I read yesterday that Larry Tesler had died at the age of 74. I had never heard of him but when I read the article I realized that I owed him a lot for the things he invented that have made using computers and especially word processing so much easier, because he created, among other things, the ‘cut and paste’ and ‘find and replace’ commands.
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The Democratic debate of two nights ago got the highest ratings of any debate, though how people knew to expect a fiery session is not clear. The good news is that 20 million people got to see Michael Bloomberg get the shellacking that he so richly deserves but that his privileged and protected bubble has so far protected him from.
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The sharp exchanges between Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg at last night’s debate have created a lot of buzz. What was noteworthy was the it was not about major policy differences but rather over trivial things about whether Klobuchar should have known the name of the Mexican president, who is more electable, the dreary old trope about whether it is better to be a Washington insider or outsider, and so on.
This clip on Twitter pretty much captured the spirit of the exchanges.
The most intense fight I’ve ever seen pic.twitter.com/TCXXO98ijp
— Mr. Dont leave me (@apiecebyguy) December 4, 2018
If you did not see the debate, here are the exchanges between the two of them.
One repeatedly finds the complaint among establishment media analysts that Bernie Sanders keeps saying the same things over and over, whether it be at debates, rallies, in interviews, or whatever. It seems like they want a candidate to be like a stand-up comedian, coming up with fresh material every so often and get bored by the same material, however important it might be.
It is true that Sanders stays relentlessly on message that health care is a basic human right and that the current levels of wealth inequality are obscene and about his proposals such as Medicare For All, free college, higher minimum wages, massive tax increases on the wealthy and corporations, and so on. Whenever he is asked about things that he thinks are distractions from his core message, he perfunctorily responds to it before immediately pivoting to the issues that he thinks are important. We saw that intense focus again last night which is why the consensus seems to be that he emerged from the debate unscathed by the attacks launched against him by everyone, while Michael Bloomberg seemed to be taken completely off-guard by a similar blitz.
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Last night’s Democratic debate was very feisty, to say the least. People came out swinging, and some clear patterns soon emerged.
They all attacked Bernie Sanders and that was to be expected because he seriously threatens the status quo and has now risen in the polls to the top. He led in 10 out of ten polls released since Monday. They attacked his Medicare For All policies saying it would cost too much but never answer his response to explain why it is that the US spends twice as much as other developed countries that have universal health care, when we don’t even cover everyone. That must mean that the US is spending be spending about half its health care costs on things not related to providing health care and thus would experience a reduction of health care costs if we switch to something similar to those countries. It also shows that there is a huge amount of money right now that is spent on providing huge profits to the health insurance industry, buying overpriced pharmaceuticals, and ridiculously high administrative cost that would disappear under his plan, and thus it would end up saving the country and people money because they would no longer have insurance premiums deducted from their salaries, they would have no co-pays or deductibles, and most importantly, no worries about losing coverage.
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In the clip below from a town hall in Las Vegas hosted by CNN’s Anderson Cooper, in response to a question from a union member about how his proposal for Medicare For All would affect the health insurance policies that they already had, Bernie Sanders gave a clear and detailed response without any waffling. It is such a difference from the equivocating of so many candidates on this major issue. It is quite electrifying. Is it any wonder that we hear that the people at his rallies give him such a rousing response?
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Some of you may have noticed that I did not post anything yesterday. That was because on Monday evening, I decided to upgrade the operating system of my MAC computer to the latest version called Catalina that was released in October 2019 and had got some pretty good reviews. Since the OS I had been using (El Capitan) was pretty old, I felt that I should upgrade since older software is more vulnerable to hacks.
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One of the interesting things emerging from the current Democratic primary race is the lessening role of identity politics. Having commonalities with a feature of a candidate’s identity, even if that identity has been that of a marginalized group, seems to be no longer sufficient to guarantee a voter’s support for that candidate. Take for example, what happened to Pete Buttigieg at a fundraiser in San Francisco,
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One of the things that this year’s election has laid bare is the dominance of the oligarchy in the process. This has always been the case but before they were acting discreetly, behind the scenes. But now it is out in the open. There are two people responsible for peeling back the veil. One is Donald Trump. By boasting about his wealth and making it one of his main appeals (though there is considerable doubt as to whether he is as wealthy as he claims), he has made other billionaires think that they too can enter electoral contests by flaunting their wealth. I have seen ads for Tom Steyer where he talks about being a real billionaire “with a b” and not a fake billionaire like Trump and how that will enable him to take him on more effectively, as if what we need is some kind of cage fight between two wealthy people.
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I pass on to readers this story of how religion can drive people to make the most absurd rules restricting women.
India’s uncomfortable relationship with periods is back in the headlines.
College students living in a hostel in the western Indian state of Gujarat have complained that they were made to strip and show their underwear to female teachers to prove that they were not menstruating.
The 68 young women were pulled out of classrooms and taken to the toilet, where they were asked to individually remove their knickers for inspection.
The incident took place in the city of Bhuj on Tuesday. The young women are undergraduate students at Shree Sahajanand Girls Institute (SSGI), which is run by Swaminarayan sect, a wealthy and conservative Hindu religious group.
They said a hostel official had complained to the college principal on Monday that some of the students were breaking rules menstruating women are supposed to follow.
The idea that menstruating women are ‘impure’ or ‘unclean’ is a widespread and long-standing belief among particular religious groups, leading to the creation of rules limiting their interactions with ‘pure’ and ‘clean’ people. As the article goes on to describe, this school seems to have gone to great lengths to identify menstruating women and create onerous rules for them to follow, along with sanctions for ‘violators’.