Monthly Archives: January 2024

A Republican Nightmare

Politics,

The GOP elephant is on his deathbed.

With the election year off to a staggering start I have yet to hear much about just who Donald Trump will select as his V.P. This could end up being of critical importance to the GOP and/or the nation as a whole. I say this because if Trump does get elected President who his Veep is could be critical.

I say this because the odds of Trump living another five years is low. His mental state being good is even lower. Trump is 78 this year so it is a coin toss how long he could live. What concerns me more is his mental state. I have now had to deal with several people who have suffered from loss of mental acuity as they aged. Two were some form of dementia while loss of memory and reasoning was another. In all cases they suffered from a degradation of there judgement and reasoning.

Now, sense the Trump/MAGA campaign has seen fit to bring up Pres. Biden’s health, both physical and mental, it is only fair we look at Trumps state. The easiest of these to look at is his mental acuity. We just need to listen to him when he is speaking. NOTE: I recommend that no one use his blogging/texting etc as there is no way to be sure this has not been either edited of ghost written. I’d even go so far as to only go by what was live in front of a group of people. Interviews can also be edited.

I leave it up to you, my dear reader to draw your own conclusions. But think on this; Trump gets returned to the Presidency in this election and then suffers either a physical or mental breakdown. Say like Pres. Wilson did. Something so bad that even if he doesn’t die he is severely disabled and can not do his job as President. If and until his cabinet and his Veep invoke the 25th Amendment the the person or persons who control access to the President will be controlling the government.

Now let us consider this scenario as stated above. Given the past performance of the MAGA/GOP leadership and just how much importance Trump places on personal loyalty it seems likely that we can expect to see one hell of a knock-down drag out of a fight over two things. First who controls the access to the Presidential sickroom. Second getting a majority of the cabinet to certify that Trump is not physically and/or mentally able to execute the office of the President. An all the while this is going on the executive branch will be lock up and the congress will most likely be too. Now add in all of the cyberspace rumors that will be flying.

Now let’s add in that the Veep and the several and several of the cabinet members have strong connections with MAGA and any or all of them are willing to do what it takes to be in control. Or let’s say the Veep selected for just ‘Hollywood’ reasons and doesn’t have much strength at all. Or let’s say the Sec of Defense is willing to call out the “Army” ? What if the Army leadership doesn’t want to get involved? Or it splits?

A real dystopian nightmare, isn’t it.

A Theory On Hell

Philosophy

As many of you already know I don’t believe in a HELL as is common in Christo-Judaic theology. I shan’t go into why right now, just go along with me that I just believe in a Heaven. Sometime ago I did come up with why what could look like a HELL but isn’t could exist and I want to share it with you now.

First some Postulates:

  1. God doe not make any errors, ever.
  2. God has already forgiven every “sin” you have ever committed
  3. All you have to do is accept your failings, admit them to God and bingo your in what you think of as Heaven.
  4. There was never a “War in Heaven” and there are no “Fallen Angels”.
  5. Some people can not accept their failings and feel that anyone who has such failings deserve HELL
  6. Some peoples idea of heaven is getting to punish “bad” people.

So stay with me on this.

When people die and stand in judgment before God they just can not forgive themselves, be truly repentant, and therefore feel they must be condemned to HELL for punishment. They have been told that they are forgiven and be truly repentant and all is good, they don’t believe or accept it. God has all the time in the universe and then some so he gives them what they expect and will welcome them once they are ready. (Think about a four year old beating his head to punish his parent(s). They will wait and watch to be sure they do no great harm knowing full well they will get tired sooner or later.)

Now think of those people who think that the most heavenly thing is to be able to punish all those people who were “bad people”, sinners if you will. They also get sent to a “Heaven” that looks like HELL. They know they are in a HELL, but it seems like heaven to them because they get totally punish all the “bad people”. They are both Happy and Miserable at the same time. Happy because they are getting to punish everyone the wanted to wreck revenge upon in life, and miserable because they have to be in HELL to do it. This is where all the demons of the classic mythology of Christianity come from. An in a way they are the “Fallen Ones”, they just haven’t made it to being angles yet.

Crazy, No?

Bad Numbers are Good

Politics

Biden and Harris

Note to reader:

I have taken this long to write about the “Bad” polling numbers of the Biden 2024 campaign just to be sure it is not my fundamental “contrarian” nature exerting itself. I am now reasonably sure it isn’t.

