Hot and Dry...ish

Although I would never classify anything Florida dishes up weather-wise as "dry" after spending several years in Arizona, it has been drier than normal for the last week or so. We had a bunch of rain a while back, everything sprouted, blossomed, etc.; now it's all dying off. The temps have been consistently in the 90's and lots of bright sun to really bake everything nicely. I'm managing to keep most of our plants alive, but that's about it. The 10-day forecast shows all sorts of rain coming our way, but it always seems to... er... evaporate before it actually gets here. It looks like I'll be getting another unexpected day off tomorrow, so giving everything a good soak is high on the list of things to get done.

OK, so much for the central Florida weather report. There have been a few things that have happened lately that I should probably comment on.

Orlando Shooting

One of the things that you learn very quickly if you spend any time studying human "intelligence" is that we suck at rational thinking, but we are top-notch rationalizers. Omar Mateen wanted to off some queers (probably due to self-loathing), and found an excuse to do so. The excuse was Mohammedanism, naturally enough given the legalized murder of gays practiced in many Muslim nations, including those considered allies of the United States. This is exactly what he himself stated when he called 9-11 to claim credit for the murders he committed inside a gay nightclub. So naturally, everyone from our president on down is busy turning themselves inside out to deny that Mateen's Mohammedanism had anything to do with his decision to murder 49 people.

Brexit

No surprise here unless you are one of the elites who have benefited from selling out the bottom 80% of your own nation to the international bankers for the last several decades. Average people are fed up with being told that high unemployment, low wages and crushing debt are good for them by the very people who are making more money than God by increasing unemployment, lowering wages and piling on the debt. Now these same elites are saying that the Leave vote doesn't matter because they ain't gonna do it and never intended to. These people are why God created lampposts; a convenient place for them to be hanged from.

The Donald

I'm not sure what can be said about this fraternity-prank-gone-too-far. Obviously, the bottom 80% in these united States are as pissed off as those in the UK, Poland, Greece, Italy, France, Spain, etc. The problem with Trump is that he is probably too compromised to do much, assuming he ends up being the Republican nomination (and I'm sticking with my previous statements on that being a big assumption) and manages to win the election. My concern is who will finally tap into all that anger in 2020. Read history; those most capable of harnessing mass hate are not the kind of people anyone in their right mind would want running the country.

Muslim Rape

The latest outrage involves three pre-adolescent boys dragging a mentally handicapped 5-year-old girl into a corner, stripping her naked, raping her, then pissing in her mouth. All on video, of course. (No one born since around 1990 or so is capable of experiencing anything first-hand. For an event to be real, even something as visceral as raping someone, it must be recorded and viewed later on a screen to have any meaning.) The news media completely ignored the crime. That of course didn't stop the locals from talking about it. Unfortunately, stories passed verbally tend to collect incorrect "facts", such as the exact ages of the boys involved, which Middle East shithole they originated from, whether or not one of the boys had a knife, etc. None of which really changes what was done, but it did give the news media the opportunity to claim that because a few minor details were wrong, then the whole thing must be made up. Because we all know that Muslims never rape. What is amusing to me is that in certain cases, the very people who jump all over obviously made-up rape stories that involve white males, like the UofV case a few years back, are the exact same ones screaming the loudest that this is all made up.

We indeed live in interesting times.

And speaking of time, it's time to go make dinner.