Month: May 2019

Why We Aren’t Panicking About Russian Election Tampering In 2020

There’s a couple of reasons here. I think the main one is, we’re pretty much emergencied out by now.

Think about it: Al Gore gave us a decade to fix the planet, and that was twenty years ago. We were running out of oil too; that hasn’t happened either. And… anyone else remember the Y2K scare? We were going to have riots, looting, and blood in the streets. Never happened; wasn’t (more…)

The Earth Is Flat.

I’ve been wanting to post my personal Flat Earth theory for quite some time now, but I’ve been holding back because I don’t want to court mindless censure. Then I realized: Politically, I’m a moderate who believes in reasonable discussion and compromise, and I fight for those beliefs. So why not this one too?

This is a theory, by the way; it’s not an article of quasi-religious dogma for me. Facts won’t offend me; incivility will. (more…)

Does One Vote Matter?

You know, in our history of electing presidents, we’ve had some narrow wins.  In some cases, if  a very few people had voted another way, the results would have been entirely different.

I was asked which margin was narrowest in our entire history of electing presidents.  As best as I can tell, (more…)

Losing In 2020

“Forget about winning for a sec.  Who do you think will lose in 2020?”

The American people. It’s a tradition, after all.

Stop and think about it: Last time around, we were asked to choose between two of the most loathed people in the country. Our alternatives included the pot smoker and a doddering honest-to-God socialist.

(Don’t get me wrong; I’ve got nothing against Bernie Sanders or Gary Johnson (more…)

Climate Change Optimism

A certain fluffy-headed optimist posed the following question:

“What tiny change could the whole world make right now to make a huge impact on the rate of climate change in the next decade?”

I’m sure it was aimed at provoking answers like “walk to work” or “plant a tree”, maybe “use less plastic” or just “consume less”. Which would all be good things; I won’t argue that; we should do them all, absolutely. But this sort of question obscures the true (more…)

Facebook, and Freedom Of Speech

“When our founding fathers gave us freedom of speech in the 1st Amendment, it meant all speech, whether you like it or not!”  -R.H.

No complex question has a simple answer.

Generally, I agree:  If you say “I believe…” and follow that by a statement, no matter how offensive that might be, you’re protected under the law, and because of certain inalienable (more…)