Bloomberg on the Virtues of China

Bloomberg argued in a September 2019 interview that China is moving coal power plants away from cities because the Communist Party “wants to stay in power in China, and they listen to the public.”

“When the public says I can’t breathe the air, Xi Jinping is not a dictator,” the billionaire businessman said. “He has to satisfy his constituents or he’s not going to survive.”

“You’re not going to have a revolution. No government survives without the will of the majority of its people,” Bloomberg insisted.

I am reminded this morning reading this, of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain going to visit Hitler after he had invaded Sundeland and returning to England to tell the King that Hitler's intentions were peaceful and he was not a bad man or a threat?

Wall Street's motto in December 2019 . .  . ."Commerce and trade at any cost".

Bloomberg also either forgets, or ignores, that a majority of the people can always be forced to follow with a military or police state with enough guns, jail cells, and gallos. The entire Russia government was taken over by a few hundred Lenin thugs with guns and baseball bats.

What Democratic Socialism always leads to.

Winston Churchill said "the problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money?"

Venezuela has more proven oil reserves than any other country on earth.  And yet, through the socialist policies of its dictators, the country has fallen into civil war, riots, massive shortages of the basics of life, and hyper-inflation has made it where the currency is basically worthless.  It could happen in the USA as well.  In a matter of years.  Yes!!!!!!!  I can happen here.  

Reprinted from The Independent    September 24, 2019

There’s poverty in life and death in Venezuela's former oil capital!

‘If a family member dies, we can’t even bury him with dignity...
how can this be our reality?’

The hospital had run dry of painkillers and antibiotics, leaving Neiro Vargas moaning in agony. The 43-year-old security guard had been brought in with a gunshot to the neck. On the seventh day, his heart gave out.

But in Maracaibo, the indignities of life no longer end at death. An economic free fall more severe than the Great Depression has crippled this onetime oil boomtown, and those who have stayed are bracing for worse under painful new US sanctions. Venezuela’s second-largest city – and its industrial engine – is now the epicentre of the socialist nation’s societal meltdown. The collapse of civilization here is perhaps most evident at death.

On the afternoon of Vargas’ passing, Maracaibo University Hospital, suffering the same major power outages plaguing the rest of the city, was stiflingly hot. His destitute family was unable to immediately pay for a funeral. So doctors dispatched his body to “the basement”. The un-air-conditioned morgue. Even when the power flickers on, none of the morgue’s eight freezers work. On a recent morning, insects swarmed the seven decomposing bodies left on slabs and on the floor. A dead baby lay rotting in a cardboard box.

As temperatures in this tropical city soared above 32C, Vargas’ corpse spent three days on the morgue floor, while his wife, Rossangelys, borrowed money to cover a makeshift coffin and transport it to their home. In the family’s living room, in a lawless part of town pocked with abandoned homes, the family held a grim wake. The narrow, black casket lay across two metal stands. Mourners averted eyes from the deceased’s infested face. Rossangelys tried, and failed, to control the smell by filling gaps in the coffin’s wood with caulking.

They could afford no burial plot. So they dug up the bones of Vargas’s long-dead brother in a local cemetery strewn with broken caskets desecrated by graverobbers. Rossangelys wept by her husband’s resting place. The expelled coffin of her husband’s brother lay in ruins nearby. “I’m just feeling so much rage,” she says. “So much rage for what we have to go through now in this city, in this country. If a family member dies, we can’t even bury him with dignity. How can this be our reality?”

Maracaibo, the “Beloved Land of the Sun”, was a city of firsts. The first Venezuelan town lit by electricity. The first to open a cinema. In 1914, Venezuelan Oil Concessions struck crude on the eastern shore of Lake Maracaibo, the petroleum-rich Caribbean estuary that laps at the banks of the city’s jagged skyline. Oil would change everything. A regional port bloomed into a metropolis of 2.6 million. By 1950, Zulia state – with Maracaibo as it capital – accounted for more than half of Venezuela’s GDP. Fueled by wealthy donors, its cultural life thrived. Maracaibo boasted three symphony orchestras and the continent’s largest museum of contemporary art.

But the depression that began here in 2013 has accelerated into a meltdown, the product of falling oil prices, failed socialist policies, mismanagement and corruption. In 2008, when prices and production were high, Maracaibo crude was generating an estimated $138m (£110.6m) a day. Output has collapsed to roughly $8.5m (£6.8m).

By some estimates, as many as 700,000 residents – nearly a third of the metropolitan population – have abandoned the area in three years, joining the larger exodus of hungry migrants fleeing Venezuela. Venezuela’s national power grid is failing, and its oil production collapsing. A country blessed with the world’s largest proven petroleum reserves is suffering severe shortages of gasoline.

