Simple Genetics

Oh, my, a late morning post courtesy of a dental appointment.  

Right now we  have 70 (F) outside and we have drizzles on and off since I rolled out of be this morning.  Temps are supposed to climb into the low 80s (F).  If the forecast for tomorrow is correct, we will be having rain on and off for most the the day.

Yesterday turned out to be sort of meh day.  I postponed my workout until Saturday because I just didn't feel like doing it.  What truly made it a meh day was my going in to work and discovering that I wasn't scheduled.  Even though I'm part-time, my schedule is fixed... until it isn't.  Because my work days never change, I never look at my schedule.  This week I should have looked at it.  In fact, my next 3 Thursdays are off.  I was told I could stay if I wanted.  🤣😂🤣 So I came home and started working on the next book.

And the dental visit this morning?  What was intended to be a routine cleaning has turned into a fiasco for the dentist.  As I sat down in the dental chair, the assistant told me that my cleaning was scheduled to broken up into 2 visits because it was a "deep scaling," and that we were going to do the right side today.  After cleaning the right my teeth on the right side, the assistant checked to see when I'd be coming in to get the left side cleaned and discovered I was only scheduled for one appointment.  Can you see where this is heading?  Of course, the receptionist affirmed that my dentist had wanted both sides of my mouth cleaned at the same time.  What makes this fiasco even worse is that they cannot schedule me in to clean the left side until November 13.  That's almost 5 months away.  The receptionist is going to talk to the dentist on Monday.  Here's what my teeth looked like before the cleaning.

Of course, yesterday the white conservatives on the Supreme Court once again highlighted their racism.  They really do hate Haitians and Syrians.  Actually, the truth is that they hate everyone who isn't white.  White conservatives have this delusion that they're special.  The white Christian Nationalists believe they are the chosen race.  They totally ignore the fact that white people are a serious minority in the world.  I find it fascinating that these people, who are supposedly Christian, and who believe that God created man, don't understand that if their beliefs are true then God made brown skin the dominant skin color.  I'm not talking heavy duty genetics.  In fact, it is all rather simple.  If a white person and a brown or black person have a baby together, that baby's going to be either brown or black.  White Christians have always had a problem with science in that it gives them answers they don't know how to deal with.

Hey there, Handsome

What better way to spend a National Holiday then with a little lawn work?  That's the plan for today.  I may even get out my... chainsaw.  It'll be too warm (mid 70's F) to dress up in my lumberjack gear so I'll most likely be wearing my summer garb:  shorts & a T-shirt. 
Yesterday was a lazy day.  I did ride 7.7 miles in order to get past the 55 miles per week I need to hit my goal of 2500 miles this year.  I also printed off the first chapter of The Body in the Loch.  Very interesting.  I researching Scottish Gaelic in order to spice up the conversations.  Did you now that in Scotland gorse is called whin?  And you can eat the flowers, but the pods are poisonous.
So, Biden said something rather foolish during an interview last week, something about 'if you're black and you vote for the Idiot Jerk in the White House you're not really black.'  He later apologized.  Me?  I'll be honest, I don't know any black people who are voting for the Idiot Jerk, except Clarence Thomas and Ben Carson, and I'll be honest, I don't really know them.  And I know they are both very darkly complected, but does that make them black?  There is a difference, you know.  It's like saying the complaints of sexual harassment by all women are sanctified... until a Tara Reade shows up.  All of a sudden there's a bit of an issue.  The fact that both Thomas and Carson, in both their words and actions, call into question their own self-identity.  Think of it as being similar to a gender issue, if you wish.  Both were born male, but in their heads the identify as something other than male, they were born black, but identify as something else.  I bring this up because the Idiot Jerk's re-election campaign is attempting to turn Biden's words into a divisive hatchet job against Democrats, while at the same time he posted something derogatory about Stacey Abrams.  As I've said before, they will throw as much shit against the wall as possible desperately hoping some of it will stick.  This November, we need to do more than just vote him out of the White House, we need to overwhelmingly cancel his ugly reality show.  American needs to fire this loser so badly his empty head will spin for the rest of his life.
Finally, I've switched to Cremo for shaving.  I'm sure that just wows the heck out of so many of you.  It's a cream and comes in a tube.  When I took the cap off to remove the seal, I found this cute little collar.  It's a nice merchandising technique.  In fact, the first words I read were 'Hey there, handsome.'

The Oscars, losing to political correctness

I saw that the Academy Awards are going to be more politically correct, no doubt because Spike Lee and Jada Pinkett Smith decided to boycott the ceremony because there weren't enough black nominees.  This is funny, I think, especially after seeing Janet Hubert smacking Jada back, saying among other things, that if Will Smith wants to whine about not getting a nomination, he should do it himself.  Of course, if Will did complain he'd need to totally avoid using that silly accent he failed at in "Concussion."
And, if they're going to be politically correct, they need to be so across the board, which means not only Black nominees, but Latino / Hispanic as well.  In fact, there need to be more Latino / Hispanic nominees then Black nominees because there are more Latino / Hispanic people living in this country then there are Black people.  They are not only our number 2 minority, they are the fastest growing minority, in fact, they outnumber the 3rd largest minority group by 1.34%.

