Signs Update For 2022 Ohio Gubernatorial General Election

 

Oof, this looks like it will be a rough election for governor in Ohio.  On the one side, we have the incumbent, DeWine, who combines the worst of blue and red states.  He panicked over the virus like a blue state governor and then wanted to prove how tough he was when his fellow Republicans ridiculed him for being a wimp and so he did stuff like force women to bury their aborted fetuses.

Dreadful.

Unfortunately, 2022 seems like an election cycle unfavorable to Democrats, so we'll probably be stuck with this turkey for another 4 years.  In any case, his name is already on the highway signs, so at least the state's taxpayers will be spared another useless expense of changing highway signs that shouldn't exist in the first place.

For some background, please check out some earlier posts on the subject:  https://www.wredfright.com/2022/04/governors-names-on-highway-signs-update.html and https://www.wredfright.com/2020/05/governors-names-on-highway-signs-update.html, but basically it's a waste of taxpayer money to stick governors' names on highway signs (ditto for mayors sticking their names on city road signs, but at least there the expense is less since there aren't as many signs).  

Of course, the Democratic candidate could win.

Just kidding.  I mean technically, she's on the ballot, and she probably has more chance than the 4 write-in candidates do (at least, one of whom is having fun), but unless DeWine starts humping a Donald Trump blow-up doll in the middle of a kindergarten class while telling the kids they all should have been aborted and that Trump should have been impeached, he isn't going to alienate enough Republican voters to clear the way for Nan Whaley, the Democrat, to win.  Her chief hope was that the patriot pastor candidate, Niel Petersen, would siphon off enough conservative votes to screw DeWine over, but Petersen didn't make the ballot (neither did independent candidate F. Patrick Cunnane, who liked to tell voters how smart he was but then was dumb enough to vote as a Republican in the primary election and thus disqualify himself from the ballot as an independent).  And I don't know what happened to the usual Libertarian and Green candidates.  Those parties seem to have become inactive if not defunct.  In any case, Whaley may be even worse than DeWine, and that's saying something.  For example, in this interview, she thinks it's a great idea to require kids to get the useless and dangerous Covid vaccine in order to attend school.  Meanwhile, in countries that actually have politicians who use their brains instead of just repeating what Big Pharma representatives tell them to say such as Denmark, they're banning the vaccine for anyone under 50.  I'm going to go out on the proverbial limb here and note that Danish anatomy does not differ from American anatomy, yet Whaley and most other Democratic politicians want to jab first graders with a harmful substance.

Sigh.  So we're down to two dreadful candidates.  I don't think I'd vote for Whaley even if she came out against sticking her name on highway signs, so I guess I should start emailing those write-in candidates to see which one can skip the ego trip and save the taxpayers some money.  Since none of them will win, maybe we can get the legislature to just ban the governor's name on highway signs practice during their crazy lameduck session after the election.

For more fun with politics, please read my latest novel, Fast Guy Slows Down!

Governor's Names On Highway Signs Update For 2022 Ohio Gubernatorial Primary Election

  

Over the years, I've always shook my head every time I drive into Ohio from Pennsylvania on I-80.  You see, driving into Pennsylvania, one gets greeted by a pleasant welcome to Pennsylvania sign, which has a motto of pursuing your happiness or something.  Then when I drive back into Ohio, the Ohio sign tells me whom the governor and lieutenant governor are.

I don't care.  Neither does any other motorist, I suspect.  It's just a waste of taxpayer money that provides free advertising for career politicians and appeals to their egos.  There's no reason for Ohio taxpayers to pay thousands of dollars for that.  Yet they do.  When last I checked, it cost $25,000 or so to do this nonsense (and that's not counting all the little mayors who emulate this practice and stick their names on the welcome signs for their cities--that also should be ended).  You can read an earlier post on the subject here (it also has links to earlier posts):  https://www.wredfright.com/2020/05/governors-names-on-highway-signs-update.html.  

Since it's another gubernatorial election year here in Ohio, I reached out to the candidates to see how they stood on the issue.  The results are dismal as usual, suggesting that Ohio will continue to be badly led whomever wins.  If candidates ignore voters at the time when they are most in need of voters, one knows they'll be ignoring the citizens while in office.  I had one candidate respond, and it was just the classic "Good point.  Let me think about that."  But, hey, that's light years ahead of everyone else.  For this election, I just focused on the Democratic and Republican candidates since the independent candidates can be dealt with in the summer or fall as the general election comes up (the deadline for them to register isn't even until the day before the primary election and none of the minor parties seem to be having a contest).  And, along those lines, why does the public have to pay for what are essentially intraparty elections?  The parties should pay for those elections on their own and not the taxpayers.  This article from last year has an interesting look at the issue:  https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/03/party-primaries-must-go/618428/.  The writer's solution is wrong, however.  One can dispense with the primary election entirely.  There's no reason for taxpayers to pay for dragging out the electoral process. 

So, first the Dems.  These cats essentially have no hope in Ohio in 2022, so they're running maybe to build name recognition for a Congressional seat down the road maybe or hoping the Repub nominee will run such a bad campaign that they can squeak in.  

First, there's John Cranley.  This dude at least had an email for contact on his website.  He didn't respond, of course, but that puts him ahead of his opponent, Nan Whaley, whom I had to contact via a YouTube comment.  Nan clearly doesn't care to hear from voters, so on that basis I have to hope that Cranley wins.  Given that Whaley's video only had 921 views on YouTube after being up for a month, you'd think she'd be excited to get any comment on it (personally, I'd be stoked about 921 views on one of my videos, but I'm not running for governor).  Both seem to be running terrible campaigns anyway.  I'm currently registered as a Democrat, and I don't think I've received a single piece of mail from either candidate.  Way to turn out the vote, guys!

