Walkabout Thoughts #44

My thoughts, Stream of consciousness, rough and ready, while walking off long Covid and listening to podcasts…June 26, 2023 Monday

Weather for the day…yes

Podcast for the day “Deja News” by Rachel Maddow and Davy Aronson, "Episode 3: "The Meanest, Dirtiest, Low-Down Stuff""

Considering Rachel Maddow’s podcast of Deja news for this week about Republican voter suppression (when will America get tired by their exhausting antics??) do we have and why don’t we have, a whole section of intimidation laws to literally put these people in prison when they pull their crap? Laws in such a way that would stop their bullshit. I don’t mean capital punishment for voter suppression, I would reserve that for former presidents like Donald Trump, for things he did and is still doing.

What should LBJ have and the Democratic Party done to neutralize Republican illiberal newspaper voter suppression attack ads in 1964 regarding a fake, non-existent, "Negro Protective Group", who told blacks not to vote or you could end up in jail? This is America. We ARE a liberal democracy, still, and regardless what the Right keeps trying to do.

Also, you can take much or most of what Republicans claim about Democrats and dig into what they’re saying to find it’s really indicative about Republicans projecting onto any or all others to distract and obstruct the view of what they’re actually doing and what they really believe in. Autocracy, apparently.

Regarding pro-Putinist propaganda by Putin apologists claiming there are Nazis in Ukraine, forgetting their Russian war criminal president's invasion of another country. For the record, there are zero Nazis in Ukraine. However, their are those of neo-Nazi mindsets who have invaded Ukraine from Russia (and some of those type living IN Ukriane, as in any country). When Russia leaves Ukraine, the neo-Nazis will have for the most part, left. Attacking another country and committing war crimes is not an excuse for perceived, or potential neo-Nazis in another country made up from a mostly democratic majority (again, as in many countries)… As there seem to be in every country around the world. Every country has right wing autocratic extremists, some of whom find titillation in political fetishism in absorbing and presenting the neo Nazi’s nonsense. In our country, they tend to be Republicans and conservatives. All of them have been misled, but also cherry pick, as the religious do, in selectively ignoring reality, and chosing to be a patently as stupid as possible in the face of reality and thoroughly against the facts. Everyone's facts, not just "alternative facts", a term promoted by Kelly Anne Conway (divorced now from her more liberal Republican husband) deep in the MAGA slurry of Donald Trump's wake.

Regarding Rachel’s podcast this week and JFK winning over Nixon in 1960...It begs the question, if Nixon had won rather than JFK would he have turned into what he later did when he finally became president? I suspect he would have. Because that’s what happens with people of weak ego and poor character. Not to mention, with a conservative orientation and a Republican to boot. Which we’ve seen again and again. George W. Bush. Obviously and ultimately in Donald J Trump, criminal FPOTUS45.

As a political party, when you realize not enough people are going to vote for your candidate, and your response to that is, "how do we keep the other parties voters from voting against us", and you then fall on an answer such as, "we will suppress their votes," or worse, "...in anyways possible", yes… your party has "jumped that shark." You have then stepped out of an illiberal democracy into an autocratic party and one inevitably of sedition. And when you're in that GOP and Trump MAGA today, you’re moving into stochastic terrorism and your are then, you have then, fully left this country, the great American experiment and democracy itself. You're an Autocrat. At some point they are, and you have become, criminals. Where the only question of the rest of us at hand will be... how to prove it with evidence in court, and execute justice?

I should contact Eagle Harbor books and the book seller downtown and see if they would take maybe two of my books for free, welcome to sell them and keep the money, and if they want more... let me know?

Why isn’t there a law that says every state must have enough polling places, free and protected, where if you’re standing in line for longer than an hour, then the state should lose money and if they don't have money to have enough polling places, then federal money would be supplied giving states and their illiberal conservative leadership (who are the ones pulling this crap) will absolutely have no reason for THEIR voter suppression actions. And so on and so forth… remember 1964 presidential election's Republican operation, which Hubert Humphrey said should be called "Operation Evil Lie", which was pure and simple, voter suppression by the conservative party.

