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.

A letter to America from Osama Bin Laden

On June 1, 2016, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a letter written by Osama bin Laden to the American people that was found in his compound in Abbottabad. The letter is undated but appears to have been written early in Barack Obama’s presidency. Despite the letter’s surprising content, reporting about the letter never really broke through the endless news cycle.

The translated version makes it sound like bin Laden followed American political debates quite closely and had started to rewrite his arguments to make them more persuasive to Americans, or at least some groups of Americans.  

To the American people, Peace be upon those who follow the righteous track. Hereafter, The subject of my talk to you is the overwhelming control of capital (Var.: money) and its effect on the ongoing war between us. I direct my talk specifically to those who support real change, especially the youth.

Your current president [Obama] warns you now about the enormity of capital control and it has a cycle whereby it devours humanity when it is devoid of the precepts of God’s law (Shari’a). The tyranny of the control of capital by large companies has harmed your economy, as it did ours, and that was my motivation for this talk.  Tens of millions of you are below the poverty line, millions have lost their homes, and millions have lost their jobs to mark the highest average unemployment in 60 years. Your financial system in its totality was about to collapse within 48 hours had not the administration reverted to using taxpayer’s money to rescue the vultures by using the assets of the victims…

Whoever enters the White House, even with good intentions to safeguard the peoples’ interest, is no more than a train operator. His only task is to keep the train on the tracks that are laid down by the lobbyists in New York and Washington to serve their interests first, even if it is counter to your security and economy. Any president who tries to move the train from the lobbyist’s tracks to a track for the American people’s interests will confront very strong opposition and pressures from the lobbyists.

Memorial Day May 27, 2019 Bud in Korea

Digital assault on the King's English

I am sitting here this morning considering the evolution of English vocabularydefinitions that has taken place in the past 20 years of the new digital age.

When I was a teenager, what did the term "dangerously" mean (don't do this you may die)?  Or "unleashed" ( a violent guard dog was waiting inside the fence to attack you).  Or Awesome or "the most powerful" of anything?  

Having grown up in Texas during the era of the Cuban missile crisis and having bomb drills at school every morning, I might have associated these terms with perhaps a thermonuclear bomb being detonated in Houston or Miami?

This morning when I turned my phone on, the first message that popped up on my screen was:
"WARNING:   Your device is dangerously Low on Storage!"

Oh my goodness.  Alarmed I was.  What should I do? Drop the phone on the floor or throw into the toilet to rid myself of the danger of whatever kind?    Talk about sending a chill up your spine.?  Was I stepping too close to a 100,000 watt electric energy force field right in my own living room?

A Calmer mind prevailed and it dawned on me that the problem must be because last I night I installed an app that was "guaranteed to be unlocking the world's most powerful audio software program" and that I was "unleashing an awesome audio experience" more than I'd ever experienced before.

Now I'm wondering, what on Earth have I done and unleashed on my calm life?   Unleashing something so powerful on my world?  Will it ever be the same?  Or am I doomed to live dangerously the rest of my digital life. I fear I can never put Pandora back in the box?

knowing I have an influence on my grand kids can take many forms!

I've had the joy and excitement of having my two grand daughters come and spend a week with me during the past two summers in upstate New York.   Last year we went to Niagra Falls and other things, and this summer a week of non stop activities.
During both times, I tried to sit with them and talk with them about "life stuff" and just some simple things that they, and anyone, can do to make their lives better, happier, and healthier.

Sometimes when you talk to small children about life lessons you wonder how much they are really absorbing and how much they are just taking with a grain of salt from an old man?   This summer I taught them, among other things, how to remember and never forget the names of the Great Lakes, just using the word HOMES.   They still remember.

I also taught them about opening doors, and just showed them when we're somewhere to try and grab the handle by the bottom where fewer people's hands have likely touched it.  Or, if there are two doors, to open the door on the left, since fewer people are left handed.

Well?  I guess it would make sense then if there were two doors, to not only open the left door, but also the bottom of the handle on the left door.     I hadn't thought about suggesting that also.

Last week, their mom texted me and said my counsel had been put into action.   They were going into some store and my youngest Grand Daughter, Vivi, went to open the door and remarked, and quite seriously, at the time, that "she was likely to encounter dog germs at that level rather than human germs."     I had to laugh and still laugh.

But I guess sometimes the message does get through.   smiling

Seeking Peace through Violence?

This seems like a great ambiguity to me?

Unmasking Antifa:  Seeking peace through violence

Might some believe that the "ends justifies the means?"

3.5 million USA Ghost voters

By Deroy Murdock   August 11, 2017  
from the National Review

At least 3.5 million more people are on U.S. election rolls than are eligible to vote. Some 3.5 million more people are registered to vote in the U.S. than are alive among America’s adult citizens. Such staggering inaccuracy is an engraved invitation to voter fraud.

