Immigration Phobia

There are people who are concerned that the demographics of this country are changing and that in the relatively near future the majority of the country will consist of people we currently consider minorities.

Its a pretty silly concern since in one way or another this has been the history of the country and populations that were once considered "unAmerican" like Irish or Italians among others, are now as mainstream as any.

We are a country that is diverse by its nature and our origins as a group of mostly English colonies is foundational and ingrained.

Yet we consistently go through periods where we decide that immigrants are going to destroy our society.

As early as the 1840s we had the Know-Nothings who felt we had to stop immigration to salvage our values.

It became a political force but soon splintered over issues like slavery and was pretty much gone by the Civil War, although of course the anti-immigration issue never really went away.

It is probably safe to say that the America of the time underwent major changes, one of which was the end of slavery and of course the millions of immigrants who came here.

This idea that the values of a particular time should be preserved forever is fairly common and we see it in some religious sects that refuse to use modern technology.

Most of us consider them somewhat quaint but then many of us want to glorify a particular period of American history and freeze it in time.

It isn't going to happen, the world isn't going to stand still and neither is the country.

The Best Nominee?

We actually saw something of a compromise in DC yesterday and the whole structure didn't collapse.

It was a pretty mild concession but it may bring the matter to a head about the moral suitability of the nominee for the Supreme Court.

It may be simplistic but I think any nominee for a lifetime position to our highest court should be above reproach.

Such people do exist and many of them have conservative leanings so I would think the majority should have done due diligence and nominated someone from that group.

Arguing about qualifications and positions is really the only issues that should be in question.

It is clear from the accusations and the details coming out about his high school and college days that he has some things in his past that aren't exemplary.  He also isn't such a remarkable talent or exemplary jurist that we should overlook these flaws.

He has been primarily a political operative and I believe his primary qualification is his service to partisan endeavors in the past.

That isn't disqualifying but they really should find a better candidate who isn't gong to have so much baggage.

Being conservative isn't the real issue here, being so partisan might be, in addition to his character.

Circus is alway in DC now.

Watching the hearing about whether or not our nominated Supreme Court Justice sexually assaulted a girl in high school or not turned into the sort of circus which Washington now produces.

Not sure there was much interest in getting to the truth, although the women who testified seemed much more credible than the nominee to me, he just seemed to be overacting and following a strategy possibly devised by the dotard to attack his questioners.

Not being there it is nearly impossible to determine what actually happened but we have other instances where his character and actions are also questioned.

It seems like the Republicans are gong to try to push him through to ensure they can do it while they still have the majority and whether they can depends on a few moderate Republicans at this point.

Based on how he reverted to pure partisan attack when he was asked to testify and his overall demeanor, he doesn't seem like he should be a Supreme Court Justice to me, and you have to wonder how many sexual predators we want on that body.

He may get confirmed anyways and how all this played out in the court of public opinion is probably more telling as the mid-terms approach.

Jokes?

Well, the dontard maintains that the UN wasn't laughing at him, but with him.

This must mean that he knows what he was saying is clearly bullshit and he expects people to laugh.

He was talking about how his administration has accomplished more in his first two years than almost any other administration in history, which we all know is laughable.

We just didn't know he realized it.

I doubt that so he simply is twisting the obvious unpleasant reality into something that he likes better.

Simply stating they were laughing with him doesn't make it so, they laughed at the absurdity of his statements.

We elected a joke and will have to live with that until the end of his term.

Even though his base is sticking with him, I can't imagine the Democrats nominating someone so bad that he gets a second term, but I didn't envision the first one.

We have the mid-terms coming up first and maybe more importantly the Supreme Court nominee.

The current one has run into some issues, so we might have to nominate someone else.

That remains to be seen.  The real question would be if the Democrats gain control of the Senate after the mid-terms would that make a new nominee more centrist?

I doubt the dontard would go that way but there are a lot of ifs in that statement.

For now we just need to remember, these are just jokes, or are they?

Violent Sexual Predator?

Thinking about the Cosby sentencing just makes you wonder if in fact justice was served.