The government of President Nicolás Maduro, bankrupt and weakened, has sought to protect the capital, Caracas, from the worst of the crisis. In a trade-off, the government has let Maracaibo fall. Since January, electricity here has been rationed to no more than 12 hours a day – when there’s any power at all. Lines for gasoline stretch more than a mile; waits last up to 2 days. The queue at the pump on University Street one recent afternoon measured 86 cars. In one street market, a desperate university professor was trying to sell his possessions – T-shirts, jeans, a lamp – for food.

At the sprawling Zulia Museum of Contemporary Art, bathroom pipes and sinks have been stolen, as have printers, computers, audio equipment and a truck. Phone cables were also taken – making landline calls nearly impossible. The museum’s main hall has been shuttered, its leaking roof leaving pools of stagnant water. Amid a budget crunch, the staff has dropped from 150 employees to 14 – and half of those are unpaid interns. A dozen exotic palms have died out front because the museum’s gardener emigrated.

The Maracaibo Symphony, unable to cover its payroll, has shrunk from 90 members to 11. “Our musicians have left,” says one player, who speaks on the condition of anonymity because she is afraid of government reprisals. “They’re playing in subways in Buenos Aires, or the streets of Lima and Quito, for coins.” She fights tears. “We don’t have enough musicians to play Beethoven anymore,” she says. “This has been my whole life. It is so hard to see it crumble.”

Most traffic lights across town are dark – for want of electricity, but also spare parts. That’s less of a hazard than it might be, because with the flight of so many people, there are far fewer cars, and almost no city buses. Some neighbourhoods are effectively ghost towns. Maracaibo’s six newspapers have closed. 

Now, we are a dead city. A zombie state. And those of us left here are dead men walking

In March, desperate looters ransacked more than 500 businesses – supermarkets, electronic stores, hotels. Many never reopened. The Zulia state chamber of commerce says 30,000 business have closed in 10 years. Hundreds more are shuttering every week. “Maracaibo was a city of lights, a city of nightlife, a thriving city blessed by the Caribbean sun,” says Eveling Trejo de Rosales, Maracaibo’s former mayor. “Now, we are a dead city. A zombie state. And those of us left here are dead men walking.

Jose Moreno motored his boat towards the centre of Lake Maracaibo. The 31-year-old fisherman pointed to the rusting husks of oil drills that were built to draw crude from the lake bed. “This is the graveyard of the wells,” he says.

This Connecticut-sized body of water was once Venezuela’s economic lifeline. Now it’s an environmental disaster. The vast majority of the thousands of oil wells that pepper the lake stand broken and useless. Raw crude and natural gas bubble to the surface. The Venezuelan oil industry was built on Zulia’s light crude. The centre shifted two decades ago to the thicker oil of the Orinoco Belt farther south, but Lake Maracaibo remained vital to the national economy. Its decline is one of chapters. In the early 2000s, Hugo Chávez, the late father of Venezuela’s socialist state, broke the unions at the state oil company, PDVSA. Trained engineers, rig workers and managers were replaced with political appointees. They ran the company into the ground.

In 2008, when global oil prices crashed, Chavez nationalized firms that supplied, maintained and provided transportation to the lake’s drills. As the government under Maduro sank deeper into its financial hole, repairs slipped, then virtually stopped. Maduro claimed victory last year in an election widely viewed as fraudulent. The United States has backed Venezuela’s opposition in its efforts to oust Maduro and hold new elections. The United States was the largest buyer of Venezuelan crude. In January, the Trump administration prohibited US companies from purchasing the oil. For an industry already nearing a breaking point, it was like pouring hot water on third-degree burns.

Zulia produced 1.55 million barrels a day in 2001, according to Caracas Capital Markets, a Miami-based firm that focuses on the Venezuelan oil industry. By 2018, production had fallen to 250,000 barrels. Five thousand wells were operational in the lake in 2002. Today, union workers say, fewer than 400 are functioning. The Trump administration this month broadened the embargo, blocking all property and assets of the government and its officials, and prohibiting any transactions with them, the central bank or the state oil company.

Jaime Acosta worked for a private contractor to PDVSA that operated six oil perforators. The company shut down two months ago because the state oil company wasn’t paying the contract. “I would agree with the sanctions if they end up helping us,” says Acosta, 62. “But to be honest, at this point, the sanctions are only making it worse.” Without his wage to live on, he says, his wife and children have left for Colombia to find work. “In Zulia, us oil workers were the ones who drove the economy,” he says. “Now our families are broken.”

In the shadow of Maracaibo’s half-empty high-rises rests the shantytown of Miracle Heights North. Four hundred families – a third of the residents – have left in recent months, and the exodus is accelerating. Hyperinflation has put all but the most basic foodstuffs and medicines out of reach, leaving those who remain thin, hungry and sick. In the absence of a functioning government, gangs and thieves rule the neighbourhood.