1964 presidential election was lopsided with Barry Goldwater losing on the Republican side and winning only later in 1968 with the eventual nightmare Nixon with an actual criminal VPOTUS (GOP took decades to advance to nominating an actual criminal for POTUS in Donald Trump). One being his home state of Arizona, with another five being States where the black vote had already long been suppressed. "Operation Eagle Eye" by Republicans wasn’t even needed in those five states because of Jim Crow laws already suppressing the black vote and the black community in general, and in so many other ways.

As we now know, if voter suppression by the right had never been utilized there would’ve been very few Republican presidents in the past 50 years.

I do realize that the 60s and 70s Republican voter suppression efforts and their "Operation Eagle Eye" did set the foundation and building blocks up for today’s illiberal “democratic free“ elections so subverted by subversive and seditious Republicans. At times, aided by America’s foreign enemies, via social media, or whatever they could come up with. With other issues such as dark money, toxic conservative, a stacked SCOTUS and federal courts, and illiberal Gerrymandering. None of that is news.

Here’s something else to consider… We hear a lot from the right about how bad the left is. We hear how the Democratic Party ruins our economy. Regardless of the fact that Republican presidents take us into wars, leave us with seriously depleted budgets and massive debt, and Democrats always seem to be the ones cleaning it up every time. But if Republicans would stop this nonsense and act as liberal democrats (lower "d"), which this country is... a liberal democratic republic… IF they would work with the other side, does it matter if they never win, if they get things done that they really do want (for the country), and not just what they want, for their always winning in their sadly toxic, anti-American, "corporate thought" agendas? If what they want is actually useful to America and Americans, and not just to their wealthy and corporate? If they would work FOR the American good and not just for Themselves? The GOP has degenerated into a party of actors who play out roles for pure power and notoriety and greed. They're propaganda is disinformed and autocratically subverted, their electorate in chaos and confusion, so now they feel like Russians who don’t know what the hell they’re voting, for. Don't we really just want to be left alone and reclaim what it is to be patriotic? Until finally they end up voting against themselves. And then Russia’s case strengthens up and we find ourselves again invading other countries (Remember "W" and Iraq?). how many of Americans mistakes in other countries are from toxic capitalism? From the greedy and conservative and the Republican? Oh surely, there were some Democrats and independents involved. But that doesn’t resolve the Right from there fundamentals and foundation in toxic conservatism. 

It has a little to do with Conservatism anymore.
Republicans: "Be very good at selling bad ideas."
Democrats: "Be very bad at selling good ideas, political effort, democratic spin"
Republicans: Fraud, Republican lies & disinformation.
Democrats: Truth and facts.
Republicans: Decency for corporations and the wealthy.
Democrats: Decency for all American citizens, especially those who are people and not business or industry while maintaining a healthy business and industry.
Republicans: Enhance faith in God and religion and autocracy. God’s autocratic by the way. The pursuit of happiness of their orientation or their beliefs or their institutions... against all others.
Democrats Enhance faith in democracy to allow a country mixed with many cultures and religions and non-religions. The pursuit of happiness, not just the conservative pursuit of their own happiness.

"Operation Eagle Eye" slogan: "To restore confidence in America’s elections"...but basically, just spew disingenuous disinformation.

Rachel Maddow's Deja News podcast should be required listening in every high school and every junior high, every college and every Congress. on TV and forced onto Fox News and all conservative media.

Attorney Jim Brosnahan, who testified against William Rehnquist in that attorneys active voter suppression action in 1964, said today on the podcast that, “Anyone's vote taken away is a democratic sin. “ restricting any citizens vote is committing a serious concern and should be dealt with." Citizens lose their vote when they going to prison. Unless it is under conditions of treason, no one should ever lose their vote. No one's vote should ever be suppressed, the more votes, the better.