The conviction is under appeal and sending him immediately to jail instead of allowing bail was probably a result of the high visibility of the case and pressure on the judge to send a message.

He was found guilty and there is little doubt that his behavior was atrocious, but, in most of these cases we are assuming a degree of ignorance on the ladies who decided to join him in his home or hotel room.

He engaged in behavior that at one time could easily be viewed as seduction with women who were interested in cultivating his help.

As I understand the accusations it was never clearly defined that they were expected to sleep with him in exchange for favors, rather he gave them something to relax them, with their knowledge, and then took advantage of them.

It doesn't excuse his behavior but I also have to question the motivations of women alone with a person, who has had a certain reputation since he first got famous, accepting drugs and thinking it was perfectly normal.

Its also interesting that he was deemed a sexually violent predator.  Not sure what the standard is for that but I'm not aware that he ever acted violently in any of the accusations.

What will be the eventual outcome of his appeal and the civil cases is still to be determined.

He was ultimately a comedian and entertainer who was also a womanizer.

I guess the bottom line here is, he should have known and acted better.

He isn't the only one.

Democracy

One of the issues we should deal with at some point is whether as a nation we believe in democracy.

That may seem odd since we always say we do but our actions put the lie to that statement.

Many of us only believe in democracy of people like us, not those who disagree with us.

This went back to our constitution when we created a system that equates the States in some cases more than it equates people.

Our founding fathers had as many flaws as any other group of politicians and while they did create a document that has for the most part withstood the test of time we still have two undemocratic millstones in it.

The Senate and the Electoral College are not democratic institutions.

Generally the best definition of democracy is that each person gets an equal vote.

Situations where someone can lose the popular vote but win an election fly in the face of that.

Similarly, while Senators today are elected democratically in each state, the number of people each one represents varies greatly.

Senators from states with large populations each represent millions of people while senators from smaller states don't.

They get equal votes on issues though so voters are not equally represented.

Its unlikely either of these institutions are going to change soon but we should remember they aren't democratic and to the extent they sometimes seem to be, it just coincidence.

Boys will be Boys?

We are seeing accusations starting to come up about our latest Supreme Court nominee concerning behavior he may or may not have engaged in as a high school student or college student.

It generally fits into the category of stupid hi-jinks, at least so far and I guess the message is that we are living in more and more of a glass bubble.

Since the days of social media this has become obvious but before that certain behavior was considered along the lines of "what happens at _______, stays at _______".

It was sort of an unwritten code that as long as you didn't go too far, you could in fact be stupid and inappropriate.  The consequences were local and pretty immediate for any offence given.

Each incident is isolated and maybe the real issue is that once you deny them you have a larger problem if they turn out to be true, or at least credible.

I don't know how many more incidents may come out now that a few have.  As we see in other such circumstances they tend to flow once the dam is broken.  Maybe there are no more, or maybe the ones reported aren't even true.

Only time will tell, or maybe it won't.

Its generally accepted now by most that the accusations by Anita Hill were true, yet we still confirmed that justice.

I'm sure some still don't believe them.

That was however a different age when attacking her was considered acceptable.  That did lead to a backlash in the next election that installed a good number of women in public office.

With the mid-terms so close we are faced with the question of whether the republicans are willing to risk the potential repercussions of ignoring these allegations?

Alternately, they may have repercussions if they don't confirm.

It makes the whole thing a lot more interesting, and further demonstrates that the level of partisanship in Washington has made progress almost impossible.

Tolerance

A lot of pagan religions had many gods to explain the various things that happen to us.  Some of the gods seemed to like us and others didn't.  One thing most of them had in common was that they liked to be bribed if we wanted them to favor us.

Most of the gods had priests who maintained their temples or places of worship and coincidental managed to live quite nicely from the offerings to the gods.

Did the bribes produce results?

Well you never knew if the gods would look upon your offering favorably, but sometimes you got what you asked for and you would make a thanks offering.

When you didn't you needed to increase the bribe next time if you wanted success.

The gods who were mischievous also needed to be bribed to ward off the evil they might cause.