Neiro Vargas, the security guard, was walking home from his 14-hour graveyard shift when he was caught in the neck by a stray bullet. He was one block from his front door. “The government doesn’t do anything,” Vargas’s wife, Rossangelys Olivares, says. “It simply doesn’t care about us.”

Violence isn’t the only killer. The power shortages, and the worsening access to running water, aren’t just inconveniences – they’re potentially deadly hazards. Parents, unable to wash their children with water and soap, are struggling to control an outbreak of scabies. This year alone, 16 people in the neighbourhood have died, community activists say, including the elderly and children with illnesses caused or worsened by the lack of clean water, unreliable power and the unrelenting heat.

Three blocks from Vargas’ home, neighbours watched one recent afternoon as a small group of people carried the body of 11-year Tiany Chacin into her home in a coffin cobbled together from old pieces of furniture. A stomach parasite had reached her brain. Before she died, her mother says, the girl was vomiting worms. This year, her family has had almost no access to potable water, saysher mother, Yulimar Chacin, 33. They were left to drink from a stagnant drain. Since cooking gas is scarce and expensive, Chacin says, she could not always afford to boil it. “We had no other way, no other way to get water,” she says. “It’s darkness here,” the rail-thin woman says between sobs. “We are alone.”

Dark side of Finland's "free" health care!

In the words of Milton Friedman, "there ain't no free lunches, and nothing's coming in the mail".

"Free health care" isn't actually free and certainly not all it touted to be by politicians running for President today.   click here for the Dark Side

The destruction of a major Economy and World power

Just a few decades ago, Argentina was one of the top 10 countries in the World in wealth and agricultural production.  It was hailed as an example of excellent government and use of resources.

Today it is facing one more crisis that may eclipse the rioting, civil war, and economic collapse it had in 2001.

The same is happening in Venezuela now and that country has the largest proven oil reserves of any country on the planet.  

If it could happen in Venezuela or Argentina, it can happen anywhere.  When the printing presses are turned on to run continuously to print more and more money to buy more and more votes and influence, ruin is not far away.

Here is an excellent documentary on what happened in just a short period of time in a "great Nation"

Elizabeth Warren Cultural Appropriation if needed.

“I have listened and I have learned,” said Elizabeth Warren at a forum of Native American voters in Iowa last month. “Like anyone who’s being honest with themselves, I know that I have made mistakes. I am sorry for the harm I have caused.”

Did any reporter ask her what harm, specifically, she’d caused, or what, specifically, she’d learned? Did any reporter ask her if her “mistakes” were ones anyone could have made, or ones she believed any of her peers, either at Harvard or in the Senate, had also made?

No, they did not.

I suppose people think that the controversy over Warren’s past claims of Native American ancestry has been put to bed, with Warren rising in the polls because she has plans for everything, including for Native Americans. But in fact, the controversy has not been put to bed, and it shouldn’t be. It points to Elizabeth Warren’s ambitions and lack of integrity, and forces us to ponder whether the rules really apply to those who would make them.

The media have certainly done their best to help Warren in putting the controversy to bed, though. The Boston Globe in a story that briefly acknowledged that Warren’s “political enemies have long pushed a narrative that her unsubstantiated claims of Native American heritage turbocharged her legal career” — gave ample space to her own much-more-charitable version of events. Her reporter-defenders have pointed out that until a certain time in her life, she declined to participate in affirmative-action programs, though even they have had to admit that the crucial leaps in her academic career — her landing a job at the University of Pennsylvania and then moving on to Harvard — occurred after she began listing herself as a racial minority. The year before Harvard Law School hired her — and trumpeted her as the first woman of color so hired — it had been subject to major, headline-grabbing protests for giving tenure to four white men.

Of course, Warren could have been deluding herself as well. She claims that her belief in her Cherokee heritage came from longstanding family lore. But the fact that she participated in the now-cringe-inducing Pow Wow Chow cookbook and plagiarized her recipes from a French cookbook suggests a certain awareness that she was perpetrating a racial fraud. And then there is the fact that Cherokee Indian is not so much a “socially constructed” racial category as a specific, legally defined identity: You are a Cherokee when the Cherokee nation recognizes you as a member on its rolls. Surely someone who identified as a Native American academically and socially in the way Warren once claimed she did would have sought such official status. But she didn’t.