Next podcast "Axios today"-
Prigozhin is not a hero, he’s a "Blackwater" type mercenary group type leader, although Betsy DeVos's brother, Eric Prince is no angel either… But basically a mob boss as some claim as a Putin capo. Putin, after all, being the mob boss. In America, we have something similar with a more cowardly, less, intelligent just as media savvy, maybe more media savvy than Putin, mob boss in Donald Trump. Both countries have the delusionally propagandized and disinformed who follow those cretins over the cliff to enjoy a plummet of their country into death and despair. Chaos and despair and apathy being the rule of the day for both those leader's followers. And remember, Putin’s capo and leader of the Wagner group, started a 10 hour march to Moscow to the capital and stopped 4/5 of the way there. There’s very much speculation about what Putin will do to his capo for this sedition. What does a mafia boss do to an ill acting capo? Well? That depends on how integral he is to his wealth and power acquisition and retention model that a mafia boss has in place. Unless that model, as in Putin‘s model, as in the failure of the Ukrainian war so far, according to his 'three days to overtake Ukraine" model, he now has in its place.

Finishing up my 4th mile, then starting on my fifth and final mile for the day. My long Covid "walkabout thought" for the day being solidly executed. If I keep this up at three or four days out of every week, while the weather hasn’t been helping, although it does get better heading into summer, That would mean every week I am alternately doing 15 or 20 mile walks total. Which my much younger, VA health doctor said is way better than anything he’s doing. But, such are the joys of retirement... and long Covid.

55 million people in the south east west to Mississippi are under a heat warning as of today. Texas is in some southern locations in the triple digits and so far doing well because they’ve applied some renewable energy sources and batteries which so far are functioning nominally. Even against all the bullshit and nonsense that crippled state's governor has been putting out since the storm, two years ago. Republicans are good at one thing. Ignoring reality and not being proactive. Being worried about this moment and this moment, alone but not about their citizens, long-term.

These temperatures in the south are as far north as Oklahoma and Kansas, have been proven to be at least five times more related to human induced climate change, and denial of this at this point really is criminal, because people are dying.

Gay and Black minorities and LGBTQ+ people are here. They always have been. To deny that is to deny America and democracy. So if you’re against all that or whining about how you won’t "pull yourself up by your own bootstraps", a typical Republican comment towards those who are incapable of doing that, then it’s not about those you hate or those you speak out against, it's yourself and your group of whiners, who refuse to go out and succeed, as any American would, regardless of what obstacles are against them. Because that’s American. And whining and abusing others or denigrate any others to make it look better, well that’s autocracy and that kind of makes you a rat bastard.

Next podcast, “Cork Today“, a podcast from Cork, Ireland, where I spent a few days and a lovely time back in 2015. I so wanna go back to Ireland. Sadly, my Irish roots are too well established for a dual passport. So, thanks for that Ireland.

The podcast is talking with somebody about a herbal remedy to help you sleep. It’s got so much stuff in it. How do you want to think about taking it. I’ve tried to keep my stress levels down since high school when I went in the hospital for it. When the doctors (3 neurosurgeons) said…(and this would’ve been winter spring 1973)… "Here’s a script for Valium 5 mg, now goodbye. We would suggest you move out of your parent's house from what your mother told us." Weeks later I graduated at 17 and moved out with a job into an apartment. Then life was good. The headaches stopped. My stress levels dropped. Now today in retirement at 67, 68 end of August, I do my best to get exposure to sunlight. 15 minutes today, even five help with sleeping at night in regenerating one's melatonin. Yesterday, I had spaghetti and meatballs for lunch with two glasses of wine, testing out my long Covid healing. I did well. But I woke up at 12:30 a.m. and thought what the hell… So I took half of a 5 mg melatonin...just enough to put me to sleep and keep me there, until  at7:30 AM I woke up. I feel pretty good today. Getting the exercise definitely is helping. I think the thing that helped me most in healing from long Covid was getting exercise, and sunlight. Although both can work against you, until you hit a certain degree of healing with that insidious condition.

