There is quite an interesting discussion going on below regarding elections, and I’ve had little to say due to my cynicism. This stems from my having run for office in 1996. Yes, I lost, but that outcome was not the real learning experience. My opponent was a nice lady who grasped some of the significant elements of campaigning that I did not. She understood, for instance, as she went door-to-door, that the important outcome of each encounter was not exchange of information. Rather, when she left a doorstep, she left the understanding that she was in agreement with the person who answered the door. That was a smart thing, and  as I would learn not even a bad thing.

You can call this inborn stupidity, but it was my first true foray into the electoral process, and I had a rather quixotic notion that I was carrying information to people who lacked my insight. I offered my views plainly. This created a rift, as there were a few issues that some people cared very deeply about. They become what we call a “third rail”, named after trains that run on tracks supplied by electricity, which is the third rail. You can safely ride the train and get to your destination, but touch that third rail and you die.

Continue reading “My introduction to real politics …” →

Jim Smith is a local realtor who has a column that often offers solid practical advice about the real estate market and conditions. He is published in our local Denver Post, I am told, and several other places. Recently he offered a short column that is reprinted in full at the very end of this post. It is called Can Your House Keep You Safe During a Power Outage?

If you travel to that link, you will notice that he has drawn only one comment, that from me. That’s the nature of Substack, I think. A few people who are more savvy than Jim and I know how to poke through, and even make their living publishing there. I have a Substack location and have republished some of what I’ve written here, but comments and reads are rare. To make it into a go requires promotion, and I just don’t know how to do that. I just like to write.

Continue reading ““Bless us and save us,” said Mrs. Davis” →

There was an item on the long ballot I received here in Colorado that offered to voters the unique idea that sports teams in our schools should be populated as follows: Men’s teams are limited to those who are born with penises, female teams to those born with vaginas. Coed teams can have both.

I don’t know why we have to vote on this stuff other than to push back on an agenda being pushed from above. I suppose some district judge will quash the results. In case you don’t know, the courts are not the friends of regular people. They too are governed from above. Continue reading “Election results …” →

I have a practical outlook regarding the behavior of certain public figures. But first I want to quote from Joseph Sansone, M.S., PhD, a psychiatrist, who offered a statement submitted to a Dutch Court in the case highlighted in this link. It is a case filed in the Netherlands, and Bill Gates and many others are named defendants. They are accused of using the covid vaccines as a means of pushing hidden bioweapons. I’ve no doubt they are guilty. The problem is that we don’t have justice, so no court will find  them so.

I have my own outlook on lies and lying liars in the public sphere. Joseph Sansone, M.H., PhD, has filed what I think in our country would be called an amicus brief to the Netherland proceedings. He is not part of the lawsuit. He says that the defendants in this case are “psychopathic authoritarians”. That’s a name dreamed up by the psychiatric professions, probably listed in the DSM-5. I imagine members of his profession voted on it, with a majority of psychiatrists deciding by a show of hands what is a disease, what is not. By this means we also have ADHD, bipolar disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, intermediate explosive disorder (which I would have guessed relates to diarrhea), and a host of others. All made up. But I want to quote Sansone on this:

Psychopathic Authoritarianism is the systemic elevation of power, control, and domination above truth, empathy, liberty, moral integrity, bodily autonomy, and human dignity. It is the collective manifestation of traits identified as the Dark Tetrad,  sadism, narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy. On a systemic level, these traits operate together with fear and coercive control to produce obedience, conformity, and subjugation of persons to institutional authority and may include a callous disregard for human life.

Continue reading “Psychopathic authoritarians, or just mundane bureaucrats?” →

Me: Is “Tokarski” in the Jewish registry of names?

 AI: Yes, the surname Tokarski is included in major Jewish genealogical registries, such as the Consolidated Jewish Surname Index (CJSI) and JewishGen databases.

• Origin: It is classified as a Jewish (eastern Ashkenazic) surname, derived either as a patronymic from the occupational name Tokarz (turner/lathe operator) or as a habitational name from places called Tokary in Poland.
• Registry Presence: The name appears in the Consolidated Jewish Surname Index, which aggregates data from 31+ Jewish genealogical databases.
• Specific Records: Jewish burial records for the surname Tokarski exist in Argentina (e.g., Buenos Aires), and the name is tracked in the JewishGen Family Finder.

