Walkabout Thoughts #46

My thoughts, Stream of consciousness, rough and ready, while walking off long Covid and listening to podcasts…June 30, 2023 Friday


Regarding affirmative action in the SCOTUS, shot me down this week, here’s the deal about that…one University where there were 9% Blacks have been cut down to 4%, in a country that has 13% Blacks who are living and paying taxes in America. Whenever we have a situation where there’s too few voters and taxpayers ethnocentrically in a group, in a workforce, an educational system, in the military, or prisons, workers, or inmates, and the percentage is way out of whack? That’s when it needs to be addressed. And that’s what we’ve been saying. In the case of Blacks, way too many are inmates. Way too few are in institutions of education. I could get what conservative members of SCOTUS are saying, if they see affirmative action laws as unconstitutional, even if I may disagree with them. But when you look at a group and see the disparity and the injustice that should be corrected, how do you do that? Are you proactive or do you react to that, that you’re just fine with it? And so we have had affirmative action laws, hoping to correct that. But not correct it 100%. Which AGAIN evokes the question… "What the fuck are whites complaining about?" Is it that they were that week and ineffective themselves, but today they have to beg forevermore for cushions to their existence? That while Blacks and Minorities should “pull them selves up by the boot straps“ because that’s those American's quote? But they don’t wanna do that for themselves? Because when They have to do it, it’s somehow reverse racism? I grew up, middle, maybe upper lower class, and through hard work and multiple jobs my stepfather worked us into lower middle and at some point (after I moved out) middle-middle class, although they were always in debt. There was no question when they died that they'd leave any money for their kids. 

I graduated high school at 17, immediately got a job and moved the hell out. I was going nowhere in life. And so I joined the Air Force at 20. I'd given it a few years to try to do better but just saw no prospects. Between that belief and a curious nature, and ability to absorb information easily in some ways, with difficulty in others because of ADHD, I struggled all my life to get out of debt myself. In positioning myself, luckily I found some opportunities, and never turned down opportunities out of fear. Plenty of times I was fearful of taking on a newer and harder position. But I kept my mother's dad in mind, our grandfather who always excepted challenges when half the time he didn’t know what he was doing, until he started doing it, or teaching it, but kept that to himself. He forced himself to succeed, and with that model in mind, I got through life bouncing around with plenty of knocks and bruises. Eventually with a small retirement, that should’ve been much larger. But at least I had one, at least I have something.

Some colleges, after hearing about SCOTUS knocking down affirmative action laws, say they will continue trying to do what’s right, regardless. Until OUR federal judiciary and SCOTUS, toxically and conservatively stacked and weighted with conservatives, at some point finally says it’s unconstitutional, remember always what they did with abortion. They won a little and they took a lot. They just wanted to pass it back to the states they said, and then they tried to pass federal laws against it to take it away from the states and nationalize an illegal ban. These are not trustworthy people. It’s not my orientation but their actions that prove this time and time again. Conservatism leans into religion, and so you can trust religion being pro-deity and anti-human in passing more absolutist laws.

How is Black SCOTUS Justice Clarence Thomas not what other Blacks used to refer to as a “Uncle Tom“? An apologist for white privilege. So I asked the AI:

"The term "Uncle Tom" originated from Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel titled "Uncle Tom's Cabin," which was published in 1852. The novel depicted the life of a slave named Tom, who was portrayed as a submissive and loyal servant to his white master. Over time, the term "Uncle Tom" has evolved into a derogatory term used to criticize African Americans who are perceived as being overly subservient to white people or betraying the interests of their own community.

"The term "Uncle Tom" is often used as an insult to demean African Americans who are seen as acquiescing to racism or supporting policies or actions that are detrimental to their own racial or ethnic group. It suggests a lack of racial consciousness or a willingness to conform to white societal expectations at the expense of one's own identity and community.

"It's important to note that the term is considered derogatory and offensive, as it perpetuates harmful stereotypes and oversimplifies complex issues related to race and identity. It is generally discouraged to use such terms, as they can contribute to negative racial tensions and misunderstandings."

OK, so maybe calling Justice Thomas, "Uncle Tom" is offensive. Then explain what the fuck he is doing?

However I have little respect for anyone who thinks like Thomas. "I put in the sweat labor to get to where I got to, everyone else had better appreciate that and do the same!" Not realizing that equating what he went through was the same for others, regardless how he grew up. To NOT stand up for your own, for those like you (regardless of race), so also giving due consideration for any of the poor, immigrants or, Native Americans who we took these lands FROM, or many Mexicans who were in a similar situation, though perhaps not quite so murderously abusive). 

