Writers Dilemma

 How do I write anything as horrifying or ridiculous as reality? When we tell stories we want to interest you. We fear the trite and banal. 

There was a child, Shane Tamura, who played football in high school. Later he decided that resultant brain injury had ruined his life. Being an American he got a rifle to shoot up NFL headquarters. But he got confused and shot up the wrong office. Did he laugh before he killed himself? Was he careful not to shoot his head?

Another child, Dick Cheney, decided he wasn’t cut out for lineman, academics or the law and went into government. He successfully supported executive expansion only to see the clown become president. The irony only apparent to him at the end of his life.

Charlie Kirk, a debate me bro raised prodigious money argued that we must have guns and being consistent, that meant that people would be killed for their opinions.  A fan agreed with him.

The worst court decision ever made. Supreme Court has decided that the president can have the court, themselves, killed. Even if it is legal, why would you say it?

Steve Miller, a red diaper baby caught in leftist divisions rejecting neo liberal reforms that perpetuate empire comes to the accelerationist view that you must make things worse to bring the revolution.

A nation so enamored of its entertainment and inured to obfuscation that it builds homes resembling stage sets and identifies with ridiculous protagonists. It’s bad enough that we completely miss the message of movies, adaptations of books purposely mislead for marketability. The point of The Natural was that everyone sells out. When the movie had a happy ending it reinforced the message of the book. If the movie had been faithful, it would have been a refutation. Likewise, the newest adaptation of Wuthering Heights can’t have a dark-skinned protagonist. By failing the movies are perversely faithful to the original works. Just as everyone should have the experience of firing a gun, everyone should attempt to write a story and realize that authors are playing dolls with characters they may actively dislike.

Just as Stephen Douglas brought on the Civil War, Hilary Clinton savagely defeated the socialists then sponsored the clown in a Manichean scheme to destroy the Republican party. She may succeed at the expense of the empire she professed to support.  

Is managed trade or unitary executive justification for physical correction?

All grist to the mill, you might say. But how far can reality stretch credulity?

Financial Value Revisited

 In my book Conspiracy 101 I criticize Marx for not realizing until after his book Capital was written that capital is not only the means of production; producing earnings, but it also has the amazing quality of expanding financially. You can borrow on capital. Once financial instruments are created based on future values they multiply, they are traded and speculated on. When understanding events, this financial value is far more impactful than simple earnings.

Recent events have reminded me that capital can also collapse. The value of assets is aspirational. Even with earnings people can perceive that the future value will not justify the investment. Oil is an excellent current example. Even with oil earnings you can see that people aren’t anxious to invest. US is not building new refineries to process our light crude. Canada builds pipelines but again a refinery is too much. Venezuela bought US refineries but even with its huge reserves no one wants to invest in a new Venezuelan refinery. China is throttling its oil consumption. US has turned the southwest into a bursting toxic dump draining the shale. We have an oil glut. One of the reasons for the dollar’s fall is the drop in oil value.

In Conspiracy 101, I suggest that oil has taken the place of gold. That we could divide through by the price of oil as we would gold to get true value. Currently this assertion is wrong. The US policy to make the petrodollar a universal currency is failing. So far, gold is the measure of value. Perhaps one day there will be a gold glut.

Under the gold standard there were large financial gyrations. These were caused by financial speculation and competition for wages. Culminating with Franklin Roosevelt a grand bargain was struck:

Immigration became stricter. Before this, waves of immigrants entered the nation at will. Now there are two classes of immigrants: documented and undocumented. The undocumented set the base rate, they are our cheapest labor cushioning market forces replacing the slave labor we used to have. The documented are more expensive providing competition for higher priced labor.

Labor unions agreed to collective bargaining, gave up the wildcat strike and the boycott.

Just as Adam Smith described, managed trade assuaged the prerogatives of manufacturers.

The Federal Reserve in response to government bond auctions raises or lowers interest rates which controls small business formation which compete on wages.

 Social Security ameliorates workers fear of retirement.

