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Monday, January 23, 2023

I was thinking this morning, trying to determine – when did it all go wrong? When did it start?

Was it with that woman in Florida who insisted on making the ballots in a heavily Democratic county in Florida prepunch so that when they ran through the vote machines they got hanging chads, which led to the ridiculous scenes afterwards of people trying to determine what the voter intended, which led to the Roger Stone led “riot”, which led to Gore losing votes in that heavily democratic county, which led to his losing Florida and the Presidency by 357 votes? 

Or did it start with Newt Gingrich and his scorched earth approach to dealing with the Democrats when he was Speaker of The House?

Did it start with Reagan and his denying the air traffic controllers their union, which led to the decline of the middle class? Or was it his deal with the Pope that led to the end of the Zero Population movement? Or was it his removing the solar panels off the White House?

Tip O’Neil pointed out that when he was in local government in Massachusetts the Republican speaker of the house was a nice guy who liked Tip, even liked Tip’s ideas, but he wouldn’t vote for them because Tip was a Democrat. forget reaching across the aisle.

Was it Joseph McCarthy and his House Unamerican Activities Committee? 

Was it Jim Crow?

Was it the Southern Baptist movement after the Civil War, which housed the racist agenda that was Jim Crow?

Was it the Civil War or what led up to it?

Was it the Constitution that declared negroes to be less than one person?

Were their local state movements like what happened in Virginia for decades where the Republican government used their power to suppress local jurisdictions and pressure the Federal government, all the while knowing that what they were doing was unpopular so they hid it behind legislation that sounded good but was actually sinister? “Right to Work “is an example. (That means a company has the right to fire you for any reason or no reason at all.)

Although these people decry socialism they love it when it applies to a hand out for them, not their voters – just them. Well, sometimes their voters get a bit – look at grain subsidies. Or look at how quickly any of these Republican congressmen will take credit for money flowing into their districts on a bill they voted against.

When did it all start? It’s seems it has always been there. It’s like trying to trace back the spot in the universe where the Big Bang originated. Any spot you choose can trace back to a spot, a different spot. I know, it makes no sense.Yet, that’s the best that can be shown to be the case. What can one conclude? Only that it’s always been there? ( What? The Universe. Which makes no sense given that it looks like the Universe is expanding and therefore had to start somewhere. )

Alexis de Tocqueville when touring America in the early 1800s said American was in a race between its vitality and it decadence. Nicely put. Hasn’t changed. However, it seems recently the rottenness has been winning out.

Most historians say democracies are periods of transition and last about two hundred years. If so our “Great Experiment” is near the end of its life. I think of the fall of the Roman Republic or Constantinople. Both fell because, in the case of Rome the citizenry assumed it would always be there, and in the case of Constantinople it had never fallen before so why now? Well, the “now” was an outside invading force, new technology in the form of a cannon, and the rest of their allies saying, “Hey, don’t worry. They’ll survive; they always have.”

The people who support the Republican Party seem to have grievances and fears, but not solutions or ideas. Well, they have grand sweeping thoughts that when asked about or one tries to apply to a practical situation don’t work. Remember Obama going to the Republican meeting in Baltimore? Boehner was holding this thick document to his chest that Paul Ryan had written. At the time Ryan was being foisted off as the boy wonder. It was Ryan’s budget and implementation plan. Obama grabbed that thing, opened to a random page and read what was on it. He then said, “You can’t govern from that.” or words to that effect. And Ryan’s budget had no numbers in it, except for page numbers.

I mean it’s nice to say, “I hope one day all men will be free.” (And women – yes.) but that doesn’t get the job done. You need a plan and people who understand and are willing to implement the plan.

There’s always this undercurrent of grievance with these folks:

The U.S. will have its troops led by the U.N. 

They are coming for your guns.

The. IRS, FBI, CIA some organization in government is doing something terrible to you, or will soon.

