Let Every Vote be Cast

 The big issue in off year elections is how many people will turn out to vote?  The more that do the better it is for the Democrats and of course Democracy.

The underlying fact in America is that we are becoming less white and more diverse as a nation.  This is simply a fact but it has been interpreted as a takeover of America by outside forces.

The original native Americans understand that but of course its not really the same.

The Asian and Latin immigrants are not arriving in force and pushing the people already here onto reservations.  Many of them have voluntarily relocated to Florida and Arizona.

Kidding aside what does this diversification of America mean?

Nothing really.

The people coming here want to be Americans not invaders.

They want homes, schools, jobs and safety.  They may or may not find those things but they are likely to find an improvement over where they came from.

Proactiveness!

 There were hearings yesterday, you know those things where politicians try to set up good press coverage or campaign video, about Afghanistan with the Military.  Not surprisingly the Military thinks they should still be there.  A little more tie and a little more freedom would make a difference.  

No, it wouldn't.

I've worked with military men most of my career and they are hard working, dedicated, intelligent, bull headed people who learn to conform early in their career.  You can't be debating orders during a battle so  the rule is follow the command and talk about it later (post action brief).

Many of their missions involve people dying or getting seriously hurt so that might be a little late for them.

Its an important aspect in war to grab the initiative and hold it.  They used to like to be pro-active and maybe they still use that term, don't know, but given a situation like Afghanistan they will want boots on the ground in country rather that waiting for something to happen.

Wait and see is just not what they like to do, although often it is the best policy.

It isn't what they do.

Be Your Best You!

 Life is what you make of it.

Many things that impact you may seem out of your control but sometimes you just have to dig deeper.

If for example you hang out with addicts and dealers it seems possible that you might have a police encounter  You may even if you don't but the odds change.

Decisions you control often control ultimate outcomes.

Go to class today or hang out and party can be a tough one.  One time isn't so bad but lets be real, is it ever just the one time?

I remember when I got my first credit card.  That first month I took my girlfriend to various restaurants we use to go to infrequently because I used to have to wait until I had the money to pay.  (pre credit cards it was required to have cash, also the guy got to pay).  It all was fine until I got the credit card bill.  It wasn't outrageous but I had a few months of dining out expense in one bill.  We went out to eat less.

Everything has consequences, either good or bad.  If you take the consequences into account you can greatly increase good fortune coming your way.  Of course you can do the opposite too.

Can you be anyone you want to be if you put your mind t it?  Probably not, but you can be the best version of you possible.

A Sucker A Minute Adds Up Over Time!

 Mark Twain reportedly said "Never Argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience".

This seems so appropriate in today's world.

There is fact based science observations, such as the Earth is Round.  One isn't prepared to argue that it isn't flat.  The idea that it may be flat is so ridiculous as to be outside our realm of logical thinking.  Similarly when people tell you the Vaccines don't work because there have been breakthrough cases, it is simply so wrong that you haven't prepared a rebuttal, but they would simply ignore it anyways.

I saw a woman ranting on Tic Toc about how she neve expected the country would have so many f*ing stupid people.  I was in the same boat.  Before the 2016 election I never thought we would elect the clown to be President.  We wouldn't have if we had a real democracy but our gerrymandered electoral college sheep led public put him anyways by the slimes to margins if you count people.  If you look at his then favorite map, he won a lot of open space with very few people.  I guess that's something.

Now even though his victory was ridiculous and defied the public will, the smarter people in this country respected our laws and customs and let him take office.  I guess that was too nice of us.

So four years later we are dealing with a defeated buffoon who has convinced his "supporters" to send him money, change state voting laws, tie up the courts and conduct absurd voting audits.

Our stupid friends say, see, something must have been wrong!  No someone threw smoke bombs and made you believe there was a real fire.

Smart Americans need to stop being polite.  Politeness can lead to more years of failure to address real issues like climate change while chasing phony media issues like who can use what bathroom.  

Give everyone the privacy they need and don't let them smoke in there.

Lets deal with the real things.

Fix Our System

 I keep reading how certain people just refuse to accept reality and our system of Government.

We have an election system that decides the winner based on the majority of votes cast.  Yes recounts can be done but once the votes are certified the election is over.

We need to revisit civics lessons because so many people don't seem to understand this.

