All posts by Jim Daniel

The Tail of Three Outcomes

General
U.S. Capital

With the Midterm Elections well into the Primaries I thought it would be nice to talk about the four possible outcome. They are, simply put,

  1. No significant change in either chambers
  2. The Republicans gain control of both the House and the Senate
  3. The Democrats expand their control of both the House and the Senate
  4. Control of one chamber is controlled by each party

I’ll be starting with number 2 because this is the expected (traditional) historical results. If we go by history the GOP will pick-up enough seats to be the majority party they need to pick-up 8 seats and this is quite doable given the past 30+ years of midterm elections. The problem with only getting 13 seats is this would give the GOP 218 to the Democrats 216, a majority of only two seats. History shows the GOP picking up something over 12 seats, but that is still a very razor thin majority. An with just how restive the “Freedom Caucus” this could make for the election of a very weak Speaker.

If the ”Freedom Caucus” does flex its mussel in the election of the Speaker it could very well encourage other caucus’ in the GOP to also make demands of House leadership. It is even conceivable for the House to be tied up trying to elect a Speaker. It has happen before when the Congress was highly partisan (See the political history of the 1850’s). This kind of battle could be very bad for the survival of the Republican Party.

As far as the Senate goes, the GOP just needs to pick up one seat and historically that is quite possible. Unfortunately to be filibuster proof they need to pick up ten seats, much more unlikely to happen. This will then force the Senate Majority leader (Sen. McConnell) to either live with what the GOP has done to the last two Democratic Administrations and have to deal with the Democrats stoping anything that they don’t like with the Filibustered. Or just getting rid of the Filibuster. Neither option is very palatable.

Now lets look at option 1, with all that has happened since the start of the primaries; 1/6 hearings, the Dobs decision, the Secret Service scandal to name just three, this option has become much more likely. With little change in just what is happening in D.C. from the last two years. The President and Democrats trying to get things done and the GOP in the Senate doing everything in their power to prevent anything from happening.

Now, lets look at number 4, the worst of the worst when it comes to making any rational forecasts. This is because what actually happens depends on too many variables. The variable is how control breaks. How controls what: House controlled by the GOP and the Senate controlled by the Dems? Or the other way around? An how strong is the control? These are waters I will decline to swim in for now. Although I would find it fun, and terrifying to live; so ”no thank you“.

An finally let us go on to number 3, the MAGA-GOP’s worst nightmare and my personal favorite. An not because I’m a Democrat, I am, but because it is the prediction I have made do to my reading of history. Like option 1, option 3 has become much more likely do to events that have taken place and continue to take place during this year. As stated before Mid-terms Send tend to be rather sedate and boring elections. A rest after the noise and fury of the Presidential election two years earlier. But this time the noise and fury has not died down. If anything it is ramping up. We are looking forward to more exciting things from the 1/6 (or as it seems to now to be called the ’Insurrection’) committee this September. Along with a large number of very poor GOP candidates (lots of ’MAGA’ faithful) and very divisive case being heard by SCOTUS before the election. An let us not forget the ’ham handed’ act of the GOP in the Senate like what just happen with the ’Vet’ bill.

As I said above, number 3 is my personal favorite because of my reading of history. I think we are living threw the end of one political party, the Republicans, and the beginnings of a new party. I shall refrain form trying to give it a name. in any case we just have to wait and see what happens.

Your Not Voting and what it means

Rants, ,

With the news of SCOTUS on Roe Vs Wade and the New York gun law along with what the Trump Mob tried to do last year I think it is time to say something about the people who don’t vote.

If you live in a Red state or district, or if it is even Purple and you don’t vote you are actually voting for the Republican candidate. An they like you not voting. They want you to not vote. Their bass is very motivated and will do what ever the Mob Boss tells them to do. Their is only one thing that can be done. Get out and vote. NOW!

If you don’t you are just empowering Capo Trump. An it will be you fault if they get control of the Congress. So remember, not Voting is what the Capo is betting you will do. Prove him Wrong.

A Proposal to Help Solve Our Gun Problem.

Politics, , ,
Assault Rifles
AR-15

How to say this with out sounding ’snarky’? Don’t know so I’ll just say it right out. To help motivate the Red-hats of Texas to start thinking about gun control why don’t we start encouraging people to start forming their own local militia(s). An by people I mean, Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, Native Americans, etc?

I suggest this because I remember back in the late 60’s and early 70’s the rise the ”Black Panthers”. I was living in California, as I am now, and I remember just how upset/worried/frightened people (mostly white people) became when the Black Panthers started showing up armed to the teeth to political events and protests. It wasn’t soon after that California, under Gov. Reagan, pass some very strict gun control laws. I’m not sure if anyone has ever done a cause and effect study (I’d love to see them) but it is highly sugestive.