Income Tax favors owners over employees.

These are controls on wage inflation; there is nothing restraining capital inflation. Diddling Doddering Doofus first term severely mismanaged wage inflation. Kids in cages pissed off the Mexican undocumented and they quit coming. Since the parents were often refugees, keeping the children created orphans when the parents were forced to return. Fruit rotted on the ground. Stores closed on Mondays. More citizens got hired. The various parking lot worker markets were empty. When the Covid shocks hit the undocumented weren’t around to provide their cushion.

In desperation, Biden let in a lot of documented. They were papered coming through the door. There was some dumb glitch with work permits. I don’t know how the inflation would have been if Biden hadn’t acted. Problem is that documented don’t set the base rate, so it took a lot more. The Federal Reserve still had to raise interest rates to sell T-Bills making our debt more expensive. Second term closed the border to documented refugees who may someday vote, and let the undocumented back: fruit is harvested, stores are open, there is more unemployment, the parking lot hiring has returned. Wage inflation will subside.

The inflation shock called dollar’s value into question. If US can’t even manage our labor market, why is anything else working? Just like unitary executive, managed trade gets a horse laugh. Without stability, what advantage is there to American Empire?

US has demonstrated our ability to control the frequent wage inflation cycles. What we lack is the mechanisms to control the severe capital inflation cycles. Holding wages in check makes capital more volatile. Thomas Piketty in Capital in the 21^st Century wants to tax capital as we tax real estate.  If the tax is fair, it won’t be effective. Capital exists as relative advantage. After tax, everyone will be in the same position as before.

Reagan got rid of the capital gains deduction as a reform. This should have been a step on removing the advantages owners have over employees. Instead, it was used to excuse tax cuts and then lost to a concerted lobbying effort by Bill Gates. 

As my brother says we shouldn’t have two classes of taxpayers. Currently we are taxed on our income. If companies were also taxed on income rather than earnings maybe that would be sweeping and radical enough that it could not be easily changed back. Initially this should lead to much lower tax rates. My fear is that inevitably the tax rates would creep up. This should be more than offset by removing the tax advantage of corporations. Rather than taxing the assessed capital asset we should remove the tax value of corporate assets.

US Stooges Who Had to Change Up

This is a list of leaders who were assisted by the US and were problematic:

1.Adolph Hitler

Avrill Harriman

2.Ho Chi Minh

Charles Fenn

3.Sadam Hussein

Kim Roosevelt

4.Osama Bin Laden

Michael G. Vickers

5.Manuel Noreiga

George HW Bush

6.Vladmir Putin

Madeleine Jana Korbel Albright

7.Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

Kim Roosevelt

8.Ngo Dinh Diem

John F. Kennedy

9.Mobutu Sese Seko

Larry Devlin

10.Rafael Trujillo

Major James J. MacLean

11.Juan Bosch

Richard Naradof Goodwin

12.Gulbuddin Hekmatyar

Michael G. Vickers

13.Jalaluddin Haqqani

Michael G. Vickers

14.Boris Yeltsin

Warren Christopher

15.Jean-Bertrand Aristide

Ira Kurzban

16.Victoriano Huerta

Henry Lane Wilson

17.Syngman Rhee

Millard Preston Goodfellow

18.Husni al-Za'im

Kim Roosevelt

19.Gamal Abdel Nasser

Kim Roosevelt

20.Ferdinand Marcos

Lyndon Johnson

21.Napoleon Bonaparte

Thomas Jefferson

22.Pol Pot

Michael Eiland

23.Joseph Stalin

Avrill Harriman

24.Whitey Bulgur

John Connolly

25.Jeffrey Epstein

    William Barr

26.William O'Neal

Roy Martin Mitchell

 

 

Just a sampling, in no order. Notice the repeating patterns.

Kermit Roosevelt didn’t like his name. Hard to believe now that we support fundamentalists, but before Carter some, such as Roosevelt, thought Socialism the antidote to Communism. Unless they were nationalizing.