This thing about majority  rule is I admit a bit troublesome but the system is not designed to all the losers to keep trying to change it.  We already have the electoral college and gerrymandering which skews the election a certain way.  

Similarly we have the filibuster which stopped acutually being a filibuster and turned into a procedural wreck.

If the people filibustering had to actually work we would have less of them.

Some people act like there is some constitutional basis for it.

There isn't.  It grew out of a desperation tactic to repress newly freed black people.

It wasn't used that often and it usually failed.

Then we decided lets eliminate the work associated with it and make it real easy.

Its use has increased.

Unfortunately we have a lack of faith and a number of misinformed people intent on keeping it.

It doesn't protect our democracy it threatens it as people wonder why they are bothering to vote?

It's Economics

 One of the things that we just have to accept in this world is that many things are not equal.  The recent case concerning Gabby and het boyfriend has led to a certain amoung of outrage among people who are saying that because she was a yung attractive Wehite women she got a lot more attention than other missing persons often of color.

This idea that someone decided this is the problem.

Because she had a large social media following she got significant attention almost right away.  Second the return of her fiancee without her was at the very least suspicious. Her parent made every effort to raise attnetion and the news piced up the story. they didn't manufacture it.

Is their potential inequities in how we administer Justice.  Certainly but how we cover a story is not one of them. Hw a story unfolds in based on many factors and of course race can be one of them.  However the idea that the police were swayed by all the hoopla is undetermined.

I saw a man who has a website focusing on missing black men  He said that if he could get some of the attention that the Gabby case got he might fin more.

Well he would have to promote that story.  The hoopla is not centrally orgnized and yes what sells media is what they push.

Its not racism its simple economics, as unfair as tht may be.

Gabby RIP

 This is a big country and crimes are committed every day.  Only a few make  big splash such as the Gabby Pettito one which is apparently the a major crisis.

Now I have seen her pictures and some videos and it is tragedy what happened.  We don't know all the details yet but even without them we see both the left and the right swoop in to politicize it.

I was watching a daytime talke show where the conversation was along the lines of "white girl syndrome" meaning that we are seeing so much attention paid because she is a white girl.  I think the fact that she had millions of followers on Instagram would guarantee significant interest in her case.

On the other hand the right is presenting it as a false flag designed to distract Americ from the failures of the Biden Administration.  What these failures are and why in the scheme of things they would decide this was the way to go is a mystery.

The simple fact seems to be that the young lady went on a trip with her fiancée that turned disastrous.

Its a tragedy but not a world changing one.  Unfortunately it happens way to often.

Hidden Politics

 I was watching a local news channel this morning reporting on economic data.  The noted an increase in unemployment claims ad an increase in continuing claims bu ignored the fact that because the federal program is winding down the total number receiving benefits went down.

The expert analyst (has a CPA) carrie on about the fact that inflation is real and serves as a tax on all of us.  Inflation is of course real and depending upon the items you uy my impact a person.  Considering the increases in minimum wage recently tere has to be some inflationary pressure in the system.

This is the same news channel that reported on the rise in gas prices after the disruption from first a freeze and more recently from hurricanes.  Gas prices were up a bit but the year ago comparisons were bad because they were looking at data from the pandemic.  More importantly I didn't see any disruption in supply and the variation seemed pretty normal.

Everything being reported was fact based but then we got opinions from the expert who has complained that federal policy is encouraging people not to work.  We know that the number o unfilled jobs would wipe out unemployment if we forced people to take them and I gather he would like to see economic pressure do just that.

Once again he is entitled to that opinion, even if it is probably wrong, but it occurred to me that many of my neighbors may actually rely on stuff like this for economic news.

So if you just watched this segment you would likely feel unemployment is up, inflation is up, and the Federal Government spends too much and pays people not to work.

I sense a political message there.

Voting Varies

 Elections in this country vary state by state. So a citizen who moves may have to learn new rules in order to exercise his right to vote.

States run by Republicans seem obsessed with making sure only the "good: votes count.  What the good votes are is pretty clear, white Republicans qualify.

Of course that can't be the policy so just put hurdles in the path of everyone else as best you can.

So in some states a tradition has arisen among certain minority voters to vote after church.  Hard to imagine what could be wrong with that, but they are minority voters so ban it.

For various reasons, some quite justified, minority voters are not eager to provide too much information to Government agencies.  They don't feel the Government has their best interests at heart.  So increase the requirements for I.D.s to scare them off.