So, why don’t the gun control advocates start encouraging the creation of local Militia(s). We can even encourage them to be well trained with gun safety drills and regular monthly field drills so the members know what to do, how to do it, when the ’tyrannical’ government, or even an unorganized mob, tries to oppress them. I’m sure all of the right and far right white nationalists will welcome them with open arms.

I can see it now. Armed, uniformed, local militia units patrolling the streets to keep us all safe from the overreaching of the tyrants police power. A Red-Hats dream come true. The ’people’ taking back their streets and homes.

Some Thoughts on Our Gun Problem

Politics, , ,
Death Dealer

First let me be clear, I disagree with the current SCOTUS holding on just what the 2nd amendment means and how it is interpreted. That said, until we have a Court willing and able to change the current law, we are stuck with it. So I’d like to put some of my thoughts out there are some of the current proposed solutions to the Mass Shootings Pandemic in the USA.

The first idea I’d like to address is the absolutely bad idea of arming teachers. First point should be obvious, like most Americans, the average teacher is not a combat veteran, shoot, they aren’t even veterans. So lets say we do ’allow’ teachers to have guns in the class room. Which guns should they have? A pistol, long rifle, an AR? What? Next who is going to pay for arming the teachers? With how stingy states like Texas is when funding education do you really think they are going to fork out $500+ (A cheep 9mm pistol) to several thousand for a good AR15, do you really see them spending that kind of money?

So now we have the teacher who has a gun. Picture this, someone in the hall way starts shooting, the kid assume the ’position’ under their desks. Is the teacher a good enough shot to miss the students he/she is shooting over? (Most class’ I was in the teacher was on the opposite side of the room from the doors.) Has the school given any live fire training to the teacher? How much and what was their rating?

Next what about hardening our schools. Lets not even begin to talk about just how much that will cost, lets just see about the problems of implementing it. First just how many entry/exit points will a school have? One, two, 10? Each will have to have at lest two full-time guards. One to check the ’Passes’ of the people trying to come in while the other watches the person(s) trying to enter the school. Ridiculous you say? When was the last time you tried to go into a Federal court? Or even a classified work place? An lets not forget places like Texas, where you have an unfettered right to carry a ’gun’ anytime any where? Will such States be willing to declare schools a ”No Carry” area? An lets not forget all of the trouble of getting the appropriate ’pass’. How long does it take, a day? a week? what? An lets not forget about emergencies, when some one other than the ’parent’ (like a Grandparent) is sent to get the student. Maybe we can build all the schools so the only egress points are thru the school offices. Just imagine what the madhouse in the morning and afternoon with all of the students coming in and going out.

So in closing, I just want to say it is easy to come up with a simple sentence fix for out Gun Pandemic. It is not so easy to implement them, much less make them work.

Some Thoughts on Hell and Evil

Philosophy, , ,

Just so those of you reading this who know me, I still don’t believe in the traditional christian concept of Hell. Nor do I accept the classic portrayal of evil. What I want to do here is talk about a possible kind of Hell that the kind of just and loving God could possibly allow to exits.

This idea started to form in my thinking of just where all of the demons that ’punish’ the damned souls in hell. In all of the representations I have ever seen there are many more demons than souls. Like on the order of 3/4 to 1 or 10+ to 1. The traditional answer to this question is they are all fallen angles. Really? The classic all powerful / all knowing God created that many flawed Angles? This always bothered me.

Given that I currently work on the theory that 1) God does not make mistakes, is loving and Forgiving 2) while Heaven could exist, Hell does not; it has occurred to that a kind of Hell just may exist. It is actually a kind of Heaven. A Heaven for all those souls who do believe in a Hell and do believe the greatest duty of all ”True Believers” is to punish everyone who rejects ”The One True God/Religion” for all time.

Before you reject this idea, just stop and consider the idea for a minute or two. To those who feel that it is their calling to punish the evil/wicked what could be more heaven like than a place where they get to punish, personally, those people they feel are the most sinful? Where they get to enjoy seeing them, the sinful, suffer for their sins? Horrifying isn’t? But is it anymore horrifying than the classic view of hell? A place with out hope?

I think not.

Our Continuing Sheldon Crisis…Part 2

Philosophy, Politics, , , ,
Foundation

As I promised in my last posting I’m now going to list some of the reasons I see an ongoing Sheldon Crisis.