I’d have to say as far as difficulty sleeping, all my life, especially in high school, I think it was more about ADHD and my mind running at hyper speed on multiple levels. As well as working nights through HS. As a snack bar drive-in theater worker and then snack bar manager. How long after work, late at night it took me to get to sleep, to get up early to go back to school, or after graduating, to work? I think my sleep was better after graduating HS, not having to go to school at day and then work nights. I figured I usually got a few hours sleep in HS. I would come home after work at maybe midnight, go to bed and have to be at school by 8:30 AM. I can remember many times looking at the clock before I fall asleep at 5 AM. I would just lay there in bed with my mind racing and thoughts spinning about everything... not all bad, just a mind that wanted to work 24 hours a day. My mother liked staying up all night. My older brother, who has said he thinks he got all the worst of our mom from her, well? I think maybe I left most of that out and get most of the best from her. Anyway, he felt he was a night person too. But we are day people as a race and require Vitamin D and sunlight and our schedules are ruled by that. I have to say really in much of my earlier my life, I did prefer being up at night. But life and having children has a way of rectifying that. Though, bending you to it, will wear on you to make you feel a little crazy at times.

The Cork podcast is talking about how hot it is there and how hard it is to sleep when you’re hot. People don’t have air conditioners there or some do bu no money for electricity. Cork's not a highly prosperous town, but it is a very lovely town. So they suggest curtains closed during the day to keep the place cool, windows open at and night sleep with a sheet only. Poor People's air conditioning. I remember those days.

Now they’re talking about a listener question about artichokes lowering cholesterol, and if there may be something involved there. The person is on a Staten who asked the question, and so am I. I’ve added eating two avocados a week. I don’t know if it’s helped or not, but they are tasty. Maybe I'll add artichokes, I do like them too. 

I'm editing this today, Wednesday, July 5, 2023 and it's my little brother's birthday... who died of liver cancer in 1975, two weeks before today, back then, He just missed making it to 15. His doctor in Manhattan said then, that maybe in 5 years, they will be able to do a liver transplant. Five years to the week, they did their first successful one. Happy birthday, little bro...

And with that...

Cheers! Sláinte!

A Brief Word on Cannabis and Psychedelics

With due consideration to a variety of changes going on in this country, politically but also socially and medically, I thought it might be good to say a word about a certain drug (cannabis) and certain psychedelics.

Check out Nightline's Growing Promises, piece. As for those who would remark about the final scientist's comments about loving CBDs but hating THC.... I would then ask him to compare and contrast it to alcohol which is legal. Because I suspect, that he would rather have alcohol illegal and legalize cannabis for recreational use.

It's really all in the Gestalt of the information, not just the information by itself. That's something that far too many people have no clue or awareness of. Sadly.

Science is about finding truth in our physical reality. It is not to be about partisanship, tribalism, or beliefs over peer reviewed, repeatable and verifiable facts. So why do we base science oriented issues on emotions and politics? Especially when it damages our culture and citizens?

In that vein I feel I need to diverge from the internally organic (legal) to the organically derived and illegal. I came to this article in doing the audiobook for my psychology article (my degree is in psychology and writing) on synesthesia and schizophrenia where at the end I conjecture we could one day train ourselves to use natural abilities to hallucinate as entertainment.

Which we can now do with drugs in using caffeine, tobacco, alcohol, or cannabis, so called "magic" mushrooms and so on. Some of those legal are not that safe, some of those illegal ones, are.

Although the article focuses on the natural and organic, internal forms of doing what people have typically used chemicals or drugs to do, there has of late been an increasing amount of interest in the media about psychedelics. This is in part because of the increasing trend of states in America legalizing cannabis for recreational use.

Briefly, what was once called “marijuana”, mostly in order to vilify and associate it with its use by Mexican, Blacks and the poorer classes, should really now more reasonably be referred to using its proper name, cannabis. Thus shedding the historically negative racist baggage forced upon it by our national and local government and police.