On paper the restrictions look race neutral but in practice we know they aren't.

Pretending the system is fair is not convincing.

Unless we give voting administration to the federal government it isn't going to be.

End Of Fiscal Year Dance

 The Government runs on a different calendar than most of us and has a fiscal year that ends in September.  This evolved since the founding for various reasons.  That means that we are approaching the end of this fiscal year and about to start a new one.

This creates a number of issues since we are a deficit country that has to borrow to continue operating.  Also, legally all our funding bills (or at least most) end with the fiscal year and new ones have to be approved or we need a temporary spending bill.

Second, related a bit to the first but also different is our debt ceiling.  We can't borrow above our debt ceiling which we will exceed it seems in October.  The money we bring in from various taxes is no way enough to actually operate the Government so if we can't borrow we have to stop certain activities.

While failure to pay our obligations would a disaster to the world economic systems and to our people as cuts would be made.

It has become somewhat common that these two events get tied up in political end games.  Of course the long term solution would be to increase income or reduce expenditures.  Since many expenditures are tied up in entitlements such as Social Security, Medicare or Veterans among others, reducing them is both difficult and painful.  

Increasing income on the other hand is called raising taxes which Americans generally dislike in principle.  Of course taxing the rich sounds OK until it turns out you may be richer than you thought you were.

It would be nice if we could agree in a bipartisan way on a long term solution.

It would be nice but not likely.

The Party Is Winding Down

 Watching the developments since the election of Barrack Obama we have seen a reaction in the Republican Party that is probably racial in nature.

The fact that they lost to a black man who seemed whiter than many white people scared them.  It also led to prominent members promoting baseless claims about his citizenship and a determination to stop his programs.

The one they didn't stop was the Affordable Care Act but they proceeded to lie about it incessantly, and convinced enough voters it was socialist that they were able to take over many state governments.  This led to the Gerrymandering done on a scientific basis.

Still they lost in 2012's Presidential election and it looked like they were becoming a permanent minority party, at least nationwide.

The Primaries led to the surprise nomination of Trump, a totally unqualified reality TV star who used Twitter and controversy to bring new voters into the Republican party.  These new voters were conspiratorial, racist and white supremacist and not really interested in traditional Republican policies.  

They were welcome for their short term impact and because they can be highly motivated ended up dominating the primaries.

It helped them win an election but in four years it lost them one.

However having laid down with them the Republicans have now been infested with their fleas.

It will take some time to disinfect the party of these bedbugs.  Until then the only fight will be over winning, not policies.

Winning at any cost, or specifically rigging elections while accusing others of doing that.

Rigged Elections

 While Gerrymandering has a long tradition in this country, it goes against what I believe to be a guiding principle of this country, one persons vote should count the same as another persons.

I was never a principle that we followed, in fact the Constitution and the Electoral College enshrine the principle that some people count more than others.  

Still over the yeas it was at least given some credence by our politicians as they pretended to embrace democracy.  We don't have democracy, we have representative Government and the way we select thoe representatives is often very un-democratic.

Sometimes we simply suppress some voters but more effectively we create districts that make their vote next to meaningless.

Creating a fair voting system is difficult but essential to have a democratic outcome.

Elections are rigged but not via voter fraud, it starts much earlier than that.

Contentious Is Normal

 Are politics today more bitter then they were in the past?

This is a common topic of discussion and there is quite a bit of consensus that they are and we are not living up to the ideals of the founding fathers.

Not sure why these people haven't mastered history but our country and most countries have lived with bitter partisan divides since the beginning.

We had such a fear of strong central Government that we tried an entirely different system that failed called the Articles of Confederation that left the States essentially independent but created a confederation.  This left a sort of central Government too weak to do much at all and we replaced it with the constitution.  If nothing else it points out that the founders were not perfect.

There was significant animosity between the two parties and within the parties.  Aaron Burr ,the vice presidential candidate almost stole an election when it ended in a tie.  

Expansion and slavery were major issues until we have a Civil War that sort of resolved one of them, but Reconstruction, the KKK and Jim Crow would argue it wasn't the best resolution.

Deep conflicts continued with issue we hardly remember today such as temperance and women's right to vote.

We had the anti-monopolistic period and the anti-immigration period.

It never really ended although it might be true that we saw a nation pretty united during the two world wars, although politics never ended.

