Tag Archives: politics

We Won!

light

PHOTO PROMPT © David Stewart

If you like my work, buy me a virtual cup of coffee at Ko-Fi.

“The light! We won! The Violet Party won!”

The ballots had been counted throughout the night while the faithful of both parties waited patiently. Then in the pre-dawn chill, the verdict was pronounced. The Violet Party, fighting for Democracy, safety, knowledge, and love had won.

The filthy “yellows” crawled off tails-between-legs. The righteous “violets” cheered wildly in the streets.

Violet One made her expected victory announcement from the high window. “We are victorious. You may be at ease. Go to your jobs secure that we, your servants, shall make all of the difficult decisions. Your only duty is to obey.”

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The Beat Goes On: Mike Glyer and File 770 Decide to Aim the Laser of Disapproval at Me (I’m such a disappointment)

Well, it’s not every day that Mike Glyer uses his File 770 fanzine to insult me, so I guess I should be honored. I’ve been criticized for being an attention hog (look who’s talking) and for not knowing the various names of SF/F authors involved in the Baen Books forum debate (oh the horror…I didn’t kiss someone’s arse or something).

Anyway, here’s the link to the relevant Pixel Scroll. Scroll down for item 6.

Now here’s the screenshot since things sometimes go “poof” on the internet  (keep on scrolling).

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January 6th, Baen’s Bar, and the Definition of “Evil”

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AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin

Addendum, 2-17-2021, 4:45 a.m. mountain time: Just an update from File 770 (still not a fan but it is an information source) on the whole Baen Bar fiasco. Of course, from that perspective, all conservatives are evil, but while 770 is also heavily biased, we must make certain that our own behavior and attitudes doesn’t support violence. No one is going to (I hope) cancel us because we believe in smaller government, the freedom to worship as we wish, free speech as guaranteed by the First Amendment, and eating actual beef hamburgers in opposition to the dictates of Bill Gates.

Original content starts here: Oh, good grief. Here we go again. I can just hear it. “All people even slightly to the right of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are Trump, Hitler, and Satan combined.”

What do I mean?

Well first off, a little personal background.

When I started reading science fiction in the 1960s and 70s, it was well before we had any idea of an “internet” much less “social media.” Today, we can investigate pretty much anyone’s past, at least up to a point. And not just individuals, but organizations as well. Thus we can make some sort of determination if we want to be associated with people and groups with a particular “reputation” before we partake of any of their “wares.”

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Waif

AlexandraSophie on Deviantart

Twin pairs of leather aeronaut’s boots crushed brittle green leaves and stems as gently as they could. Amanda Westcott and her love Wyatt Ellison approached the unconscious girl as quietly as if they were entering the room of a sleeping baby.

“Oh God, Wyatt, you were right. She is here, but how?” Amanda appeared some six or so years older than her thirty-year-old companion, but her hair was a rich and thick ebony restrained only by her pilot’s goggles. Equally “restrained” as it were, was her full figure, dressed in her leather aviation jacket, scandalously short knee-length wool skirt, and shear black silk stockings, she looked both innocent and alluring.

She bent over slightly as if to touch the child but then held back, perhaps not wanting to disturb her.

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Coronavirus is no laughing matter…or is it?

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Sorry about the “language”

I’ve read a number of social media memes that have suggested the death rate due to COVID-19 has been exaggerated. I also read a New York Times article that said New York City added more than 3,700 additional people who were presumed to have died of the coronavirus but had never tested positive, which seems to support that suggestion.

And yet, when I tried a Google search on overestimates of Coronavirus death tolls, all I came up with is info on how the death rate is underestimated.

Here we have more or less the same news from ABC News, Nature, and CNN among others.

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One More Commentary on the Dragon Awards

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Image found at DragonCon.org

I’m new to the whole hype over awards for science fiction and fantasy, well, ever since last year when I learned about the controversy involving the Hugos and the so-called Sad Puppies and Rabid Puppies.

However, I’ve been paying attention to the Dragon Awards. Unlike most other awards of this type, anyone who has internet access can register for no cost and be able to vote for their favorite authors, books, television shows, and so forth (in other words we mere mortals). I even voted myself, but unlike others, the purpose of this blog post isn’t to share who I favored.

I discovered at least three other commentaries on the Dragons: File 770‘s Mike Glyer, Camestros Felapton‘s, an apparently associated blog which I’ve just started following, and Richard Paolinelli’s SciFiScribe.

They all had slightly different takes.

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Using Climate Change to Illustrate Debates Based on Data vs. “Feels”

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Yes, this is Ben Shapiro appearing with one of his quotes. Don’t panic.

Relax. The point of this blog post isn’t to say that climate change is a hoax or to deny that it’s possible for human beings to damage the environment in any manner. The point is that when you want to convince someone of something, the way NOT to do it is to appeal to their “feels,” at least not when your point is supposed to be based on observable data and repeatable results from scientific experiments.