Someone is taking your job, your way of life, or getting something for free or something they don’t deserve.

There’s nothing new here. It’s the same old drum beat. And it has never shown to be the case. But that doesn’t matter. It has been lies. Now with Fox News having to defend themselves from the evidence that they knowingly lied, repeatedly and for profit what will happen? 

How about that “They are coming for your gas stove!!!” thing. Turns out a Federal agency said if you use gas in your home and you are asthmatic it could effect your health and you might want to switch out your gas stove. That’s it. OMG! Run for the hills!

But if you live in rural parts of this country most of the media is controlled by a right wing media group and that’s the only stuff you get. I won’t call it news because it’s not. it’s propaganda masquerading as news. We could, I guess, debate whose propaganda. Right wing? The rich and powerful? Russian? Southern Baptist/evangelical/Christian? White supremacist? Nazi? Neo-nazi? Quanon?

And if all you are fed is this stuff, most will end up believing some part of it.

It is a fight for power, for control. They want to tell YOU what YOU CAN DO, and what you can’t.

What you are allowed to believe. Speaking of belief, I don’t care what you believe, until it effects me. 

It’s odd but the folks running around with “Don’t Tread on Me” license plates seem to be the folks that want to tell you what to do.

How about some other “Don’t” phrases, like:

Don’t tell me what to do. (Thank you Leslie Gore.)

Don’t tell me who to love.

Don’t tell me what I can do with my body.

Don’t tell me where to live, how to pray, what to believe.

or to put it positively:

Leave me alone.

Yet, the very people who cry and moan about this the most are the very people who want to inflict their beliefs on you.

In this country I’m afraid it will only get worse. I don’t see a way out of the situation. If you look at the population map of the U.S. you will see that it is concentrated in California, the southern border, and the New York area.

Or to put it another way the majority of the population of this country is located in 16 states. That means that 34 states have a minority of the population, but the majority of the senators and that controls what happens in this country. I have proposed before that we split up California into five or ten states, giving it 10 or 20 Senators depending how we split it. That would kind of even things out.

Consider the majority of Supreme Court Justices have been selected by presidents who won a minority of the popular vote and that six of those justices were put in place by one man working behind the scenes with a lot of money from dark places, what chance does democracy have to survive?

It’s not a hopeful picture. Now those dark forces are after our safety nets and our basic underlying things that have allowed us to survive as a democracy. They are attacking Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Veterans benefits, and they are trying to strangle public education. 

This is not a time to be complacent. This is a time to stand up and speak out.

Day 725

Thursday, January 12, 2023

When George Orwell wrote 1984 at about the same time Lord of the Flies came out as did Satre”s No Exit and Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett all were attempts to predict the future. The most successful so far is 1984. He predicted the behavior better than anyone. Actually, you can say he held a mirror up to the reality of what was going on in his time.

I generally wake up thinking about what I’d like to write and how I’d like to say it.

Today was an interesting pedagogical walk and I usually don’t do this, but today I thought I’d take you on that constitutional, because the original thought was so terrifying and I’d like to circumambulate a bit before getting there.

Let us start with some cliche phrases:

Les Jeux Sont Fait – is French for “The bets are placed.”

But that isn’t really what it says if you translate it literally. It says, “The games are made.”

Fait is an interesting word. It is a verb form of Faire which is translated “To do,” or “To make.”

“Il fait chaud’” is translated, “it is hot.” but the actual translation should be, “it makes hot.”

It seems to me that the word for make or do in French has some characteristics of our verb “to be.”

The French see situations we think “just are” as actually being created. Interesting.

“Alea iacta est” is Latin for “The die is cast,” and is attributed to Julius Caesar when he decided to cross the Rubicon River and march on Rome with his army. Sometimes we say, “Crossing the Rubicon,” to say we have reached the point of no return. 