With such considerations, I must here offer this from, "The Beat with Ari Melber", podcast on a special episode:
"BONUS: Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Affirmative Action Dissent Read by Actress Alfre Woodard". "Award-winning actress Alfre Woodard reads Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s entire 29-page dissent to the affirmative action ruling." Why? Because of SCOTUS poor standing of late in their excessively conservative extremist rulings. The Republican Party and its supporters have gone off the deep end, grabbing things they've long wanted, regardless the consequences. Because it's easier to take and apologize later and retain some, than do what is right and receive little of what you want. No matter who unethical, immoral or toxic it is to the nation overall.

Is it time to rid the world of internal combustion engine leaf blowers and grass trimmers, yet? For that of battery powered ones? I read this thing decades ago, while it apparently doesn’t have scientific legitimacy, it does makes sense. That is that as civilization evolves, it becomes more advanced to the point that it becomes quieter. Maybe darker? Thus earth once shouted massive amounts of signals off planet and our cities and machines are noisy. But as we get more electric cars and such, we become quieter as we make advances. It also makes sense we would utilize lighting more adeptly so we'd direct smaller amounts of lights (at night) with more efficiency in various ways. But you get it concept.

How do we know that the Bible or the Quran aren't some of the largest “telephone game“ examples in the history of humanity? That being in writing things down after telling them by word of mouth for a long time, and then by translating them so that through time and history, we've been altering them? And we’ve seen how that subvert and/or Re-orients from the original message.

So, according to SCOTUS... racial Gerrymandering exists, but that’s where it ends? WTF?

One wonders if we sent back in time, well-educated individuals, from both sides of the ticket today, to when the US Constitution was being written, how would that alter it? Because I suspect they would tighten it up and better address certain issues that the Right is now trying to make superfluous. What I'm saying is, if we went back in time to tell the Founding Fathers what the hell we're doing with their US Constitution, they'd make some re-writes. And now how today's nutcase Right wingnuts would.

I like Pablo Pascal, the actor. He signed on to the writer's strike. I liked him in "The Mandalorian". I liked him in, "The Last of Us". I heard him in an interview recently where he said he had a lot to be thankful for in having been in "Narcos" on Netflix. So I watched that this past week. It was him and his blond haired, white partner with Pablo being a Spanish speaker in Colombia where they were DEA agents. I understand he didn’t think he would be in the show very long but he lasted two seasons and then they gave him the third season, losing his partner. Interesting they never mentioned what happened to that guy. But when I saw the third season, it was obvious to my why he did so well after that. It wasn’t so much the first two seasons, but they got him to the third and final season. I really liked it. Then they came out with "Narcos Mexico". Which I just started though he’s not in it. I remember when sinsemilla cannabis hit the streets in the late 70s as the seedless version of weed. In the 70s we were so sick of having to clean out the seeds, as Cheech and Chong had so famously said, "No stems no seeds that you can see, Acapulco gold is fine... ass weed!" But I didn’t know about how that all came into being. At first we thought it was brilliant. The weed was cleaned up. Everyone had a shoe box lid or something just slid under their couch usually with their weed in it and some stems and seeds off the the side. Maybe an expired credit card or something for the sifting. Holding the lid at an angle, using the card to drag the weed up and catch it repeatedly to allow the seeds to run to the bottom. Anyway, you got what you paid for with sinsemilla, not a bunch of bulk and seed nonsense you didn’t use. When one day we we’re sitting around getting stoned and  I looked at my friends, and I said, "Hey, this is seedless." They smiled, just puffing away and said, "Yeah, I know, cool...right?" "Yeah cool… but now we can’t grow our own." And everybody looked at each other surprised and went, "Oh shit that’s right." Until someone said, "Yeah, but we're not growing it anyway, right?" "Yeah, but now we can't, even if we wanted to." And suddenly, everyone wanted to. But it was brilliant marketing in that they didn’t have to ship the stems and seeds, which kept us from growing our own, but also made the packs smaller and they could profit more and ship more. The kilo is more dense, which was an all-around win-win for everybody. Except for anyone who wanted to grow their own. At that point, we started to try and find some seeds and no one had any. And if they did, they were valuable. When they had been everywhere at one point. It was a marketing awakening, in the illegal weed market. So Narcos Mexico. Pretty entertaining. An interesting show though so far I’m only a few episodes into it

But speaking of that, I watched the latest episode of "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" last night. It was a court trial, which usually I like, but not in a sci-fi show so much. But by the end of it, I liked it a lot. Actually, that was last weeks episode. And it was good by the end. Last night's episode was a time travel episode where they went back in time on earth. And again you might be like, "Hey, this isn’t space cowpoke fun romping around the universe stuff!" But by the end they tied it together, and you had to sort of smile and go, "Nice job."

The last episode of "Silo" hit for the season on an Apple+. Really like that show and it had a good cliffhanger season ending that left me with my mouth open, going, "Oh shit, hadn't seen that coming!"

