"When I do not want to say things in real life I often say them here." — Mimi Smartypants
Because we can’t be trusted to run our own lives
From a New York Times op-ed titled “I Wanted to Be a Good Mom. So I Got a Gun“: A few months after my father left our family home for good, my mother heard me screaming in the middle of the night. It was the kind of scream that made her grab her rifle in […]
I don’t know how many readers look at older posts here at Paul’s Thing, but if you do you might have noticed most of the photos are gone. The graphics and photos I use here link to originals stored on Flickr. Three days ago I tried to upload new photos: my account had vanished, along […]
… that doesn’t make the argument about sharing critical information on terrorism and airline flight safety invalid, and when push comes to shove, that’s the argument that’ll get Trump off the hook.
The first thing I do in the morning is glance at the LED clock in the bathroom. Yesterday it was blank; the GFCI outlet it’s plugged into had popped (I had to look up GFCI just now: ground fault circuit interrupter) and the little red button wouldn’t reset. A contractor is pumping out our swimming […]
You’ve played battleship, right? Aircraft carriers are today’s battleships, and we’re all in the game, trying to guess where they are. Earlier this month—the 5th of April, a day before we struck Syria—I questioned reports saying an American aircraft carrier was on its way to strike North Korea. People were getting worked up: some were saying the […]
If we keep funding Social Security and Medicare at present levels, America will be broke in eight years. So said a Republican congressman on NPR. It’s ooga-booga, no different than stirring up poor whites with lies about inner-city blacks coming for their women. You know how Republicans always say we shouldn’t enact new programs without making sure they’re paid […]
President Truman ordered the integration of the military in 1948. It didn’t happen overnight, but by 1953 and the end of the Korean War it was reality. My dad was Air Force and I grew up going to integrated DoD schools in Germany. My one exposure to official segregation came when we rotated back Stateside […]
For the second time in two months, my debit card’s been compromised. Donna picked it up right away: four small charges from Angeles City in the Philippines. I always examine card readers on gas pumps and ATMs and am pretty sure I haven’t fallen victim to a skimmer. Well, who knows? This time I had to make […]