Warren has repeatedly claimed over the years that her parents’ marriage was rejected by racist grandparents because of her mother’s Cherokee ancestry. But Cherokee genealogist Twila Barnes has said there’s simply no evidence of Cherokee genealogy in Warren’s family. Warren’s mother was not some racial outcast, but the popular daughter of a prominent local family. And there’s no evidence of the romantic elopement, or racist animus on the part of her paternal grandfather, Grant Herring, who regularly played golf with Carnal Wheeling, a recognized Cherokee.

The media haven’t really known how to handle this story. Like a Geiger counter in a North Korean nuclear-weapons lab, the reaction of the “smart set” on Twitter was wildly disconcerting when Elizabeth Warren announced the results of her spectacularly ill-conceived DNA test earlier this year. At first, the trace amounts of Native American heritage were held up as proof against Donald Trump’s attacks. Then, as geneticists and common sense intervened in the discussion, it became obvious that Warren’s Native American roots were negligible.

As the social-climbing Warren begins to gain over actual socialist Bernie Sanders, I expect the Sandernistas to unload on the contradictions between the upwardly mobile Left’s hatred of cultural appropriation and the changing racial identity and falsified family history of its darling Warren. If she survives that and wins the nomination, she’ll face a general election in which the same basic problem remains.

I predict that should she make it that far, everyone will just try to change the subject.

Michael Brendan Dougherty is a senior writer at National Review Online.  @michaelbd

quotes heard today

"most people relate to you, in relation to their agenda for their life".

and a funny one:

"may the wind at your back not be your own".

Venezeula and its Collapse. Argentina next? USA when?

by Maybell Nieves, a professional physician from Venezuela.

Dealing with this subject has been quite difficult for me. Both the concept of the state stripping you of everything has diverse interpretations, so trying to approach this from a single point of view is a complicated task.

In my country, Venezuela, after 20 years of “revolution,” we have bottomed out and learned to live in situations we never imagined (so much so that I was able to write an article on survival techniques I never imagined myself using on daily basis).

It’s not that the governments before Hugo Chavez were much better. But there was a much more stable political and economic situation with access to the international market.

In 1999, when Chávez’s government was instated, oil prices were the highest in Venezuela’s history. The newly born Communist policy in the country was hardly felt and had very few repercussions on the professional citizens who lived on a monthly salary.

That’s probably why those first few years didn’t really feel like something was taken away from us. In addition, the newly elected president had a 60% popular approval rating and promised endless opportunities for the neediest people.

One of the first economic policies was the implementation of exchange control, currently in effect. Any operation with foreign currency was managed by the state. Later came the control of the prices of basic products, which caused the disappearance of those items and initiated a black market that is also very much in force to this day.

The real problem began in 2004 with the accelerated decrease in oil prices that translated into a lower income for the government. Remember that we are talking about an oil-reliant country.

The decay was soon seen in many aspects. There was no longer maintenance on public roads, and public services failed often until reaching the point of constant failures of electric service, even for days.

The public health situation is also getting worse and worse. As a health professional, I have seen this deterioration for the last 10 years.

I am an oncologic breast surgeon. In Venezuela, breast cancer is the main cause of death from cancer in women. However, in the hospital where I work, the most important hospital in Caracas, there are no basic services for this issue. No chemotherapy, the radiotherapy equipment has been inoperative since 2015, and surgical procedures are suspended every week.

For me, as a doctor, it is frustrating not to be able to help my patients in any way. Just last week two breast cancer patients who were going to the operating room were suspended for the fourth time in a row. This time the anesthesia machine was failing.

The purchasing power of the Venezuelan citizen also decreased. It seemed to have happened from one day to the next, but if you look at the political situation since 1988, the decline took a long time; all that was left was to hit rock bottom.

Finding ourselves in extreme situations makes our defense system act in a primitive way. This means activating the fight or flight response at any time within any context—and yes, the state takes advantage of that.

The state will rip you off, but it doesn’t happen all of a sudden. There are a lot of logistics; it takes a long time to develop the kind of policy that makes citizens totally dependent on the state.

You start by losing something unimportant, like some kind of monetary bonus now given to you as government-run grocery store credits, and you end up losing your freedom and all kinds of rights, including freedom of speech and protest, but these issues are so extensive that they require an article of their own to explain them properly.

The state has taken charge, with great success I must say, and you are now living in fear of the so-called public authorities, meaning police and military police, since they serve as pro-government forces of repression.

Many of us have lost the incentive to go out and protest. We did it for more than 10 years. However, I have seen the evolution of the manifestations before and now.

I remember 2003 when repression was minimal, almost non-existent. Today many friends who still have the strength to continue have gotten gas masks in order to defend themselves from the hundreds of tear gas grenades used by the authorities that should be defending people.

In any public protest, savage repression is a constant. That violence is what we Venezuelans have become used to.