Some of these religions are still practiced today although for most Americans they seem like superstition.  Their adherents continue their traditions and seem none the worse for it.

The movement to a single god is attributed to the Israelites, although there is some evidence that one of the Egyptian Pharaoh's may have believed in a single god, except he himself was also a god who had to be obeyed.

The reduction to a single god is documented in the old testament where the god of the Israelite's wins various competitions to prove his dominance.

In fact, those passages seem to indicate the other gods did exist, they just were nothing in comparison to the god of the Israelites.

That evolved over time into there being only a single god which translated into Christian and Islam beliefs.

At least in Christian belief, we have lots of god helpers in the angels and the saints as well as the fact that in some sects the single god has three different natures.  In fact it is interesting that the only god somehow had a son who is in fact the same god as the father although for most appearances he was separate and made to suffer for our sins.

Anything that seems incredulous is of course explained as a mystery that we have to accept on faith, words that I am sure were used from our earliest days.

Religion is a very personnel thing.  It becomes a bit of an issue when those who practice a particular one think they can impose those values on others.

I accept the fact that some things about the universe and its creation are, at least at this time, unexplainable.  Whether some conscious being was the cause is the problematic part, since the unanswered question would be where did he/she come from?  It would be even odder if such a being got involved in the individual affairs of his creations because one prayed better than another or made a bigger donation.

Everyone is of course entitle to believe whatever they want.  They need to realize that everyone else shares that same right.

Fairness

One of the things that I find troubling often is when people try to be fair.

I don't have a problem with that except it often results in them being unfair.

For example, in many sporting events, the officials don't want to seem like they are favoring one side over the other and so, even when one of the teams is being clearly more aggressive or outside the rules the official try to find offenses to sort of even things up on the non-offending team.

The assumption that both sides are more or less playing the game the same way leads to this and a lopsided number of calls will be challenged by the team that has them.

The result of this is that the team being more "guilty" will get away with things while the more "innocent" team will get penalized.

This is because it just seems fair that by the end the number of infractions is roughly the same.

We see the same thing in Politics where there is the same assumption that both sides use the same tactics.  They do to some extent, but recently at least we see one party clearly leading in falsehoods and dirty tricks and then accusing the press of bias when it points it out.

The press bends over backwards to try to appear balanced.

The dontard clearly leads all contenders in outright lies and history revisions and the press has pointed it out.  However it then finds things which are much less significant to accuse the other side of for balance.

This attempt to be balanced results in bad behavior being equated with behavior that is not close to equal in seriousness.  For example I read a recent fact checking article concerning a private citizens op-ed which stated that the dontard has shown no inclination to stop election hacking.

The article spelled out examples, many of which were done b congress trying to show this was incorrect and concluded the words "no inclination" went too far.  Really?  This was an op-ed by a private citizen that drew a conclusion that is essentially accurate, even if a few things could be found that might indicate the opposite.

It was clearly a lot of effort to be "balanced".

It wasn't.

Climate

We see the continuing flooding as a result of Hurricane Florence and it is being described as unprecedented and historic.

It is becoming a common refrain after each new historic and unprecedented storm moves through.

Hurricanes have always been violent and dangerous but each year they seem to increase in intensity to some extent.

It isn't a straight line but it seems like a trend as the number of high category hurricanes trends up.

People in the Carolina's are facing devastation even if they live quite a ways inland from the tremendous amount of water carried and dumped by Florence.

Is this a result of Climate Change?  Still not quite enough evidence to say that unequivocally.

Whether you believe in Climate Change or not, wouldn't it be prudent to take action to stop emitting CO2 into the atmosphere?  We already have to some extent and switching to renewable and solar is a growth industry.

It might have some impact on the energy industries but they are already exploring getting into the other technologies.

Coal would probably be hurt but progress causes industries to evolve.

No short term solution is going to immediately reverse the effects of the greenhouse gases we have already spewed into the atmosphere, but that doesn't mean we should keep making it worse.

Water levels are rising, weather is getting more intense and we are contributing to the problem.

Why not become part of the solution?

Mid-terms

Most of the polls show the democrats picking up significant seats in the House and maybe even getting control of the Senate.