That's fine.  I'll likely be registering as a Republican this time just to vote against DeWine, the current governor (I'm really an independent but if the parties are going to run their primary elections on the public dime, then they'll have to put up with people like me popping in and having my say on them), who combines the worst of blue and red since he panics about the virus just like the Dems and then has to prove how Repub he is by making women bury their abortion fetuses.  DeWine's name is up on the signs, so I didn't bother contacting him, assuming he is not going to be in favor of losing his taxpayer funded campaign signs.  Unfortunately, my guess is that DeWine will win again since he has so many primary opponents that the vote against him will be split and in 2022 it is unlikely for a Dem to win statewide in Ohio (or anywhere, given Biden's unpopularity).  So I contacted his three opponents.  Only Joe Blystone's campaign responded.  Even with the classic stall response, he still stands out as the best since he, you know, actually responded to a voter.  Jim Renacci probably has the best chance of unseating DeWine, but the tanned guy who looks like a used car salesman even had the wrong election date on the email he sent me (he threw me on his fundraising email list instead of responding to my question).  I replied to let them know to fix the date, but they didn't respond to that either.  Good luck, dude!  You'll need it.  In 2018, Cordray, who ended up being the Democratic nominee, also had simple dumb typo type stuff plaguing him (for example, the email address he had listed on his website was wrong) and ended up losing, so making elementary mistakes is usually a good way to lose.  The last Republican candidate, Ron Hood, also didn't respond.  I'm not even sure why he's in the race.  He appears to just be someone who likes to run for public office.  He's not even likely to be enough of a factor to split the vote.  Like the Dems, maybe he's just trying to improve his statewide recognition, so he can run for auditor down the road or something.

So from the primary perspective, things look grim for getting rid of those dang names on the highway signs.  Maybe Blystone will pull off a miracle and then pull off a bigger miracle by pulling off those signs.  Anyway, I'll try to check in with the candidates on the general election later this year, but if you want to help, then you can contact these boneheads as well (or even better your state rep. or city council person to band this practice in your state or city or, even better, both) and let them know we're tired of paying for inflating the egos of politicians.  Also, in the meantime, you know, I can't specifically encourage anyone to do the dangerous and illegal action of say replacing either DeWine's or Husted's name with that of Satan Tortilla (pictured above) or something, but I sure would have a smile on my face if next time I drive into Ohio on I-80, some graffiti artist had done just that.

Do you fantasize about pooping on the heads of egotistical politicians?  If so, you may want to seek some mental health help, or, better yet, read my latest novel, Fast Guy Slows Down, in which a character does just that!

Oh, and here's some soundtrack music for when you're asking the politicians to stop wasting out money:

Yeast? · Bloomsday

Our Government At Work

So I had to renew my passport this year.  I sent it in back in September and got it back in February.  Having to get a passport is annoying in the first place (here's a brief history of how they came about; mainly, they were a World War I "emergency" that never ended:  https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/how-passport-became-improbable-symbol-american-identity-180962064/), but having to wait six months for something that should take all of three weeks (anyone piping up about just having to pay a bit extra for the expedited service should shut up now as it's yet another example of how the rich cut lines)--a week to mail in, a week to process, and a week to mail back--is super annoying and yet another example of our "beloved" American government being badly run.  Instead of doing something sensible like run efficiently so the passport process only takes the three weeks it should, the government spends my, and your money (if you're American), tax money doing stupid stuff instead.

For example, they printed up a bunch of flyers recommending that Americans get fully vaccinated against Covid-19 before using the passport and traveling internationally.  I got one along with my new passport.  OK, I know you've likely experienced metric tons of propaganda about how the vaccines are "safe and effective", so I might sound like someone from Mars when I point out that's not the case, but please try to have an open mind.  If the vaccines actually worked, we wouldn't have seen the explosion in cases after the vaccines were introduced (lowering the bar to say they prevent hospitalizations and deaths doesn't cut it) nor would we see all the odd injuries and deaths that have resulted, usually cardiac related and probably a side-effect of the mRNA vaccines (I can cite personal examples, as can you likely, but the number of celebrities getting injured or dying unexpectedly or mysteriously before their time is one that probably all of us are familiar with).

Again, the point of this post is that instead of being efficient and fulfilling their responsibilities properly, the American government is badly run.  Instead of cleaning up their act, the government wades into areas that are outside their (using "their" instead of "its" here to emphasize that the government is made of people who are responsible for decisions and actions and consequences) scope such as an individual's health, or Russia's relationship with Ukraine, or spying on everyone's telecommunications, and so on and so forth.  Given how badly the government performs its own responsibilities, it's easy to see that going outside the scope is typically disastrous (with luck, we won't all be blown up with nuclear weapons in the blunder du jour, the Russia/Ukraine war, and, by the way, here's some background on that you might find a refreshing antidote to all the mainstream media out of context war hysteria:  https://scheerpost.com/2022/02/11/oliver-stone-american-exceptionalism-is-on-deadly-display-in-ukraine/).

No doubt this complaint is an exercise in futility (and I've worked in government so I can testify personally to it being badly run--so is much of private enterprise but I don't pay taxes on that, so I don't care as much), but Uncle Sam, get your shit together!  Once there's no national debt, my tax refund doesn't take six months to get back, I get my passport renewed quickly (if I have to have one at all), you don't waste tons of money doing stupid stuff, and so on and so forth, then we can have a conversation about expanding your responsibilities (I'll tell you likely no then as well, but at least then I'll be willing to hear about it--until then, shut up about it and stay in your lane, as the old saying goes). 