More recently we saw Civil Rights, Feminism, Abortion, and many other controversial issues.

So is it worse today or just us complaining more?

We grew and prospered the whole time despite these differences and I suspect it will continue.

We are a contentious bunch.

Uneven Playing Field

 What we are seeing in Republican politics only makes sense in the framework of lost privilege.  They are the party of socially conservative Americans who are used to running things in this country.  They are generally white, church going and while they sometimes deny it are children of privilege.

The privilege they enjoy is the privilege of being part of the "in" crowd.  They are used to being treated well and take itfor granted.  They believe that they earned everything they have although many of them didn't work hard in school and simply got hired locally because they knew somebody.

Some of course did work hard and went on to become professionals or developed some expertise in an area.  but that is not really relevant.  They enjoy the privilege of being accepted if they get Government assistance they feel they have earned it by having parents who were real Americans.

The others who look different, worship differently or love differently are the problem.  They should simply try to fit in and follow the rules.  

The rules might require them to have menial jobs for a few generations but isn't that the story of America?

Why should they get any Government assistance, even if the law says they can?

If they want the same privileges as the real Americans, they need to pay their dues.

Why?  Because that's the way it is!

Our Nuclear Arsenal

 Think about the fact that America and a few other countries have weapons capable of effectively ending civilization as we know it.

Think about the fact the we leave this decision in the hands of the President who gets elected in our strange system and requires no specific background.

Think about the last President who was both irrational and emotional.

Its a bit of a wonder that we didn't have a disaster.  

Now we hear that one General instructed people to make sure any orders to use the bombs was valid.

It certainly exceeded his authority as a military officer but not his authority as a human.

It calls into question our whole process and who we should entrust such a decision to.

We might all like to think that there are adults overseeing the process but they don't exist.

Yes there are some safeguards but they aren't instantaneous and might be too late.

I for one am not in favor of nuclear Armageddon and not sure anyone is in favor of it.

Use of these weapons are too critical to all of us to allow an irrational person to be in charge.

Of course if you look at the carnage we have unleashed in past wars, without using these weapons, one might ask does it matter?

Dead is dead.

Real Issues

 What are the issues that Americans care about?

Do we care about Afghanistan?  I don't think so, not really.  We did care about our soldiers there, but they are out now.  Some are trying to convince us that they present a risk to us and in a very general sense they may allow terrorists to operate from their, but if you wanted to pick the worst place in the world to operate from it might be Afghanistan.

Its remote and while that makes it easier to hide, it doesn't lend itself to making attacks in other parts of the world.

Syria, Iraq or Iran would be better situated but not really.

You want a place with easy access to targets and good communications.  I'm not sure if attacks on this country are even much of a tactic.  I wouldn't rule out terrorist attacks but they haven't led to much success.

What we seem to care about is economic issues and not as much as one might think.

We used to worry about keeping jobs in America and giving people an opportunity to work hard to be successful.  We don't associate those two things anymore, at least not like we once did.

Our economy now requires each individual to build his /her brand.  The days of getting a job for life are gone or going.  

This actually puts a lot of pressure and a lot of low paying jobs into the mix.

This has led to the opioid epidemic and a lot of mental health issues.

Simplify

 When you study an event it often depends on whether you have preconceptions about what you are going to find.  A lot of evidence is unreliable and often subject to interpretation.  If you have a goal of distrusting the official version, you will probably find evidence to support that view.

Of course we should question official accounts but publishing or pushing half baked theories just leads to conspiracy theories and general distrust.

Take the various accounts we have seen about drone attacks over the years.  The attacks are based on intelligence gathered painstakingly before they are executed.  While possible the odds of an actual mistake are fairly low.  However since reporting that the Government account is correct doesn't get you noticed, we see reports of mistakes that killed innocent victims.  Of course there never has been a victim who wasn't considered innocent by some people.  Interviewing people on the ground or only examining the collateral damage is simply guesswork.  

There were two articles recently where journalists examined the available visual evidence of the drone strike in Kabul to determine the events.  Now much of that evidence came from the Government and it shows the car being hit and exploding.  The reports support certain conclusions that might be suggested by the evidence.  I guarantee that other conclusion can be drawn since after the fact analysis generally supports your original position.