Case in point: climate change. The most liberal member of my immediate family, one of my sons, says that it’s possible for what we are currently observing to be “human assisted” climate change. He’s pretty smart and reads a lot (okay, reading and podcasts), so even though we don’t always agree, I can depend on him to present his point of view logically.

Now relative to climate change, he agrees with me that it’s not like the Earth has never been hotter than it is right now.  For instance, during the Cretaceous Period, according to LiveScience.com:

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When Banning and De-Platforming Becomes Censorship

censorship

Image courtesy of Bill Kerr via Flickr

I always get some blow back when I post anything political on this blog, and I’ve been actively trying to avoid it for the past several days (which is why I have twitter and Facebook). However, I was very impressed by an article published by “The Federalist” (yes, they’re conservative) I read today titled The Stigma Against My Conservative Politics Is Worse Than The Stigma Of Being Gay written by Chad Felix Greene. In my opinion, Greene successfully compared his being bullied when he came out as gay at age 16, and how he is sometimes harassed online now that he’s adult and his political views have become increasingly conservative.

You can click the link I provided above to read the whole article, but I want to focus on one thing he brought up. Greene quoted from a story published on “Vox” (which is heavily biased left and not considered all that accurate) called Milo Yiannopoulos’s collapse shows that no-platforming can work. Now before anyone gets upset, I have no use whatsoever for Yiannopoulous. When I first heard about him and the various panic attacks being experienced on college campuses where he had spoken or wanted to speak, I looked up some of his content, and the guy is way over the top.

news source biasHowever, as “Vox” reports, removing all of Yiannopoulous’s online support essentially sank his career, and therein lies the tale.

There’s quite a bit of buzz in certain conservative circles about content bias against conservatives on social network and crowdfunding platforms. Yes, they all have “Right of Use” policies, and if you legitimately violate said-policies, your account can either be temporarily suspended or permanently banned. However, are those policies always applied impartially?

At “Business Insider,” I found an article called A top Patreon creator deleted his account, accusing the crowdfunding membership platform of ‘political bias’ after it purged conservative accounts it said were associated with hate groups. Highly successful liberal, atheist author and podcaster Sam Harris deleted his very lucrative Patreon account (nearly 9000 paying patrons) because he said the platform unfairly discriminated against conservative creators. That earns him “hero of the month” in my book. Too few people are willing (including me sometimes) to look past their politics to see that if it’s unfair, it’s unfair no matter if you do it to a conservative or a liberal.

However, the problem is much worse than what we might see on the surface. I found the BI article on Facebook, and a responding comment said:

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Which “Echo Chamber” Should I Choose?

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Laura Loomer

Disclaimer/Trigger Warning/Whatever: This is a rant. Feel free not to read it.

I’ve got time on my hands so, I decided to “get political” again. I just read a Daily Wire story (yes, they’re conservative) called WATCH: Laura Loomer Banned From Twitter For Criticizing Rep. Ilhan Omar, Islam. Here’s Her Response.

Up until a few minutes ago, I had no idea who Laura Loomer was, and I’m a little surprised that both twitter and Facebook banned her for life for criticizing Ilhan Omar. After all, political figures are criticized on social media all the time without such a drastic result. I myself have criticized Ms. Omar for her anti-Israel and antisemitic positions, and yet I am allowed to remain on social media.

Apparently even political scientist and columnist Ian Bremmer, though not a supporter of Loomer, commented on twitter that banning her seemed a little harsh. Of course there were many others, including The Jewish Voice who were more critical of twitter’s and Facebook’s actions.

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On Elizabeth Warren, DNA Tests, and Native American Heritage

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Senator Elizabeth Warren – Image found at the Washington Examiner – no credit listed

As many of you know, I’ve gotten “political” on this blog from time to time, and have occasionally taken criticism for it. Fair enough. If I couldn’t take a little criticism, I should probably stick to safe subjects such as cute kitty videos.

Thus, we come to Senator Elizabeth Warren’s (D – Mass) statements that she has Native American ancestry. These claims began in the 1990s when, according to this CNN story:

Harvard Law School in the 1990s touted Warren, then a professor in Cambridge, as being “Native American.” They singled her out, Warren later acknowledged, because she had listed herself as a minority in an Association of American Law Schools directory. Critics note that she had not done that in her student applications and during her time as a teacher at the University of Texas.

In the same article, Warren is quoted as saying:

“I am very proud of my heritage,” Warren told NPR in 2012. “These are my family stories. This is what my brothers and I were told by my mom and my dad, my mammaw and my pappaw. This is our lives. And I’m very proud of it.”

“As a kid, I never asked my mom for documentation when she talked about our Native American heritage. What kid would? But I knew my father’s family didn’t like that she was part Cherokee and part Delaware, so my parents had to elope,” she said.

Admittedly, Warren has taken a lot of heat over these claims, especially since 2012 when Scott Brown, who, at the time, was running against Warren, accused her of lying about her heritage, and things got ugly from there.

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