On life:
“Has it ever struck you that life is all memory, except for the one present moment that goes by you so quickly you hardly catch it going?” ― Tennessee Williams
Actually, by that definition, there’s no such a thing as a “present moment”.
Discuss among yourselves.
Afterthought: I apologize for the unwarranted gravity of this post. And now, we return to the topic of Salma Hayek’s boobs.
Almost exactly 365 days ago, southern Britishland was in the grip of a fearful drought, vid.:
…and of course, pics like the above caused much weeping, wailing and gnashing of British teeth with headlines such as “Does climate change mean that we’ll never see rain again?” and similar twaddle.
Of course, we sentient human beings all know the difference between “climate” and “weather”, so there was NO PANIC!!! amongst us. And indeed, here we are, a year later:
…because Britishland’s old friend — RAIN — has fallen from the skies again, this time leading to items such as this (sent to me by Longtime Buddy Mrs. Sorenson):
…which in turn leads to things like this, taken in my car yesterday:
I’d gladly offer to trade, say, 25 degrees off our summer for a couple weeks of cooling rain from theirs.
Were it not for non-existent income tax, relaxed gun laws, hands-off politicians, fine BBQ and friendly Texans… I have no idea why I live here.
By the way, in the comments for the original article whence I filched the first two pics, one guy offered the following: “That drought was in the south. Up here in the North, it’s been raining nonstop for five years.”
Reader Andy T. sent me this little video, and it had me giggling like a little girl. As he put it:
“Not quite a Righteous Shooting (this apparently occurred in NYC), but definitely a Righteous Beating thanks to a couple of PO’ed Sikhs…”
Taking the law into their own hands, and righteously so. I bet the beatee doesn’t come near that shop again.
I must have watched the thing a dozen times, and I bet you will too.
While chatting with an old buddy, this song came to mind and now I can’t shake it.
Psychedelic music, baby.
…but too young to die, as a wise man once sang.
Now we have the political equivalent:
Former South Carolina Republican Governor Nikki Haley said over the weekend that politicians should have to take mental competency tests once they hit 75 years old to ensure they are fit to serve the public.
“We need to have mental competency tests for anyone over the age of 75,” she said. “And I don’t say that to be disrespectful. I don’t care if you do it for 50 and older. What I’m saying is, these are people in D.C. that are making decisions on our national security.”
Of course, this tin-eared politico uses this argument to score a point off the noticeably-senile Joe Biden, but she does have a point nevertheless.
We don’t let people go into public office when they’re too young, because even among a poulation of ignoramuses, youthful wannabe-politicians are no more than the primordial ooze of society. Young people, as it’s been said, argue with passion, vigor and conviction; except that they’re almost inevitably wrong.
So given the inescapable fact that old farts start losing their marbles as they approach senility — forget the numbers, stats and medical studies on this, it’s an inescapable fact of human life — why not set an arbitrary upper limit on public service? Forget that “testing” bullshit as suggested by Haley et al., that’s just busybody government attitude on display. Carve it in stone — hell, stick it in the Constitution, why not? — but make it impossible for any Olde Phartte to govern.
Yes, I know: some old people are commendably active, mentally speaking, and denying them office would have denied us of, to name but one, Ronald Reagan (at least his second term, anyway). But even in Reagan’s second term, it was apparent that the old boy was losing his marbles. And taking our cue from that, it’s not really how old a President is when he takes office, it’s how old he’ll be at the end of his first term that’s important. Think about it: 70 years old on Inauguration Day means 78 towards the end of his Presidency, when he’ll still have his finger on the nuclear trigger and be proposing legislation that may suit the present but be a hopeless long-term proposition. Older than 70? Ladies and gentlemen, I give you: Joe Biden.
Which brings me to the next issue about senior-citizen politicians: the “I’ll be dead by then” attitude that is as inescapable a mindset as physical senility. Oh sure, we’d like to think that our politicians are going to be statesmen like Washington or Jefferson and think of generations to come; but the most likely scenario is that they’re going to be more like Barack fucking Obama. (Tangentially, the only reason to allow older men to become president is because they’re more likely to die soon after leaving office, unless they’re named Jimmy Carter in which case they continue to meddle and foist their horrible ideas and opinions on us long after they’ve exceeded their useful date.)
