caucus99percent

free-range politics, organic community

It’s statements like this one by Ed Rendell, former Pennsylvania governor and current chair of the Democratic National Convention, that make my blood boil:

Yesterday I was reminded on the Book of Faces of a poem I wrote six years ago. It does a great job of capturing the aura of recent events, so I thought I should maybe share it again.

I missed this two months ago, but it's worth repeating even if some of you previously came across it.

Monday May 8, 1916
Report from Dublin on the Wedding of a Martyred Irish Rebel

Link: http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/dem-primaries/279136-democratic-nati...

As if you're not disgusted enough with the Democratic Party, the weasel Ed Rendell just doubled-down on pissing off half of their voting base:

Lately I've been looking into installing solar panels.

My house faces east, with the peak of the roof running east-west so I have a pretty good stretch of roof that is south-facing. However my neighbour to the south has a pretty tall maple tree -- at least as tall as my house -- so I'm not sure whether that would affect efficiency. A similar tree on the neighbour's property behind me might block any southwest-facing panels.

Google is arguably the first tool that most people use to inform themselves about presidential candidates and election issues. People often use Google Search to ask political questions, while Google tries to guess the question and complete it while the user is still typing. The AI (artificially intelligent) algorithm Google employs for this feature is keyed to many environmental variables, but the most influential are terms and topics that are trending.

Thus, we come to Donald Trump. These days, people are searching his name often, and one of the most frequent questions they ask appears to be:

Is donald trump a republican or democrat?

The American people just aren't certain.

During last evening's diary, someone posted the following question:

Are there any studies as to why some people react as they do? There has to be something about brainwashing or extremely, rigid hierarchical systems and the reinforcement loop.

That's a very good question. My partner teaches people how to do psychological research and has access to a very good library, so we found a paper on anti-transgender prejudice from 2012. It will take me a couple of days to translate the research method used and statistics into actual readable English, but I'll do it and get back to you.

Meanwhile, we can all revel in the American Family Association's Sandy Rios, who first denied that AFA is "testing" Target's policy of allowing transgender people to use public facilities in their stores (you know, like normal people) by sending men into women's facilities, before getting to the point of her hatred.

Perhaps I'm beating a dead horse in the eyes of some here, but when I see a headline like this - Fort McMurray: Fire could double in size, Canadian official says - from CNN, I find it more than a little disturbing.

Dry, windy conditions are fueling the blaze, which has already raged over 1,010 square kilometers (389 square miles). By Saturday, it might be twice as big.

This will be a several part essay, which will hope to explain just how we got ourselves into the mess we now face.

Faith. Everyone seems to recognize it, but what is it really? What is truly meant by the word Faith? And what role has it played in politics, especially in the race for the presidency.