This renewed interest now however is also because of a much more knowledgeable citizenry. This is due in part to the prevalence and evolution of today's media. But as well to the rise of our overall national level, if one can momentarily sidestep concerns of what has generally and sadly been referred to as this “post truth” world, of what we could nominally call, wisdom. That is, we are as a group wiser now than ever before in history.

Even though the news media calls into question just how wise we are anymore, people are in general more aware of what is going on now than ever before rather than just what we were once told to believe. I am sure that one day hopefully soon, we will all learn better how to more appropriately handle this awesome responsibility.

The trouble of late in our transition is an inability of so many, mostly on the political right, to be unable to tell the boundaries of reality and think that actual journalistic efforts are "fake news", and much that actually is fake news, is real news, actual journalism. Not the least for the efforts of those who are trying, like our president Donald Trump, to further their own agendas, at the expense of American citizens, for self aggrandizement and protection.

Reality always needs to trump opinion and lies.

Since as we have seen the government was apparently incorrect in so many of their professed fears about certain “recreational” drugs which they had so disingenuously sown into the fabric of our nation, our citizens are now reasonably beginning to wonder, and rightly to question.

For decades our government assiduously denigrated cannabis since the Nixon Administration first initiated their miscast "war on drugs," with the ensuing devastation it has perpetrated upon the American people. A devastation born mostly by our fellow citizens within our ethnic minorities. But also by every American tax payer.

The Shafer Commission formally known as the National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse, was appointed by Republican U.S. President Richard Nixon in the early 1970s and concluded that:

"Neither the marihuana user nor the drug itself can be said to constitute a danger to public safety," concluded the report's authors, led by then-Gov. Raymond Shafer of Pennsylvania. "Therefore, the Commission recommends ... [the] possession of marijuana for personal use no longer be an offense, [and that the] casual distribution of small amounts of marihuana for no remuneration, or insignificant remuneration no longer be an offense."

What happened was the Nixon commission recommended legalizing marijuana and Nixon completely ignored his own commission's rational and factual assessment, plunging the nation into decades of waste and abuse.

Ever since ridiculously being labeled a dangerous drug, cannabis has been grouped in with such drugs as heroin and cocaine as a Schedule 1 drug. Reality, sanity and facts would include alcohol as it has many of the dangerous and descriptive elements of cocaine. LSD also does not belong listed as a Schedule 1 drug. The categorizing of cannabis and even LSD in this group are therefore political and not rational, factual medical considerations. It is a political boondoggle.

SCHEDULE 1 (CLASS I) DRUGS are illegal because they have high abuse potential, no medical use, and severe safety concerns; for example, narcotics such as Heroin,LSD, and cocaine. Marijuana is also included as a Class 1 drug despite it being legal in some states and it being used as a medicinal drug in some states.

Even some of our most conservative leaders are now beginning not to see the mistake in keeping cannabis illegal when so many find it so reasonable, safe and useful. Useful both to themselves but also to our society at large.

If cannabis isn't as bad as we were told, people now wonder, what about other drugs? Truth be told we have devastated entire sectors of our society, especially within our social minorities, destroying people's lives, the lives of their families and many of their (and our) social structures.

Mission creep from the war on drug's original intent moved aggressively to one of vast losses to our economy, social strata and national persona. It has jammed up and made defective our police, our courts, our prisons and our social services. It has affected children growing up unnecessarily without one or both parents.

It has forced people into seeking methods of social lubrication limited to what is legal, with dangerous prescription drugs and alcohol and even dangerously mixing them so that now we have had useless deaths and a massive opioid crisis. All perhaps while there were far better, safer and cheaper alternatives.

So why the institutional and governmental allergy to “this” reality...to actual reality? To actuality? Rather than to their own desires of what they merely want to be true for some unfathomable reason with all the damage it has, and they have caused.

This has been a trend lately and one we need quickly to get under control. We have recently seen more authors and self professed experts turning up in the media, trying to sound very politic and clever. If their research is not at times exactly legal, then they attempt to decry professional credentials of, if not medical, then journalistic. At the very least they try to sound educated and authoritative. What they have to say is actually if not simply entertaining, frequently useful and insightful to our newer American consciousness. To our latest, Zeitgeist.