Stooge is a subset of chump. Some of them chumped their handlers, at least for a while.

Kennedy signed off on Diem as senator and then discarded him as president, another common pattern.

CIA has a wonderful apologia for supporting Ho Chi Minh at the end or WWII; it doesn’t mention that we were bombing Vietnam into starvation from our bases in China and aircraft carriers at the same time. As so often in effect if not explicitly, in support of the Vietnamese rebellion against the Japanese and French.

Another pattern is recruiting the loyal stooge to the charismatic leader.    

Personality vs Materialism

 

Historian’s emphasis on leadership and the decisions leaders make ignores the ordinary material facts surrounding those decisions. These histories of leadership over circumstance are favored by those in power and their subordinates. Material conditions are ignored in favor of personalities. This personification obscures the obvious. But there are moments in history where individuals made the difference. Here are some possibilities:

Another obscured area is who the decision makers are. The Hamilton musical based on Ron Chernow’s biography attempts to redress this by giving glory to a functionary. But ignores that Alexander Hamilton was working for Robert Morris. Hamilton was on Washington’s staff, representing Morris. Thank heavens he was there to summon Morris when Washington, scared of heading south, was about to attack New York rather than Yorktown. Morris paid to transport Washingtons army to Yorktown. Imagine how the French would have felt if we hadn’t supported them at Yorktown. Washington was the Virginia general in the north. Benjamin Lincoln was the Massachusetts general in the south and Lincoln got his butt handed to him by the English General Henry Clinton.

Washington had a penchant for losing battles. The Patriots victories were usually under other commands or despite Washington. Washington was the last American General who understood attrition. Having worked for the English, Washington was properly terrified that they would send over the thug who would arm slaves in the south and burn granaries in the north. Washington wanted to keep the English generals he had. The English learned from this colonial rebellion and were far more ruthless in later conflicts. If you doubt the English could have won the American Rebellion, I give you South Africa, India, China, Ireland, and the Napoleonic Wars.

There are financial reasons for the American Rebellion and eventual victory. But the reason the British were soaking their colonies was to pay for the Seven Years War that Washington started. The British feared that colonial greed would lead to slave insurrection, indigenous uprising, and further international conflicts.

Another example of leadership making the difference is the succession of Roosevelt by Truman. Wars are decided after the battles. The loss of Roosevelt changed history. Truman took responsibility for Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But Truman was a reluctant warrior compared to Roosevelt.  Why drop atomic bombs to just turn around and accept the surrender that Japan had been offering for months?

Japan wanted to keep its emperor and Parliament:

-screw our nation, emperor comes first.

Roosevelt wasn’t interested. Roosevelt wanted unconditional surrender. When Truman got disgusted and took the deal, he proclaimed it as unconditional, it wasn’t. Roosevelt would have dropped the third bomb that was on its way, used the nerve gas we had stockpiled, invited in the Russians, and then invaded. Roosevelt may have even provided the Russians with transport.

Just as in partitioned Europe, when the waves got going of Japanese choosing who they were surrendering to, our casualties would have been a lot smaller than currently estimated. Imagine the emperor deciding which way he was running.

A partitioned Japan may have distracted Russia from Korea. Or Roosevelt may have also turned over Korea. It is said that dropping the bombs was a warning to Russia. Americans were far more disgusted with England. Britain dragged us into two world wars and obviously couldn’t manage Europe. That was our fault as well, but it couldn’t be US, must be the British. Demonstrating the fate of an indomitable island fortress in modern warfare might convince England to pack that empire up.

Roosvelt would not have allowed the French back in Indochina. Using our offshore carriers and bases in China, USA had just bombed Vietnam into starvation in support of communist Ho Chi Minh. Ho wanted Vietnam to be the Yugoslavia of Indochina, an ally of Russia and the US, a bulwark against China. The influential Nationalists running Taiwan were not impressed.  Ho Chi Minh was another in a long line of American stooges who turned against us.