If you need a laugh after your latest interaction with government, then please read Edna's Employment Agency, my latest novel.

Living In Joe Biden's America

*Your washing machine breaks, so you have to order a new one, but there is a one-month back order before it can be delivered, so you have to go to the laundromat in the meantime, where you go and the change machine isn't working because there is a shortage of coins in the U.S. so you have to go home and go back the next day once you scrape up enough coins around the house.

*The government wants to give your five-year-old a vaccine (even though his risk of dying from the disease is lower than his risk of getting hit by lightning) that countries such as Iceland have banned.  You wonder how American anatomy is different than Icelandic anatomy, then you realize that it's just American politics is bought by Big Pharma.

*The school district makes your five-year-old wear a mask, which is actually progress because last year when they panicked they just closed the schools entirely.  Meanwhile, virus rates rise and fall regardless of mask mandates (showing they don't matter, so they should be dropped).

*The library makes you wear a mask to go inside, which is actually progress because last year when they panicked they just closed the library entirely.  It was optional, but when social pressure didn't work, they just mandated it again.

*Your car is approaching 200,000 miles and rather than put more money into it, you decide to buy a new one, but there are no new cars to buy because the supply chain is broken and there is a computer chip shortage due to the virus panic.  When a car does show up, the dealers want to change 5 grand above MSRP due to "market fluctuation".  You decide to just take the bus, where they require you to wear a mask that does little to nothing to prevent disease but makes public health officials feel that they can do something about something they cannot.

*You work remotely but you have to either get a rushed vaccine whose long-term health effects are unknown or you have to stick a Q-tip up your nose twice a week to prove you don't have the virus, even though the tests are notoriously buggy with false negatives and false positives and you are never near any coworkers or customers whom you might theoretically infect.  Or you can quit, which just contributes to the staffing issues plaguing the economy.

*You have to take a flight, but your flight gets canceled because the president is trying to force airline workers to get the vaccine, so they just keep calling off work to protest.

*Your elderly parents get hungry on a long car trip and want to stop for a snack, but the fast food restaurants all close early due to staffing shortages or only have the drive-thrus open and the lines are too long.

*Your elderly parents watch the network news which just promotes the party line on the virus panic, regardless of facts, punctuated by commercial after commercial for Big Pharma products, terrifying them.

*Your elderly parents get the vaccine and then you have to take them to the emergency room for blood clots and swelling.  The emergency room is short-staffed because vaccine mandates have caused some health care workers to quit.  Some of their friends die or get serious illnesses such as a form of blood cancer after getting the vaccine.

*The president nearly falls down the stairs of Air Force one because he can't see his feet because he is wearing a mask.

*You drive through suburban and rural areas and see "Trump 2024" signs, as well as signs and flags wanting to have sex with the president, though they mean that figuratively.

*Real problems in the country go unaddressed as the politicians spend their time fighting over a virus that is a manageable medical issue and would have been on page 28 of The New York Times in 1969.

*People who are vaccinated get sick and die from the virus, yet when people get mad, they seem to get mad at people who don't want the vaccine, but if you are vaccinated and supposedly protected from a disease, how does anyone else's vaccination status actually affect you?

*Democrats give up the logical stronghold of "pro-choice" and declare that people can be told what to do with their bodies, then don't understand why the pro-life side of the abortion debate starts gaining headway and why they can't see that there's a difference (because there isn't).

*Everything in the grocery store and everywhere else costs more or else comes in smaller containers (when it's in stock at all) due to inflation picking up because of all the free money sloshing around the economy, so the money in your hard-earned savings now is now worth less.

*The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices doesn't do what the President wants, so the CDC Director follows the politics and overrules them, then tells everyone they should follow the science.

*Media pundits and politicians tell you incorrect things, then accuse anyone who corrects them of spreading misinformation and try to get that person censored, fired, and so forth.

*The Republican Party was on the edge of extinction, but now it looks like they will return to power for an entire generation and do all sorts of dumb things like force women who had abortions to bury their fetuses because they are right on one issue and The Democrats can't admit they were wrong on it and keep doubling down on it instead.

*You post a complaint about how living in the country seems like living the final days of the Soviet Union, complete with the corporate media serving the role of Pravda, but Big Tech censors it since leaders don't like to be told when they are wrong, and will even double down on mistakes and kill people rather than admit they were wrong and finally do the right things.

Welcome to living in Joe Biden's America, where everything is a pain in the ass.  Trump is a con artist, but it's enough to make one nostalgic . . .

If you need to laugh, so you don't cry, then please read Edna's Employment Agency.

What Happened To The ACLU? What Happened To American Liberalism?

 

I got a letter asking for money from me from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).  I have been a member of the ACLU for years, but I ripped up the contents of the letter, stuffed them in the envelope, wrote the above message on the back of the envelope, and mailed it back to them.

With luck, they'll get the hint and take me off their mailing list, or, better yet, reconsider their cowardly and erroneous support for vaccine mandates.  I was aghast when I read the following Glenn Greenwald article:  "The ACLU, Prior to COVID, Denounced Mandates and Coercive Measures to Fight Pandemics".  I actually went and checked it out myself, and yes, after years of defending people and their rights to make their own healthcare decisions, the ACLU seems to be so scared of SARS Jr. that they abandoned their principles in the manner that Greenwald describes. 