Of course polls aren't always accurate, however even when they are wrong they are usually closer than they get credit for.

Take 2016 where the polls showed Hillary with a lead of a few percent.  She actually won the popular vote by close to that amount but lost the electoral college because of a few states where the differences were extremely low.

Polls are statistical animals that survey a fairly small number of respondents and predict the overall results based on certain assumptions.  These assumptions rely on past behaviors and patterns that get factored into the ultimate number.

So in any election, a wildcard factor is difficult to account for accurately.  In 2016 the wild cards were all the allegations piled on Hillary and the dontard's ability to energize his base.

This led to an election surprise where a few hundred thousand votes in the right states would have changed the outcome.

So what about the upcoming mid-terms?  It seems that the wild cards are still how much the respective bases are energized.

You see the republicans still trying to find someone to attack and Nancy Pelosi is now a favorite target although they don't mind attacking Hillary, Obama or anyone else they think might work.

It doesn't seem like the base is as energized as it was when Trump was promising them a return to the glory days of the industrial revolution where coal mines were booming and factory jobs were aplenty.

We now have a loyal base but a base that is starting to pay for the poor economic decisions of the dontard as the trade wars start to impact farmers, workers and even miners.

The outrage on the left seems to be growing so we have, at least right now, a strong likelihood that democrats will show up to vote and many republicans won't be motivated.

Can this change?  Of course it can, but considering the general disinterest the mid-terms elicit and the ability of the dontard to create controversy, we don't think it will.

Private/Public?

One of the things we normally do in this country is allow private companies to make a profit while administering Government programs.

This stems from a somewhat misguided belief that they can do it cheaper and better than the Government.

However, if in fact the Government is allowed to provide the same service, the private companies complain arguing they can't compete.

That should tell you that the premise is simply wrong.

Now, there are certainly advantages to private enterprise in a market that is being developed as they can respond more quickly and compete in real time to win markets.

That advantage disappears however as a market matures and what is required is simply administration.

Take something like the Social Security Administration.  No private company could provide the service they do at anything like the same cost.  They ultimately are concerned about profit, not service so to provide the same service plus profit would cost more.

Public workers take a lot of abuse, but most of them aren't very different than private workers, they go to work, do their job, get paid.

To my knowledge the main reason we emphasize letting private companies to provide services is to provide them profits.

This is not to say that inadequately funded public services, like education in many places, is going to work.  It will however work better for the majority of students in the area than say a charter school that provides services for profit to a select group.

Diverting funds for a purpose like that ultimately penalizes the many for the privileged few.

We should strive to have the most efficient Government services we can.  Once you add profit as a cost, you haven't achieve that.

A Tariff here, a Tariff there

China has retaliated for the latest round of the dontard's tariffs and the administration position seems to be that, yes prices will go up but no one will notice.

Well those who can't export goods or produce will notice.

The price increases will only be noticed by a small group who rely on certain goods to compete so this cavalier attitude is similar to the let them eat cake position of the Ancien Regime in France before the revolution.

Pay more because we have a president who doesn't understand economics or trade and that efficiency for all is the road forward.

We need to move our resources into the things we do best, not try to create jobs that are lost to technology of cheaper wages.

The fact that China exports much more to us than we send to them is simply a reflection of the differences is cost of production, and remember those imports create lower prices and more demand.

We should be trying to open up export opportunities to China and the rest of the world to improve our economy as standards of living continue to equalize around the globe.

Our current posturing is likely to provide China and Europe as well as others inroads into markets we need to be in.

Producing a product in America is becoming more risky than producing it elsewhere because the dontard is simply risky business.

Supreme Sexual Predators

Most likely we are going to have another Supreme Court Justice who may have sexually assaulted or harassed someone.

There is really little doubt that Anita Hill was telling the truth but it didn't stop the nomination.

Now the story told by the new victim sounds credible, but of course it might not be.

I would think that it should be explored and evaluated before there is a vote.

However, it probably isn't going to happen, since the nominations are now done on purely political grounds and this justice is a good one for the dontard based on his views about executive privilege.

