Possible Source of "Q" ?

 "To be or not to be, that is the 'Q.'"

---attributed to "Joe Livo"

What is the significance of Oct. 31, 1849?

Comment I left on YouTube about Meghan McCain's refusal to leave the GOP

I'm going to start posting these "editorials" here on the blog more often. I feel that what I want to say is not getting the best exposure in the YouTube comments section.

Well, what choice do any of these semi-sane Republicans have? The party as a whole has spent the last 40 years painting the Democrats as LITERALLY the Army of Satan. I mean every word of that. Many people who are not full-blown fundamentalist/evangelical crazies do not fully comprehend the extent to which right-wing Christianity in this country has penetrated the GOP. They do not want to believe just how crazy the True Believers are. I know. I was thoroughly indoctrinated from 4th grade to my senior year in a small, private Christian school in the Deep South. Not only was the school committed to brainwashing us kids into the most hardcore version of Christianity, but also into a view of the American Civil War that is, to put it charitably, WRONG. In addition, they were devoted to the notions that ONLY the GOP had the correct policy positions and that the only reason FDR instituted the "welfare state" was to addict minorities to government handouts so that the Democrats would maintain a voter base in perpetuity. They told us repeatedly to go home and encourage our parents to vote Republican. Ronald Reagan was the Chosen One to them. The school that I attended is not some exception; there are thousands of such schools in this country. The legacy that those schools, most of them founded in the 1970's, fostered is now bearing fruit: several generations of American voters who think that evolution is a lie, privatization of all government functions is the most efficient way to get things done, and that Satan (Yes, SATAN) works through the Democratic Party. People born into Republican families have as hard a time leaving the party behind as do atheists leaving their family's religions.

Comment I left on a video of John Cleese whining about the "Woke" movement

 "Ever since Cleese came out in favor of Brexit (from the safety of his financially secure retirement in Arizona), I've been trying to determine if he is, at heart, conservative or reactionary. His grumpy complaints about "political correctness" ruining "creativity" remind me of the tiresome nonsense we hear from old people generation after generation: "Today's music isn't as good as the old stuff." Maybe the stuff you hear on what passes for Top 40 is, by and large, mediocre, but that has always been the case. There is plenty of good, even great, music, literature, art, and comedy being produced; it's just not what is blathered all over the mainstream media. Again, that's always been the case. I really don't understand what Cleese is whining about. Is he yearning for the good old days, when you were "allowed" to use racial pejoratives or to slap a woman's fanny (all in good fun, of course)? You're talking here about a man who thinks Freudian analysis is wonderful and criminally misrepresented in the public consciousness. You're talking about a man who, according to his colleagues in Python, has been itching to gather enough loot to retire since the late 1960's. If you think comedy is SUPPOSED to be offensive, look no further than "Jackass" or "Dirty Grandpa" or "Movie 43." Get your kicks that way, instead of going back to the same old well once again for stereotypes of women and blacks. If Cleese is such a "libertarian," he ought to believe in the power of the marketplace. The market has spoken, and it doesn't care about outdated garbage anymore."