Ezra Klein Talks of Conventions and Normality

Ezra Klein talks about how diffeent the RNC convention was from the norm. Worth a watch.  Hit link.


http://www.vox.com/2016/7/28/12281222/trump-clinton-conventions

Election 2016 - Libertarian Party

  Now that we have the major players, and for the most part every party has selected their nominee, it is time to start discussing the election here.

  There are things I like about the Libertarian Party, but other things I do not.  I do think nobody would argue thought that it is the most credible of the so called third parties.  Given the fact that so many detest the major party nominees, I am going to start with the other parties in order of their credibility (in my admittedly subjective opinion) and mathematical chances of election.


  Libertarian Party

Presidential Candidate:  Gary Johnson
VP  Candidate:               William Weld


 While I like the fact that on most civil issues the Libertarians are for increased personal liberty and as long as you are harming nobody else, leaving you alone.  I support their call for full legalization of marijuana, wending the drug war, and getting rid of private prisons.  all have done vast damage to our society in myriad ways.  Sadly though the party leaves the realm of reality in other ways and offers up a platform with things in it so vile and dangerous I cannot support them

 Sorry but I cannot get behind a party who has an official position says child labor laws are immoral and need to be immediately repealed because it places an unfair burden on business to not be able to force 6 year old kids into coal mines for 3 cents a day, because hey a minimum wage is unfair too. Oh yes and giving that 6 year old a breather mask so he doesn't die of black lung before he grows hair on his willy is also an unfair burden, tell the kid not to breathe to deeply.

More importantly even than those is their stand on environmental laws. This is a battle I lived through. The official Libertarian position is that all these laws need to go. Business should be able to spew anything they want anywhere they want. That if some harm comes from this it is not the role of government to do anything about it, that we as individual citizens have to take on huge corporations in court and prove that we were harmed, exactly to what monetary value that harm was, and that this corporation was responsible and no other. Do you really think that you have the resources to make a fair court battle with Dow Chemical or the Ford Motor Company?

Many of you are too young to remember the things I have seen.

Standing on the bank of the Clinton River in Mt. Clemens MI watching it burn for 3 days becasue it was so polluted a passing car that a cigarette butt had been tossed out of on a bridge cause it to explode.

The Cuyahoga River in Cleveland burning even longer in similar circumstances when I was younger.

Driving to Chicago and seeing a dark mass on the horizon for more than half an hour as we approached Ft. Wayne Indiana, and driving through it on a Sunday, near noon, on a cloudless day and having to have the windows up and the headlights on because the air pollution was so bad you could barely see a bright spot n the gloom where the sun was.

I lived through that, and know that it too represents a clear and present danger to our future. Both types of law took decades, and hundreds of deaths to enact, and that was before corporations were allowed unlimited buying power in elections. If we loose them, we loose them forever and our nation will go further down the road to a dystopian hellhole where we all slave for rich corporate masters until our increasingly birth defected children (from the pollution) can no longer even breed and we die out.

The Libertarians, like Trump, represent an existential threat to our liberty and indeed the very survival of the human race. I cannot vote for them. I cannot recommend anyone else vote for them. In fact I openly call on all people to NOT vote for them.

  A little musical interlude, a song from the era when we were trying to enact Clean Air and Clean Water legislation.

Dad gets to play make-up artist.

Dad gets a makeover.

Undrinkable: The Flint Water Emergency

The Danger That is Donald Trump

I've been spending too much time on Facebook and my Book Blog, Baalat's Temple, and not enough doing this blog.  I'll be changing that this year.

Adolf Hitler took power in Germany quite legally. Many people forget that fact. One of the ways he took power is because so many citizens of Germany thought he was an obvious buffoon who would flame out. He flamed out finally, but not until he lead the world down the path of unimaginable horror.

We are witnessing the rise of our own American Hitler. I speak of course of Donald Trump. this man is more dangerous to our nation, its place in the world and its posterity than any other man, woman, or group on the planet. Trump's rise in the campaign is fueled by the least educated, low information, hate filled and frightened people in our nation. Their bigotry, ignorance and fear feed his ego, bigotry and thirst for power. A feedback loop of every negative facet of humanity has developed between him and these people and it is every bit as dangerous as the same phenomena that placed Hitler in power.

Do not underestimate the danger we are in at this moment in history. Those of us who think he is dangerous, those of you who think he is a joke that will collapse, anyone not ignorant, fearful and bigoted need to loudly stand up and repudiate him.

Donald Trump, I reject and condemn you and everything you stand for. Your fascist, racist, bigoted kleptocracy is everything our nation was founded to be opposed to. I will not be silent. I will not be passive. You are an embarrassment to me as a citizen of the United States and more so as a member of the human race. I stand for our Constitution and for my fellow citizens of all races, creeds and colors.