Tag Archives: danger

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. President Trump. Say what you want about Europe and the NATO alliance, but they represent most of our oldest and strongest allies. Maintaining strong working relationships there is a key element of American national security. If ever there was a moment for the president to reign in his normal impulse to ratchet up the drama, it would have been this week’s London summit. Pitching a hissy fit in the face of mean words isn’t a good look internationally.

2. Impeachment. The House of Representatives seems to have the votes to move forward with articles of impeachment against the president. The Speaker is a good enough politician not to bring the vote if she didn’t have the numbers. Soon enough the whole thing will be thrown over to the Senate for trial… where I can only assume the Majority Leader will manage the case every bit as politically as the Speaker has done laying the charges. Prediction: The president remains in office while Republicans and Democrats retrench and emerge more divided than ever.

3. Lyft assault accusations. About a million years ago when I was growing up, we were all consistently warned about the dangers of getting into cars with strangers. Now, here in the oh so advanced 21st century we’re suddenly surprised when bad things happen when you get into cars with strangers. It’s the kind of thing we use to call having some goddamned common sense.

Where do I start…

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The usual answer to that question, logically, is “at the beginning.” If time was an unlimited resource that might be the right answer here too. As it is not, the best I can manage in one sitting is to try racking and stacking the approximately 87,241 things that are banging around my head this evening.

At various points today I’ve pondered the issues of securing the boarder, the virtue of allowing 100,000 Syrians to take refuge here in the states, the war in the 21st century, national responsibility and imperial power, how much more “presidential” Mr. Hollande sounded this afternoon than did our own president, and how many of my countrymen wish to remain willfully blind to the real dangers abounding in the world in which we live. Any one of those could fill a volume – a blog hardly gives space to lay out the thesis.

Then there’s the other thing. The one that we usually leave unsaid. The one where just about anything we say out loud is bound to devolve into a shouting match between people who have diametrically opposing points of view on any subject that even sniffs of controversial. More importantly, before I delve into those waters, I have to ask the question of whether or not I have the energy to even endure being a third party to the argument.

You’ve caught me here on a Monday night, so the answer is an overwhelming no I do not. If push comes to shove, I’m not even going to try convincing you that my points of view are valid and worthy of consideration. I can only trust that you know your own mind as well as I know my own and that you’ve made whatever decisions you feel are best for you.

I’m never quite sure if anything that’s on my mind is worth saying out loud – or if any of it cuts through the rest of the electronic noise that assaults us each day. As you might have guessed, I’ve certainly got my opinions. Perhaps, on a night when my head isn’t particularly addled I’ll spell out some of the specifics and see if we can get a proper argument going.

Glass: The Danger in our Midst

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There is a grave danger to every man, woman, child, and distracted bird in this country now hidden in our midst. Multi-billion dollar corporations are allowed to build 15,000 square foot retail stores in areas commonly used by people for shopping. Then these companies then have the audacity to clad their storefronts with newfangled see-through glass doors and walls. These fancy glass doors represent a clear and present danger to any and all who seek to do commerce with those businesses and I say they must be stopped. How dare these companies use glass to allow passersby to see into their stores and allow their stores to be take advantage of natural ambient lighting. It’s too much! Too much, I say!

83-year olds like Evelyn Paswall and all our fellow citizens must be protected from the continued use of glass in construction around the country, because our corporations are patently “negligent … in allowing a clear, see-through glass wall and/or door to exist without proper warning.” We as a species have only been aware of glass for five millennia, clearly not a sufficient time for all of us to learn about the hazards of walking headlong into this dangerous substance as we go about our daily business in our homes and places of employment.

The courts must provide an immediate remedy for the egregious use of such a dangerous product, because clearly human beings have not been graced with the common sense that God gave the average house cat.

While this case is winding its way through the courts, I’ll be stockpiling supplies for my bunker… because civilization is obviously doomed.

Global War…

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Anyone who thinks we are not in the midst of a truly global war against terrorism should take a long look at this minute-by-minute map of events going on around the world. Terrorism doesn’t just mean Islamo-Facist extremists shooting up the streets of Baghdad; It’s home grown pipe-bombers, the covert movement of radioactive material, and kidnappings in the name of one political sect or another. The world has been and remains a dangerous place, my friends. The web only shows us those items that are common knowledge… Want to guess what’s going on that no one has discovered yet?