You can argue that the ACLU themselves are not the writers of the article, only a pair of their senior lawyers, but it's fairly clear that supporting vaccine mandates is a de facto position now of the organization, as the following article explains:  "Why the ACLU Flip-Flopped on Vaccine Mandates".  In the past, the organization seemed to stick to their civil liberty principles regardless of how unpopular their lawsuits and campaigns were at the time.  You can see a timeline of the ACLU's fine work here:  "The Successes of the American Civil Liberties Union".  They supported Communists, African-Americans, abortionists, pornographers, Nazis, and other minorities from the tyranny of popular opinion.

That's why it is so disappointing to see the ACLU now play the role of the bully, seemingly only because their staff members are scared of a virus that, while annoying and even deadly, clearly is not The Black Plague.

For those of you unfamiliar with The Black Plague, here's a primer:  https://www.history.com/topics/middle-ages/black-death.  Basically, in 5 years, it killed a third of Europe.

Now that's a pandemic.

SARS Jr. (I call COVID-19 SARS-Jr. because that's basically what it is:  "The Naming System Behind SARS-CoV-2"), by contrast, doesn't seem to be making the same dent in world population.  In 2020, world population was estimated at 7,794,798,739.  Now, it's estimated at 7,896,921,101 and counting (you can follow the fun at https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/#pastfuture).

So the virus is nasty, but there are more people on earth in 2021 than there were last year, so it's not that nasty that we need to abandon all sense and principle, and I am not sure if anything is worth abandoning sense and principle.  Panics, and this is a panic, usually end badly.  We're already seeing the effects with people fighting among one another, blaming one another for illnesses and deaths (guess what, it's a virus that's responsible, and not one another--OK, if you're a conspiracy theorist, you can blame Anthony Fauci, Peter Daszek, Fort Detrick, The Wuhan Institute Of Virology, and everyone else who likes to fund and conduct gain of function research in coronaviruses:  "Rep. Roy Demands Pelosi Open Investigations On COVID Origins").  We've all seen nasty sideeffects from the attempts to stop the spread of the virus, whether medically, economically, and personally.

One of them is now the ACLU losing all sense.  As Alex Berenson has bravely reported (they threw him off Twitter because the facts, studies, and observations he notes do not fit the party line), the Sars Jr. vaccines are not as effective as people hoped they would be and they have harmful sideeffects and consequences.  Given that situation, it's odd that there is such a push to get everyone vaccinated.  If Biden and the others pushing vaccine mandates thought the vaccines worked, why would they care so much about others making different health decisions as the vaccinated would have nothing to fear from anyone unvaccinated?  Even Noam Chomsky, historically a smart guy, can't seem to grasp this point.  Greenwald again had an excellent article about this entitled:  "An NBA Star and New York's Governor Show That Liberal COVID Discourse is Devoid of Science".

Liberals are all concerned for the moment about protecting the right to choose when it comes to abortion, and I'm with them; that's a big decision about one's own body and it should be left to the individual whose body is in question.  But the same goes for the vaccine.  I guess when it comes to killing babies it's "my body, my choice", but for anything else, it's "my body, Biden's choice, ACLU's choice, your governor's choice, your school board's choice, and so on and so forth").   

Which brings me to my second point:  what happened to liberalism?  What happened to the ACLU seems to have happened to liberals across the board.  For example, I got a fundraising email from Democratic Congressional Representative Tim Ryan, who is running for Senate in Ohio.  He discloses that he is fully vaccinated but he has the virus.  Rather than blame Big Pharma for making a rushed, crappy product and Big Media and Big Government for foisting it on him, he writes, "And I’m grateful to have the protection of a safe and effective vaccine that's kept my case fairly mild."

I guess Ryan is trying not to get me to give his campaign money by writing something as stupid as that.  Ryan is young for a politician (48 years or so) and seemingly healthy (he does yoga and whatnot), so he would likely have had a mild case of the virus even if he didn't have the vaccine.  Like most nasty viruses, it hits the old and sick the hardest.  And guess what, no one is going to live forever anyway.  If the virus doesn't get me when I am old and weak, then something else will.  I just hope I don't have to live in misery because public health officials and politicians want to go on power trips trying to do something about something they are powerless to do anything about.  Viruses spread.  At this point, the genie is not going back in the bottle.  All they can do is make other aspects of life miserable.  In the past, this virus would have been kept to a manageable medical matter and not something that is causing so much collateral damage in other aspects of life.  Today, our leaders are morons, so we get two years and counting of dumbness.

As a warning to liberals, you're opening the door to con artist Trump's return and Republicans taking over Congress.  They're wrong on nearly every other issue, but this is the issue that currently affects everyone's lives most directly, and you're on the wrong side of it.  Don't get involved.  If people want to get the vaccine, then let them get the vaccine.  If they want to wear masks, then let them wear masks.  But don't force people to do things that have been demonstrated to not work, despite every little doctor and politician on the news claiming the opposite (makes me wonder if these people know how to do math and logic because the virus keeps going regardless of these efforts, even in localities with very different approaches to things).  When you shove unwanted medicine down a population's throat, they're going to eventually shove something back that you don't want.  This article on Biden's growing unpopularity is probably just the top of the roll down the hill:  "Biden's Slide With Key Voters: Momentary Blip or Danger Sign?".  It's not too late for liberals and the ACLU to gather some courage and go back and find their principles.  2022 and 2024 are still a ways away.  Biden should have just declared victory over the virus early on and moved on.  Now it's his problem and not Trump's.  Banning people for expressing dissident views doesn't exactly help your side's credibility (the ACLU has been fairly silent on these big tech free speech issues as well, leaving it to The Republicans, who a generation ago wanted to censor information about sexuality); it's like you're just conceding the debate by trying to stifle the other side (along those lines, I was particularly disturbed by Elizabeth Warren's attempt to pressure Amazon to censor Berenson's books because Berenson's stuff seems to hold up; unlike most of the other American reporters who read press releases and lack critical thinking skills--watch the network nightly news and count how many Big Pharma commercials air for fun--when I factcheck Berenson his analysis bears out).  Even if Berenson were dead wrong, it's not for Warren to pick what I or anyone else can read.  She can stick to picking her own reading.