Race / Ethnicity	Number	Percentage of U.S. population
Americans	308,745,538	100.0 %
Non-Hispanic White	196,817,552	63.7 %
Non-Hispanic Black	37,685,848	12.2 %
Non-Hispanic Asian	14,465,124	4.7 %
Non-Hispanic American Indian or Alaska Native	2,247,098	0.7 %
Non-Hispanic Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander	481,576	0.2 %
Non-Hispanic some other race	604,265	0.2 %
Non-Hispanic two or more races	5,966,481	1.9 %
Hispanic or Latino	50,477,594	16.4 %

So, if the Academy wants to embrace diversity, they need to embrace it fully, and not just with one particular ethnic group.  Or, maybe people just need to take a deep breath and a big step back and stop whining.  The Academy doesn't give nominations to good films, they give nominations to films that are outstanding.  There are hundreds of films that are good, and make money, and still don't get nominations.  And there are outstanding films that never get a nomination.  This is how life is, deal with it.

GOP - Lost in the forest of no return

After the 2012 National election there was all this inference from the Republican Part that, after losing badly to Obama, they were going to have to change. Studies were published saying young people were not attracted to the party.  The party platform was out of touch with the rest of the country.  They needed to become more inclusive in regards to Blacks, Latinos, Gays, Lesbians, women's reproductive rights; the list just goes on and on.  For a few months after the election they did make a few furtive steps in those directions, but now, eight months after their defeat, those steps have all but stopped.  This was to be expected.  To continue would have meant to voluntarily choose to change, and for that to happen the GOP would need to admit that they were wrong... on a lot of things.  They have spent too many years pointing their fingers at everybody else any and every time something has gone wrong while they held the presidency.  They are lost in the forest of no return.

Lost without no path out

Denial has led them down the path to their autumn years and it is far too late for them to turn over a new leaf.  As a result, the only thing they can do is attack.  While I've never read it there, I'm sure one of the unspoken planks in their platform is "if you can't offer an alternative solution, burn down the other guy's house and then blame him for it."  What a sad place to be in if the only way to get votes is by constantly deriding and disseminating falsehood and allegation.  This doesn't say much for their ethics, but I'm fairly sure they shit those away a long time ago.  They are the party of aging white men.

The Changing white population

The US Census bureau released some information that a number of Americans no doubt found staggering:  that by 2043 white people will be a minority group.  I'd read something several years ago which at that time suggested racial integration in America was picking up speed.  Back then it was suggested those people who call themselves white my reach minority status in the 2050's.  That  data must have been wrong, or else it has been continually re-evaluated. Actually, this is no surprise to me.  Genetically darker skin is the dominant gene.  This is life, which makes me laugh at the thought of all of those white supremacists who saw that press release and shit a brick.  I wonder if, with their numbers slowly dwindling, they might at some part consider a Black Nazi Party.  What a hoot that would be!

Five years from now this picture will be different

I did some research and discover defining 'white' is not as easy as it sounds, unless you're from one of the southern tier states.  Some people view Spaniards as white and others don't.  There are a number of Latino families out there who consider themselves white and yet they are darker then Marco Rubio.  Speaking of him, one can only wonder what he calls himself in his heart of hearts.  I suspect he thinks of himself as white.  In some of the Central Balkan countries religious ethnicity seems to take a big part in considering if one is labeled dark or light white, irrelevant of the actual skin shade.  Believe me, this gets really complicated.  Take a trip to Italy and you'll find a lot of dark skinned people who, if they lived in this country, would call themselves white even though many of the residents of Tulsa would call them Latino.  Of course being 'white' doesn't really mean anything. Boy, is time proving that to be true.  If you look at all the children under 5 in this country, 49.9 % are considered minorities.  This year or next that number is going to change.   This is how it goes.  

Fox News is killing the Republican Party

Democrats are ecstatic and Republicans are devastated.  What else can you say about the recent election?  I'll also go so far as to say most Republicans now find themselves in a quandary; how to regroup and proceed when statistically they alienate women and minorities.  I actually work with an associate who was claiming in the break room that Obama won "because the Democrats were loading people into vans, registering them, and taking them to vote."  When I started listing voter polling results he claimed "that's all from the liberal media, who lie," though I'd actually seen the information on number of websites from the Washington Post, and Bloomberg, to MSNBC.  Oh, wait, I'm wrong, there is a bastion of Conservative Honesty on the airwaves and it's called Fox News.  As soon as this associate said that I knew Fox News would kill the Republican Party.  Why?  Ratings!

I'd first read, a number of years ago, the Republican Party playbook was based on the ancient television show Leave it to Beaver and that the family values represented by that fictional family were those they wanted all Americans to aspire to; it doesn't work.  There was a time when the Republican Party was, like the Democratic Party, more centrist.  This is where the majority of Americans sit, leaning a little right here, veering a little left there, but never really straying too far to either side.  The Democrats get this, the Republicans don't.  Fox News doesn't either.  They mistakenly believe, based on high television ratings, that the American People accept Fox as an authority.  While some, like the associate I work with, might, most Americans vote their gut instincts, not the way some news organization wants them to vote.  We are not sheep, well, most of us aren't.

As for the Republican Party?  They've sutured themselves to Fox and as a result are in a terrible dilemma.      They have shut out most Women, Black, and Latino voters because they did not fit in with their Leave it to Beaver playbook.  And, things are only going to get worse for them.  During this past election Puerto Rico voted to apply for statehood.  When this gets ratified there will be even more Hispanics the Republicans will need worry about.