To start things off, to all those out there who are sure of the inevitable victory of Donald J Trump in the November election I would just like to remind you of 2016’s election and the expected ending of President Hillary Clinton’s second term. No one who was not working in the 2016 presidential elections was more surprised and aghast than me that night when Hillary gave her concession speech. The numbers thru almost all of the campaign should Hillary winning hands down. Trump was a joke! There just was no way he could win. But he did. And now, in 2024 we are living thru all that means.

For me it meant, among many many other things, taking a hard hard look at just what and how political polling is taken, analyzed, and reported in the early 21st century. After eight years I’m still in a quandary and still working out just what is going on. The one thing I’m reasonable sure of is that it is not telling us what we think it is telling us and we have a lot of work ahead of us.

So, just why am I saying “Bad Numbers” are good. It is quite simple. Motivation of the electorate. It has been a long standing principle (over 50 years now) that high voter turnout helps the “Liberal” aka Democratic candidate(s). Back in 2016 I was quite worried that the independent and/or moderate voter turn out in swing states should be low, and they were. Very low. This has been shown in Political Science elections studies to be greatly influenced by the idea that Hillary was a shoe-in. That their vote wasn’t needed. Etc. They were wrong.

In 2020 this same electorate was motivated to get out and vote. Again, studies have demonstrated the validity of this, even when actual voter turn out was expected to be low do to the pandemic a respectable number of the independent voter was quite noticeable and is often given credit for Trump’s defeat.

The 2024 election is promising to be anything but nice. Anything but a sure thing. Not for Pers. Biden and not for Donald Trump (no mater what the MAGA machine says). A bad numbers along with the new campaign being started by the Liberals and Democrats it should make the independents and casual Demographic voters realize that there vote is vital. They will get out and vote.

That is what I think, now I get to wait and see if I’m right.

Why I’m Optomistic About Thing To Come

Climate Change, Philosophy
The Future of Telephones in 2000
Telephones of the Year 2000

As I write it is 2 January 2024. In the past year I’ve been asked why I’m optimistic about the future. An while the answer is not particularly complex I have found it hard to explain to others. After much thought I’ve come to understand it comes down to two things. I know the history of what we thought the future will be like and I know the history of doom I have personally lived thru.

Let’s start with the History of the future and by that I mean what did we think the future would be like back in the day. The two pictures above show to distinct images of the future. One from around 1920 and one from 1973. The top one is wildly optimistic and the other is wildly pessimistic. Both are quite inaccurate in their vision. I can go on and on with examples and I invite the reader to try looking for their own for examples. They are surprisingly easy to find.

My second reason for being optimistic is I have personally lives thru three “we are DOOMED” events. Back when I was just a boy (1950s) it was the “Atomic Bomb”. Quite a few of the SF movies of the era delt with both the “Atomic War” and or it’s aftermath. Some, like “On the Beach” were very well done. Others like “Panic in the Year Zero” not very good at all. Most were made to be “B” reel movies. Like the movies, the written SF of the time that dealt with “Atomic War” tended to be only fair to poor and were mostly pulp fiction. They all had a few things in common. First the “Atomic War” was inevitable. Next nobody wanted it and last “It just Happened”. An finally it almost always ended up where everything was “Bad”, with wildly varying degrees of ‘Bad’. As of this writing the “Atomic War” has yet to happen.

The next, second, “we are DOOMED” even started in the 1960’s, over population and is in the second of my images above. I selected “Soylent Green” because it is set in the ‘far distant future of 2022’. None of what it predicted has come to pass. Although we do seem to be working our way to the ‘permanent heat wave’ of the story. There have not been as many movies/stories about the “over population crisis” as the “Atomic Bomb crisis” but it was not as “flashy” as an atomic explosion.

The third and last event was the short lived “Ozone Layer”. This “Dooms Day” event could be easily missed if you blinked hard as it was going by. Needless to say the Ozone Lay is still with us.

We are now in a new “We are Doomed” crisis with “Climate Change (AKA Global warming). I don’t know how we are going to solve this one, thankfully it is not my job or responsibility. An that brings me to why I’m optimistic. It is simple, I have faith that the up and coming generations will find solutions to their problems just like mine found solutions to its “crisis” events. I feel this way because they are just like my generation it what is important. They don’t know what is impossible. They do not accept that there are “Insolvable Problems” and they, like us, are ready, willing an able to tackle what comes their way.

Now don’t ask me what the solutions they will find will be or look like, I don’t have a clue. But I do know it will most likely not look like, if even be, what we can imagine today. That is why I have the first picture. To show how right and wrong our current visions are. We have the video phone, and no, they don’t look or work like anything imagined back then. But it will happen and it will be wondrous.