Monday, April 4, 2016

The Left can be as looney as the Right

Untitled, silkscreen by Barbara Kruger (1989, The Broad collection).

     I've seen some strange weather in Chicago — a day when it was 105 degrees, another, 26 below zero, green skies, monsoon rains and massive snows. But I've never seen a day like Saturday, beginning at dawn with flurries in April, then alternating from blue-skied sunshine to white-out blizzard, and back. Sun, then snowstorm. Clear skies. London fog. All. Day. Long.
     "BI-POLAR VORTEX" a Facebook friends labeled a video of the maelstrom, resurrecting a twitter tag from two years back.
     My poor saucer magnolia blossoms. Open for one day and then, boom, snow and freeze.
     "Where's your global warming now?!" I snarled at the sky.
     "That's not what it means," my wife informed me, perhaps forgetting whom she married.
     Yes dear, I know. A feeble attempt at humor, based on conservatives who, trumpeting their ignorance of all things scientific, declare that really cold days are a refutation of climate change: "How could the world be warmer if it's cold now?" That's like standing in a house engulfed in flame, pulling open the freezer and announcing, "Look! How can there be a fire? The popsicles are fine!"
     But I don't want to rag on the Right. It's too easy. I've started to notice that while the Right's irrationalities get frequent denunciation in the press, the Left has its own irrationalities that receive gentler handling....


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9 comments:

  1. Yes there are some goofy people on the left. The anti vaxxers could do some real damage. Why any one would listen to some one like Jenny McCarthy is beyond me. Jay Cutler's wife is also an anti vaxxer and is going along with it.
    As for Sanders. Yes one would have to consider it pie in the sky. However it wouldn't be if the government did not give so much money away in subsidies, tax loopholes and other ways that the government gives away money. I might have suggested this before, but I wish everyone would read three books by David Cay Johnston. Perfectly Legal, Free Lunch and The Fine Print. One of the things he wrote about in Fine Print is having the government do your taxes for you. They already have your pertinent information. Unless you have complicated taxes the government can do it quite easily. How ever companies like Turbo Tax are against it. As is Grover Norquist. It is obvious why Turbo Tax would be against it as they make so much selling their products. For the most part we know the rich are getting away with a lot, but it is really astonishing how much they and big business gets away with. If we got all the taxes that should be paid free college would not be pie in the sky. Johnston was an investigative reporter for the New York Times. He is really great ferreting out all this info. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook. He writes for USA Today and some other sites.

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  2. Grrrr. I have strong opinions on all these topics, and was all set to write a screed on how Neil got something wrong, but today's column is imbued with a large quantity of well thought out positions, and common sense. I can bore many with details of the ignorance that is climate change "science", the beliefs of the catastrophic alarmist has crossed the border into religious faith, but I'll give it a pass today. Sanford, the IRS already does taxes, part way through the various 1040's there is a line that says you can stop here and the IRS will calculate your taxes for you. They have computer programs the look for errors in each return, and if a mistake is made you will get a letter telling you how much more you owe please respond in 30 days. Other unusual numbers in a return can trigger an audit. There are stories in the news occasionally, of people and corporations have a dispute with the IRS about what is owed, sometimes in the millions. Thanks to congress, the tax code can be vague in places, and open to interpretation even among honest people.

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    1. The thing about the irs was in Fine Print. It was published in 2012. I don't think things have changed much. I do know that as recent as a year or so ago companies like Intuit and probably H&R Block are against the govt doing your taxes. However there is a difference between starting your taxes and then letting the IRS finish and letting them doing it from the start

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  3. I think that Trump and Bernie were small players in the big picture, brought in to introduce the ends of the bell curve ideas that very few tout and almost nobody takes seriously - until they did. Now the groundswell has traction and the ideas are front and center, if only for the time being, but will be a giant soup stain on the tie of America for years to come.

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  4. I agree with you on GMOs. What's truly nuts is that because Vermont is going ahead with mandatory GMO labeling, food giants are going to be forced into putting GMO labeling on every package, because they can't segregate Vermont-only products in their supply chains. I'm beginning to think that state is good for nothing besides maple syrup, fall scenery and pain-in-the-ass politics and politicians.

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  5. I am not so sure that the the anti-vaccine and anti-GMOs people are all or even mostly Lefties. I wouldn't even say that they are all ignorant, but rather that they get their information from inferior sources. Perhaps, socialists are likewise hampered by their information sources or maybe it's the rest of us who are misinformed.

    john

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  6. Bernie Sanders is the liberal's Ron Paul. I'm surprised he's made it this far, but his lone opponent does have a lot of negatives. I think as president he would be completely impotent. Trump would be disaster, but at least his chosen party is fighting his nomination.

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  7. yes neil we are ALL fooled by something .

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