Q: So now that Joe Biden has quite the race, does that make you rethink your cancellation of your New York Times subscription?

A: Not at all. That was a long time coming and there were many reasons for it. It would have happened eventually anyway. Perhaps I’ll write about all my beefs with the nytimes one of these days, but probably not, as the nytimes publisher doesn’t read this blog anyway, so what’s the point? Other folks have written about it better than I could anyway.

Q: How do you feel about Biden quitting the race?

A: He pretty much had to, with all those Democrats calling for him to quit. If he had stayed in, it would have been very difficult for all those people to credibly rally behind him. Personally, I think he’s still cognitively in good shape, but a lot of folks believe otherwise, including voters and contributors, and in the end, they’re the ones that count. And there was always the possibility of another senior moment like that debate performance just before the election with no time to recover. I notice that now the money is just flooding in.

Q: What do you think about Kamala Harris?

A: It looks like she’s going to be the Democratic nominee and although I had reservations about her record as a DA, I could say the same about Joe Biden’s record as a senator and I ended up being quite happy with him as president. Very often, not always, but very often, politicians change depending on what constituency they are serving. I’m hopeful that that will be the case with Harris. In any case, if she is the Democratic nominee, she will have my full backing, for whatever that’s worth. I hope that everyone, whatever their political persuasion, who wants to make sure that we don’t get a second term with that Republican candidate, will put aside whatever qualms they might have and give her their full support. Way too often I see folks on the Left who are so caught up in their own little ego trips that they lose sight of the bigger picture. That was the case with, for example, the Bernie Bros back in 2016, who when they didn’t get their preferred candidate, refused to support the Democratic ticket, which is at least part of the reason that Hillary Clinton didn’t prevail in the electoral collage. Or the nutcases in 2000 who wanted to teach the Democrats a lesson and voted for that asshole Nader, thus throwing the election to junior Bush.

Q: I notice that you didn’t name the Republican candidate. Why is that?

A: Because I try to keep profanity to a minimum on this blog, and I just dropped an F-bomb the other week so I fear that to name that shit stain would uncork a torrent of strong language that I’d rather avoid.

Q: But you’ve used the terms asshole and shit stain.

A: Is that a question?

Q: Aren’t those examples of strong language?

A: Minor league compared to the invective that the former guy would elicit.

Q: Aaron Sorkin has suggested that the Democrats nominate Republican Mitt Romney. Presumably that isn’t going to happen, but how would you feel about putting a Republican in the Veep spot on the ticket?

A: How would you feel about my putting a rattlesnake in your sleeping bag?

Q: I take it that’s a non-starter with you?

A: Every time the Democrats have put a Republican into any position of power, every fucking time, it’s been a huge fucking mistake.

Q: I thought you were avoiding strong language?

A: I could put that rattlesnake in your bed.

Q: So what’s wrong with putting one of the good Republicans on the ticket?

A: The only good Republican is a d— 

Q: You aren’t going to say a dead Republican? Isn’t that pretty harsh?

A: If you hadn’t interrupted and let me finish, I was going to say, the only good Republican is a dead drunk Republican. Better?

Q: Maybe a little. Aren’t you painting an entire party with a pretty wide brush?

A: Name a good Republican.

Q: Well, Mitt Romney.

A: You mean corporations are people too, my friend? The guy who drove 12 hours with his dog on top of his car? He’s a rich entitled asshole who acts like a human being about once every four years or so, just enough to get the media jerks to cream all over him.

Q: Susan Collins.

A: You mean the one who’s so concerned? I don’t know if she’s stupid or just a big fraud. Puh-lease!

Q: Adam Kissinger.

A: True, he did stand up to the former guy and I’ll give him credit for that, but otherwise, like Liz Cheney, he’s just a garden variety Republican.

Q: So I take it you don’t like Republicans very much?

A: Certainly not the modern Republican Party, what it’s become since those assholes Nixon and Reagan transformed it into the Racist Party, and Newt Gingrich completed the transformation into a party that has no principles, all it cares about is grabbing power anyway it can. It’s not the party of Dwight Eisenhower, or Barry Goldwater, or Hugh Scott, or even Everett Dirksen.

Q: Is the modern Democratic Party the party of JFK?

A: He would at least recognize it. But that’s not what bothers me the most. Back in the mid 90s, the immigrant Rupert Murdoch realized he could make a bundle of money by pandering to the dumbest people in the world, the far right loons of the Republican base, so he created the Fox “news” channel and proceeded to turn it into both a loonfest and a hatefest for those nut cases. He’s earned a tidy profit for his efforts. And when I reconnected with some of my high school classmates a few years back, I discovered to my utter dismay that one of my favorite people from back then, someone who used to value science, or at least I thought she did, has fallen for Murdoch’s propaganda—hook, line, and sinker. It’s as if she’s been turned into a pod person compared to the smart girl I used to know in high school. A few months ago she sent me an email where she listed a whole series of things that she was currently upset about and they were all, every last one of them, they were all crackpot lies propagated by the likes of Fox “news” and its ilk.

Once upon a time the Republican Party did offer an alternative to the Democratic Party. In a saner world it still would. It would recognize that climate change is real and it would offer its own solutions for combating it. Perhaps those solutions might even be better, at least in some ways, than what the Democrats offer. Instead if you saw even a few minutes of their recent convention, all they are offering is hate and lies. That’s all that’s fueling them these days. And it’s sad and frightening to realize that so many voters are responding to that hatred.

Q: Why— 

A: Thank you. That’s it for questions for today.