But since she's opened the door to having others pick what one reads, then I suggest she start rereading The Bill Of Rights she swore to uphold.  Apparently, she needs some remediation there.  

And so does the ACLU. 

The Idea That Voters Should Select Candidates In Primary Elections Seems to Be Growing

A few months ago I wrote about how I thought it was obnoxious that the county party where I live endorsed candidates in the primary ahead of the election.  It was a blatant attempt by party bosses to favor certain candidates over others.  It looks like some others have now also objected to this practice as Our Revolution has launched some activism along these lines.  Presumably, this is because their candidates tend to be of the progressive and grassroots type who gets usually victimized by this process.  I'm not sure how common this practice is, but it definitely needs to be discarded.  Once again, voters should be picking the candidates for the general election, not party bosses.  If enough people object to this practice, it will go away.  Unfortunately, most people don't seem to care about much these days, so it will definitely be an uphill battle.  It is one of many sensible election reforms that should be made.  It's not quite to the ridiculousness of having a partisan referee an election, but it's pretty close.  By the way, the Ohio Democratic Party never did get back to me about why they were endorsing candidates ahead of a primary election.  Sigh . . . I guess they were too busy preparing to lose another general election.  Just saying, maybe they wouldn't have such a horrible losing streak if they just let voters decide the primaries.

Our "democracy" is pretty laughable these days, but that's also pretty depressing.  If you want an all around more pleasant humorous experience, then please read my latest novel.

Facemask Follies

So it seems the politicians, public health officials, and even the general public just will not let the COVID-19 panic pass.  The latest hysteria is the mandatory wearing of facemasks among the entire population (at least, most people have learned that lockdowns don't work; they do not stop the virus; they just create more problems--for a nice overview on the stupidity of lockdowns, please check out Heather Mac Donald's "Four Months Of Unprecedented Malfeasance").  Unfortunately, mandatory facemasking is just as dumb as the lockdowns.  Those of you who think facemasks are the solution, please have an open mind and keep reading.

First of all, facemasks apparently do not stop the spread of the virus.  I know this goes contrary to the heavy propaganda push about wearing them from politicians, public health officials, and the general public, but it appears to be true.   Let's start with the World Health Organization.  Their most recent publication about facemasks is "Advice on the use of masks in the context of COVID-19" updated on 5 June 2020, which is an interesting overview on masks in a variety of settings.  For health care workers treating COVID-19 patients, WHO clearly recommends the wearing of facemasks.  However, given how many healthcare workers wore masks and still died from the disease, one does wonder if they are as effective as WHO hopes.

Moving on to the issue at hand, it gets worse.  Even WHO admits that there is no evidence suggesting that masking an entire population will be helpful:  "At present, there is no direct evidence (from studies on COVID-19 and in healthy people in the community) on the effectiveness of universal masking of healthy people in the community to prevent infection with respiratory viruses, including COVID-19."

Of course, the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.  Universal masking could work; we just don't know yet.  However, such a pronounced change in social behavior needs some evidence before it's adopted.  The politicians such as the governor of Ohio USA who have mandated facemasks did so without evidence (mine, in the picture above, says "Resign DeWine" if you're curious--he can compel me to wear one, but he can't compel me to like it).

Even a politician with some horsesense (DeWine also was dumb enough to push for the Iraq War because of the weapons of mass destruction lies, so one expects him to make idiotic decisions; the only ones dumber than him are the Ohio voters who keep electing the moron so he can continue to make more dumb decisions to make their lives worse) such as Bernie Sanders is pushing universal facemasking.  Despite giving up on his presidential run, Sanders continues to send out fundraising emails (Why?  I have no idea.  You will have to ask him.  Maybe he's hoping the Democrats will figure out Joe Biden is senile and turn back to him at the last minute).  In a recent one, he wrote, "The science is clear: Wearing a mask is the best way to protect ourselves from the coronavirus and save lives, and the widespread use of masks will get Americans back to work sooner and reunite families who have stayed apart."  Since the research I was finding while researching mandatory facemasking was suggesting quite the opposite, I emailed Sanders asking if he could point me to that "clear science".

He did not reply, but he did send me four more fundraising emails.

I unsubscribed.  

Well, maybe he didn't get back to me because there is no clear science.  While I did find the occasional study that suggested facemasks might be good for sick people to wear, I found more often stuff that stated that facemasks were more or less useless overall such as this:  ("A cloth mask or face covering does very little to prevent the emission or inhalation of small particles.").

And this: ("In pooled analysis, we found no significant reduction in influenza transmission with the use of face masks").

And this:  ("Viruses, including the coronavirus that scientists believe may be the cause of SARS, are so tiny that they can easily pass through such barriers.").

And this:  ("[B]oth surgical and cotton masks seem to be ineffective in preventing the dissemination of SARS–CoV-2 from the coughs of patients with COVID-19 to the environment and external mask surface").

That last link raises another interesting issue.  If you click on it, you don't go to the actual study; instead, you go to an article about the study.

This is because the study has disappeared.  It was retracted by the authors.  Parsing the retraction carefully, it looks as if the authors wanted to correct whatever mistake they made, but the editors said no.

