I expect to migrate garymcgath.com to new hosting in late August or early September. This may result in downtime and changes in appearance. It could result in broken links and lost content, though I’ll try my best to avoid that.
My tour of the libraries of Rockingham County is now complete! Here’s the Flickr album.
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The Democrats’ rush to beat the Republicans at the gerrymandering game confirms that America is doomed. Even Barack Obama, whom I regarded as having some degree of integrity, has endorsed the scheme. Meanwhile, the Democrats in Congress aren’t even trying to get Trump removed for his many despotic abuses of power. Most of them are avoiding any hint of impeachment because they’re afraid of losing the pro-tyranny vote. But the Democratic Party isn’t afraid of losing the votes of people who care about fair elections. It doesn’t mind throwing away any suggestion of principled opposition to MAGA.
America as a free country is dying, murdered from within. Who did it? Let’s look at some suspects.
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“You shall not wrong a sojourner or oppress him, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt.” (Exodus 22:21)
“When a stranger sojourns with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong. You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” (Leviticus 19:33-34)
“You shall have the same rule for the sojourner and for the native, for I am the Lord your God.” (Leviticus 24:22)
“You shall not abhor an Edomite, for he is your brother. You shall not abhor an Egyptian, because you were a sojourner in his land.” (Deuteronomy 23:7)
Exhortations like these occur repeatedly in the Pentateuch. The idea was clearly important: People from other countries who have come to Israel and Judah should be treated by the same standards as natives. They shouldn’t be oppressed. Christian nationalists think otherwise, though I’ve never heard them explain why.
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Somehow I thought I’d posted about this earlier, but I hadn’t on this blog. As a little summer project, I’m visiting every public library in Rockingham County, New Hampshire. Rockingham is in the southeastern part of the state and includes all of New Hampshire’s 18-mile seacoast. There are no big cities. Portsmouth, which I think is the only city in the county, has about 22,000 people. Three towns are bigger. The difference between a town and a city in this state is the form of government, not the population. Derry, the biggest town in the state at about 34,000, has two libraries, and the people at the smaller one in East Derry firmly say it’s not a branch library.
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Dean Cain, who had once played Superman on the TV show Lois & Clark, has taken a job as an ICE officer. He is listed as a guest at Cincinnati Comic Expo. He may be a guest at other upcoming conventions I don’t know about. Now that he is working for ICE, he is a dangerous person to have at any gathering of fans. By taking the job, he has shown that he has no regard for human rights. He may well pick attendees for ICE to grab.
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This morning I saw that my video of Georges Méliès’ Le Voyage dans la Lune (A Trip to the Moon) is no longer blocked on YouTube. Its status now says “Visibility restrictions are lifted until the dispute is resolved.” That means it could disappear again.
Again, the is the complete version, with a celebration at the end, and the accompaniment is my original, improvised music. I did a better job this time than in my earlier public performances.
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About a month ago I started a parody Bluesky account purporting to be King George III. At first I thought of it as a way to make some political jokes. I should have known that it would lead me into a new rabbit hole of research. These things always do.
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Yesterday I uploaded a video of the famous 1902 silent film, A Trip to the Moon or La Voyage dans la Lune by Georges Méliès, with my original accompaniment, to YouTube. Today I got a notice that it’s blocked because somebody called “CPR Agency for MK2” claims to own the movie. This is obvious nonsense. I’ve disputed the claim and hope the video will be available before long.
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