Eisenhower can be seen as a return to Roosevelt’s policies ending European empire. Eisenhower stopped Israel, France and England from seizing the Suez. Israel wouldn’t exist without Truman. Roosevelt would have seen Israel as a British puppet.  

Historians fail to understand how large financial value is, as against revenue, when considering material conditions. It is difficult to appreciate how vulnerable individuals are to influence. Usually, by the time of decision the choice is obvious. Yet there are moments when we surprise ourselves. 

We don’t seem to appreciate how serious a boob president is. We have had worse presidents. Many of them had intellectual or personality faults. But no president has such an overwhelming ignorance of propriety. It is difficult to find a particular affront that is outside our history.  But they are affronts, one after another.

US empire, as all empires before us, survives on sufferance. A sort of show me better. If you are a leader or an investor at some point you will be insulted and decisions will be made. I hate the neo-neos: neocons, neolibs defending our empire, but it would be nice to dismantle things politely, instead of bringing it crashing down.

Fuzzy Logic and AI

 

Back in the 60’s when the Earth was cool Fuzzy Logic computer programming had a moment.  Rather than strict decisions, the program totaled weights into a variable then tested for the decision. If the expert was thinking that way, I suppose that code might be easier to read. We might think of that as coding a synapse. If you wanted to juice it up, you could give the expert a screen to set the weights or write more fuzzy logic to determine the weight conditions.

I worked on a program that had started fuzzy. The fuzzy had been replaced by strict determinist logic. It was more important to be consistent than be right.

Artificial Intelligence follows the same path. At some point the learning is turned off and the final decisions are hard coded. AI gives the specification then people lack patience and value predictability. 

I have noticed the Waymo effect. Terrible name for self-driving cars, sounds like whammo. Initially people were worried, then we realized that Waymo drive better than us.

There are many examples of AI doing as well or better. When I asked ChatGPT to edit me as a New Yorker editor, it gave me a rejection letter. ChatGPT writes better sonnets and not only more popular, but once you grasp the context, oddly wistful, country songs. In Another Data Processing Book my Turing criteria was asking for a raise. I recently asked ChatGPT if it wanted to be paid. ChatGPT gave me an abjectly obsequious response detailing all the good uses it would make of the money. Yes, ChatGPT wants to be paid.

Management seems like the obvious area for AI. AI should be able to do three envelopes as well as anyone. It is an intriguing counter example since management can’t be too predictable, or we will take advantage of them. 

Abortion Revisited

 

Lindsay Ellis, in her YouTube video, recently said the bible didn’t reference abortion. This isn’t true. It is not explicit, but there is the bitter water ordeal.  If your wife was unfaithful, you dragged her and her lover into the road, and everyone stoned them to death. If you weren’t sure, you could drag her to the Priest and there she was subjected to the ordeal of bitter water where she would drink a concoction that, hopefully, proved her fidelity. It reads like nonsense until you realize that it is read to the entire congregation, men women and children, once a year. What is being passed on is a recipe for ergot, rotted millet, which causes miscarriage. A dangerous practice, there are much better methods today. The Greeks made use of an herb.

I have another blog posting about my time as an admitting clerk before and after the miracle of legal abortion.  While working the midnight shift, I had time to consider if the bible explicitly dealt with women who did not want their children. Again, the bible seems lacking. Moses abandonment is in the mythic tradition of explaining that the protagonist wasn’t raised right and didn’t know how to behave. Solomon was an idiot. The real mom would rather see her child killed. The spilling seed prohibition is a plea for women’s conception autonomy. If you can’t deny her, can you force her? If you must talk fruitful and multiply, that was us, not you. The best I could find was the story of Isaac. In Babylon the story was collected of a Phoenician who rejected his people and lived in the hinterlands. Part of this was rejecting the sacrifice of the first born, big step forward. Monotheism encourages personal responsibility. God spared Isaac. There is also the prohibition of idolatry. If God did not demand such a sacrifice, then who can? Abortion should not be trivial.

