Finding the occasional straw of truth awash in a great ocean of confusion and bamboozle requires vigilance, dedication, and courage. But if we don’t practice these tough habits of thought, we cannot hope to solve the serious problems that face us – and we risk becoming a nation of suckers, a world of suckers, up for grabs by the next charlatan who saunters along.
— Carl Sagan
Sagan died in 1997 so this quote is, at the very least, nearly a quarter of a century old. “Vigilance, dedication, and courage.” A triad of qualities in frightfully short supply for, at the very least, a quarter of a century. And now Sagan’s worst nightmare has come true.
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Bad Business On Big Talk
Emma Johnson of Kite Line and I touched, if ever so briefly, upon the horror show that is our holy land’s prison system. Slamming people behind bars is big business in America today. Bad business, at that.
She joined me on Big Talk yesterday afternoon. Catch the podcast of the WFHB feature here and the entire original interview with the co-host of Kite Line radio here.
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Smart Cookie
Well, sure, Leo Cook is out there. He wouldn’t deny it. He couldn’t deny it.
And why should he? The only sane people in this mad, mad, mad, mad world are those who are at least three degrees off center.
Leo’s latest mad foray into media-megastardom is hosting kids’ spots on WTIU’s The Friday Zone. Here are a few pix from the set of one of Leo’s upcoming edu-tainment show-gram episodes:
Food Or Not Food?
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A Blip > A Flop
Vindication for all those who swore to high heaven that a Bernie Sanders presidency would have been better than a L’il Duce reign: The events of the past seven months have proven them righter than right.
I was skeptical of the prospect of Sanders taking over the Executive Branch while both houses of Congress were in the hands of the hijacked GOP. He’d be utterly powerless, an afterthought, a sure bet to go down in flames in 2020. All that might have been true had he snatched the Dem nomination and gone on to beat the man who is now President Gag.
Superior
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Yet, a President Sanders would not have benefited from Russia’s terrifying disinformation and hacking campaign. And he wouldn’t be gutting the EPA, Planned Parenthood, the renewable energy industry, the Justice Dept.’s civil rights arm, or all federal depts.’ civil rights arms, for that matter. He wouldn’t be surrounded by social Darwinist billionaires in his Cabinet, he wouldn’t be pushing us toward war with either N. Korea or Iran — or both. He wouldn’t have made a shambles of the State Dept. and vandalized pretty much every relationship we have with all the major nations of Earth (save one).
A Sanders presidency might have been a mild punchline for late night monologuists. L’il Duce‘s threatens the very future of this holy land. Sanders’d have been better by a factor of thousands, even if he turned out to be a toothless four-year blip in the history of the presidency.
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