  1. The similarities of the the 1850’s and the fall of the American Wigs party and now.
  2. The rise of religious back political action, that is the uses of religion to support political action.
  3. The rise of accepted corruption in the body politic

I will tackle these in reverse order. Since the turn of the 21st century the acceptance by the electorate of corrupt dealings by people in the government, either elected, appointed, or Civil Service, has been becoming more and more pronounced till we end up electing Donald J. Trump as President. Then the powers that be totally ignoring it. An I’m not just talking about the Congress. I’m also talking about the electorate, and not just in the general election. The GOP voter had an entire Primary season to put Trump in the trash, but they didn’t. (see earlier posting on my thoughts on why they did this.) Even now, almost two full years after the end of the Trump administration we have stores coming out about self-dealing of high officials and family members with little or no reaction from the self same high ethics/morality touting conservatives. The last time this happened was in the Gilded Age.

Next is the use of ones religion to justify ones political action(s). Or rather the use of religious fervor to opt-in voters for political power. This has been going on for almost 50 years now to greater and greater effect. Now, please note I am NOT talking about acting or voting based on ones religious beliefs. Nothing can be better than following your religious moral/ethical teaching when voting. I would just like to share one of the earliest bible school teaching I ever got. ”The Devil Quotes Scripture.” When I first heard this someone had the good since to ask the teacher just what that meant. She replied that you can find something in the Scriptures to just doing just about anything. That’s why you need to read not the the passage but also what came before and what comes after. When we told to go look to see if we could find a scripture that would justify staying up past bed time, or only have desert for diner, low and be hold we found quite a few. (Unfortunately all our parents had been warned about the teaching in the class, so no joy there.) It is an unfortunate truth that when people start believing that their religion justifies their doing something they, themselves, would never stand for being done to them we come to the point of doing that which we hate.

An now to the final, and most important point. Also the hardest to really understand. This is because the politics of the USA in the decade before the Civil War is both complex and little written about. It is also fragmented. We have not only the collapse of the American Wigs party and the rise of the Republican party. We have the rise of the ’Nativist’ or ’American’ political movement. Add to that both sides of the Abolition movement justified their position with bible texts.

An that leads me to this final point, a Sheldon Crisis is not simple. It is Complex, Convoluted, Hidden and Obvious. An it is dynamic and always changing. That is why it is so hard to see the answer till the ’crux’ of the crisis is reached. A lot of people will see the answer, a lot won’t, and, unfortunately too many will think they see the answer and be mistaken. These last are the most dangerous.

Our Continuing Sheldon Crisis….

Philosophy, Politics, ,
Foundation

With the 2022 primaries true and well started I’d like to stop and take note of the ”Sheldon” crisis we are in. I know I’ve been talking about a crisis for several years now and before I go on, I’d like to point out some things usually over looked when talking about ”Sheldon” Crisis’. First, the ”Foundation” novels never really give us a good time frame for just how long a ”Sheldon” crisis takes to start and end. Shoot, we never get a good idea of how long it takes to travel from Terminus to Trator. Weeks, months? No clue, just that it is not too long for the people making the trip.

Also we are never told just what a ”Sheldon” crisis is. All we know is that it is a phenomenon of ”Psycohistory” a science that was invented by the mathematician Hari Sheldon. We are also told that ”Psyohistory” can predict the actions of very large bodies of humans (very large being the populations of entire planets if not multiple planets). So just how am I using the phase ”Sheldon” Crisis? What do I mean by it.

Simple put I’m talking about the phenomenon of a Sociopolitical science where a sudden, often violent events occur that mark a distinct change in a socialites social, political, and/or economic state. a good example is what happened between 1914 and 1945. Yes that is 31 years. But in the history of people and nations it is shorter than a blink of the eye. So live with it. I will go on from there.

What I’m looking at today is the possible death of the Republican Party that came into being in the last half of the 20th Century. If you look at the demographics of the Republican Party in the 1950/60 and the 2010/20 you can see a significant difference. (Please note that you can see a related demographic change in the Democratic Party) These changes are most notable in the rise of extreme politics. The shift from seeing someone with a differing political/economic/social/religious view point not just as opponent, not just as the enemy, but as fundamentally evil. Something to be eradicated at all cost. My side, right or wrong, but my side.

One of the key issues with this phenomenon is that it has a strong tendency to concentrate concentrate “The True Believer” (See Eric Hofer) into one political party or movement. It also has a tendency to concentrate the Authoritarian-Autocrat personality into one political party or movement. When it is in one political party/movement we have a very explosive mixture. This is what I see happening with the Republican Party of the early 2020’s. I shall give some examples of what I think of as symptomatic and/or diagnostic events in my next posting.

