Light relief, courtesy of I know not who

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The flood of Trump-fearing American liberals sneaking across the
border into Canada has intensified in the past week. The Republican
presidential campaign is prompting an exodus among left-leaning
Americans who fear they’ll soon be required to hunt, pray, pay taxes,
and live according to the Constitution.

Canadian border residents say it’s not uncommon to see dozens of
sociology professors, liberal arts majors, global-warming activists,
and “green” energy proponents crossing their fields at night.
“I went out to milk the cows the other day, and there was a Hollywood
producer huddled in the barn,” said southern Manitoba farmer Red
Greenfield, whose acreage borders North Dakota. “He was cold,
exhausted and hungry, and begged me for a latte and some free-range
chicken. When I said I didn’t have any, he left before I even got a
chance to show him my screenplay, eh?”

In an effort to stop the illegal aliens, Greenfield erected higher
fences, but the liberals scaled them. He then installed loudspeakers
that blared Rush Limbaugh across the fields, but they just stuck their
fingers in their ears and kept coming. Officials are particularly
concerned about smugglers who meet liberals just south of the border,
pack them into electric cars, and drive them across the border, where
they are simply left to fend for themselves after the battery dies.
“A lot of these people are not prepared for our rugged conditions,” an
Alberta border patrolman said. “I found one carload without a single
bottle of Perrier water, or any gemelli with shrimp and arugula. All
they had was a nice little Napa Valley cabernet and some kale chips.
When liberals are caught, they’re sent back across the border, often
wailing that they fear persecution from Trump high-hairers.

Rumors are circulating about plans being made to build re-education
camps where liberals will be forced to drink domestic beer, study the
Constitution, and find jobs that actually contribute to the economy.
In recent days, liberals have turned to ingenious ways of crossing the
border. Some have been disguised as senior citizens taking a bus trip
to buy cheap Canadian prescription drugs. After catching a half-dozen
young vegans in blue-hair wig disguises, Canadian immigration
authorities began stopping buses and quizzing the supposed senior
citizens about Perry Como and Rosemary Clooney to prove that they were
alive in the ’50s.

“If they can’t identify the accordion player on The Lawrence Welk
Show, we become very suspicious about their age,” an official said.
Canadian citizens have complained that the illegal immigrants are
creating an organic-broccoli shortage, are buying up all the Barbara
Streisand CD’s, and are overloading the internet while downloading
jazzercise apps to their cell phones.
“I really feel sorry for American liberals, but the Canadian economy
just can’t support them,” an Ottawa resident said. “After all, how
many art-history majors does one country need?”

(Ed:  I can’t find out where this originated. But from time to time you have to have a laugh.  Life is too serious by far)

He did say this

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“Some of these (illegal immigrants) are fantastic people.  I’ve been to the border. I was there a few days ago.  I met some people.  These are fantastic people, and they have great reputations within their communities………The bad ones, they’re gone. They never come back.  They’ll never get back into this country. But the good ones, of which there are many, I want to expedite it so they can come back legally.”
And then:
“The dreamers, it’s a tough situation. We’re going to do something…..I would get people out and then have an expedited way of getting them back into the country so they can be legal….A lot of these people are helping us …..I want to move them out.  I want to move them back in and let them be legal.” (Donald Trump)
63% of illegal immigrants would leave under this Trump policy if they were promised a path to citizenship, and 85% would do so if they were promised a path to citizenship.  So it isn’t at all impossible to implement this policy, known as “touchback”.  Indeed, although a similar idea was turned  down in the Senate in 2007, it could be resurrected, maybe successfully.
But this is not what Trump voters wanted when they voted for him.  They wanted Latinos gone.  What will they do when they find that the former illegals are back in the US for good? Of course, Trump will blame someone else, deny he ever said this about the illegals.  But, nonetheless, the Trumpeters will have been betrayed.

The opioid crisis in America

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In 2015 an all-time record of 52,404 people died from drug overdoses, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, eclipsing even gun deaths.   80% of these deaths were the result of misuse of opioids: heroin, Fentanyl, Oxycontin and Vicodin. Prescription opioids accounted for 17,536 of these deaths, a majority.  Doctors are advised to prescribe in low doses, after non opioid alternatives have been tried.  They shouldn’t prescribe opioids concurrently with anti-anxiety and antidepressant drugs.  But 36% of patients told a survey conducted by the Washington Post/Kaiser Family Foundation that their doctors had never mentioned alternatives, a similar percentage said no mention was made of addiction.   50% were taking both opioids and antidepressants simultaneously, with the agreement of their doctors.  Many of the drugs are shared with others, and 34% said they often used opioids to get “high”, to relieve stress or to relax. This is a public health emergency.
According to what I heard during yesterday’s Senate hearings on the Rex Tillerson appointment to the State Department,  Fentanyl comes illegally from China and issmuggled into the United States via Mexico.
What is it about our fellow citizens?  Where is the outrage? They shrug at 30,000 gun deaths a year, and seem, in general, indifferent to the 52,000 people who are dying with these painkillers.  I hesitate to bring religion into this, but in view of the the self-proclaimed religiosity of a majority of Americans, perhaps they could take a long, hard look at their moral compasses and get up in arms about this loss of life.  Or is there something about modern christianity I don’t understand?  Educate me, someone!

Thought for the day. Have a cool one!

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Threats from the unexpected.  Now it is air conditioning and refrigeration. World-wide the demand for air conditioning is expected to rise by 33 times by the end of the century.  By 2050 the world population will use more electricity for cooling than for heating. This will make the planet hotter, because cooling requires the burning of fossil fuels.  Coolness is required in homes, for the longer life of food in supermarkets, for medicines and vaccines, and data centres. As demand for cooling goes up the amount of CO2  emissions will increase by 25% by the middle of the century, cancelling out any hoped-for improvements elsewhere (if they seriously materialize)!.

Double standards, or seeing us as others see us

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It is hard not to laugh at Americans’ indignation over Russia’s alleged meddling in the US elections. For at least a century, the US has done everything possible to influence the outcomes of other countries’ elections. After WWII, the CIA lavished money on Italy’s Christian Democrats, inventing sex scandals to discredit left-wing leaders. In Iran in 1953, the CIA launched a coup to overthrow the democratically elected Mohammad Mossadegh. In Chile in 1964, it spent $4m on ‘covert action projects’ to stop Salvador Allende winning an election, and [later] organised a coup to oust him. Americans should be thankful that they are unlikely to suffer a coup because, as the Latin American joke has it, there’s no US embassy in Washington.”
(Peter Wilby in the New Statesman)

He has a point. I would only add that to help to the US Presidency a man who is so manifestly ill-equipped for the job, and whose principal, maybe only,  interest is himself, is particularly galling to those of us who will now have sit and watch Trump make fools of the people who voted for him.

But Obama’s brilliant, stirring oratory during his farewell speech last night should encourage us to have faith in the basic goodness of our fellow citizens and guard and protect our basic freedoms which are fragile, and, if carelessly given away, are irreplaceable.  There is perhaps little this particular writer can do except continue to advocate kindness, consideration and understanding towards all fellow citizens, and moderation in all things.   Younger people can, I hope, be more proactive than he in standing up for our basic rights and freedoms. Epicurus eschewed politics and stayed in his garden.  No! Don’t do that – get involved. We have a crisis on our hands.