When there is no public or social security, when the devaluation of the currency is occurring on a daily basis, and when you don’t know if the bakery on the corner is going to be broken into tomorrow, at that moment, the debacle has already occurred.

Defending oneself from these kinds of problems is as difficult as trying to explain them. Many have chosen to leave and seek a future in other countries. That way the state even strips you of your own country by causing you to become self-exiled.

I don’t blame them. We all have more than one family member or close friend who has been kidnapped or stolen from violently, and sadly, all we can say is “You should be thankful you weren’t killed”.

Personal security becomes a problem of epic proportions, to the extent that going out on the street is considered a risky activity—a risk to which, unfortunately, you have to get used to in order to live a normal life.

Living in that state of continuous stress in which your rights are violated, in cities where, despite paying high taxes, everything seems to be in ruins, is part of that hopelessness that the state achieves in the individual.

Living in a place where a good monthly salary fora top executive, for example, does not reach $100 a month, is not easy, especially taking into consideration that a basic shopping list for a family of four can cost up to $140 monthly.

So the mismanagement of incompetent and corrupt civil servants results in the deep separation of three social classes: extreme poverty, which represents more than 80% of the population and is totally dependent on the government; the working middle class, which manages to subsist through one or two basic incomes plus the economic help of family members abroad; and those who do business with the government and can live in a very comfortable, ideal world that has nothing to do with reality.

Of course, there are exceptions to this, and some people have high incomes without being involved in dubious businesses.

It is sad to see how fourth-level professionals, trained in the country, must leave in order to provide for their families.

I know it is not a unique situation in the world—it has happened and will continue to happen—but it is very different to read about it than to see it sitting in the front row or even being the leading character.

Nowadays it is the common denominator, and more and more qualified professionals and technicians step into the international airport in search of a better quality of life.

That’s why there is a whole generation that has no kind of roots in their country and only waits for the opportunity to leave.

I think the worst part of all this is the desolation sown in all of us. It seems to be an endless story, with the political disqualification of opposition leaders, political prisoners, and many more vexations.

Writing all this is not easy, but it makes me reflect. It is an exercise in introspection. Without a doubt, the state strips you of everything in its eagerness to stay in charge. That’s the way they do it.

There comes a point at which the only thing in your mind is to know if you will return home alive. Everything else is secondary. At that point, the state has already massacred you internally. You can never be the same again. I’m sure I am not.

Even if you are a person who is not involved in politics, an “apolitical” citizen, in this state of anarchy, you have to fix your position.

As Desmond Tutu said, “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.

Changing the definition of Time

Revised August 12, 2019.  Original draft September 9, 2016

First of all, I’m not a scientist.   I have no letters after my name or any scientific training, except my own layman’s study in mysteries of science and math that have always intrigued me.    My best friend knows me as a person whose mind seems to never rest but I ponder the imponderable all the time.   My daughter says that I am always seeking answers to things that other people don’t even think of the question.  I don’t think of myself as a brilliant person, though my IQ is above average I suppose. I am 67 years old, have achieved a measure of success as a builder and developer and hotelier.  And I have always had a tendency towards skepticism and not taking the status quo as being fact.      All that being said, I’m not some crackpot that just jumped out of an H.G. Wells novel, and I’ve never believed in Ouija boards, etc.  I am just a man with an idea here, that I think merits serious consideration by others who are more learned than myself.

The idea that has puzzled me for a long time is the limitations posed on me personally, and science collectively, of Time.   However, in the past year, I came to the conclusion that perhaps much of what I believe about Time is incorrect.   My father always told me as a child that it wasn’t what you know that gets you in trouble but what you know that’s wrong that gets you hurt.   I’ve read books on Space and Time.   I remember from college and high school math and science classes the manner in which time was factored into equations.   But everything I have been taught about time is that time is “some thing”.  

What is a thing?  Things have matter.   Things have dimensions.  Things have mass.  Things have definition.  Things are describable.   I suppose, in a sense, things can be touched.  While some might say that space cannot be touched, I’d have to disagree.   If I were an astronaut on a space walk outside of ISS I could reach my hand into space and my hand would be there in space.   It would be “at” a particular point in space, and though it would have no sensation, I would still be “touching”.    The same could be said for hydrogen.  Gas is a thing.   Though it would be without sensation, I could still put my hand into a container of hydrogen and I would be “touching” the gas.   I can touch a wall.  I can touch a car door.  I can even touch a ruler.    However, I cannot touch a foot (12 inches).   I cannot touch a meter.   I cannot touch an inch.   Nor can I touch a minute or a moment or an hour.