This is similar to the sort of election fraud analysis we have seen.  Without actual evidence they argues that statistically the results are inconsistent.  Ignoring the fact that those analyses are rife with inaccuracies why would we rely on statistical evidence when we have real and conclusive actual data?  The actual votes have been recounted multiple times and support the certified results.  

Sometimes things are what they are.  There is a philosophical rule called Occam's razor which states that the simplest explanation is the most likely. In other words if you are investigating hoof prints in the Western United States, they were more likely made by horses than Zebras.

Conspiracy theories ignore the razor and create scenarios of more and more complexity until you have a tangled mess indeed.  

Time for a shave to reveal the face of truth.

Will Democracy Survive?

 As the demographics turn against them it seems that it will be a persistent Republican theme that elections are being stolen and therefore additional barriers need to be created.

They are already complaining about the California recall election and they don't even know the results yet.

You have to realize that they have been engaged in a long term conspiracy to seize and maintain power and I'll give them some credit.

Apparently financed by the Koch brothers they developed a plan that is based on the State level first.  Win enough state legislatures and you get to gerrymander the legislative and congressional districts.  Once you have frim control of the state you can influence enough seats to have a significant say in Congress.

The simple fact is that the demographic message is clear, groups the normally favor Democrats are increasing and those the favor Republicans are decreasing.

To stall this trend you see Republicans trying to suppress certain votes.

Are they willing to go to the next step and declare that democracy is unreliable and only a leader can cure the ill of the country?

We Need freedom form Lies

 Freedom is an interesting concept.  In our country we promote it but its not an absolute right or even one guaranteed in the Bill of Rights.  We do guarantee some freedoms and prohibit slavery but freedom is not a specific right and we deprive people of freedom fairly frequently.

Not only do we detain people convicted of crimes, we also detain people simply accused.  The logic these is that they may not show up but is being accused of a crime sufficient justification for depriving people of freedom.

Maybe the best example of being deprived of freedom is the draft.  While we don't have one now, which may be a mistake, my generation and the ones before me saw millions of young men called into service who lost their freedom for a few years and too many also lost their lives.

It didn't really matter if you agreed with the war you were asked to fight, your options were limited.

Maybe the good thing about the draft was that it forced the military to be more inclusive and force a greater percentage of the population to care about our foreign involvements.

There are numerous restrictions on us in public and private settings concerning what we can do and what we can wear.  Of course we impose on foreign visitors certain restrictions similar to what they impose on us concerning vaccinations and past behavior.

So the current argument over preventive measures related to the worldwide pandemic are not unusual or extraordinary.  Unfortunately we do have one freedom guaranteed which has led to a ton of misinformation on the internet, freedom of speech.

Some people seem motivated to make up lies and they show no signs of stopping.  

The earth is not flat, we did land on the moon and the vaccines are safe and effective.

Planning the Future

 Tomorrow is the 20th anniversary of the 9-11 attacks.  Maybe remembrance is a better trrm.  The Americans who died on that day fall into two categories, the innocent victims and the first responders who died trying to save the victims.

The question that needs to answered after 20 years is whether our response to the terrorist's attacks was right or wrong.  Clearly when someone attacks us we need to respond.  

What happened was that we let politics dictate the response.  Taking action against Al Qaeda was clearly the right thing to do, they were a terrorist organization that had perpetrated multiple attacks against us

However we drove him underground and disrupted his organization fairly quickly.  However, unfortunately we saw people harness the anger of the moment to start a campaign of nation building.

We invaded Iraq under the pretense of them having weapons of mass destruction, which they never did.  

Twenty years later are things better?  We just left Afghanistan to the Taliban, and our position in the region is at best about the same as it was twenty years ago but maybe not.

Its time for America to learn the lesson of the last 20 years and maybe longer.  Kneejerk reactions simply don't work.  

As strong as this country is we have to realize we are part of a family of nations. 

Some of them are our allies and some are not.  Maybe its time we all worked together to make the world a better place.

Polls and Bias

 Polls are essential to any politician but they can also be terribly misleading.

Its very hard to construct a poll that has no bias.  Bias can get into polls unintentionally or intentionally.  For example suppose you put on-line polls at the end of news articles.  Well the only people answering that poll are the people who read that article.  So suppose its a poll about a foreign situation such as Afghanistan.  People who have no interest in that country are unlikely to be part of your poll since they probably won't read the news article.  So the answer has a bias built in, not bad just inevitable.