It was alleged to happen during their teen-age years and while it was behavior that has always been considered wrong, one could consider it awkward teen age behavior, at least we might have at one time.

In today's age we seem to be willing to assume that all the fault lies with the boy or man when of course there has to be a female involved.

In the story, at the age of 15, she went to a unsupervised co-ed beer/pool party.  She new the behavior was not going to be considered good by her parents and in all honesty she was probably a little lucky she wasn't drunker.

Girls/women have the right to not be attacked, it is never acceptable, but they also have some responsibility to engage in safe behavior.

If someone walks alone in a bad neighborhood, display signs of wealth, they don't deserve to be mugged, it just becomes a lot more likely.

Common sense really.

Who Are These People?

I've been in four different states since the current primary season has heated up and I've seen a lot of political ads.

Few of them actually addressed issues, mostly they took the time available to say why their opponent was (fill in the blank).

Part of the reason for this is that on most issues there isn't as much difference as they would like you to believe.

Nobody is campaigning to raise taxes, increase crime, lower education, or cut benefits.

Getting into the strategies to improve these things is probably more than can be expected in a TV slot so we get ads that want to plant negative opponent images and positive images of the candidate.

Unfortunately, these ads have a lot of influence on elections and for many voters it is all they will see.

Issues of course vary based on the level of the election and maybe that's part of the problem.

Someone running for school board has a real problem getting any attention during general elections.

Similarly when you show up to vote and see a list of names for offices ranging from town clerk to governor of the state, you end up going with the party you align with or the names you recognize.

It why you see so many ads aimed at name recognition, including those signs on public by-ways and lawns that simply show a candidates name.

It may become recognizable when you go to vote in a sea of unknowns.

Of course a few of us take time to know the candidates and the issues, but I'm confident in saying its a definite minority, especially when it comes to some of the myriad elected positions where we might not even know what they do.

I think its one of the reasons voter turnout is so low, much of the time we aren't sure what we are voting for.

It certainly could be simplified but it won't be.  Simple voting about actual issues wouldn't be good for many of the current candidates, just good for the people.

Make it Better

One of the problems people identify frequently in various interviews is that they feel the country is moving in the wrong direction.  What they mean by this varies tremendously from moving towards a totally socialist society, a sharia law society, a dictatorship, fascism or an anything goes society.

The one thing in common is that they don't like where it is going.

This played well in the last election as we saw two quite diametrically opposite candidates, Trump and Bernie Sanders do better than expected against establishment figures.  In fact, the election of Barack Obama probably was a result of this underlying American and World angst.

The world and America is changing and has changed dramatically.  Human nature for the most part can't keep up.

Things that were totally taboo just a few years ago are now routine.

Our approach to sex seems to have gone totally haywire in that we see it everywhere in public ads that would have been the stuff of pornography once yet have adopted stricter rules about what is permissible without explicit permission.

I was recently at an amusement park and it was hot so I would take fairly frequent breaks sitting on benches.  The outfits worn by young girls and slightly older women cover less and less of areas that used to be, well, covered up.  Its hard when you're from my generation to figure out the appropriate behavior since I wasn't there to ogle, just to rest.  It made me think of the movie Gigi where Maurice Chevalier would sit and admire the Parisian beauties strolling.  Of course they were wearing many more clothes.  The song "Thank Heaven for Little Girls" sounds a lot like a pedophile by today's standards.

So are we going to hell in a hand basket or are we becoming a nation of repressive accusers?

I think the problem really is that the answer is yes to both depending on your point of view.

The country is becoming more and more diverse every year or at least more and more exposed to the rich diversity we always had.

We always had major differences between say a city kid from the Bronx to a country boy from Alabama or a surfer dude in California or a coal miner in Kentucky to a rancher in Wyoming, or a farmer in Kansas.  It was just that the diversity stayed pretty diverse, while the global communications network of today is making everyone aware of everything.

Are we more or less god-fearing?  Well both.  Are we more or less promiscuous?  Once again both.