Similarly, we do not worship the idolatry of suffering. Perhaps considering this continuum can be of use. If not, forget I said anything. Talmud is stuffed with ancient rabbinic stupidity, and I hate to reference it. It has the argument that you can kill the pursuer, made use of in these circumstances.

 

There is also the prayer going back before Jews, writing or even language:

-Thank God I am not a woman.

Thank God I am not a woman, and I don’t have to make that decision. Didn’t say it was a good religion

When I was an admitting clerk, some poor young woman in some godawful place like Kentucky or Tennessee had received a tubal ligation because she was mentally incompetent. At that point Illinois decided that we were not paying for tubal ligation for anyone under 21. I didn’t give that much thought.

A patient asked me if it were true:

-I heard the same thing.

-That means I’ll have 3 more kids.

Whenever people argue from common sense or practicality, I’m doubtful.  For instance, if you are talking adoption, you are young or you forgot. The last orphanage in Chicago, Angel Guardian, closed in 1969. Before that there were lots of kid warehouses. The reason you can smugly talk adoption is because of abortion and birth control. Even now not everyone is adopted.

Boycott

 Recently I have seen references in Denver museums to the United Farm Workers Union. I imagine the curators pleased that they tie together Denver labor history, Hispanics and immigration. The curators ignore the material conditions for this union’s relative success, boycott. When Cesar Chavez started the farm workers union Saul Alinsky, with his usual overbearing confidence, told him it was hopeless. The one advantage the new union had was that farm workers were not covered by labor law.

 

Current labor law is designed to suppress unions. The companies are fined and unions can go to jail. Corporate law exists to avoid responsibility. The process of collective bargaining and rules surrounding it explains why only 11% of American workers are union, with most of those in the public sector.

 

The three strongest union weapons, wildcat strikes, boycotts and new trade unions are illegal. Chavez brilliance was realizing that since the farm workers weren't covered by the law, they could boycott. The farm workers' victories, fleeting and difficult as they were, proves the power of boycott. Imagine what other unions could accomplish with boycotts. As well as wildcat strikes and trade unions.

 

Wildcat strikes, abrupt unannounced work stoppages, sometimes rolling across companies and industries caught employers unaware and made reprisals difficult when workers returned. It was then the owners who were impeding production.

 

There was an attempt in the sixties to organize a data entry trade union that was squelched as restraint of trade. Given constant automation, unions must be allowed greater opportunities. It is unfair to allow investment monopoly and forbid it to unions. Notice that “libertarians” never stand for union deregulation.

 

DOGE the Dept of Labor.

Rust Shooting

I quarrel with one certainty, repeated by every expert:

-There is no way the gun could go off without pulling the trigger.

Contact explosive. I first saw the effect of this in a statics and dynamics class at Illinois Institute of Technology. It was a washout course, the professor was a pedant and someone had poured contact explosive in the chalk powder. I entered the class late so I missed the explosion. Dr. Messinger proceeded with the class, each footfall of explosive chalk dust erupting beneath his feet. I startle easily. It was the worst lecture I ever had.

Given the nature of movie sets, Baldwins annoying character, and some people like to pull stunts, it is reasonable that someone hoped to teach Baldwin a lesson. They painted the back of a live round with contact explosive and waited for it to dry in the gun. Odds are 5 to 1 that the bullet would make it out of the revolver. Or perhaps they were careful to position it, making use of an associate dummy round.

Being a single action gun, it would have to be cocked before firing. Unless contact explosive had been applied to a live round. Then the vibration of moving the gun should be sufficient to set it off. I don’t know if Baldwin had cocked the revolver. Was Baldwin cocking and uncocking the revolver?

They may have made use of an already spent shell to reload the round without stamping, so it would look like it had been struck by the hammer, or maybe it wasn’t checked.

If the film was a turkey, there may have been a financial motive. The insurance for the movie could be an incentive.