Maybe their mistake was simply going against the groupthink tide.  One bizarre sideline of researching this issue was how much of the research tended to disappear.  A study by a retired dentist from 2016 about how facemasks don't work in dentistry?

Poof!  Gone!  You can find it mentioned by Peter Hitchens in this article, but if you go to where it was posted, you find this:  "“Why Face Masks Don’t Work: A Revealing Review” by John Hardie, BDS, MSc, PhD, FRCDC, it has been removed. The content was published in 2016 and is no longer relevant in our current climate."  However, you can still find it if you know where to look.  Take that URL from the link and go to one of the links in my link section that takes you to websites from the past.  I can't tell you more because I don't want it to disappear even more so, but you can find it if you want to.  Fortunately, the retired dentist has kept writing.  You can see what he thinks about COVID-19 here (while you're there, you might as well read "Should You Wear A Mask?  What Does The Science Say?").

I even experienced some of the Orwellian memory hole censorship personally on NextDoor.Com.  Some well-meaning moron had slapped up a quick post called "Wear A Mask!" and the thread exploded like no thread that I had ever seen on there.  Most folks were pro-mask and not just for themselves; they wanted you to wear a mask as well.  In fact, if you didn't, they thought you were a horrible person who was trying to kill them.

The fear that the politicians and public health officials have whipped up about the virus goes beyond even the considerable fear whipped up by the politicians during the War On Terror.  Back then, we were supposed to be afraid of terrorists; now, apparently, we're supposed to be afraid of one another.  For those of us old-fashioned Americans who believe along with FDR that "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance", this is particularly annoying.

These folks couldn't be reasoned with.  I would cite the WHO report, and they would tell me I was citing "junk science".  One poster claimed that New York USA had mandatory facemasking and that's why they were doing better than we were in Ohio USA.  But when I looked up the per capita death rate on the CDC website, New York was so bad they had it divided into the city and the state, and they both were in the top ten in the USA with the City being #1 by itself (Ohio was 27th or something at the time, with something like 1/10th of the per capita deaths of NY overall).  When I pointed this out, they carried on as if they lived in some alternate reality where Ohio had the larger death rate.  It was like people thought they had a right to their own facts, not just their own opinions.

The people on my "side" per se and resistant to mandatory facemasking were an interesting bunch as well.  Most seemed to believe in various conspiracy theories about the virus.  I get the conspiracy theory appeal.  Even when they're daft, they still reassure people that someone somewhere, even if they're evil, knows what they are doing, and life is not as chaotic as it seems.

There is a comfort in that because otherwise the truth appears to be that we are just led by morons who have no idea what they are doing.

Eventually, NextDoor.Com just deleted the whole thread.  Maybe someone complained, or maybe they didn't want to offend the State Of Ohio, who was one of their main advertisers (reminding us all to "Wear A Mask!" among other things).  I tried contacting them to find out, but there seemed no way to reach them.  Since I wasn't down with censorship, I just deleted my account.

The censorship and groupthink is definitely creepy.  To add more creepiness on top, my home county made headlines for establishing a snitch line where people could inform on those not wearing masks.  I am sure this is in a fine tradition of fascism.  Maybe the Nazis had such a snitch line in Amsterdam and that's how poor Anne Frank got caught.  Either way, it's annoying to pay taxes to these people and they won't even provide basic services because they're terrified of the virus (for example, closing most of the county buildings to the public), but they'll waste tax money on a snitch line about something that does nothing to help the situation.

My county is corruptly run by Dems while Ohio is corruptly run by Repubs, but when it comes to mandatory facemasking, they're in agreement.  They love citizens being muzzled.  Not only is it a nice symbol of a voiceless public, but it makes the politicians able to pretend that their failed lockdown policies weren't to blame for failing to stop the virus and then creating an economic disaster (a gift that may keep on giving), it was the public not wearing masks that is to blame.

In truth, the virus isn't going to be stopped.  It's going to run its course.  All the politicians and public health officials on power trips and the population that supports the nonsense they slop out can do is make more problems on top of the annoying virus.  Some countries such as The Netherlands and Sweden have somewhat recognized this.

Sadly, if you watch the network news and read a lot of the panic porn articles online, you probably are too terrified to critically think enough to recognize that the true way forward is to return to normality as quickly as possible (indeed, we never should have panicked in the first place).  Strangely enough, the voices of reason currently seem to be all coming from right wing nutjobs, which makes things even more terrifying.  I suppose, like a stopped clock, they are right once in a while (in the stopped clock's case, twice a day; in the right-wingers' case maybe only on this issue).  So, if you need an alternate to the mainstream media hysteria, check out Justin Hart and Alex Berenson for some counterweights.  Just like Trump, when liberals and progressives push nonsense, it just makes them harder to believe the next time, even if they're right.  So, please, people who are otherwise semi-reasonable, stop pushing for mandatory facemasking and other strategies that will do little or nothing to stop the virus.  Start pushing for a return to normalcy and away from hysteria over a nasty variation of the common cold.  There are almost 8 billion human beings, more than ever in history; this virus is not going to make a dent in that number overall.  Politicians and public health officials cannot conquer death; they can make a mess of life though. 

In 1984, Orwell wrote "If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — forever."  Even old George couldn't imagine that we would be so dumb that the face would be wearing a facemask.

1984's a better book overall, but it isn't as funny as Edna's Employment Agency, and, let's face it, if you made it through that post about how crazy Americans have gotten panicking over a virus, then you need a laugh.