Crossing the Rubicon was not taken lightly. Caesar thought about it for several days because there was a law against doing it. To cross that river meant he was in revolt against Rome. The Senate had thought he was growing too powerful and wanted to recall him and strip him of his power. Maybe, imprison or kill him. Interestingly, James Clavell wrote Shogun, which had a similar theme. But the general dithered until circumstances changed. Why hurry to your own beheading? In Hannibal’s case he asked Carthage for resupply and they thought he was too powerful, and they never liked his family for their wealth so they didn’t aid him. He ended up wandering around Italy and finally had to leave. Eventually, he committed suicide.

By the way, no one is sure which river is The Rubicon.

In the crash of the plane that killed many of The Manchester United Soccer team (sorry Football) the term “V1” was used to say, “you’ve reached a speed at which it is no longer safe to abort. The term “V2” usually follows to say you’ve reached the minimum speed at which to take off. They reached V1 but the V2 never came. Earlier the plane had a problem with an engine. It was running too rich and they had to dial back it’s revs until they got going faster, This meant it would take longer to get up to speed, and consequently use more of the runway. The last third of the runway had slush on it because planes weren’t using it, but this plane needed that extra runway. When the plane hit the slush its nose went down as it lost speed.  

No one knew that slush would slow down a plane. Really? Hadn’t anyone driven through a puddle at high speed? Guess not. Likewise another plane crashed with “just a little bit of ice on its wings,” when engineers did wind tunnel tests they were shocked to see that a little bit of ice can cause huge performance problems.

In both cases procedures were changed to try and eliminate these problems. What an idea! If you have a problem change what you are doing. Huh.

In some areas of life we are unwilling to do this. It would take education and restraint. In a country that finds wearing a mask inconvenient, then how are we to restrain ourselves?

Richard Malthus warned that people tend to use up all the resources. They keep expanding until there is a catastrophe. Then they are forced to stop. The only way to stop this using up of our resources is to limit population growth. This led to the Zero Population movement, which was making headway until Reagan and the Pope met and killed it. The Catholic idea that every life is precious no matter how miserable won out. In the 1970s the world’s population was 3.5 billion and it was thought we had reached the maximum number for sustainability for the planet. Our population is now at 8 billion, with four births and two deaths occurring every second.

I see ads every night for “Save the”: children, whales, animals, elephants, orphans, etc. Or it’s “Feed them.”

The price tag is always $19.00 a month or 63¢ a day. Doesn’t matter if it’s Shriner hospitals or Mercy ships.

At some point I got to wonder if perhaps the problem isn’t feeding, clothing, helping but rather limiting. This would require some tough choices and I don’t see the willingness to make those choices but a penchant by some to claim some sort of moral high ground by not doing so. Or there is often a motive to make money by ignoring the problem. “Hey, it’s not my problem. Let someone else deal with it.” Or a simple, “I don’t believe it” will suffice.

But here’s a problem, or a potential problem The U.S. has over 3500 nuclear missiles: Russia 4100, approximately. As James Taylor once said, “We have the capacity to shake the rubble seven times over.”

We also have an outdated launch system. Last time I heard we had 10” (or was it 16”?) floppy disk for downloading the launch instructions.

I got to wonder if we aren’t fighting the last war?

In WWI the generals didn’t believe the machine gun could wipe out a charging force, then they started calculating the attrition rate. Even though they had hard evidence from the Russian Japanese War earlier that this was the case. 

It wasn’t until Churchill got the tank onto the battlefield that things changed.

Vietnam we fought like we did WWII. Didn’t work so well. Now we have a navy with aircraft carriers. The Chinese have this humongous rocket that can knock out an aircraft carrier. Our admirals say they aren’t worried, but none the less they pulled the carriers out of range. We have 28 knot navy. We could of had a 100, or at least 96 knot navy, but no. We turned that down. (Long story, another time.)

I just finished reading about the B-21 bomber. It’s the follow on to the B-2. It sure looks cool. They say they have overcome problems they had with the B-2. It’s smaller. It doesn’t have to stay in an air conditioned hanger. The wiring on the wings can be accessed by pop up panels. The B-2 you had to peel off the radar paint and coverings. etc. etc. etc.