Another one on that streamer is "The Crowded Room". Having a degree in psychology and always being interested in pathologies kind of like shows like that.

Another on Paramount plus is Joe about it Bureau of land management ranger. Like the character so much I haven’t read novels that it’s just a fun and at times difficult show to watch. He takes a lot of brutality in his job but keeps on pushing. And his family’s interesting his lawyer, wife, and two girls.

I also watched Mayans because I was a Sons of Anarchy fan. But there’s something missing from this series that "Sons" had. Maybe it’s 'cause I’m a white boy and not Mexican, Latino, Latinx or whatever, but I’m kind of looking forward to the end of the series. Hey, I still watch it. Though it's not meant to be some kind of sequel to "Sons", and well, it's not. Something isn't clicking for me with it.

Alaska Daily (now cancelled), how about a New York world famous journalist transplant to a tiny newspaper that’s on the edge, in Alaska. The first and only review I read of it when it premiered was not good and they shot the showdown. Screw them. I liked it. I'm sad it's cancelled (I just found out in looking for a link for this). But I think there’s elements for the show the reviewer entirely missed. We need more shows like this. Losing our small newspapers has been crippling America. Native Americans, First Nations...they're getting more attention, but still not enough. A Free Press is a necessary part of our democracy. Our toxic capitalism has worked hard to conglomerate, kill off smaller papers and allowed to monopolize, hampering a Free Press ever more so. Autocrats are doing it around the world. Our democracy and our haters of democracy on the right, especially autocrats like Trump and his MAGA infection, are using the boundaries of democracy to cripple our Free Press. 24 hour new cycles haven’t helped because then they have to always report something new even if it's nothing or worse, which is anathema to what should be loss leader news reporting. Short news cycles and shorter short term memories, news for profit rather as a loss leader for a company, or a network has been signing news death warrant now for years.

How in the hell can we have a fair and balance SCOTUS if it’s too heavily unbalanced one way or the other and why aren’t there laws to assure that NEVER happen? Obviously so that it CAN happen. And that’s got to change. I’m not asking for liberals to have a hand up. I’m asking for the entire country to have a fair and even hand up. Mitch McConnell and the GOP conservatively stacking our federal courts, as well as OUR SCOTUS, in illiberally disallowing Merrick Garland a seat on that court… If that’s not anti-American, what the hell is? Well, more "corporate thought" at work.

For those complaining that the Trump economy was better than Biden so far… First off Biden isn’t done and has he said what they have done and it is helping, it is working and it will continue to get better, such as reasonable projections all say. Let’s point out the disaster Obama took over and now he has a history of a better economy, so far better than Biden or Trump. But Biden still has time in his office before you can judge him. Especially if he gets a second term...if America has any self-esteem left whatsoever. Biden will, as opposed to say Trump getting a second term, which takes the consideration of any self-esteem whatsoever for America off the table if that happens, as he will have gone full on autocrat, giving him purchase to completely destroy our economy and our democracy. If you can’t see that, that’s a degree of ignorance so vast one don’t even know how to address it. Trump doesn't WANT to destroy our economy, just our democracy, but if he profits only by destroying our economy? It's toast.

A new Navigator poll shows that 75% of Americans are against tax cuts for the rich including Republicans. So WTF America? I remember saying when I got out of my university years in 1984 that priorities in America are fucked up. Well, thanks to conservatives they’re fucked up to a fantastical degree far beyond anything I had considered back then. And I have some pretty good "out there" fiction. Just check out, "In Memory, Yet Crystal Clear" (ebook free through July 2023). When I would have said all this now is just bad science fiction or really really poor speculative fiction writing and by a lazy writer.

This isn’t a difficult intellectual puzzle. We have to take money from somebody to run this government. I know my brother says we can run without taxes. I said explain to me how that works  but he couldn’t. But then he’s a conservative who supported Trump, so… But the point is, do we take those taxes more from people who don’t have the money or from those who do have so much money, they don’t know what to do with it? How is that an intellectual conundrum? I mean it's just common sense. The people with more pay more but also at a higher ratio. First of all nobody should have above a certain amount of money. No individual should have as much money as a country. No corporation should have more money than the largest country. Multinational corporations are dangerous. Just watch Rollerball. The original better one with James Caan. The problem as with so many other things in our society today is due to toxicity...in our conservatism and economy, leaning into autocracy, of those with autocratic desires, where common sense has been devalued, diluted and weaponized, all this against ourselves.

Inflation is down 11 months in a row, gas and groceries are down… But Biden they say is a doddering, old fool? And Trump isn’t? At the least, at very least Biden isn’t a criminal like Trump. Even if you believe Biden is, or that there actually is a "Biden crime family", which is stupid, which is fucking stupid, when you can see there is obviously is a Trump crime family, which is not mere denigration or ad hominems, which is why Trump keeps getting indicted ("criminal")… We just need to stop this juvenile fakery and get down to work.