There is not single America and even from the days of the Pilgrims in Boston to the Settlers in Virginia, the Dutch in New Amsterdam, the Swedes in Delaware, the Catholics in Maryland, the Quakers in Pennsylvania and of course the slaves brought here in captivity, we have been a diverse nation.  It helped make us great.  There is no single "American: way, we are a recipe of many ingredients that together make one great American nation.

Enjoy it, its constantly changing.  We need to make sure it gets better.

Wicked Circle

There is an irrational fear in this country that the liberal Government wants to raise taxes and give benefits to their supporters, who aren't by the way "real" Americans.

Real Americans in this scenario are church going white people who probably don't live on the coast.

Now as far as increasing taxes, most of the increases people see are state and local taxes, since the federal tax rates have not increased in quite a while, if you ignore the latest round of tariffs ordered by the dontard.

Still, you do hear talk from some democrats that we need to increase taxes on our wealthier individuals in order to reduce the deficit, fund social security and pay our bills.

Assuming that paying our bills is something of an American value we have to figure out a way to do it.

The only real choices would be to increase the Government income or reduce its spending.

We would all prefer to see the spending reduced until we see what is being reduced.

The big pots of money go to areas we don't want to cut, like defense and social security and medicare.

Almost everything else isn't going to be enough and some of those program are quite important to many of us.

We also face an increasing bill for the interest on our debt that is only going up as time passes.

Increasing income can be done by increasing growth, since taxes would go up.

Of course a recession would reduce Government income greatly while forcing up spending.

Right now there is no real plan to eliminate the deficit, nor a spending reduction plan that has any real hope of success.

So we borrow tremendous amounts each year while reducing taxes on the wealthy who can then use that money to buy interest bearing bonds.

Government Ponzi?

Emotional Responses

Everybody has some unique qualities but we also share basic qualities with each other and the rest of the animal kingdom to some extent. We all have the need to eat, sleep, find shelter and take care of our other bodily functions.

In addition most animals, including us, have an instinctual need to care for our young. This is so fundamental because those who didn't have it, tended to die out. Instincts are strongly tied to our emotional responses.

They happen whether we want them to or not. Generally the sound of a baby crying will elicit strong responses, especially in women. It explains, but doesn't explain intellectually, things like love at first sight, the need to help strangers, our ability to adopt a crowd mentality, etc. These are things which helped our species to survive just like negative emotional fears such as fear of the night, fear of heights, etc. also helped preserve us.

There are probably a million books concerning human behavior and I may be oversimplifying but our emotional, instinctual responses are generally stronger than our intellectual ones. This has long been understood by demagogues who use crowd mentality to stir up support for things which intellectually most individuals would reject. The emotional response stays with us after the mob has dispersed allowing actions which seem illogical to proceed. Also because it is an emotional response, it can be triggered despite evidence that shows the position to be false. Take our current and past opposition to immigration.

As immigrants have come from different parts of the world, we have reacted in mob fashion throughout history to oppose them. We didn't want the Irish, the Italians, the Eastern Europeans, the Asians and now the Latin Americans. Each previous wave was pretty easily persuaded to oppose the future waves. They are all people trying to take care of their basic needs and wants and not a wave of evil people intent on destroying the American lifestyle. They just want to be part of it.

Hurricanes

It has been a quiet Hurricane season in the Atlantic so far, but that seems to be ending.

Hurricanes are weather and weather over time is climate.  Its always hard to predict the impact of storms although of course the people paid to do so tend to be alarmist, since not warning people is so much worse that warning them too much.

However there are three storms at the same time just like last year on this date.

The first of these seems to be building up strength faster than is normal, unless of course we are dealing with a new normal as oceans get warmer.

It may hit the Carolinas as a category 4 or 5 and if so will be devastating.

Lets hope it weakens although the conditions are fairly ideal for it to get stronger.

The next two are still pretty far away but are notably building up strength faster than the old normal.

The simple fact is that warm equals energy and with the clear evidence of global warming as part of climate change we can watch devastating storms with increasing frequency and coastal flooding or w can do something about it.

We know the current administration isn't concerned apparently.

What grade?

