Infinite Quack

I feel halved. Maybe more so. I would frequently refer to Susan as my better half, so that suggests I've lost more than that. It's also my timeline that has been sliced in two. I went for a walk by myself today, and couldn't remember doing that for a while. I realized this is going to color all my experiences from now on -- doing things I've done before, but now I'm doing them as a widower. I had experiences before I met Susan, and some of those were nice, but the best ones happened during my time with her. Now that time is over. I'm 47, so my timeline hasn't been cut exactly in half either. I've most likely got less than half my life ahead of me. Just now, it's hard to imagine it being the better half, but I can hope it'll get better than this. It's like how 9/11 changed America, dividing everything into what happened before or after. It's different, though, because this event is not shared. As I walked around the neighborhood, I heard p...

Trump’s Attempts to Overturn the Election Are Unparalleled in U.S. History This article illustrates how bad things have become. Imagine you're holding an election on a spaceship. The votes have been cast, and one side has a clear majority. But the other side is so intent on winning, by any means, that they start opening airlocks to flush ballots out into space. Not only is this obviously an illegitimate tactic, it's also dangerous. You're throwing away precious oxygen. You're risking not just the election's integrity, but the safety of the whole crew. This is what the Grifter Oligarchy Party is doing. They're playing to win at any cost, and the cost now extends to basic norms of behavior. A system of laws stops working when a significant part of the population just decides to ignore them, and do whatever they feel like. The cost extends to making bald-faced lies, planting ideas in the heads of disgruntled Trump voters -- who have been primed, over the course of ...

‘Reach Out to Trump Supporters,’ They Said. I Tried. I Give Up. Don’t waste your time reaching out to Trump voters like I did. Instead, invest your time organizing your community, registering new voters and supporting candidates who reflect progressive values that uplift everyone, not just those who wear MAGA hats, in local and state elections. Work also to protect Americans against lies and conspiracy theories churned out by the right wing media and political ecosystem. The right-wing conspiracy theory funhouse of Alternative Facts is essentially a cult. People who are happy listening to that day after day... they aren't about to be talked out of those ideas by rational arguments. What would  talk them out of it? Perhaps, nothing. People have to realize the truth on their own, sometimes. They will leave the cult only when they're ready. But don't wait for them. Try to make progress despite  them, progress that will benefit the whole society including  them. Someday, once...

‘The Far Left Is the Republicans’ Finest Asset’ The Democratic Party represents an enormous group of competing constituencies, running the gamut from trade unionists to feminists, from minorities to environmentalists, from secular Americans to LGBT advocates, a list that can be extended to multiple pages, with many people in the party answering to several of these descriptions, further complicating matters. Yeah, that's a challenge. Because we have just two parties that matter in the US today. One party is batsh*t crazy, greedy and selfish to the point of nihilism, has abandoned all pretense of having a value system, and has now shown willing to burn the country down (or at least its democracy, its heart and soul) rather than surrender control over it. And on the other side, we have the Democrats. The party of everyone who isn't crazy . Well, you can't put all the rational people under one roof and expect them to agree on everything. This problem partly exists because the G...

Behind Trump’s Yearslong Effort to Turn Losing Into Winning This crap makes me furious. It wasn't a surprise when it arrived; Trump has been broadcasting for a long while, to anyone who would listen, that he was going to do all he could to cast doubt on the integrity of the election in an effort to retain his hold on power if he lost. But anticipating it doesn't mean any of us should stand for it. The expectation that we will choose our leaders through a voting process is baked into our Constitution, and has been since its beginning. But like any legal system, operated by fallible humans, it relies on a basic expectation of decency, on good-faith attempts to discern what is true and what isn't. Going around sowing doubt in the integrity of the voting process -- it's the kind of thing that is effective due to some inbuilt tendencies we all have, to form beliefs based on insufficient evidence. It's a con. Trump isn't good at much, but he is good at conning people....

As Biden Plans Transition, Republicans Decline to Recognize His Election “It’s important for the cause of democracy and freedom that we don’t allege fraud and theft and so forth, unless there’s very clear evidence of that,” Mr. Romney said. “To date, that evidence has not been produced.” Trump was clear about laying the groundwork to contest the election if he lost, saying back in September he could only lose if the election was "rigged". That would be like me saying I can only lose my next game of Monopoly if the dice are rigged. Like much of what Trump says about himself (and he cares about nothing else), it's pure self-aggrandizement divorced from any sense of reality. He's simply delusional. Most other Republicans continue to back him up, though not because they believe the election was stolen, nor that they particularly like Trump. They're just concerned that being seen to contradict him will cost them politically. Folks like Romney, with integrity and politi...

Portable mind-reader gives voice to locked-in people Something unrelated to the election... I had the idea that devices like this were already available for consumer purchase. After all, we have those brainwave-activated cat ears and such toys. A device that can signal yes/no should not be a problem. But I searched Amazon and had some trouble finding one. Does anyone know? During my wife's final days, she could not talk to us. The nurses advised us to talk to her, though, saying she could likely still hear. If we wanted to know whether she was uncomfortable, we had to make educated guesses based on her breathing, facial expression, and other such cues. I really wanted to be able to communicate with her -- even to the minimal level of answering yes or no -- assuming she was conscious, which we also had no power to determine. If such devices are available, IMO, hospice nurses should all have them in their arsenal. Original Facebook post

I hope everyone reading this, who hasn't voted early, is planning to do so today. Susan and I voted. We filled out our ballots a few weeks back, though due to how things were going health-wise, we didn't get it done until past the point where the experts recommended mailing it. I made a point of driving both ballots to the nearest drop box -- in our case, about a 40 minute drive, each way -- while she was still hanging on. Her ballot envelope is the last thing she was able to legibly sign. When she later consented to care by hospice, she only managed to make some confused squiggles on the page. It's been just over a day since she left us. If she's able to witness the election's outcome, it will only be because she's managed to snag a window seat in Heaven, and a telescope. Whatever happened, I really wanted to be able to discuss it with her. She cared about the state of this country, every bit as much as I did. When Donald Trump was running in the 2016 GOP pri...