Planet A of the Humans

Donal

“I wanna decide who lives and who dies.” Crow T Robot

In the late 1980s, I took a very smart woman to Michael Moore’s film, Roger and Me, showing at a small theatre in NW Washington DC. As the lights came up, we found that Moore had been watching along with us. He was friendly and accessible, explaining that he wanted to see the audience’s reaction to different scenes. I’ve seen almost all of Moore’s subsequent films.

I recently watched Planet of the Humans, which has become controversial for its accusations that environmental groups and CleanTech businesses are promoting ‘green’ industries that promise a renewable future but actually exacerbate energy depletion and climate change. On Earth Day, the film was posted for free on youtube, and will be available for a month. Jeff Gibbs is credited as writer, director and producer, and Ozzie Zehner was a producer, while Moore’s…

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Symptoms

Donal

Almost four year ago, I wrote Clinton vs Trump, in which I considered both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump to be very weak candidates for President in an open field. I wrote then, “After a spirited primary season, it comes down to an establishment neoliberal candidate and a populist moderate candidate, both of whom are widely disliked and distrusted outside of their loyal core.” Clinton carried the popular vote, but failed to win the electoral college, failing to inspire rural voters in supposedly “blue wall” states Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. Some pundits claim she hadn’t even campaigned in Wisconsin because she took it for granted.

Once again, Bernie Sanders ran an inspiring campaign but currently trails an uninspiring establishment neoliberal candidate, in this case his “good friend” Joe Biden. Sanders devotees are again stunned, again feel cheated (denial) and accuse Bernie of being too nice to rivals…

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That Time I Made it Into Huffington Post

I thought you would all enjoy this from Romona.

Constant Commoner

Ed and Mona – Together for more than 63 years

I know it’s awful to stay away for so long, only to come back to brag. But here I am and I came back to brag.

I sold a piece to Huffington Post Personals! (Key word: sold) This is how it happened, for those of you who are writers and are wondering how these things happen, and for those of you who are just curious, or for those of you who think my writing stinks and you want to get over there to see what the hell they saw in it.

My husband and I celebrated our 63rd anniversary this year, and it seemed like a pretty big deal, at least to us. (Nobody else seemed to notice, but I chalk it up to having had so many they’re getting bored with that whole rah rah thing.)…

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Tennys Court

Donal

As a fan, I have been following the Australian Open (AO) tennis championships, which feature both women and men players. That seems to mean I’m old.

According to a 2016 study of sports leagues, the average age of the ATP’s television audience is 61, fourth highest of all major sports. The WTA fares better; its average viewer age was 55, and the age of its audience decreased between 2006 and 2016.

I actually prefer watching the WTA, but I’m still older than the demographic they want.

After some lean decades, the AO moved from the Kooyong Lawn Tennis Club to Flinders Park (now called Melbourne Park)  and has blossomed into equal standing with Roland Garros, Wimbledon and the US Open. Its main stadiums are named Rod Laver Arena, Hisense Arena and Margaret Court Arena.

In the weeks leading up to the AO, there was a lot of media chatter about…

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The Passing of a Playboy

Donal

I’ve been intrigued by the reactions to the death of Hugh Hefner – the founder of Playboy Magazine. Erotica goes back thousands of years on cave walls, in paintings, sketches, and later in woodcuts and engravings. Since the invention of halftone printing there have been magazines like PhotoBits, first published in 1898. Pinup girls like Bettie Page used to pose for such magazines, which were usually sold discreetly to adult men, who usually concealed them. Playboy was the first high-quality, mass market men’s magazine to feature nude pictorials, and the first of the type that many women and children ever saw on the shelves. My father concealed his Playboys, though not very well, but we had neighbors whose parents were less conscientious.

I subscribe to the self-described progressive outfit The Young Turks (TYT), who have one show called, “Old School.” During a recent broadcast founder Cenk Uygur announced Hefner’s…

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Bad Boys, Mean Girls and Normies

Donal

Despite not knowing what it was for, I joined Twitter a few months ago. I don’t tweet much, but I follow people I respect, and read a wider variety of articles. Aussie progressive gadfly Caitlin Johnstone tweeted that, except as concerns Russia, President Trump seems to be caving to the establishment agenda. I decided to circle back to John Robb at Global Guerillas, and in an article from a few days ago, The OODA loop of Trump’s Insurgency has been Smashed, he agreed. OODA means Observe, Orient, Decide, Act:

 … the real uniting goal of Trump’s insurgency was “opposition to a failed establishment.”

That goal held the insurgency that put him in office together, despite gaffes, scandals, leaks, etc that would have ended the political career of any other candidate.  It was also a goal that allowed the insurgency to continue after winning the election.  In most cases, once…

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Kord-Kutting & Kaepernick

Donal

A few days ago on Facebook, one of my brothers “liked” an article showing empty seats during the first week of NFL football. Why? Because he feels that people should stand for the national anthem instead of protesting like Colin Kaepernick and a growing number of players and fans. The article implied that attendance is down because people who think like him are angry, and boycotting the games.

Black Lives Matter activist Shaun King has also proposed a boycott of NFL football but for exactly the opposite reason. Like Hank Aaron and a lot of people, King believes that Kaepernick is getting blackballed by the NFL owners for taking a public stance against police killings of black people that in many cases presented no obvious threat. For example: Tamir Rice, a boy playing with a toy gun, John Crawford, a man holding an air rifle he had just picked up…

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Wait, What?

There has been a very interesting progression happening, right before our eyes, in the midst of all the BS that happens every day in American politics.

No, not Trump.

For anyone truly wanting to dig through the weeds as to how and why the “Russian Collusion” story came to be and subsequently got hijacked, there are some compelling facts hidden from your normal average mainstream media outlets (gee, I wonder why?) that are coming to light.

I’m not a big fan of right-wing or left-wing media these days – which makes finding real news extremely difficult, to the say the least – but there are ways for the dreaded Daily Caller to get a story out, and it’s quite a story they have to tell.

Ready?

I’m not going to write a damn thing.

I’m going to, instead, point readers to this simple daily trick that I use.  I google Debbie Wasserman Schultz, and I google Imran Awan.  I also google Hillary but I’m a glutton for punishment.

If you google (or, otherwise search) Imran Awan, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, and now and then, throw in Julian Assange, things get thrown together in monthly timelines that I have no patience to piece together, but I can honestly say I’ve been watching since last year.

It’s…interesting.  To say the least.

The narrative that Russia colluded against our election last year was peddled by none other than the Clinton campaign, last year.  But who’s paying attention?

I have links to that, too, but…as I said, who’s paying attention?

 

Single Payer CA

I understand via twitter that the establishment Dems took this video down from the official site:

Can’t imagine why …

The Angry Blue Planet

Donal

My weekend morning ritual has been to watch reruns of Men Into Space (1959) at 7:30 AM on Comet TV. Although I was completely unaware of the show until a few years ago, I’m sure I would have loved it as a boy. Essentially the show presented space exploration as a serious military project with very little tolerance for any speculative elements and roughly zero dissenting social commentary. The technical aspects seemed real enough for the time, though the space suits are obviously not pressurized. The show revolved around Air Force Colonel Edward McCauley, who was Ward Cleaver in a uniform – an authoritarian, by-the-book officer that always turned out to be right about everything. When not traveling into space, the Colonel and his subordinate officers enjoyed cookouts with their wives and girlfriends, who were extraordinarily attractive despite wearing pointy bras and way too much makeup. On two occasions women…

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