What kind of job is the current president doing? He claims he is doing a great job, just ask him. He points to certain things that he may or may not bear some responsibility for such as the job market, the rise in stock prices and the low unemployment rates. 


All of these things were happening before he was elected but they do continue and to the extent his business friendly policies and tax cuts help he should get some credit. He gets credit for the rising deficit and national debt which is to some extent financing the current activity.


He has also failed to get any real concession about nuclear arms from North Korea and his Iranian policy isn't, as of now making anybody safer. It is possible that his policies will bear some fruit but right now he has achieved nothing except to serve as a PR puppet for the Korean dictator. His trade policies have hurt the economy more than they have helped and they have alienated our friends as well as our rivals. We are bailing out the farmers (see deficit spending) because of the tariffs and while he seems to think they are paid by the country he imposes them on we all know that we get to pay them.


His immigration policies have mixed results also. He has managed to disrupt the lives of many US residents who admittedly may be here without proper documentation. However they came here struggled to succeed, got a job, paid taxes, had a family and now they may be expelled for something that they did many years ago. Of course he has also destabilized the dreamer program and rants about crimes committed by immigrants when the crime rate for them is no higher than it is for people born here, and is, in fact lower, if you ignore the immigration ones.  He rants about a particular gang, when while a gang, is not taking over the streets of America. We have native gangs too.


His policies on health care are simply to take it away from people who need it and make them buy something that doesn't cover much or rely on emergency rooms. There is of course a debate on whether health care should be provided by the Government, but that debate has been long decided in favor around the world since being healthy is a big part of being a good citizen. He has managed to make almost all of us pay more for a little less, so not a big success.


On the whole, right now he might get a C if the economy doesn't fail while he is in office, an event which is increasingly possible. He totally fails on environmental issues and seems intent of creating more pollution to increase profits for some of his cronies. Income growth and the old manufacturing job is little changed since the issues there are long term economic ones. Down to a c minus at best with a downward trend.

Evolutionary Origins

Evolution is sort of the ultimate way to answer the question, what came first, the chicken or the egg? Of course the egg that became the first chicken was laid by a non-chicken and mutated into a chicken. Now, of course the bird that laid that egg would have been very chicken like, but it was that last defining characteristic that the new chick exhibited and spread to create chickens. Evolution is not as dramatic as some would like to pretend, mostly to discredit it. It actually is gradual changes that spread rapidly. Mutations happen all the time, most aren't beneficial and die off and many beneficial ones dies off as well if they don't increase breeding opportunities. That last mutation that created a chicken was also something that made the new species superior to its predecessor in the areas that count, survival and breeding. Its a sort of natural intelligent design and the many complexities were all created step by step.

Loyalty among ?????

what we are starting to see are people who work for the donntard who realize he's incompetent and irrational. Of It course some would disagree with some of that but you have to decide whether when he lies multiple times in a day, as he usually does, is he just a liar or is he delusional? His fear of immigrants might just be an act but he has taken these things to heart or he is pretending to care. to whatever extent he can be said to have a rational agenda, although rational might be to strong a word, is his belief that business owners and wealthy people should be left alone by the Government. Of course this is rather self serving but I think he feels that the Government has at times bothered him and his friends. He has never cared about anyone else and when he says things like I'm going to bring industries back to the United States he has no idea what he is talking about. The evolution of the American economy has proceeded due to economic factors, not because we signed a trade agreement or two. They were instruments to help us cope with the reality of global commerce, not the cause of it. People apparently close to him see the incompetence and try to do what they can to correct it either overtly or covertly. He considers them traitors. They have in a way betrayed him but they haven't portrayed the country we all love.

Conservative Supreme Court

The point has to be made over an over, voting matters. We have had many people who felt the entire system was corrupt or uncontrollable so they felt participation was meaningless. Elections in this country are generally decided by a majority of a eligible voters which is not close to a majority of the people. Even a high participation rate of 75% which is unlikely means that the election is decided by 38% of total eligible voters. Would the results be different if we had 100% participation, I can't be sure, but at least they would actually reflect the will of the people. The last election showed how a very small number of votes cast and not cast in a small number of states changed not only that election but policies for possibly a generation as Supreme Court vacancies get filled with ultra-conservatives. How much will that matter? Potentially it will be life changing for many although of course the decisions haven't been made. Voting matters and not voting is in fact a vote. Its a vote for the other side whether you want it to be or don't. Yes, sometimes the choices aren't the greatest, but almost always one is closer to what you want than the other and if you don't vote you will see the pendulum swing away. Vote.