Great. The B-2 was supposed to cost $500 million. The air force wanted 132 of them. They got 21 at $2 billion each.

The B-21 is supposed to cost $692 million and they want -well we don’t know, that’s classified. We do know that it will cost $203 billion to maintain 100 of them over the next 30 years. These estimates are all the public facing numbers. The real costs are hidden in “black” slush funds.

But if we look at the track record for these programs it ain’t good. The F-35 – production problems and cost overruns for 21 years. Costs doubled to $428 billion for 2,470 planes. Not sure how many they got. The earlier F-22 was $149 million each.. They wanted 648. They got 188 at $400 million each.

And are workhorse plane is still the B-52, which is an awesome plane to see coming at you.

I gotta wonder if some tactic is going to come along that will make th the B-21 not live up to its PR’d potential.

Remember the smaller F-117 that was shot down in Yugoslavia? As I remember it, the panes were taking off from Italy. Someone was watching them and contacted forces across the Adriatic Sea by cell phone. By estimating speed and distance they knew about when the plane would be in range. They used radar to pick up a blip and ten fired several missiles. One of them hit. I thought the missile put up shrapnel, not sure.

Of course, every time we hear about a new plane we are told “This will be different,” and “We learned our lessons from the last time.” It reminds me of my relatives talking about the upcoming football season, “This might be the year!” Then they lose a game they should have won to a third tier team and then there’s silence followed by “Guess not.” followed by, “Did you hear we got a five star recruit coming next year…”

Call me skeptical abut price, performance and delivery. Look, I love this cool tech stuff, but is it what we need? Yeah, probably. But…but, is it fighting the last war?

I’ll give you my doomsday scenario, and this is what I really wanted to write about. Just took me awhile to get around to it. (Arlo Gutherie’s famous quote in the middle of “Alice’s Restaurant” is “Just waiting for it to come around on the guitar again” comes to mind.)

Okay, in economics they talk about “black swan events.” Something that comes out of nowhere and upsets the apple cart. (Naturally, there is always someone who says, “I told you so.” The one I love is the promo pitch that says, “He predicted the last three recessions!” Yeah, well, that’s not hard if what you are doing is always predicting recession. Broken clock right twice a day and all that.)

What about a black swan war event, or catastrophic event? I’ll give you two:

1. We continue to increase in population. We use up all our resources and we plunge into world wide catastrophes of hunger, disease and systems break down. Then all those prepper scenarios come to mind.

2 – A bunch of well armed idiots (I mean god fearing patriots) break into a nuclear silo and launch a rocket. This results in retaliation and the world as we know it is destroyed.

Either one or both are possible. How likely seems to me to increase in probability every day.

We need to return to facts, science and truth. However, there are many who believe in something. Something that they can’t prove, or show evidence that it is true or could become true. For example, how do you run a child porn sex ring out of a pizza parlor basement when there is no basement?

Once in awhile these folks get caught up in their lies and confronted and then they try the old, “Well shucks” defense. “Did you really think I meant that?” Or the “Ya gotta believe!” Like the idea that there will be this moment of truth where Christ defends and lifts us up. It’s called The Rapture. Some folks want to create the conditions for this to happen sooner than later. That’s why Trump moved the capital of Israel to Jerusalem. To bring on the moment. Please, he might get cut down my Muhammed on his winged horse.

I gotta go.

Friendly People:

As I travelled through Egypt I met many people, all friendly and wanting to encourage others to come visit.

People here are struggling to make ends meet. They are more than willing to help you.

I was invited to dine at least four times in people’s homes. I was also invited to stay at their homes “next time.” I was invited to going sailing on the Nile River. (“My brother and I own a boat…”)

The food is wonderful. Hummus and baba ganoush that I had is some of the best I have ever tasted, smooth and creamy. Then there were figs, dates, and persimmons. Fabulous.

