Neal's Rants (Mostly Political)


WARNING: This is where all the re­ally po­lit­ical things are found. Know that I am so lib­eral that I don’t mind at all that others are conservative—as long their your opin­ions are based on facts. While I have mel­lowed con­sid­er­ably with age, I still suffer fools poorly.

As Artemus Ward re­put­edly ob­served: “It ain’t so much the things we don’t know that get us into trouble, it’s the things we do know that just ain’t so.”

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it was fifty years ago today, mayor daley sent his troops to play

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DemCon68 bw troops 1500 crop

MY SEVENTEENTH YEAR of this life-cycle opened with the Viet Cong launching the Tet Of­fen­sive, in which they put the lie to every­thing our gov­ern­ment, our mil­i­tary, and our media had been telling us about the war “over there.” This sup­pos­edly causes Pres­i­dent Lyndon Johnson to an­nounce that he will not seek re-election.

In April, Martin Luther King Jr, prob­ably the most in­flu­en­tial man of color in the United States, was as­sas­si­nated. READ MORE

the hydra of hate bubbling beneath america’s surface

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MultiHeadedHydra 1600

I SKIPPED “MONSTER TALK” with Blake Smith as he pre­pared for Cryp­tidCon in the latest Skeptic newsletter. The ques­tion “What does sci­ence have to tell us about mon­sters” didn’t at­tract my in­terest. Nor did common mis­con­cep­tions about the ori­gins and de­vel­op­ment of iden­tical and fra­ternal twins. But I did eye the key ar­ticle by Carol Tavris. READ MORE

george zimmerman and self-defense

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MartinZimmerman 800

I RARELY PAY ATTENTION to the let­ters written into the local news­paper. Too many let­ters are from mis­in­formed in­di­vid­uals who al­most al­ways vote Rep*blican and ac­tu­ally be­lieve that Lim­baugh and Beck and O’Reilly are sources for ac­tual “news.”

I am as­tounded by the people willing to put their name in print and claim credit for some­thing that would take them five min­utes of re­search on the in­ternet to dis­cover was not so. READ MORE

an experiment that actually curbed hate speech on the internet

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InternetTrolls TrollHunter 1500

I HATE BULLIES and I see internet trolls as bul­lies. So I hate in­ternet trolls. But aside from Face­book, where I can keep them curbed by ex­cluding them from my com­ment thread, I have little in­ter­ac­tion on so­cial media plat­forms on the in­ternet. Con­se­quently, I have little in­ter­ac­tion with bul­lies and trolls on the in­ternet.

Oh, I see them when I’m out and about reading ar­ti­cles and es­says on other sites—whether news sites or opinion sites. READ MORE

barbara lee and the boundless consequences of war

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LeeBarbara closeup1

“SO YOU THINK YOU’RE RIGHT and every­body else is wrong?” I heard those words from my fa­ther many times while growing up. Of course, the ra­tio­nale be­hind those words is sound: most of the times we hold an opinion that dif­fers with that of 99% of every­body else, then 99% of the time we will prob­ably be wrong. READ MORE

lies, damn lies, fake news, and the misinformation ecosystem

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CharliesAngels FullThrottle devil 1500

FAKE NEWS AIN’T NEW NEWS. The term has been in fairly reg­ular if not quite common use for years: it ini­tially re­ferred to the mis/disinformation and pro­pa­ganda cir­cu­lated by the thou­sands of well-connected, rightwing radio talk shows for pro­pa­ganda. It grew to even vaster pro­por­tions with the emer­gence of the mil­lions of ‘con­ser­v­a­tive’ web­sites and blogs known as the Rightwing Bl­o­gos­phere. READ MORE

in a dark time, the eye begins to see a world of early childhood damage

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BermanMorris painting full copy

WE LIVE IN A WORLD of early child­hood damage, says Morris Berman. This is what caught my eye when I was turned on to Berman’s web­site, Dark Ages America. The reader will find below ex­cerpts from an in­ter­view with Berman by Murray Cox for Omni mag­a­zine (Au­gust 1991 issue).

What fol­lows is an abridged ver­sion of their ex­change. READ MORE

right-wing extremists inject hateful rhetoric

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KKK 1 1500

AS I HAVE MENTIONED over and over again, the preva­lence (that’s a bit of un­der­state­ment there) and vir­u­lence of rightwingnuts on var­ious so­cial media on the Internet—how they in­ject hate and fear here, there, and every­where. I thought I’d let someone with a bigger pulpit re­it­erate some of my points: in Oc­tober 2017, Right Wing Watch fea­tured “White Su­premacy Fig­ured Out How To Be­come YouTube Fa­mous” by Jared Holt. READ MORE

I did not pay that woman with whom I did not have sexual relations to not talk about not having sexual relations with me!

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DavisStory cartoon ClayJones 1600b

I DON’T GIVE A HOOT what two con­senting adults do in the pri­vacy of their bed­rooms, in their of­fices, in a hotel room, or in the White House. I don’t care that Donald Trump may have had some sexual re­la­tions or any other kind of re­la­tions with Stormy Davis—although the Forbes mag­a­zine thing is funny.

I just wanted an ex­cuse to pub­lish this line that I made up and think is funny as all get-out:

“I did not pay that woman with whom I did not have sexual re­la­tions to not talk about not having sexual re­la­tions with me.” READ MORE