Modern Stress

One of the things that causes a lot of today's stress is how we live.

One of the great advantages of living today is all the things we now have and "enjoy" over what the world was like say 100 years ago.

Most of our ancestors lived a much simpler life which involved working close enough to home to walk to work, coking meals at home, seldom traveling any great distances and finding entertainment in simpler ways since there was no Television, movies were new and radios were a recent innovation.

Reading, talking, eating as a family and participating in community events or church events was the primary activities.

Of course 100 years ago we were already entering the modern age and had movies, radios, automobiles, etc, although not at all to the degree we would later.

Of course there were disadvantages.  We didn't have the medical advances that have greatly extended our life spans.

Generally though we were fitter with much less obesity since walking and working hard were pretty universal.

There was stress and its hard to characterize that, all stress is individualized, but for the millions of recent immigrants and those here a little longer, the stress was likely related to making ends meet and survival.

I'm sure there were things people wanted that they stressed over, but it just seems like we stress over much more superficial things in our consumer based material existence.

We can't go back as a nation, but each of us can in many ways eliminate unnecessary stress from our day to day existence simply by wanting less.

It might not be good for the economy, but you might find it relaxing.

What Values

There are some issues in this country which are so dependent on individual belief systems that we are unlikely ever to come to a common national position.

Take an issue like guns and safety.  If you believe that the right to own a gun is more important than the right to be safe, than we have a significant and possibly unbridgeable abyss.

Of course those who support gun ownership tend to argue that guns make you safe, although clearly this isn't supported by the many statistics on gun violence.

There are obviously other weapons available but guns are unique in many ways.

Responsible gun owners are not the problem and this isn't about that specific issue.

A similar issue is abortion.  If you consider it murder you will never accept it.  If you consider it as simply another form of birth control, you will never understand the other sides position.

One of the phenomena's of the modern era is that in many cases truth is now relative.

For most of history societies excepted that there was a single authority who dictated what was right or wrong for everybody and questioning that authority was heretical and severely punished.

We now live in a world where we are our own authority or can choose one based on our personal predilections.

This creates a climate and a system where there is no clearly defined truth, where many believe what they want to.

Of course some still cling to the belief systems they were raised with, although even many of them have changed during their lifetime based on a personal event or crisis.

Without a central authority everything can be questioned, even those things that seem indisputable to many.

If a fundamental issue such as the existence of God is in question, what isn't?

What are the core beliefs of a society?  Who defines them?

The freedom to be who you want to be can be liberating, but it is also terrifying.

Our society and values are in many ways in flux and the new authority is probably the court of public opinion, which unfortunately has trouble making up it mind.

Or it jumps to conclusions.

September Thoughts

The dontard is going to skip a couple of important Asian summits.  The vice president will attend but it is likely to be viewed as a bit of a snub by them and provide China greater inroads and influence.

I believe this is because he isn't really comfortable with these type of summits where he is not the center of attention and also because it would be during a period where his presidency might be on the line.

We as a country have always paid more attention to Europe, it is where our country had most of its roots and where we feel a sort of kinship for those with Western heritage.

Of course Asia is much more populous and still developing so its where most future business opportunities are greatest.

As these countries grow richer, the number of customers who can afford our goods will provide great opportunities.

Of course we know other nations want to exploit that market and certainly our companies are eager to sell their.

We seem however to be making it more and more difficult for them, at least to sell things made here.

We have withdrawn from the Trans Pacific Trade deal and as noted earlier are skipping some important summits.

China and Russia aren't.

As we engage in a trade war with the biggest Asian country and fail to represent our business interests in the area properly we are allowing other countries to expand and fill the gaps.

Not very pro business.