Oh, another streamer show “From”, I like that one a lot because it’s really messed up.

I really like Kaley Cuoco, the actor from, "The Big Bang", who was in "The Flight Attendant". Another screwed up, show that I liked a lot. It was in fun and part is my older sister was a senior flight attendant all of her life. It was fun to tease her about, "Hey, did that happened to you?" No.

Oh, just saw the first few episodes of this season 3 of, "The Witcher" (last season for Henry Cavill as Geralt, replaced in upcoming seasons 4/5 by Liam Hemsworth). They just dropped on Netflix season three. Nice to see it back. I heard it’s the same actor as in "Superman and Lois" and for some reason I like that and watch it too (Emmanuelle Chriqui surely having nothing to do with it). But remind me of the Clark Kent, superman thing, where are the actors don’t look anything alike in each role. (I know, I know, see below further down).

This week I also watched Lamborghini with Frank Grillo as the elder character of the title name, and Gabriel Byrne, whom I have always liked his work. Since I first saw Ridley Scott's first film "The Duelists" with Harvey Keitel, opposing Keith Carradine through their lives, and the Napoleonic wars. Great underrated film.

Oh, and by the way, "Bidenomics" has given us the lowest unemployment rate for Blacks and Hispanics. So Hispanics really need to review this rush to the Republican Party who really doesn’t give a shit about anybody except their own leaders, donors and superPACs, lobbyists.

I se Hyperwrite as of recently and a company called Reword just pinged me with some spam. It looks interesting. But I need to make sure it’s hooked up to this blog. I don’t think it is. If I could make this stream of consciousness blog look a little more... well written without spending a lot of time on it, because I’ve got other things to do, I think we all agree... that would be awesome.

Sometimes I put things in these notes during walkabouts that are just for me to see so that when I get home and read them, I delete them from the blog and go do them. But sometimes I leave them in... like the one just above.

As I’ve spoken about in the previous two blogs, when exercising you can hit a point where you want to quit. Today that was at about mile 4 and a quarter. Usually I don’t start sweating till like the last mile or so. It’s hot today so it was by the end of the 2nd mile. But around mile 4 I started feeling I was overdoing it. So I stopped in a shady place. I looked down into a gully, or gulch, or whatever you wanna call it, that runs off downhill to the next main street below. I realized, I’ll have been in this house about five years now and in the first week, years ago, I would’ve already gone down into this thing out of curiosity. Just to search around to see what was there. I've always been like that. Going up in the mountains by myself to go hiking alone. Exploring local, wooded areas people tend to not go into. But with this time and age, it’s just not worth my effort. Or I just don’t have the motivation anymore, or my body isn’t so in shape (thanks so much Long Covid) so as to not give a thought about overdoing it in time or effort. Yeah getting old is not for the old, but it sure as hell isn’t for the young.

Damn talking about ADHD… I just posted on Twitter and social media today about it, because my son, who also has it, sent me a 20 minute comedy clip of a guy talking about his wife having ADHD. It’s pretty funny and more so if you have it. He’s exaggerating, but it’s pretty entertaining. And the reason I say this now is because above, I was gonna say something about getting to mile four, and wanting to quit today. And the reason for mentioning that, which I got distracted from… was that I had stopped to cool off And then saw something on my phone from someone who DM'd me about being a product ambassador or something. Which distracted me so I started walking again and then realized I feel fine now. So I’m now starting mile five and again I feel fine. My point is, was... that when you hit that point where you think you can’t do anymore, rest, then take your time to slowly move forward, get back up to speed and you may well find that you’re just fine.

I agree with the Biden administration consideration on if all Biden makes is a single term. They should get two. They have a strong story to tell that needs to be told to counter the bullshit from the right. This ain’t your grandfathers voodoo economics of trickle down nonsense by toxically capitalistic right wing nut cases who led us to first to the Tea Party, and then Donald Trump's MAGA and an insurrection. How you can see him being "worth his salt" is beyond all rational thought.

At what point do we make Nazism, neo or otherwise, illegal in this country? It will hopefully eventually die off, this core of the MAGA Trump personality cult, our current autocratic infection which needs to be curbed and made somewhat, somehow, illegal? Yes, yes 1st Amendment, yes, Freedom of Speech, and so on, but when it’s weaponized against our US Constitution itself, maybe it's time to act.

Want an easy element to indicate to you who not to vote for? Someone who is thin skinned like Ron DeSantis, like Donald Trump. Those are not leaders. Those are not men who can run a country. Run it into the ground, yes, sure... to be sure. But, let's not do that.


Cheers! Sláinte!