While the surname is ethnically Polish, its presence in these indices confirms its usage within Jewish communities, particularly in Eastern Europe and among diaspora populations.

Continue reading “Ashkenazi this!” →

I am not much for poetry. When in seventh grade, the principal of our school, Sister Angelina, assigned my class of 30 and others too the task of writing some verse, which I think was going to be used in some larger project. I surely I did my part, and probably scribbled some indecipherable nonsense. Later our teacher, also a nun, relayed Angelina’s disappointment that not one useful line had been generated by the brain power of the seventh grade class of Little Flower School, Billings, Montana, in the year of our Lord 1963. We didn’t have much of that.

I don’t get poetry. I’ve read it, but for the most part it does not register. It bounces. I know to ignore the end of a line and read the next as if the two were not disjointed. I was singled out for praise in high school for reading a poem in that manner when called on in class. And I once saw an advertisement, probably for some airline, about the White Cliffs of Dover, read by someone with a deep resonant voice, talking about “this land, this England”. (sic) Just reading words in such a manner often passes for greater intelligence than exists in the reader.  Thus do we honor Morgan Freeman as we do. He could read The Da Vinci Code and make it sound like Shakespeare.

Continue reading “Angelina’s fool” →

[Operating in memory in writing this piece. Harper’s Ferry became “Fort Sumpter.” I’ve changed it and acknowledge the error.”]

I received in my inbox this morning the following comment:

it’s the easiest thing in the world to recognise patterns. less so to analyse the event in full detail.

I had another go-round with AI, which I found interesting. I’ll spill it beneath the fold. It is not terribly long, and has a twist or two in it. I wonder what it would be like if we had real AI, that is, something that is objective and not part of the propaganda system. For instance, I could suggest that the existence of viruses was not proven. As it is, AI comes down completely on the side of virology and dismisses critics. That sort of talk has to be programmed in. Were it not, AI might say something like …

Yes, the subject has inspired both advocates of the existence of viruses, and detractors alike. In fact, most holding the title “virologist” cling steadfastly to their being real. However, detractors point out that while it is claimed that viruses enter human cells and reproduce, thereby creating disease, this has never been proven to be the case. Further, detractors claim that the very experiments that “isolate” viruses have done so merely by changing the definition of the word “isolate”, and that further, Koch’s Postulates have never been satisfied. Virologists dismiss this criticism, citing, for instance, Rivers’ postulates as having replaced Koch.

Just one example. Note in my idealistic example above, AI would not be an advocate for either side. It would merely spell out the facts of the debate. As it is, AI is just another cog in our massive propaganda machine.

But it is useful. We must get used to it, and use it to its best advantage. If people learn to use it properly, they will easily do their own taxes, prepare household budgets, fill out resumes, repair their vehicles, and maybe (longshot) assemble Ikea furniture. Schools would have to change their teaching methods, as all of the answers to multiple choice and true/false questions would be a click away. They would have to line the walls of the classrooms with lead.  Better yet, they could start discussion subjects in give and take forums, inviting students to explore on the own. As Chomsky said once offered (he's quotable on many things), the job of a teacher should be to throw out a rope, and guide the student along as he follows it to places known and unknown*.

But that’s not what we have, and we have to get used to the propaganda system still front and center in our lives. Just use it for good, ignore the bad.
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*I once listened to a private tutor, a student of John Taylor Gatto, who had a young boy as client. The kid was caught up in space travel, aliens, flying saucers and ETs. The tutor’s attitude was “Fine. I won’t tell him he's wrong or off on a tangent. He'll figure that out for himself eventually." Or not.
Continue reading “Close encounters of the ethereal kind” →

While in Washington, DC, we had a couple meals at a restaurant called Busboys and Poets. What a trip! It was right out of my life years ago, when freshly sprung from my right-wing Catholic conservative upbringing, I did what I called “the bounce”. Assuming my prior life had misled me about everything, I discovered there was a left, and assumed I would find some truth over there.

Continue reading “Stumbling into the past: A left wing enclave in a DC restaurant” →