Rumors, Half Truths, and Utter Nonsense

The Mitt Romney ritual cannibalism story won't go away.  There are some interesting ideas about a Maltese connection surfacing.

The Tom Cruise/Katie Holmes divorce settlement came quickly and was sealed for reasons that would be hard to discuss on TV evening news without the use of convoluted euphemisms that most viewers would find more frustrating than illuminating.  It's believed that bodily fluids of some sort or other were involved.  Nope, neither tears nor saliva.

My nondisclosure agreement in my settlement of my paternity suit against Justin Bieber prevents me from discussing the amount of the monetary settlement.  Bieber denies the truth of my allegations.  I'm not allowed to comment.  Rumor has it that I now have a two hundred foot yacht and a fleet of classic cars led by a Bugatti Royale.  That so-called pic of of someone who looks a lot like me you may have seen in "Amphibians" magazine parking an Auburn Boat Tail Speedster at a local outlet mall is definitely a picture of a classic car and a rubber frog with cat ears.  Then there's the story of the thousand dollar tips to chambermaids at the Beverly Hills Hotel.  I really can't comment.

A Gather member has brought to light the Mitt Romney human/chupacabra hybrid story.  It has some very plausible aspects although I've never seen a chupacabra with hair that good.  A family friend who's a hair stylist says that she has never heard of a chupacabra patronizing a hair salon so it's possible that the hair thing is from the human side. Our stylist friend is an expert.  Cut, color, and everything else you might think of.  She knows her stuff.  She can spot a dyed eyebrow at a hundred paces.

Today I was conversing with a Gather member about the failure of federalism in the EU.  He suggested that the US would have been better off had it retained the Articles of Confederation.  Presumably that means that the Constitution is an instrument of tyranny.

A new TV show just debuted.  It's a crime show where the main character is a schizophrenic.  His delusions and hallucinations actively help him to solve crimes.  Apparently he can handle day to day life.  I've known some schizophrenics.  I don't claim to be an expert.  In general they have a lot of trouble with day to day life.  Apparently Joan of Arc played a prominent role in the first episode.  (I'll admit that I didn't see it, only read a review.)  I'm pretty sure that people who have two way conversations with Joan of Arc probably have trouble handling a lot of social situations that many people find easy.  I'm not sure that this crime show is going to raise people's awareness about the problem of mental illness in our society.

There have been several Gather articles or posts or whatever they're called these days about the difference between liberals and conservatives.  I've read some from both sides of the political continuum.  All of them have more than a bit of sweeping generalization.  I think it's a waste of time.  There are certainly differences between left and right.  It's not easy to show that all members of a group are in lockstep, even though at least one member disputed me on that.  I think everyone who thinks that way ought to look up the Stalinists and the Trotskyites.

Ah, one more interesting point of view.  In the comments on a post that suggested that there are strong parallels between the development of communism in Cuba and what's going on in the US today I suggested that dictatorship doesn't have much use for ideology except as a means of social control.  I. e. self styled communist dictators have more in common with Louis XIV than with Karl Marx.  Communism is just another opiate of the masses the ruler hands out.  An angry anti-communist gleefully suggested that I had contradicted myself by talking about dictators making use of ideology.  His reasoning was that if a dictator talks up communism then he's using communism and he must be a communist.  His supporters congratulated him on his trenchant argument.  I'm still pondering that one.