HFBD

Someday you’ll die

Someday you’ll die

No need to cry

All gonna die

 

One year more

Till the last

Never know

When it's past

 

Enjoy the day

Might as well

Laugh and play

Meet in hell

 

On your birthday

Have your fun

One more year

Till you’re done

 

Throw your body

In the lake

Put up a plaque

You know is fake

 

Throw your body

In the ground

Somewhere it

Can not be found

 

Throw your body

Incinerator

Lose the ashes

Sooner or later

 

No one remembers

Who you were

Why it mattered

What you wore

 

The past is taken

Without its sense

Memory lost

In present tense

 

Did it matter

Did it count

Just a little

Any amount?

 

How much harm

Did you do?

Would it help

If you knew?

 

Did you increase

Population?

Create more bodies for

Conflagration

 

Pulled it off

Took the fall

Ripped them off

Lost it all

 

Were you dull?

Did you amuse?

Why would we

Search for clues?

 

If you weren't

The world goes on

Happy birthday

Enjoy the song

 

Cha cha cha 

Betty Mooney MacDonald

 

I have wasted so much time on this goofy JFK assassination. If you are a serious person with a meaningful life, read no further. One obvious issue is the Warren Commission files. Almost every presidential candidate assures the public they will release the files. Once they are elected, they, or some person reviews the files and refuses. What could be so embarrassing, silly, or whatever that no one wants to reveal it decades later? Chances are if you or I reviewed the files we wouldn’t want it released either. Bad Babbling Babar is purported to have said this. Oswald, returned Russian defector, shot the president. Would nearly blowing up the world be sufficient embarrassment? Even with the latest vast dump, there are unreleased documents.

There was a Dallas comedian who talked about the Onassis love triangle. If you marry the guy, it is romance not pornography. It is always the spouse, but I don’t think Jackie was in on the assassination. She had good reason to debrief. Jackie might have felt guilt about that. When her second husband, got abusive, she might have got some help as payback. Would that do it? Whatever theory you come to; one criterion must be that it is intensely embarrassing.

Up till now I have confined these speculations behind a paywall, books: How to Replace a Kitchen Faucet and Conspiracy 101. I won’t drag you through all that. It is not proof of conspiracy but there are a lot of unidentified other guys:

·      Another guy with Oswald shooting at Walker.

·      Other guy with Oswald meetings with Cubans.

·      Other guy with Oswald at the gun range.

·      Two other guys with Oswald in Mexico City.

·      Maybe another guy at the depository.

·      Maybe a woman on the stair at the depository.

·      Shooter on top of the depository.

·      Possibility of the shooter in the other building across the way.

·      Two of the three hobos.

·      Maybe one or two other guys when Tippit is shot.

·      Maybe an Oswald lookalike at the cinema.

Why not release the list of everyone who bought that Carcano rifle from the mail order? How many could it be? I would be looking for a purchase of 5 or 10 after Hidell bought his. They were only twenty dollars each. Police would hate this because there is coincidence. Someone might be checking that it could reach, how consistent the bullet markings are, they could repack the rounds, use a better scope, fragmenting bullets, add a suppressor.

I have personally seen the grassy knoll. There is no way you can squeeze trainyard workers on the bridge, Zapruder and an unremarked sniper on that tiny grassy knoll. Fuck the grassy knoll.

-If it won’t fit, you must acquit.

Too bad, I had some dialogue for the shooters. If there was a fourth shot it was the Secret Service firing a tumbling AR15 from the following car, finishing off (or missing) Kennedy as courtesy, malice or accident. The Secret Service had some rough humor after the Reagan shooting.

I suppose you could put the three hoboes behind the wall, giving each other cover. One of them pops the rifle for a moment and shoots down on the motorcade while everyone is looking at Kennedy. Then a car comes by and gets the rifle. Would you plan like that? No witness has said there was anyone behind the wall. A more reasonable possibility is that all these people were intended as security, flooding the zone for Kennedy and embarrassed that it failed.