Security:

Our tour was often accompanied by security. Sometimes, it was a man who sat in the front of the bus in a suit. Other times, it was a military escort in jeeps front and back. At Amarna, which was the capital of the pharaoh Akenaten, famed for creating a single god for the people to worship. It didn’t work out too well. soon after he died they moved the capital back to Thebes and went back to their pantheon of gods. But at Amarna we were escorted by military that spread out to the four corners of any area we were inspecting. when we went to the rock cut tombs and stela at Amarna I noticed there was a soldier on the top of the cliff as well. it was never clear to me if this was necessary or if it was more of a way to keep people employed. One of the security men who rode on the bus with us became friendly with me. I don’t know how it came about but he opened the flap of his suit to reveal a shoulder hung semi-automatic weapon. I asked if he ever used it. “Oh yes,” was the answer. However, I’m not sure if there might have been a misunderstanding due to the language difference. 

Whenever we were out and about at remote sites, almost all the men were armed. Most with automatic weapons, but some of the older men had military style rifles.

None of them wanted to be photographed.

Weather:

The weather was bright and sunny during the day and cool at night. I wouldn’t characterize the daytime temperature as hot so much as the sun was bright, which made you sweat. Yes, it was hot, but not a humid sweltering hot, but rather a dry hot. There were times at night that I was glad I had brought my puffy winter jacket along. I forgot that in a desert environment when the sun goes down it gets cold.

Litter, Dust, Women, Meals and Homes:

Outside everything gets covered in dust, things look grimy. That’s the cost of living in an area with a lots of desert. Our hotel in Cairo had a lovey lawn. It was exotic looking. Every morning a team of groundskeepers watered the grass and trimmed the shrubbery, and let the flamingoes out of their nighttime pen. If you didn’t constantly water and wipe down floors and walls they quickly became covered in dust and then sand.

I was invited into a hoe that had a dirt yard. You took your shoes off at the entrance. the floors were dirty by American standards, but that is the norm. I visited several friends in their apartments. The hallways are grimy, but once you walk through the door the homes are clean and inviting. 

Women by and large stay home. Often times they are sitting on sofas in the main living area watching TV. I was taken into a side room where we ate. The we being me and my male guide. After we ate the women and children ate in the main room.

Egyptian TV has a channel that plays black and white shows from the 1950s. One show was an early sci-fi show with an evil man at a control screen and the heroes flying in a rocket that was suspended by a string. Other times it was a performance at a nightclub or a daytime TV drama.

There was lots of trash in the streets and canals. I saw a few dumpsters, but they were filled to overflowig. I did see a few garbage trucks, but I also saw a man with a donkey cart dumping litter from plastic crates onto the side of the road just out of town. Sometimes I saw trash burning or I saw it mixed with loads of dirt on the outskirts of a town.

If you travel in most of the world this is what you will see.

Hi Ho Silver:

The people selling trinkets around the Giza pyramids and everywhere else in Egypt for that matter have a standard introductory line:

“Where you from? Oh, America! Number one.”

But the folks at Giza throw in “Hi Ho Silver!” 

How many people in America even know what that is? 

Oh well. 

Egypt is a magical place. Like many places it is filled with contradictions and friendly people.

Saturday, December 24, 2022

Christmas Eve

Okay, so what do we know?

Well, Trump’s tax returns reveal, if nothing else, that he’s a terrible businessman.

Also, he doesn’t pay much in taxes, and there are a lot of questionable deductions and accounting things.

Shocking, I know.

Then there’s the Jan 6th Committee Final Report and associated transcripts. Wow. 

They have outlined eight – count ‘em eight – schemes for Trump to try and stay in power.

One involves seven states that were directed to send in fake electors – and they knew it was fake.

One state, Georgia, has made a referral to their Attorney General. We’ll have to see what happens.

