The Electron Pencil

Let There Be Light

Hallelujah!

Winter solstice zips in tonight at 11:49pm in the Eastern Time Zone of the United States.

Winter Solstice Sequence

[Image: Danilo Pivato]

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The days, after that moment, will become longer, brighter, and more amenable to my overall mental health.

Yay.

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Talking Headless

It is important not just to shoot, but to aim.

That’s the advice Barack Obama would give his successor regarding how to kick the crap out of ISIS. He was talking with NPR Morning Edition host Steve Inskeep in the public radio network’s annual end-of-the-year chat with the boss of this holy land.

It’s vintage Obama — measured, considered, sober, calm.

As opposed to, say Sen Ted Cruz, the foreign-born pretender to the throne who not long ago told the same interviewer that Murrica oughtta “carpet bomb” ISIS.

Carpet Bomber Cruz

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That’s something your idiot, uninformed brother-in-law would say in the midst of a holiday meal pontification. What’s scary, natch, is the fact that Cruz is a valid contender for the 2016 Republican nomination for president.

Cruz tried to justify his remark by saying this country has dropped more and bigger bombs many a time before so why in the world aren’t we doing so now?

Do we really have to answer that? Okay, let’s say we must. The reason we dropped more and bigger bombs in other wars was because we were trying to destroy an enemy’s war-making capabilities, its factories, its railroads, its air bases, its military installations and key infrastructure sites. None of which ISIS really possesses. What Cruz doesn’t grasp is, ISIS is a marauding band of lunatics invading semi-urbanized, semi-permanent outposts, terrorizing frightened tribal groups, and imposing its will mainly through the use of scimitars and other medieval tools of war. Obama said earlier in his interview, “Well, who is it you are going to bomb? Where is it that you are going to bomb?”

But what Obama doesn’t understand is Cruz’s blatherings resonate more with the American people than his own rational utterances. The vast majority of citizens herein want the bold, decisive, action-oriented palaver of Ted Cruz and Donald Trump more than the aforementioned measured, considered, sober, calm reasonings of Obama.

I don’t suggest that Obama start word-vomiting à la Cruz, Trump et al. I do insist he begin talking more to the limbic brain of the American electorate. Be more of a cheerleader, Barack. Tell us you’re gonna stand on your head to beat ISIS. Reassure us that we’re the biggest, strongest, baddest-assed nation on Earth. We want to hear it. It doesn’t matter if it’s all bullshit. We want the bullshit.

We have no interest in wonk-think. Obama can continue to be the policy wonk behind closed doors. He should be. He must be. But when he’s addressing Murrica, he’s got to be more Ronald Reagan than the University of Chicago senior lecturer he once was.

You’ll pardon me while I go drink my depression away now.

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Vox Pop

So, Bob Zaltsberg and the brain trust over at the Herald Times have decided to suspend public comment on stories during the holiday season.

H-T Chief Zaltsberg

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Hmm.

I can’t figure out why readers’ sensibilities might be more fragile during this two-week period than any other. Zaltsberg writes that he and other gatekeepers have had to delete a few dozen comments in recent weeks because the commenters violated the paper’s civility policy.

Me, I’d leave even the most egregious, insulting, offensive stuff in — with the proviso that everybody who comments use their real names. I like the idea of knowing who the haters and flamboyant ignoramuses are in our town.

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Cosmic Comedy

The contestants from Uranus, the Andromeda Galaxy, and Kepler 452b protest.

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