It is also important about how you structure the questions.  I get campaign mail from both major parties and sometimes they include a poll about what priorities they should pursue.  Often what I would suggest isn't part of the survey.  For example if the question is something along the lines of what method should we use to reduce the deficit, it assumes I want to reduce it.  Even if I do the suggestions are generally tailored to things that party favors.  

We also have some polls conducted by independent third parties who honestly try to eliminate bias from the people surveyed and the questions asked.  They are generally better but certainly not perfect.

The one bias they cannot overcome is that they can't sample who won't answer polls.

What way does that bias swing?  We have no way of knowing since they won't answer polls.  We can speculate but it adds uncertainty.  

Still polls do capture some points of view at a specific time and that is an unavoidable bias.  The further away an election is the less reliable the polling is.  Opinions change over time.

They just do.

Solving Problems or?

While there are issues in this country and the world, we actually know what to do about them.  Unfortunately, primarily due to political reasons, many refuse to do what will help. 

We have a pandemic which killed too many of us and around the world yet a number of us are convinced that the vaccines are more dangerous than the disease.  Most of the opposition is based on unfounded internet rumors which are usually easily disproven, but people believe the rumor and ignore the facts.  

We then have the "voter fraud" issue.  There was no evidence of any voter fraud and in fact most neutral observers think it was the cleanest election we ever had.  However due to insistent falsehoods much of the population thinks we had fraud.  The main fraud seems to be the lie that most Americans are conservative and oppose progressive policies.  They are partially convinced by maps showing large areas of the country as red and much smaller areas as blue.  Of course this is geography based, not demography based.  Land doesn't vote, people do.  In the last election the people voted for the more progressive candidate in epic numbers.

Tale the recent withdrawal from Afghanistan.  It could have gone better but the sudden collapse of the Afghan government and military waa a surprise.   Still, American troops are out and the vast majority of Americans who were there are also out.  Yes there was an attack by a terrorist group that killed American troops.  They died because of the way, not the evacuation.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           Probably the biggest issue facing everyone is global warming or climate change.  It has become such well established science that few are claiming its not real.  However we still see political opposition for trying to mitigate the damage.   We have seen a series of years with some once in a lifetime weather events that unfortunately are become many times in a lifetime.  

Unfortunately our ability to address these issues is hampered by politics and its up to the American people.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             

Mid Term

 We are still over a year away from the midterms so a lot can happen.  The press likes to play up that the presidents party often loses a significant number of seats.  That is truer when the presidential election led to a large shift in seats.

We didn't see that in the last election,  In fact the Democrats lost some seats.

The way the states are gerrymandered, only a relatively small number are actually up for grabs.  Those results are very dependent on turnout so, as always, get out and vote.

To actually continues to push a progressive agenda we need to keep both the house and the senate and probably need a bigger majority in the senate.

Stranded Americns?

 On some news channels we see a lot made about Americans left in Afghanistan as if they aren't there on their on volition.  The Government is doing what it can to help them get out but lets be real here.  They are there because they wanted to be there, either on business or other purposes, but they went to Afghanistan for their own reasons.

They aslo had ample warning that we were pulling the troops out and opportunities to leave.  I'm sure there are a few stories of hardship that can be exploited, but even those are not because of the Government.

Similarly many Afghanis want to leave because they don't like the Taliban.  I don't really like the Taliban but realistically they are fundamentalist Muslims not significantly different than the evangelical Christians in this country.  They are considered by many Americans to be a terrorist organization but outside of fighting the Russians and then us I'm not sure what terrorist activities they organized.  They did allow training camps to be used by Al Qaeda which we associated with the 9/11 attacks but those terrorists learned how to fly in Florida I believe and the operation was planned in Germany.

To some extent they allowed certain terrorists to stay in their country but that is not terrorism.

They also follow Sharia law quite closely which while restrictive in out eyes, is a valid system of law and justice.  

The bottom line is that if you are an American in Afghanistan its because you decided to go there.  If you are an Afghani trying to get out,  unless you are in danger because you worked for the US, you are really just another refugee.  

Too many people in this world seem unwilling to accept responsibility for their actions.  

Establishing Religions

 The founders of this country generally espoused religious views but certainly they were not all the same religion.  Many of them were deists which simply accepts the existence of God without accepting any particular religion.  The majority were members of the Church of England which became Anglican.  However they were wise enough to prohibit the Government from establishing a single religion or to require any religious views at all.