Michigan made an investigation and referred it to the Justice Department.

But what about the other six states? We don’t know.

Then there’s the testimony of Cassidy Hutchinson. There is a great deal of backstory information. She had a lawyer, who wouldn’t tell her who was paying him (Trump) and he said to her, “I don’t want you to commit perjury.” And then gave her advice that would have her committing perjury. How serious is that? Well, as soon as the information came out he resigned from his firm. I am told he should face disbarment and criminal charges.

Even more interesting is how Ms Hutchinson came to her decision. She read Bob Woodward’s book about Watergate. Not once, but three times in one weekend. She related to the man who revealed to the Watergate Committee that there was a recording device in the Oval Office and all the conversations were recorded.

Now we get to Jan 6th. The committee has laid out that this was a coordinated, planned, well financed event. There was nothing spontaneous about it. Even more terrifying is what Trump wanted. He wanted 10,000 National Guard to “protect” his people as they marched on the Capital. He wanted to be there too. He wanted to be in the chamber as they counted the votes and he planned to speak.

Imagine if those rioters with Trump in their midst and 10,000 armed military had descended on the Capital?

It is part of the reason the Pentagon was hesitant to send the National Guard to the Capital. Whose side would they be on?

Finally, and this is incredible, more than 30 people who pled the fifth in their testimony to the Committee. You plead the Fifth if you think what you will say could incriminate you.

Roger Stone pled the Fifth when asked if his name was Roger Stone. He also pled the Fifth when asked his age. Michael Flynn did a similar kind of pleading.

Another person said they could not recall if they were in the White House or home on that day.

Now, here’s the problem with that, it’s the fact that certain events trigger a response in a population. My parents remember VE (Victory in Europe day, when in WWII Germany surrendered).

For my generation it was the day Kennedy was shot. We remember exactly where we were and who told us.

The Challenger was a similar case.

9/11 was another case.

And, perhaps, Jan 6th. It is incredible or rather it strains credulity that someone “forgets” where they were that day.

Tuesday December 20, 2022

Apparently, I haven’t said anything about the political landscape since October 28th. Amazing, I know. Right? Yeah. Well, we have a situation. Not the situation. But a special situation.

Congress has referred to the Department of Justice a criminal referral for the ex-President (“I’m still President!”) Trump for, among other things Insurrection.

This will create an interesting situation because in a few days the House of Representatives will change hands and the Republican Party will be in charge. What will they do with their new found power? Last time they were in charge every committee they were in charge of decided to investigate what happened in Ben Ghazi and how was Hillary Clinton implicated in the deaths of several diplomats. They knew the facts before the first gavel was struck. They also knew that the underlying reason for the deaths was due to their cutting the funding for security, but they ignored that and they tried to twist the facts and the truth. Imagine what they will do this time?

Many are anticipating they will issue subpoenas. For what? you ask. Why for Hunter Biden of course. Okay. He’s an easy target. He has had all sorts of problems. Addiction for one. Plus, he was hired by the Ukrainian gas company Gasprom when it was controlled by Putin’s stooge. The stooge had the very important job of skimming 30% off the top of any gas that was shipped. Skimmed probably isn’t the right term – added to, would be more accurate. So what did Gasprom do to clean up their image? They hired Hunter Biden, because he was closest they could get to the then Vice-President Biden, who had been pushing to get the corruption out of Ukraine’s politics and their gas company. The Republicans were outraged. They did ignore that many of their sibs had been hired in similar instances by other companies trying to clean up their images. Just like they ignored the fact that they had used private email servers for which they accused Hillary Clinton of such sacrilege. 

The Jan 6th Committee also pointed out that several Republican members of the House had refused to comply with their Congressional subpoenas. Those members had been referred to the House Ethics Committee. I wonder what the new committee’s subpoenas will be handled if they are ignored?

So much to contemplate. Until he is cuffed, charged, found guilty and put behind bars …