Governors' Names On Highway Signs Update

Over the past decade, I've commented several times on a pet peeve of mine, which is politicians sticking their names on highway and other road signs paid by taxpayers (see the following posts:  2014A, 2014B, 2014C, 2014D, 2014E, 2018A, 2018B, and 2018C).  Basically, the politicians are trying to get free political advertising at taxpayer expense.  I suspect no motorist really cares whom the mayor of a city is or the governor of a state is, and if any of them do care, it certainly isn't worth the expense of the sign (for states, sticking a governor's name on a sign can run to thousands of dollars).  This should be an easy fix, right?

Nope.  Politicians keep doing this.  And if they don't, some gal or guy in the highway department or whatnot who wishes to suck up to her or his new boss does.  I had a small hope that Ohio USA would take the opportunity to not to do so when a new governor took office in 2019, but, nope, they did it again.  This time, they just made new highway signs overall at greater expense (possibly to camouflage the costs of putting on the new governor's and lieutenant governor's names since they didn't make new overlay signs just for that).  Unfortunately, at some point, someone will have to paint over those names when the officeholders change or they'll be back to the overlay signs, so nothing really changed.  Also, unfortunately, though Pennsylvania still has a good I-80 sign at the spot I typically pass, I did spot a turnpike sign with the governor's name on it last year.

All these politicians obsessed with quarantines ought to quarantine these type of highway signs.  A plain welcome to wherever sign will suffice.  We don't need to know whom the governor is.  Of course, given the disastrous decisions many of these governors have made overreacting to COVID-19, they may regret having their names up on these signs.

After all, some irate folks who have had their lives destroyed by the lockdowns may follow Elon Musk's advice about tarring and feathering the politicians who panicked about the virus and use the signs as a reminder of whom exactly to boil the oil for.

If the continued existence of these highway signs depress you as well, cheer up with my latest novel!

What's Going On With Democracy And Civil Liberties?

These are weird times, and from a democratic and civil liberty point of view a bit alarming.  Where I live, we've had a botched election.  New York's Democratic officials seem to be actively trying to still damage Bernie Sanders even though he already dropped out of the presidential race.  We have tech companies playing censor, presumably to curry favor with the government officials who regulate them (contrast that with the early hope of the Internet to allow for a flowering of free speech and minority viewpoints, even bigger than the print zines in the picture above).  Most of the country is still under house arrest, even though I just checked the Constitution and there's no freedom from assembly, only the freedom to assemble, meaning that regardless of what's happening or the justification given by politicians, human rights don't get postponed or cancelled.  With luck, the current panic will die down, but people will need to start exercising their rights, or there will be some lasting damage to civil society as a whole and us as individuals.  Maybe the notion that Americans were much made of sterner stuff is a historical fantasy, but it seems as if centuries old Enlightenment values are eroding under mountains of cash and stupidity.    

I Thought The Primary Was When Candidates Were Endorsed?

The primary election in Ohio was extended.

Don't get me started on that.

OK, I will get started on that.  I was supposed to work as a pollworker, you know doing my democratic duty and getting a bit of dosh.  It's a brutal day.  I work from 6 in the morning until 8 at night or something.  Plus I have to set up the night before and go to a training session a week before.  As if that isn't bad enough, this year, the governor was panicking about COVID-19 and decided at the last minute to cancel the election.  So the day before the election was this back and forth as public officials figured out what they were going to do.  Keep in mind, I have to go to bed early, so I can get up in the middle of the night to get ready to work the polls.  At first, it seemed a done deal the election was going to be postponed.  I was told by the Board Of Elections that the evening setup was canceled.  Then, I saw on the tv news that a judge had struck down the governor's order.  At that point, I headed to bed.  I was brushing my teeth, when the Board Of Elections called to say I had to report at 5 a.m. now, even earlier than usual (presumably because we still had to set things up).  I think I woke up somewhere between 3 and 4 a.m., got ready, and headed over to the polling place.

Of course, no one was there.  At that point, I remembered that the robocall from the Board said something about calling them in the morning.  So I called, and, of course, found out that the politicians had figured out some other way of postponing the election (they declared in-person voting to be a public health threat or something).

Great!  I wish they had told me that before I had to set my alarm for the wee hours of the morning.  No one is even entirely sure this is all legal, but one can't turn back time, so now they decided the election will be held by absentee ballot only, which sucks because Ohio has this goofy system of voter registration to prevent basically nonexistent voter fraud (well, it exists in the minds of Republican politicians who would never get elected anywhere if most people voted, but that's not the same thing as reality).  I had to request a ballot, filling out a form asking for my ID, and then buy a stamp to mail it.  Then, I get the ballot (fortunately, the return is postagepaid) and I have to again fill in my ID information.  Why do I need to fill in the same info twice?  Just put it on the ballot bit if one is worried about that.  That would suffice to guard against the almost nonexistent voter fraud.  Clearly, the system is designed to frustrate people enough that they won't vote, and though I am not a fan of encouraging stupid people to vote (generally, they vote stupidly), neither am I a fan of making voting extra-difficult just to be a creep.

Anyway, enough digression, so I receive this postcard in the mail today because the election is being extended.  The postcard tries to tell me which Democrats to vote for (currently, I am a registered Democrat because it is basically one-party rule where I live locally, so if I want more of a say in local elections I need to officially be a Democrat--some of the local Democrats are about as creepy though as most of the state and national Republicans are).

Pardon me, I thought the primary election was what endorsed Democrats.  I don't know what this thing is, other than party bosses trying to steer wins to favored candidates.  I'll try to contact the state party who sent it out though and see what they say, just to be fair.  If they respond, I'll post about this again.