A foot or a meter or an inch can be measured, with a ruler.    And a minute can be measured with a stop watch.    But that’s all a minute is.  And it is a called a minute just because someone calculated how long it took for the earth to go around the sun and divided that by 24 and divided that by 60 and they called that a minute.    It is just a passing between one point in the plane of existence to another point in that same plane of existence.  And I offer that description of points on the same plane, because that is the way we imagine life and time goes on, in a linear time line fashion.   What if it doesn’t necessarily have to though?

I have told my friend that only things or physical conditions can limit us.   I can sit in my living room and not be able to throw a rock from my chair and hit my neighbor’s house.  In that case, the three walls of my three rooms, plus the brick exterior my house are certainly sufficient resistance to render that feat impossible.   I could however overcome the resistance of those walls, and bricks, and even distance with a 44 caliber hand gun and bullet.   Those mechanical advantages would help me overcome the physical limitations of the “things” that stand between my neighbor and myself.

I could put a pair of handcuffs on my wrists behind my back and I’d certainly be unable to brush my teeth.   Certainly, the man I am still has the capacity within myself to brush my teeth, but a thing has made limited my possibilities.

In his interesting, and fun to read book How to think like Einstein, by Daniel Smith, the author makes the point that one thing that distinguished Einstein from others was that he believed if you wanted to do something that others thought impossible, you should start with the assumption that it is possible and then work the problem backwards from the objective.   So in this example I might say, “I can brush my teeth with my wrists in handcuffs behind my back”.  And then design a remote control, that could be held behind my back, and keyed from memory, for my robot to brush my teeth for me, and thereby overcome even the limitations of handcuffs.   My point is still the same.  The “thingness” is what meant I could not do it and I was forced to find a way around the limitation of the “thing”.

Since things have all of the characteristics I described above, then I can only reason that Time is NOT a thing any more than a centimeter is a thing.  Time and a centimeter are measureable.  Time and a centimeter are A measure.   Time does not have mass.  It cannot be touched.  I can’t ask you to bring me a pound of time or a pound of meter.  

I theorize then that only things or the properties of things, can cause limits (The lack of oxygen in my air will cause me to die.   It’s not negative-oxygen killed me, but the properties of my physical body that demand oxygen).  Certainly gravity can limit me.   Wind can limit me.  Water can limit me.  The walls of my home can limit me.  Handcuffs can limit me.  But can a thought limit me?   I say no.   Can a theory limit me?  I say no.   Can a happy smile limit me?  I say no.  Can a centimeter limit me?  I say no.   And I say then that there should be no limitation on me by time, which does not in fact EXIST.   Matter and Energy exist.  Time does not.

Time is simply the term we have come up with for measuring the passing of moments in existence.   Just as we have come up with the term for an inch as being the amount of space between the 1 and the 2 or the 9 and the 10 on a ruler.  We can point to what 1 inch of a piece of wood is.   But we’d not be describing “inch”.  We’d be describing the wood, and that portion of the wood between the 1 and 2 marks.   When we hold up a stop watch and start it when the runner takes off and stop it when the runner crosses the finish line, we’re not looking down at stop watch that reads 42.12.14 seconds and saying “ah hah.  There is the race!”.  We’re not even looking at the stop watch and saying “there.   That’s the runners TIME.”    Because the stop watch is only showing us a reflection of the moments it too the runner to run the race.   We’re just pointing to the number on the stop watch and saying these numbers are the measurement, or record of the race.

I’m not sure what learned men could do with this idea in science if they would for a moment go back to all the myriad of equations that science uses that factor in time, and just take that out.    I’m only suggesting that they try.  I’m not speaking of time used as a factor or variable of a required measurement.  For instance, there are certain physical conditions by which the measurement of time is necessary to complete another action.  i.e.   You cannot write a mathematical equation for boiling an egg without a factor of time. If a rocket ship only will go 100,000 km then time is a factor in determining how long it would take to reach a destination.  

I wonder though why can’t we imagine what might be possible in certain experiments if somehow time was not limiting to us in a linear, forward direction?  Stephen Hawking has said that he believes that at some point in the future, the universe will collapse back within itself and all will be reversed.  As a man with more than a few regrets in my life, I look often at the figurative broken glasses on the floor of my life and long for the day, and even imagine in my mind, when the broken glass will reverse course and go back and up onto the piano and be restored. Science (so far) says this is impossible because it considers time a thing and that thing only moves forward.   Physics though tells me that if I can write out the breaking of the glass in a mathematic expression that I need only reverse the equation to reverse the results.      Maybe, the reason physics has not given me a way to restore my broken glass is because physics has told me that time is a limitation.  I am imagining that it is not.

In conclusion, and at the risk now of sounding like a crackpot, I would suggest for some learned consideration that maybe H.G. Wells was half right in his idea about time travel.   Where his traveler made a machine that took him first backward, and then forward in time, and then ultimately back, maybe the whimsical part of that is that it overlooks that man’s body is a thing, and our body does act as a limiting factor to certain things.    