If we think about this logically, politicians and lawmakers in general should have to live with the consequences of their actions, because then the urge to just say “oh fuck it, let the kids deal with it” is a lot less appealing.
Corporations, by the way, recognize this issue quite clearly, which is why we have mandatory-retirement policies in so many professions — airline pilots at 55 65 being the most noteworthy — and why so many people prefer middle-aged doctors to both young and inexperienced doctors and old doctors who may not be up to date with recent advances or do things “because I’ve always done it this way”. There are limits to experience, of course, and particularly when that experience stands in the way of proper action. Most corporate boards, by the way, have no age limit but that’s because the proper function of a board is advisory and not executive.
Here’s my suggestion: all public servants, regardless of position, should be banned from running for public office after the age of 67 — the de facto “retirement” age of current society. I know that medical advances are wonderful and have done so much to ensure that the age of Man is no longer just threescore years and ten etc., but allowing much older people to run for office — yes, Trump as much as Biden — is an irresponsible indulgence that in general and in the long term will turn out to be harmful to society. (Trump, for example, would be 78 were he to win the Presidency in 2024, which means he’d be 82 at the end of his term of office. You sure you want an octogenarian Trump flailing around the Oval Office for two whole years? And that’s assuming he’s still got all his marbles now: by no means an established fact.)
As a bookie might put it: yeah, there are some senior citizens who would function perfectly well while late into their seventies and even eighties — but that’s not the way to bet.
If we have a lower limit on political life, why not an upper one?
If anybody has noticed that the hysteria surrounding Global Warming Climate Cooling Change© is ratcheting up, you’re not alone. However, the reasons for this increased hysteria — fueled by the spate of summer heatwaves* consuming Yurp and Murka alike — are not surprising. Why? Because government and especially the Marxist wing thereof constantly affirm the wisdom of H.L. Mencken:
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed — and hence clamorous to be led to safety — by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”
Now that the dreaded Covid has essentially subsided into a “seasonal flu” category, this eco-nonsense has perforce had to take its place:
There are a lot of religions on this planet, but none so demanding of one’s faith as the Church of Climate Change. It’s a cult whose message is so pervasive in our culture that many take it at its word that mankind is indeed changing the climate of the Earth, but once you start looking at the data you can see pretty quickly that a lot of its claims are based on half-truths or full-on lies.
The dirty secret about the Church of Climate Change is that all things considered, it’s a suicide cult. It wants humanity to die off and stop having so many children. All this to, ironically, save you from yourselves.
Moreover, its goal is to get you to give up on human advancements and regress back to a time when humanity worked with lesser technologies and fewer rights. It wants you to hand power to them, not only in the government but personal freedoms such as your ability to travel freely and eat what you want. It wants to regulate businesses into obeying rules that would cripple and restrict them.
As Jeffrey Tucker points out in the Epoch Times, the media is currently using the fear-inducing models they created for COVID-19 to push the climate change scam. There are orange and red “tracking maps” on major networks following big heat increases in the same way they would highlight COVID-19 outbreaks.
Executive summary: don’t believe the hysteria, especially because the media is using that to attract eyeballs. That it happens to coincide with the totalitarians’ aims is in itself no coincidence.
However, there are at least a few signs that this nonsense is finally being recognized for the foolishness that it is — not by us, the public, but by government officials. Good grief, even squishy BritPM Rishi Sunak is snapping back:
He added: ‘If you or others think that the answer to climate change is getting people to ban everything… I think that’s the absolutely the wrong approach.’
Yeah duh, Rishi old man; welcome to our party.
But if there’s one thing we can be certain of, it’s that climate change hysteria is not going to abate, but get more frantic.
*Note that there’s a perfectly good reason for said heatwaves, but blame can’t be laid at the door of airliners, SUVs or Republicans so it’s being ignored by the media:
In the study, published in Geophysical Research Letters, Millán and his colleagues estimate that the Tonga eruption sent around 146 teragrams (1 teragram equals a trillion grams) of water vapor into Earth’s stratosphere – equal to 10% of the water already present in that atmospheric layer.
Oh.
Maybe we should ban volcanoes. What the hell, it makes as much sense (and as much chance of success) as any of the other initiatives proposed by the Greens.