The Election Integrity Project of Judicial Watch — a Washington-based legal-watchdog group — analyzed data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2011–2015 American Community Survey and last month’s statistics from the federal Election Assistance Commission. The latter included figures provided by 38 states. According to Judicial Watch, eleven states gave the EAC insufficient or questionable information. Pennsylvania’s legitimate numbers place it just below the over-registration threshold.

My tabulation of Judicial Watch’s state-by-state results yielded 462 counties where the registration rate exceeded 100 percent. There were 3,551,760 more people registered to vote than adult U.S. citizens who inhabit these counties.

“That’s enough over-registered voters to populate a ghost-state about the size of Connecticut,” Judicial Watch attorney Robert Popper told me.

These 462 counties (18.5 percent of the 2,500 studied) exhibit this ghost-voter problem. These range from 101 percent registration in Delaware’s New Castle County to New Mexico’s Harding County, where there are 62 percent more registered voters than living, breathing adult citizens — or a 162 percent registration rate.

Washington’s Clark County is worrisome, given its 154 percent registration rate. This includes 166,811 ghost voters. Georgia’s Fulton County seems less nettlesome at 108 percent registration, except for the number of Greater Atlantans, 53,172, who compose that figure.

But California’s San Diego County earns the enchilada grande. Its 138 percent registration translates into 810,966 ghost voters. Los Angeles County’s 112 percent rate equals 707,475 over-registrations. Beyond the official data that it received, Judicial Watch reports that LA County employees “informed us that the total number of registered voters now stands at a number that is a whopping 144 percent of the total number of resident citizens of voting age.”

All told, California is a veritable haunted house, teeming with 1,736,556 ghost voters. Judicial Watch last week wrote Democratic secretary of state Alex Padilla and authorities in eleven Golden State counties and documented how their election records are in shambles.

“California’s voting rolls are an absolute mess that undermines the very idea of clean elections,” said Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton in a statement. “It is urgent that California take reasonable steps to clean up its rolls. We will sue if state officials fail to act.”

Ronald Reagan’s California has devolved into a reliably far-Left stronghold. While pristine voter rolls should be a given in a constitutional republic with democratic elections, even that improvement might be too little to make America’s most populous state competitive in presidential elections.

The same cannot be said for battleground states, in which Electoral College votes can be decided by incredibly narrow margins. Consider the multitude of ghost voters in:

Colorado: 159,373

Florida: 100,782

Iowa: 31,077

Michigan: 225,235

New Hampshire: 8,211

North Carolina: 189,721

Virginia: 89,979

President Donald J. Trump’s supporters might be intrigued to learn that Hillary Clinton’s margins of victory in Colorado (136,386) and New Hampshire (2,736) were lower than the numbers of ghost voters in those states. Clinton’s fans should know that Trump won Michigan (10,704) and North Carolina (173,315) by fewer ballots than ghost voters in those states. It’s past time to exorcise ghost voters from the polls.

Perhaps these facts will encourage Democrats to join the GOP-dominated effort to remove ineligible felons, ex-residents, non-citizens, and dead people from the voter rolls — for all contests, not just presidential races.

“When you have an extremely large number of stale names on the voter rolls in a county, it makes voter fraud much easier to commit,” Secretary of State Kris Kobach (R., Kan.), co-chairman of President Trump’s Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, told me. “It’s easier to identify a large number of names of people who have moved away or are deceased. At that point, if there is no photo-ID requirement in the state, those identities can be used to vote fraudulently.”

In fact, CBS’s Windy City affiliate last October compared local vote records with the Social Security Administration’s master death file. “In all,” the channel concluded, “the analysis showed 119 dead people have voted a total of 229 times in Chicago in the last decade.” KCBS–Los Angeles reported in May 2016 that 265 dead voters had cast ballots in southern California “year after year.”

Under federal law, the 1993 National Voter Registration Act and the 2002 Help America Vote Act require states to maintain accurate voter lists. Nonetheless, some state politicians ignore this law. Others go further: Governor Terry McAuliffe (D., Va.) vetoed a measure last February that would have mandated investigations of elections in which ballots cast outnumbered eligible voters.

Even more suspiciously, when GOP governor Rick Scott tried to obey these laws and update Florida’s records, including deleting 51,308 deceased voters, Obama’s Justice Department filed a federal lawsuit to stop him. Federal prosecutors claimed that Governor Scott’s statewide efforts violated the 1965 Voting Rights Act, although it applies to only five of Florida’s 67 counties. Then–attorney general Eric Holder and his team behaved as if Martin Luther King Jr. and the Freedom Riders fought so valiantly in order to keep cadavers politically active. Whether Americans consider vote fraud a Republican hoax, a Democratic tactic, or something in between, everyone should agree that it’s past time to exorcise ghost voters from the polls.

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/450413/election-fraud-registered-voters-outnumber-eligible-voters-462-counties?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=NR%20Daily%20Monday%20through%20Friday%202017-08-11&utm_term=NR5PM%20Actives

Great Depression era black and white photos