Sunday, April 19, 2026
I flipped on theTV for a few seconds and saw the end of His Kind of Woman.
A1951 movie staring Robert Mitchum, Jane Russel, Vincent Price, and Raymond Burr. Howard Huges was the big boss. The film ran way over budget because Hughes kept making changes and demanding odd things. This I learned from the host after the movie ended. He wrapped up by saying, “Which asks the question, ‘How does someone so erratic, so delusional, so incompetent become the boss?”
Yes, I wonder.
Thursday, April 16, 2026
I was struck by comments about Victor Orban and his economic plans, if you can call them that.
The Heritage Foundation praised them. Various Republicans and right wing groups said that Orban’s economic plans were their model, as did folks on Fox.
I don’t know what they saw in his plans. He destroyed the everyday economy of Hungary. It is stagnant and we are one tenth of a point better in the U.S. of A.
It reminded me of that Prime Minister in England, a conservative, who put forward an economic plan that was hailed by the same or similar group of folks that like Orban’s economic plans. She lasted five weeks, I think. The shortest time of any Prime Minister. Her economic plan was the main reason. It was a disaster. Right on it’s face. Yet, the same right-wingers and Fox praised it.
Why, I keep asking myself, are these people thinking that these very destructive ideas a good idea? I don’t know.
I think it comes down to a difference in philosophy. Put simply – Do you want a rising tide that lifts all boats or do you just want to get your boat off the beach and screw everyone else?
For decades the candidates in the Republican Party have used the phrase “tax and spend” derisively when describing Democrats. Yet it is the Republican Party, when in power that spends – much more than the Democrats. And, to make things worse, when the Republicans are in power they not only spend more, but they run up the debt. They don’t tax. They just spend. And when the Dems come in to clean up the mess they wail about the Deficit.
I heard Senator Ed Markey questioning someone from the GAO about the effect of the Big Beautiful Bill on our deficit. In ten years it will add thirty trillion dollars to the deficit. That bill alone will double our debt which will mean it will stand at double the amount of our whole annual economy. That is if we don’t get an uptick in interest rates, which is highly likely given the shaky nature of our economic house. The GAO guy said even a small uptick would blow the amount added to the deficit to fifty trillion.
When Biden left office we had the strongest economy in the world. Now? To quote our President, “People can’t believe…”
And don’t forget when Obama left office and before Trump came in we had a deal with Iran. Now? We have a war, which no one seems to know what for.
Wednesday, April 15, 2026
The point has been made that autocracy and corruption go hand in hand.
Paul Krugman pointed out that this can be tracked statistically. The biggest take away from the chart he showed was the comment in the chart that “no country is rated as both highly democratic and corrupt.”
Rachel Maddow pointed out that Victor Orban’s Hungary had anemic economic growth (.4%) and we in the U.S. under Trump are at .5%.
Then there are the charts showing that the worst states economically and educationally are all under Republican control. In the case of Texas it used to be #7 in reading under Democratic governor Ann Richards. Under the Bushs and Greg Abbott it has fallen to #47.
Every Republican president from Ronald Reagan on has increased the deficit, made the economy worse, and infringed our liberties. Yet, the Republican candidates keep blaming the Democrats for the messes that they the Republicans create. Or as Bill Clinton has said, “their big complaint about the Democrats is we don’t clean up their messes fast enough.”
Imagine if Trump while in office had done nothing, just let things go at their own pace. We’d have a deal with Iran. We’d be pushing Russia back on its heels in Ukraine. The economy would be booming. Health care and education would be increasing. Basic research would still be going on. Instead all those things are in decline.
Then there is Trump and Russia. Is he a tool of the Russians? Every indication is that he is. We’ve never learned about the server in Trump Tower that was communicating directly with a server in Russia.
Then there is Jeffery Epstein. Does anyone believe that a man who hung out with Jeff for over ten years, swapped birthday cards with innuendos in them and has been photographed with numerous underage girls and been accused by multiple women of sexual assault not know what was up?