Yet in some ways much of that is just so much nonsense.

We have seen for decades now that drugs aren't what they were purported to be. Some drugs once thought safe no longer are seen in that light. While others are viewed in quite the opposite manner.

Cannabis for instance is now seen as not only benign but indeed, it seems to have a wealth of associated benefits to both its use in imbibing, but also in a variety of manufacturing endeavors which is why our Founding Father grew hemp for very much the same reason. Though hemp has no psychoactive elements, it does have vast uses in making a variety products such as rope, clothes, paper, and even fuel, and so on.

Not to mention the decrease legalizing it would mean for policing, for prison overcrowding, for hampering drug cartels and in using legal taxation for the common good. Also the enhancement that would bring to bettering relationships between police, communities and citizens who use it.

With decades now of experience and of citizen testing, we now as a culture understand it and ourselves far better than we did in the 1980s, the 1970s and before. It is curious to consider that the government restricted agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) to research certain things such as cannabis and even, and oddly enough... firearms.

After all, more knowledge is always better than less and is a mainstay of entire article on synesthesia, this present piece developed from. We can now be overall more informed, better aware and reasonably less fearful; not just simply, ignorant and fearful. We should never fear better and more accurate information. It is better to have it and decide what to do with it, than to not have it and base very important things on bad if not false, information.

Consider how seeing someone driving a modern car back in 1900 would appear, a car that could easily do over 100MPH when most cars could barely do 20MPH (in part because of the roads). As extremely novel things pop up we should indeed be wary of them. However wisely so and not just foolishly (or childishly) concerned or fearful about them.

Our world, the entire universe is something to explore, not to fear.

If someone were to drive say, a Chevrolet Corvette back in 1900, under the understanding and consideration back then of what is normal, it reasonably would be to the commoner a little frightening...at least until they better understood it, and what it was, what its potential actually was for safety or for danger.

And so, there we all are now, with things like cannabis and some of the hallucinogens. Not all drugs are good or beneficial or easily and safely administered by the typical citizen. Those who say we are not now at that more informed and aware place are simply fear mongering. If not merely ignorant themselves. However do be aware that those in we put in authority are actually charged by us with shedding their ignorance more quickly than most. And yet, they seem to do that so infrequently.

Whenever they do not update their understanding of things, they are not following their agreed and accepted mandate to properly protect the citizenry whom they are sworn to protect and serve. There may always be plenty of those types around, sowing fear for their own agendas be they personal, or political party (or ideology) affiliated.

However with proper awareness and protection (as one should do in going out drinking alcohol over the course of an evening), many of these drugs in question are actually safer than current legal drugs, like alcohol. In point of fact, much safer. We should therefore give them due consideration and realize that legality and jurisprudence are not the modes through which we should deal with them. Rather we should deal through information, actual and confirmed, freeing them of the unreasonable legal strictures which have plagued us for so very long now.

As I have indicated at the end of my synesthesia article, perhaps one day most people will retire to home after work to organically relax. Perhaps using a method involving synesthetic experiences rather than drugs or alcohol. But until that time isn't it only rational, sane and economically if not sociologically (and psychologically) feasible (and reasonable) to allow other safe and novel ways of relaxing. To seek, if not inner peace then internal reflection and relaxation? In our fast paced world we need that relaxation, but in a more safe and not organically damaging way of tobacco, alcohol or prescription drugs.

I think we "jumped the shark" as it were, when we went from organically available natural drugs (a theist might say ones that |God gave us and that grow naturally and are useful merely by picking them in the world), and without the need to synthesize or even semi-synthesizing them.

There is a fascinating world available out there right before us.

We just need to merely open our minds and explore, rather than closing them, believing whatever a confused and biased government tells us.

Because in doing so we harm not only ourselves, but possibly all those around us.