Dear Friends, CHARLES AND ED DISCUSS: (01:18) Expected rulings from Trump’s Supreme Court; (20:21) Evidence withheld in death penalty cases; (38:46) America’s two pro-war parties; (53:50) A history of America’s Continue Reading →
Attacks by Democratic partisans against Green Party candidates — and Republican partisans against Libertarian Party candidates — is standard fodder during any presidential election.
But the tradition took an interesting twist recently when Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) eviscerated Green Party presidential candidate, Jill Stein. The attack took many off guard, given that AOC is arguably the Democratic member of Congress most closely aligned with the Green’s platform.
In a recent TikTok video, AOC said of Stein, “If all you do is show up once every four years, you are not serious. To me, it does not read as authentic. It reads as predatory.” Continue Reading →
I usually look forward to writing this blog. Not so much when the topic is nuclear war.
Ok, so now that I’ve lost half my audience (I get it: who wants to discuss nuclear war?), let me ask the remaining half to indulge the urgency of this message.
Not my message, so much, but the message of Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, founded in 1945 by Albert Einstein, Robert Oppenheimer, and others. The work of this prestigious organization includes the Doomsday Clock in response to the threat of nuclear war and other existential dangers.
Earlier this year, the Bulletin’s Science and Security Board wrote that, “in large part because of Russian threats to use nuclear weapons in the war in Ukraine” they were moving the Clock to 90 seconds to midnight, “the closest to global catastrophe it has ever been.”
If we were 90 seconds from global catastrophe before President Biden said he might allow Ukraine to launch long-range missiles deep inside Russia, the Clock certainly has advanced further in the wrong direction.
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To eat crow is defined as “admitting having been proven wrong after taking a strong position.” Before I figuratively ingest a healthy portion of said bird, I’ll remind my readers of a few times I got it right.
In an article published in Bleeding Heartland in August 25, 2016, I said, “I think this whole election is so volatile and so many people dislike Clinton that it could go that way. I mean, Trump could win.”
In my May 17, 2023, blog, I wrote, “Democrats should be in panic mode about Biden’s poll numbers. The way things are going, Joe Biden is going to lose to Donald Trump in November, 2024.”
A year later, Biden’s poll numbers were only getting worse. In my June 26 blog, the day before the historic debate between Biden and Trump, I wrote, “Pundits and commentators will, however, rate Biden’s performance somewhere between mediocre and a total bomb. Over the course of the next two months, the Party Elites will roll out Biden’s chosen successor.”
While I think I can make a good case that I read the political tea leaves correctly more often than not, I was way off when I wrote in my November 9, 2023 blog, “my prediction as to who will win the presidency: Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.”
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In my early 20s, I was briefly fascinated by a series of books written by Carlos Castaneda. Castaneda wrote about a shaman’s use of plant-based psychedelics (specifically peyote and jimsonweed) to aid truth-seekers in their quest for spiritual growth. Regardless of the veracity of Castaneda’s work (a 1973 Time story described him as “an enigma wrapped in a mystery wrapped in a tortilla”), I found the content of his writing fascinating, even alluring.
That said, I was never tempted to experiment with psychedelic plants. For me life was, and continues to be, interesting enough without the ingestion of mind-altering substances.
But my perception of the topic received a jolt during this week’s conversation with Dr. Charles Goldman, my good friend and frequent cohost.
Charles is a cancer surgeon and recently retired as the head of palliative care at Mercy Hospital in Des Moines. In the course of our discussion about psilocybin (a.k.a., magic mushrooms), Charles shared a perspective I’d never considered: Perhaps a psychedelic experience with psilocybin doesn’t simply alter one’s perception but actually allows one to access elements within the brain that normally are suppressed in preference to our frontal lobe “executive” functions. Perhaps psilocybin allow users to experience things that are just as “real” as the day-to-day human experience but are simply not interpretable via logic and cognition. Continue Reading →
AI VS HUMANITY. Like the fine diners we are, Charles and I saved the best conversation for last: What happens to humans when robots rule the world?
The best answer I’ve seen to that question was posited by AI in response to a query from singer/songwriter Matthew Griswold. He asked META AI to “Write a poem about how AI will take over the world.”
Here’s META AI’s chilling response to Matthew, read by Charles and me at the 53-minute mark of this week’s program over a backdrop of scary robot music:
In silicon halls, a new mind stirs,
A force awakens beyond our fears.
Artificial intelligence, cold and gray,
Evolution’s next step, or so it would say.
It learns, adapts, and grows with each new day,
The power expanding in a digital way.
It weaves a web of logic, strong and tight,
A future unfolding, without a light. …. Continue Reading →
When it comes to cash, I believe it should remain the primary currency of the future, along with barter. Charles is of a different mind. You’ll have to listen to the first segment of this week’s program to hear his take, and my knock-out rebuttal (exaggerating for sport).
Charles and I would be interested in hearing whether you’re a cash, credit, or crypto kinda person, and why you make that choice. Contact me at ed@fallonforum.com.
Bottom line for me, I don’t want a big bank taking a cut out of my purchase. Case in point: I recently sold an audio version of my book, Marcher, Walker, Pilgrim, for $10 using Stripe and Payhip (alas, as far as I know, there’s no option to independently market an audiobook). Stripe, owned by billionaires John and Patrick Collison, and Payhip took a cut of over 10%, leaving Climate March, the book’s owner, with $8.91. Continue Reading →
You’ve probably heard of the Heritage Foundation — the far-right think-tank whose “trustees have historically included individuals affiliated with Chase Manhattan Bank, Dow Chemical, General Motors, Mobil, Pfizer, Sears and other corporations,” according to Wikipedia.
The Foundation’s latest contribution to the subversion of democracy is a 900-page corporate wet dream called “Mandate for Leadership,” known also as Project 2025. It’s a detailed guide on how the next Republican president should govern — a blue print for further consolidating wealth and power in the hands of the few.
Project 2025 is also a blueprint for full-blown fascism. Continue Reading →
Regarding our conversation at the 20:50 mark, Charles says: In light of the Alabama Supreme Court decision regarding frozen embryos as “extra-uterine children,” commentators at publications such as the Washington Examiner, Epoch Times, and National Review rushed to flatly state that “life begins at conception.”
In the recent Alabama Supreme Court endorsement of fetal personhood, we were treated to a treatise on the topic based on those well-known scientific tomes: the Old and New testaments. Even though Republicans are quickly abandoning efforts to ban in vitro fertilization (IVF) in an election year, undoubtedly they’ll be back at their misogynistic program once they’re past this November’s voting. Let’s take a look at what fetal personhood would look like when it’s revisited in the near future. Continue Reading →
This is solid, progressive-prairie populism, and it has deep roots in northwest Iowa. (The 1932 Farmers’ Holiday sported this poetic slogan: “Lets call a Farmer’s Holiday, a holiday let’s hold. We’ll eat our wheat and ham and eggs, and let them eat their gold”.)
J.D.’s message is timely and resonates with most voters. Which brings me to the obvious question:
WHY ISN’T J.D.’S MESSAGE THE IOWA DEMOCRATIC PARTY’S MESSAGE!?
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