Then there’s Trump’s latest speech where he said the world cannot believe what they are seeing. Indeed they can’t but they’ve learned.
The best indication of what people think of Trump is to look at the price of oil. During his latest speech the price of Brent Crude went up $8 a barrel.
We will be paying for this reckless, incompetent, corrupt insanity for decades.
I doubt we will ever get back to our standing in the world that we once enjoyed.
“The Epistimology of Apocalypse: The Teotihuacan-Maya Battle on Tigre Pyramid, El Mirador”
Dr. Richard Hansen
This Zoom call was held March 23, 2026 at 8pm.
I believe this talk is one of three talks Richard has ready to give. Therefore, the information may already be known, but it was new to me.
SUMMARY: The main point of the lecture was that Richard and his team found evidence of a battle on the top of El Tigre Pyramid. This took place after El Mirador had gone into decline, slightly before the Entrada. Evidence suggests there were about one hundred people living in the ruins of El Mirador. They were attacked by people with Central Mexican weapons. This is evident by the fact that obsidian arrow points Teotihuacan style were found over the Upper Platform and the three pyramids at the top of ElTigre. The obsidian came from sources in the Central Mexican Valley. There were also arrow points of Mayan style made from chert. There is also evidence that the people defending themselves took to the three pyramids and hurled stones down on their attackers. These came from dismantling the tops of the pyramids.
So it seems that Central Mexicans (Teotihuacanos?) attacked Mayans living in the ruins of El Mirador. The evidence of this is that the arrow points were found on top of dirt that was on the pyramid.
Whoever attacked did not stay and there is evidence that the bodies were left where they fell.
Richard’s conclusions were that the small band living at El Mirador might have been what was left of a royal family and perhaps the Teotihuacanos were in the service of Tikal and killed the people in El Mirador to ensure that they would not reformulate and be a problem for Tikal.
My Thoughts:
This is evidence of Teotihuacan influence in the Tikal area before the Entrada. Could it be that Tikal employed a mercenary Teo force?
History has examples of people being hired as mercenaries who then take over replacing the people they were hired to protect. The Aztecs are one example. The Mafia is another. They were originally hired to protect the lemons in Sicily from theft.
The talk is recorded and when I get a link I will share it.
Other points of interest:
The Mirador Basin sits atop a raised area with a depression in the central area (ie a basin). Richard has identified 962 villages within the Basin. They are all connected via roads. None of these roads extended outside the basin.
Some of the arrow points have evidence of human remains and samples are being tested for DNA.
Richard shared some photos of the set of Apocalypto.
Tuesday, February 17, 2026
It always amazes me. No mater how low we have sunk we can always go lower.
James Burke did two series for the BBC back in the 90s. One was called Connections and looked at how what appear to be disparate discoveries helped one or the other to achieve something greater. How the Jacquard Loom cards helped bring about the punch cards of the modern computers for instance. The other show was about America, specifically the United States. At the end of the series he quoted from de Tocqueville, who wrote that America was in a race between its greatness and its decadence. Not much has changed since the two hundred years that de Tocqueville wrote that.
I think about the cautionary tales about republics and how they give way to authoritarian regimes. Historians give democracies about two hundred years then something happens. It appears that powerful interests figure out how to rig the system. That and the common folk think the system of government will stay around because, well, it’s always been there. And what they mean by that is they grew up with it and don’t expect it to change. Tell that to the people of the Roman Republic.
Or there’s technology and complacency. Constantinople had withstood many attacks from without and within. It had always withstood them so there was no reason to believe they wouldn’t withstand this one, right? The one they couldn’t withstand came in the form of a 1200 pound ball of rock hurled at their walls via a new weapon called a cannon.
Our forefathers never envisioned political parties. They envisioned men of good character guiding the country. If someone got out of line these good fellows would throw the rascal out. How wrong they were. Or in more modern times it was said that it takes a carpenter to build a barn but a jackass to knock it down. No one envisioned a whole party of jackasses.