Day: January 31, 2022

Closing Thought–31Jan22

Good-bye to Johnny Fever

Many years ago my favorite sitcom was WKRP….all the characters were spot on for the day but my favorite was Johnny Fever…..

He has died…well the actor that played the part…..Howard Hesseman.

Howard Hesseman, who played radio disc jockey Johnny Fever on the sitcom WKRP in Cincinnati and actor-turned-history teacher Charlie Moore on Head of the Class, has died. He was 81. Hesseman died Saturday in Los Angeles due to complications from colon surgery, his manager said Sunday. Hesseman, who had been a radio DJ in the 1960s, earned two Emmy nominations for his work on CBS’ WKRP, which ran from 1978 to ’82. The role made Hesseman a counterculture icon at a time when network television featured few hippie characters, the AP reports. “Impossible to overstate Howard Hesseman’s influence on his and subsequent generations of improvisors,” Michael McKean posted Sunday.

“I think maybe Johnny smokes a little marijuana, drinks beer and wine, and maybe a little hard liquor,” Hesseman told the New York Times in 1979. “And on one of those hard mornings at the station, he might take what for many years was referred to as a diet pill. But he is a moderate user of soft drugs, specifically marijuana.” Hesseman knew the territory. He said he once served 90 days in the San Francisco County Jail for selling an ounce of marijuana, though the conviction was reversed for entrapment. In 1983, per the Hollywood Reporter, Hesseman conceded that he’d conducted “pharmaceutical experiments in recreational chemistry.”

 

Hesseman grew up in Lebanon, Oregon, and attended the University of Oregon before moving to San Francisco, where he was a DJ for KMPX, an underground rock station. He joined the Committee, an improv group, appearing with other members in the 1971 film Billy Jack. Hesseman also had roles in Shampoo, the Sunshine Boys, and the Other Side of Midnight. His many TV roles included Boston Legal and That ’70s Show; his character married Bonnie Franklin’s on One Day at a Time, per the Wrap. When introduced to the station manager—and the show’s viewers—in the WKRP pilot, Hesseman’s character was said to be Johnny Caravella. “I’m also known as Johnny Midnight, Johnny Cool, Johnny Duke, Johnny Style, and Johnny Sunshine,” Hesseman said

Hesseman’s passing made me nostalgic for WKRP……

May his family and friends find some sort of joy knowing that he was loved by his fans.

Rest In Peace

“lego ergo scribo”

That Trump Supporter

This issue has defied explanation for years……what exactly makes a Trump supporter tick? What about the man makes so many angry and so many devoted?

A couple of researchers have tried to answer those questions and a few others.

What makes a Trump voter tick? Is it policy, their leader’s charisma, or something else entirely?

Two researchers at the University of North Carolina and the University of Missouri set out to answer that by measuring candidate support, cognitive performance and political ideology among 831 US-based participants — and found that Trump voters are, simply put, more cognitively rigid and interpersonally cold.

“Conservatism is commonly defined along two dimensions: Resistance to change, and opposition to equality,” the two authors wrote in their study, published November last year in the Journal of Social and Political Psychology. “Liberalism is defined by the opposite. People with enhanced sensitivity to threat and uncertainty in the environment are predisposed to epistemic, existential, and relational motives. These predispose individuals to political conservatism.”

Part of the study was to resolve an ongoing debate in psychology about whether liberals and conservatives fundamentally differ from each other — asymmetry), or whether extreme liberals and conservatives are similar to each other (symmetry). In a new interview with PsyPost published yesterday, study author Jake Womick told the publication that they found support for the asymmetry hypothesis.

“Supporters of relatively extreme Democratic candidates were similar to supporters of more moderate Democratic candidates and were not similar to Trump supporters,” Womick told PsyPost. “This trend was particularly strong for interpersonal warmth.”

For the study, participants indicated in 2020 whether they planned to vote for President Donald Trump or one of the Democratic primary candidates, which at the time included Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and others. They also completed psychological assessments of four variables representing cognitive rigidity (openness to experience, active open-minded thinking, dogmatism, and preference for one right answer) and two variables representing interpersonal warmth (compassion and empathy).

https://futurism.com/neoscope/research-trump-voters

Well that explains it….NOT!

Then what makes these mental midgets believe crap?

Conspiracy theories are more like fantasies. They are not theories in our scientific understanding. In short, a theory is an explanation of an aspect of the natural or social world that has been repeatedly tested, and verified in accordance with scientific methods relying on accepted protocols of observations, measurement, and a critical evaluation of the findings produced. None of this is the case when it comes to conspiracy theories.

Yet, behind almost every conspiracy fantasy lurks an occult force operating secretly behind the seemingly real. This remains a fact for all conspiracy theories – past, present, and future. Perhaps it is not unfounded to claim that we live in The Age of Conspiracism.

Thanks to the Internet, recent conspiracy theories have migrated with ease from the margins of society into the center of political life. They have become an omnipresent feature of contemporary political culture. The recent rise of conspiracy theories occurred because of three – a political, a technical, and a health – developments:

A Theory About Conspiracy Theories

Because of their closed mind these voters will not think about their decisions once they are formulated…..they want to wallow in ignorance is my thought.

Turn The Page!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Mid-Terms Not Looking Good For Dems

The 2022 mid-terms are quickly approaching and as usual with American politics it is not looking too good for the Dems when the voting is counted…..

To state the obvious: A lot is at stake in November. The 2022 midterm elections will not only decide control of both the U.S. House and Senate, but also who sits behind the governor’s desk in 36 out of the nation’s 50 states. 

History tells us that midterm elections generally go well for the party that’s not in the White House. But how can we tell whether that’s shaping up to happen again this cycle? As we inch closer to Election Day, there are four big indicators you can watch to give you an idea of which way the political winds are blowing.

The first number to keep an eye on is President Biden’s approval rating. Since World War II, there has been a decent relationship1 between the president’s average net approval rating (approval rating minus disapproval rating) on the day of the midterm elections and how many seats his party has lost in the House of Representatives. As you can see in the chart below, the president’s party has almost always lost seats — but popular presidents have been able to mitigate their losses.

Since World War II, presidents with net approval ratings better than +30 percentage points on a midterm’s Election Day have lost an average of only three House seats. Meanwhile, presidents with net approval ratings between +5 and +30 points on Election Day have lost an average of 24 seats, and presidents whose net popularity was worse than +5 points — which includes every president since 2006 — have lost an average of 39 seats.

The relationship isn’t perfect, though. President Dwight Eisenhower was extremely popular on Election Day 1958 (a net approval rating of +30.0 points), but Republicans still lost 47 House seats. And in 1974, President Gerald Ford was pretty popular (+19.8 points), but Republicans, still tainted by association with disgraced ex-President Richard Nixon (who had resigned just three months earlier), still lost 43 House seats.

Some Early Clues About How The Midterms Will Go

If things go the way of history then the American people are in store for a chaotic 2 years until the 2024….2 years of political stagnation.

Choose wisely.

Watch This Blog!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”