We cannot go back in age.  We cannot go back to being a baby and into our mother’s womb.  Nor (at our present physical condition) do we have the ability to flap our appendages fast enough nor have the mass or feathers, to produce the lift required to fly as a bird.

But maybe there is a part of man that is without limitations.  And if time is simply a measurement of points on a plane of existence, perhaps it is possible to freely, outside the body, go from one point on that plane to another except not always forward?  As I said in the beginning of this paper, I am not a scientist.   And I’ve only recently learned that scientific “purists” deny that there is anything spiritual about man, but that mankind is simply biologic and a product of some evolutionary process that made us simply more advanced goo and gob than a lizard.   I guess those same purists must say that emotions are illusory?   I don’t know.   So I suppose for those that would think me just an organic biologic, accumulation of proteins and waters, they would not be able to step outside their orthodoxy to consider my own experience.   

But I learned many years ago, that a man with an experience is never at the mercy of a man with an argument.   

And in my own life experience, some (not myself) would say that I have been gifted with an extra sense of being included in a conversations or experiences, in other places other than my physical location.    The easiest example is in my continued experience of calling someone to confirm something that they had just been thinking or speaking with another about.   I often times hurt emotionally when I am “knowing” that someone is saying some about me unflattering, even to the point of seeing in my mind the people having the conversation.    So what is that?  Half of Wellsian time travel?   Am I moving back and forth between points on a level and present time plane?   If that is possible, why wouldn’t it be possible for someone to go backward to a point or forward even?

Anyone who knows me knows that I'm a strong advocate of the 2nd Amendment and free speech.   But that advocacy does still have limits.  I do not believe, for instance, that a person has the right to stand up in the middle of a dark auditorium and yell "Fire".   While I do believe that I should have a right to say I simply don't like someone, or some group, for any reason I might have, I don't believe I have a right to express that dislike in threats or narratives of harm toward that person or group.   

I have also been known to support certain types of punishment that "fit the crime" regardless of whether it might be considered unusual.   I.e. for digital crimes of hacking someone's computer, just a simple sentencing of having a number of fingers removed corresponding to the seriousness of the crime, or number of hacks. In the case of rapists I'd have no issue whatsoever with chemical castration.   For crimes like the inhumane mass shootings this week, the perpetrator should know that punishment they will most certainly receive will be inhumane as possible and in a public format for any others who contemplate such things to know. 

In this morning's posting from Jim Geraghty, I read an interesting form of punishment for those who have supported, and encouraged, the efforts of the shooters this weekend in El Paso and Dayton.   

Shoehorning Multiple-Causation Shootings into Single-Cause Narratives

By Jim Geraghty National Review Magazine August 5, 2019

On Saturday afternoon, after the El Paso shooting but before the Dayton shooting, New York Daily News opinion editor Josh Greenman observed, “It’s never just guns. It’s never just mental health. It’s never just radical ideology. It’s never just sad manhood. It’s almost always a toxic combination.”

We keep hearing the same kinds of anecdotes after a mass shooting. The details change, but the gist is the same. Often but not always, there’s no father in the home. Often but not always, the shooter has few or no friends and nothing resembling a real support network. Often but not always, the shooter is unemployed or barely employed. Often but not always, the shooter has some mental-health issue, sometimes formally diagnosed, sometimes not. Often but not always, the shooter played violent video games. Often but not always, the shooter was active on extremist or Columbine-focused chat boards or had a noticeable interest in or obsession with previous mass shootings. Often but not always, the shooter has gotten in trouble in school or has been kicked out of school.

And then in every single case, when the shooter leaves some sort of message, it reveals he has convinced himself that he is the real victim of powerful forces beyond his control, and that the only remaining option he sees for defiance is shooting as many random people as possible in a public place. And in every single case, the shooter manages to get his hands on a gun — sometimes legally purchasing them, sometimes stealing them or taking them from someone else.

Only a handful of those who play violent video games become mass shooters, and the same is true for those without a father in the home, loners, the unemployed or under-employed, those with mental-health issues, those with discipline issues at school, or gun owners. But if enough of those traits are found in the same individual, we have a formula for trouble.

In the coming days, you’re going to hear a lot of fruitless arguments about which ideological side is responsible for these monsters.

The El Paso shooter’s manifesto describes America being taken over by “unchecked corporations,” “invaders who have close to the highest birthrate in America,” and “our lifestyle is destroying the environment of this country,” and describes his attack as “a response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas.”

