Yesterday, I went to visit Virgil. I managed to stack the deck correctly before he came in to give him the perfect hand (I had tried twice before, once when he was still at Bent, and had not succeeded, but I finally did.) this time. His face didn’t give it away, but he was impressed – I can tell because he kept mentioning it when he got a hand that was not so good. I couldn’t have asked for a better result. I also learned something from Heather Cox Richardson which surprised me – and that is that the Washington Post has an investigative journalist on their staff. His name is Glenn Kessler, and it’s a pity that more people don’t know it, or anything about his work. Here’s a link to Rchardson’s post, parts of which will likely make you angry, but hopefully Kessler’s findings will help some.
This is not a time sensitive article, but an essay on the death penalty by Mary Trump. She is very articulate on the subject, which should not be a surprise since she is a professional psychologist. Even if she doesn’t say anything new, I expect her to have new ways to say what she does.
Well, at least this (from Wonkette) is more plausible than most of their guanopsychotic panics over what children read. It is possible to choose to be a Democrat, or a Republican, for that matter, whereas it’s not possible to choose to be straight, gay, trans, or whatever – you are as you were born, although that may not show up until puberty (except for trans people – that shows up early enough for affirmative care to be helpful, if it can just be allowed.) I could wish the book had gone into the entire Political Compas instead of pretty much just left and right issues, but everyone here knows I strongly believe that. Last week, over at Democratic Underground, where a few were trashing Jeff Flake (who has endorsed Kamala), I left a comment to the effect that this election is not about left and right, it’s about autocracy and egalitarianism, and at least he’s on the right (excuse me, the correct side) of that, and another DUer was kind enough to respond with this: “If all Americans understood this as well as you do we wouldn’t be in this mess.” That made my day.