This was not as true as the country was settled as many towns had a church or a minister who was some denomination but the Church became somewhat central to the town's activities.  

So despite our Constitution many lived in a religious oriented community and had prayers in school, among other things that violated the constitution.

We now see a surge of religion in our national politics as politicians try to use religious beliefs to their own advantage.  They are appealing to the "real" Americans who are under attack as their religious values are ignored.

Well separation of Church and State requires that.  In fact looking at American society religion has been somewhat established in much of the country as they are given tax exemptions not available to others.

Allowing them exemption from taxation increases the taxes on the rest of us and clearly helps them maintain their existence.  Is this not the establishment of State sponsored religion?

They need to be treated the same as the rest of us and taxed.  

Opportunity

 The problem is we live in a country where some people think they are better than other people here.

They may come from families that came here earlier, or came from the right countries or grew up in the right neighborhoods or some other meaningless criteria.  They feel they are entitled to have the country run the way they want it run.

Those other people, who are not here as long or come from the wrong background should sit back and wait their turn, which will never come.

This is a land of opportunity and since it was founded we have extended opportunity to more and more people.  Just because you were lucky enough to be born to people who came for their opportunity earlier does not give you any special rights.

Labor? Day

 Labor day in this country is sort of an anachronism.  It was designed to celebrate the working people in this country and was very tied in to the Unionization movement.

Unions still participate but Union membership has been on the decline and most American workers are not eager participants.

Unions fought hard for rights that are now taken for granted.  In their heyday they had some issues and were blamed for some of the costs associated with rust belt labor.

Its pretty clear that industry works hard to keep unions at bay and they have issues with things like automation and cheap foreign labor.

We have been through and may still be in a period of labor automation or outsourcing.  Much of the labor force is willing to let management do what they want.

To the extent history is any guide, Management will be out of control, if they are not already.  The one issue that is somewhat dormant, is the difference between executive pay and workers pay.

Still right now the Unions and labor seem to be losing but things do change.

Labor day is now mostly the last holiday of the summer, not a real celebration of labor.

Might as well enjoy it.

Texas Abortion Law?

 So the new law in Texas allows private citizens to sue abortion providers for performing abortions.  Since HIPA prevents the release of patient information without the patients consent, it would seem that getting evidence would be difficult.

Also since the penalty is civil and amounts to $10,000 or up to $10,000, its not clear to me how the amount is determined, I can see women being recruited to have abortions, so a group can sue the provider.

I guess the other way to look at it is to just add $10,000 to the cost of an abortion.  A bit pricey but that is the value Texan decided a fetus would cost.

I'm not sure what the pro-abortion people in Texas plan to do, but I can imagine a number of interesting legal cases revolving around abortion, HIPA and self-incrimination.

Maybe the civil courts can be tied up totally with these citizen cases.  

I don't know how many citizens can sue over a single abortion, it would seem that there should be a limit.

Without the patients medical records, protected by HIPA, not sure how any case would be winnable, although I suppose since civil cases only require a preponderance of evidence it is possible.

Curious as to what happens next.

Takeover in Progress

 You would like to think that people have some basic inner goodness and respect for each other.  Unfortunately, history doesn't support that.

Did you ever wonder how certain, rather small nomadic tribes were able to turn into rampaging hoards?  Well generally after raiding a place, killing the old people and enslaving the young women and girls the young men were offered a choice, join us or die.  More joined and had no problem inflicting horror on the next village or town.

For much of history the law was exactly what the rich and powerful said it was.  There were of course places with histories of a sort of Democracy, but eventhose that lasted a long time eventually succumbed to the rich and powerful.

Rome had a long tradition of republicanism until it get perverted by the Caesars.  Brutus who has gone down as a betrayer was in fact trying to preserve certain rights.  Whether his group would have seized power or simple worked through the Senate is unknown.

We see treason and terrorism now permeating American politics.  One side has convinced millions that the other side is "bad" for real Americans and that they need to be kept out of power.  All the evidence points to it being an attempt to usurp power to preserve their hold on America.

Unfortunately, the propaganda they send out is a bit persuasive.  

Watching it happen is problematic because everyone wants to believe it can't happen here.

Well it can and it will if people do nothing.

Let all Americans vote easily and freely.

If they need IDs make sure they have one.

Don't wait until election day to reject them.