The Dayton shooter’s social media history described himself as, “he/him / anime fan / metalhead / leftist / i’m going to hell and i’m not coming back.” He wrote on Twitter that he would happily vote for Democrat Elizabeth Warren, praised Satan, was upset about the 2016 presidential election results, and added, “I want socialism, and i’ll [sic] not wait for the idiots to finally come round to understanding.”

Bottom of Form

Then again, his expression of support for Warren seems pretty immaterial in assessing his character compared to this:

Dayton 24/7 Now spoke with other classmates of [the shooter] who said he was expelled from school after officials found a notebook where he reportedly wrote a list of people who he wanted to rape, kill and skin their bodies. The classmate we spoke with said Betts was supposed to write a letter of apology to the people on the list. After being expelled, Betts was allowed back to school, according to the classmate.

(Really? This is how schools are handling a student who threatens to rape, kill, and skin the bodies of other students? Re-admittance after a letter of apology? How safe would you feel sending your children to that school knowing they handled this kind of a threat this way?)

The ideological leanings of the shooters don’t matter nearly as much as their conclusion that they are justified in trying to kill lots and lots of people. You’re free to believe whatever kooky stuff you want; you’re not allowed to conclude that your kooky beliefs justify violence to others.

Over the weekend, Twitter commentator Kilgore Trout offered an extreme option: Authorities can determine who posts on boards that celebrate mass shootings or troll about them, and they should charge them as accessories to the crime. (Profanity warning at the link; the term for posting memes and other messages celebrating, promoting, and encouraging mass shooters is a four-letter word.) Cleaning up his language a bit, his recommendation is. . .

You’re not going to fix the problem one white nationalist ****poster at a time. their networks need to be destroyed by putting them in constant fear that their next ****post body count meme is going to be the one that sends the feds to their door. Yes, this is a government action deliberately designed to suppress speech, and no, slyly conspiring to commit acts of terror in broad daylight on 8chan is not protected speech after the acts of terror are no longer hypotheticals. This is what we’d advocate for if ISIS set up shop in America and created a bunch of one-man splinter cells ready to activate at any moment. No one would bat an eye at arresting the accomplices – it’s just less recognizable as white nationalist ****posting. if you want to share ****posts about shooting the [offensive term for Latinos] and gassing the Jews, go right ahead, no one’s stopping you. But if one of your ****post buddies you go back and forth with on 8chan then goes out and does it, yeah, you should be good and[in deep trouble].

Earlier this year, Michelle Carter was sentenced to 15 months in jail for involuntary manslaughter charges, brought after she sent “hundreds” of texts to her boyfriend encouraging him to kill himself. She was 17 when her 18-year-old boyfriend killed himself through carbon monoxide poisoning.

In this particular case, an effort to shut down the message boards may be moot: “A San Francisco-based Web company announced Sunday it would no longer provide services to 8chan, a website notorious for hosting lawless message boards where manifestos have appeared before mass shootings.” Those who want to post and read these sorts of messages will probably find some other one.

I find the idea of pressing charges against those who encourage mass shootings uncomfortably appealing, even though it amounts to the government arresting people and charging them with crimes for what they write on the Internet. Maybe this just reflects an exhaustion with “trolling” culture. If you spend a significant amount of time online — particularly on Twitter — you’ve probably put up with more abuse than your ever imagined, often racist or anti-Semitic and more than vaguely threatening. The vast majority of us think of ourselves as a First Amendment supporters, but perhaps you can only be sent “Trump’s gonna put you in the ovens” memes so many times before you start thinking, “to hell with this, if this guy sending me this message is such a big fan of fascism, let’s have the government throw his butt in jail for what he posts and see if he likes it so much then.”

Some folks hoped that after these stomach-turning abominable terrorist acts, President Trump would “call out white supremacist terrorism by name. He needs to take a break from Twitter trolling for several days at least. We need unifying, determined, presidential leadership from him.”

This morning, Trump offered to support universal background checks if they’re attached to immigration reform.

The president also contended that the shooters were driven by outrage over news coverage, and that it was the responsibility of the media to watch what it says, lest it drive someone to commit mass murder in the name of stopping an invasion by immigrants: “The Media has a big responsibility to life and safety in our Country. Fake News has contributed greatly to the anger and rage that has built up over many years. News coverage has got to start being fair, balanced and unbiased, or these terrible problems will only get worse!”

It is August 2019. I think it’s long overdue for people to give up on the hope that Donald Trump is going to become a different person or act differently than he has before.   

As the president attempts to negotiate his preferred immigration policies in exchange for “background checks,” it is worth recalling that neither of these shooters had a criminal record that barred them from purchasing firearms. We can fairly ask whether one of the shooter’s threats to rape, kill, and wear the skin of his high school classmates should have generated some sort of criminal charge or an involuntary stay at a mental health facility that would have barred him from legally purchasing a firearm.