Any Takers Out There?

Politics, ,
Child Sacrifice

One of the great lies in the debate over legal abortion is the ”Right” saying they are the side of “Right to Life”. I’ve done a little research on just where this mime came from and unfortunately I’ve come up with too many answers to say for sure. What I can say for sure is that it is only half true. They really don’t care about the life the fetus gets, only that it gets to live. Once Born, most, if not all, Right to Lifers could care less about the newborn.

In fact they really could care less about the unborn child. To confirm this just look at all of the programs the Right to Lifers, or Conservative Movement, GOP, and/or Republicans support that provide pre-natal care. I’ll wait for you to list them (please do in the comments). ……….. Done? As for myself I could find none. zip, nadda, none. Not to be too brutal but it seems that the babies involved are of little importance to all of the political leadership. Quite Trumpian.

So, what is the Republican who thinks of themselves as apposing abortion on moral grounds. And who does care about the newborn to do? I’d recommend you start promoting programs for pre-natal care. For newborn care. For child care. For very good schools. An this should be for all children, no means testing, no testing on the parents. Any Takes Out There?

Some Thoughts on the Coming SCOTUS Ruling

Politics, ,
The Roberts Court, April 23, 2021 Seated from left to right: Justices Samuel A. Alito, Jr. and Clarence Thomas, Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., and Justices Stephen G. Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor Standing from left to right: Justices Brett M. Kavanaugh, Elena Kagan, Neil M. Gorsuch, and Amy Coney Barrett. Photograph by Fred Schilling, Collection of the Supreme Court of the United States

By now most of you have heard more than you care to hear on the ‘Leaked’ draft opinion that will over turn Roe v. Wade of the upcoming . An before you ask, no I haven’t read it yet, it is over 90 pages long and as you all know I’m a painfully slow reader. So what I’m working from is what has been quoted in new reports. Also this is just a draft, not the actual option.

First off, if this opinion actually does over turn Roe v. Wade I think it will be one of the biggest mistakes made by the Conservative Movement has ever made. Even greater than letting Donald J. Trump get elected. Just from the morning news this one act is motivating not only the Left but also the independent voters. This is both direct and personal to many voters who rarely pay any attention to midterm elections. These are the voters that MAGA/Conservative Movement want to stay home Election Day so their motivated voters will control who gets elected. An give the traditional small turn out for midterms it will not take a lot of fence sitters to have a big effect.

Winning the “Right to Life” (more on that in my next posting) could be the worst thing to happen to the GOP.

On the Election Police of Florida

Philosophy, Politics, Rants, , ,

USA Constitution

Just read in “News & Guts” that the Gov. of Florida has signed a bill that will establish a special election crime unit to ‘end’ election fraud. This is a great unit, even before it is established the crimes it is to prevent are already almost non existent. I know of only two cases of actual election fraud in Florida in 2020 out of over 11 million voters. Given those numbers the election fraud rate would be 0.00001818%. A veritable crime wave? Nope.

But what the election police can do is keep all those people who shouldn’t be voting, but are, away from the polls. You know who I’m talking about. All those ‘not white’ people who just don’t know how to keep in their place. The ‘uppity’ ones who demand to be treated like all the ‘good’ people. By ‘good’ I mean all those who agree with what the MAGA is saying. That those who are at the top are, by their very position are “right, good, just”. Or if you like, the ‘Elect’.

Political Scientists, and Historians have seen this all before. It happens way to often in our history. It has happen in Russia in the 2000’s, it happened in Germany in the 1930’s. It has happen in the USA in the 1870’s. First you identify a ‘problem’ that really doesn’t exists and then you create a solution to fix it that lets you control the people. Since the 2020 election MAGA and it’s captive political party, the Republican, has been crying ‘wolf’ over election fraud.

They are telling us that it is ‘rampant’ in the nation. Their proof is that ‘election fraud’ is the only way to explain Donald J. Trump’s loss, even thought many Republicans won their elections. (This, by the way, is classic double speak.) So they now create a police force to eliminate the non existent crime of election fraud by apprehending the fraudsters.

An like any newly created unit the EP (election police) unit(s) will want to show they are doing their job by having a large arrest record. Thousands, ten’s of thousands can be arrested. Most, if not all will be let go, after the polls close, with only a few actually being charged and even few going to trial. An those who do go to trial, the ones who are not “The Right People” will get nice long prison sentences. Those that are will get nice, understanding suspended or public service sentences.

All I can say is I hope the electorate of Florida is paying attention and does the something about this come November.