Since I seem to be channeling the ghost of Andy Rooney anyway here and complaining, I might as well note the absurdity of taxpayers paying for partisan primary elections in the first place.  I suppose the argument would be that this guarantees fair elections, but the parties are essentially private institutions.  On this ballot, there was only one issue, which could have waited until the general election.  It looks more like the parties conspired together to pass on the costs of their primary elections to the general public, who should only be concerned that the general election is fair; let the parties figure out their internal dynamics on their own dime.

The other creepy thing on this card is how many races are uncontested.  Now, of course, there will be candidates from other parties in the general election for these positions, but it's still sad that such a lack of choice exists in a democracy.  I have written about this before and concluded that it was not a good idea.  In any case, it goes a long way to explain why our officials make such dumb decisions and waste so much tax money.

I would humbly suggest that the Ohio Democratic Party stop this practice of trying to sway the primary voters and just let the primary voters decide whom to endorse, but I suspect that's a waste of time (though I have time to waste , so I may do it anyway).  After all, this is a state party that regularly gets their clocks cleaned by neaderthallike Republican candidates, so that it's basically one party rule statewide, so clearly this is a group that makes dumb decisions to begin with.

But there's always hope.

Right?

For some other folks who make questionable decisions, please read my latest novel.

2018 Ohio Race For Governor

What a pleasure it was a couple of weeks ago to drive to Pennsylvania and see a welcome sign that just had the usual stupid state tourism slogan ("pursue your happiness" or some similar nonsense) and didn't provide free advertising for politicians.  This spring, when Ohio takes down the current governor/lieutenant governor highway overlay signs, we shall see if they get replaced by new signs with the names of the new officeholders on them.  Odds are, they probably will, for the vanity of politicians holds few limits.  I did seek out the candidates on Facebook to see where they stood on this small but easy issue.  Most ignored me, of course, but the Libertarian candidate said that he also thought it was a stupid waste of taxpayer money and was against it.  So, here's a shoutout to Travis Irvine for taking the right stance.  I was a little surprised the Greens didn't go anti governor's name on the welcome sign, as they did last election, but maybe they are just too disorganized this time to respond.  The Democrats ignored me, which was no different from their stance in the primary election.  At least, I could message them though.  For the Republicans, I was reduced to just posting a comment on one of their posts.  If this is any indication of how they will govern, then we can look forward to being ignored.  Unless, of course, we're a big campaign donor.  Politicians . . . sigh.

The Fake News Gazette

The Trump News Gazette*

Publishing All The News Donald Trump Likes Since 1783**

Today, the greatest President ever*** announced his new initiative to end all problems in America. Typically, the fake news media did not cover this announcement, focusing instead of some tawdry, unimportant scandal****. Yet, the news was huge. Called "Keep America From Becoming a Shithole," the new initiative takes all the money from the U.S Treasury and loans it to Trump, Inc. to finance an array of daring projects.***** The President touted just a project or two, and, by the way, if you'll pardon this aside from your humble correspondent, the President's hair looked AWESOME! But back to the content, for example, the Ohio Turnpike will now be named The Trump Turnpike. "I like the ring of that," the President said, "Kasich couldn't get the job done when he tried to sell the turnpike, but I get things done."

The audience was puzzled by the mention of Kasich, then Sarah Huckabee Sanders ran to the podium and explained to the audience that he was the governor of Ohio. "Forget him!" the President said, "I mean forget him again. You already forgot him. Sad! I also have some huge news. As you know I have asked for the resignation of my current Secretary of War."

Huckabee Sanders whispered something in the President's ear.

"Oh, yes," the President continued, "Defense. Defense. Like football. All right, folks, let's not get me started on the NFL. Shameful. Sad! Anyway, I think the best defense is a good offense, so I was very, very disappointed that the current Secretary of War, I mean Defense, hadn't started any wars. I mean, he's been in office for a year. And not a single war. I mean I'm not going to be like Obama and just be content to continue the wars of other presidents. I want one of my own. I want the history books to note a Trump Doctrine like that, you know, Madison Doctrine or whatever. So I am appointing Bobby Lashley as my new Secretary of Defense. Folks, he's tremendous. I worked with Bobby when I did some wrestling with my great friend Vince McMahon in his WWF. Bobby's also black, so to all those people who say I am racist, look who I am appointing as Secretary of War. He's going to do a tremendous job, folks. And to further prove I'm not racist, I'm going to ask Bobby to start in a white country, maybe Norway, for his first war."

"Come out, Bobby," the President called, and Bobby bounced onto the stage and posed shirtless, flexing his muscles for the crowd, "No, we'll start off with something easy like Iceland. Maybe you should have put in that Trump golf course, folks. The geysers would have been awesome if we made them water hazards. But, seriously, folks, Iceland's a terrific country. It's going to make a great state someday after we take it over."'

The audience applauded the President's brilliance. Bobby Lashley bodyslammed the one member of the audience who didn't applaud.******

*Formerly The Fake News Gazette

**Correction, since 2018

***Correction, the current President, not the greatest President, which is a title historians argue about.

****The current impeachment of the President trial going on in the Senate

*****Ideas left over from the Obama Administration that the Republican Congress would not fund.

 ******He later apologized to the man who it turned out was a double amputee who didn't have hands. The President invited the man to dinner and asked everyone there to give him a hand for attending. Then, noticing his unintended pun, he noted that everyone with hands should start their own "#MeToo" movement on Twitter since people without hands had real problems unlike those whiny feminists. The President further noted that the double amputee would be liked very well by those feminists since he couldn't grab anyone by the pussy. At this comment, Huckabee Sanders rose and slipped out the side door and went and had several Irish Car Bombs at a bar with Sean Spicer and your humble correspondent, who had also left earlier to start drinking heavily to write this article.