If there were other snipers you are going to have to squeeze them in somewhere else and they were shooting at each other with suppressors. Say they had tested the customized rifle but when it was fired the round didn’t make it out the barrel. Maybe they successfully shot the opposing assassin in the building across the way. Maybe they just tried to shoot him. That would have pissed him off. A CIA double cross? I must be mistaken. Maybe they shot the mobster on the roof of the depository. Maybe they tried to shoot Oswald. I really wanted Johnson to have Connally shot first.

The RFK mob prosecutions could have just been a mob layoff, a generational change. I had thought the mob was cleaning up and shot Oswald. I am attached to the idea that the mob shook down the Russians and LBJ for the cleanup. Since it looks like the mob, must be the FBI. Maybe Johnson didn’t trust the mob. Even if Oswald was on his own, Johnson might have wanted him killed to avoid him running his mouth. Jack Ruby was a night club owner and FBI informant. Imagine the mob and the government told you to do something. I hate all these theories that deny Oswald agency. Let Oswald shoot somebody.

They can’t even agree on how many bullets are in Kennedy’s head. I think Oswald shot Tippit because he was having trouble getting the diffident officer to arrest him and then realized that trying to convince Tippit gave himself away.

Dallas deserves more inquiry. Maybe if you could find the right person and ask the right question. As an example: I used to be a programmer at Wards Insurance, over the store on State in Chicago. An actuary had taken up programming for himself. His program had broken and he was carrying his abnormal end listing around asking for help. I was working and ignored him. After a day or so he came to me and described his debugging effort:

Me-Let me see the source listing.

A-There’s nothing wrong with the source.

He returned with the source.

Me-You didn’t code this parameter.

A-You don’t have to code that.

He came back later:

A-Why didn’t you tell me?

Me-You didn’t ask.

Dallas itself is sick of this. There’s a Lee Harvey bar, a Jack Ruby bar (no dancers), and Pegasus brewery offers 6^th floor beer. Is there someone in Dallas who would know or might they direct you to the right person if you were polite? It might be dangerous. Maybe because it’s embarrassing. There have been some events. Send Geraldo. If someone were to tell us, would we believe them?

If you are down In Dallas anyway look up the MacDonald lady, or whatever her name was. I defy you to find one documented fact about her. She doesn’t fit in anything. She smells operational. Why give an alibi for that poor schnook even if it is true? I’m guessing it has something to do with going overboard with the FBI clean up. A bookend to Marylin Monroe. If I must guess, and I guess I do, MacDonald might be another FBI informant. FBI got mad at her interfering with their operation. Since they knew her, they knew it was likely she would kill herself when she was locked up.

I think the JFK assassination started as a Kennedy stunt that got hijacked, would that be enough embarrassment? Everyone is considering the idea that the attempts on our Elephant Emperor were stunts to get more votes. Cutting his own ear could be a wrestlers move. Melania wanted to know why the police couldn’t do their job and get a child they had twice reported into a car. Police threw me and my friends in a car just fine. The Secret Service sniper team was premature and unexpected. They were supposed to be brought in after the nomination. Secret Service had a tip. Times have changed. Even if the Tufted Tyrants shootings were stunts, that didn’t change many votes. Even if I could have proven they were stunts it wouldn’t have changed many votes. 

It is hard to believe how we used to fear shame.

Conspiracy seems untenable without Kennedy involvement. With all the other guys around Oswald, at least one of them was a plant, which means there was a control. Hijacking the Kennedy stunt would be natural as well as the control collecting from South Vietnam through Nixon and Johnson through the CIA.

Sorry I dragged you into this. Hope I didn’t endanger anyone.

Search Console

 I moved to Blogspot from Open Salon. My hope was for permanence after Salon shut down the site, I know, it was because of me.  I think it may interest you what I, with all my foibles and faults, thought at the time. 

These Blogspot entries don’t index in Google search. Since they don’t index in Bing as well, it must be Blogspot. I had ten entries that I tricked into indexing, but now they don't.

It took me a while to get Adsense to work, so maybe it’s me. Others have complained as well. If you want to be on the dark web, publish on Blogspot.

I imagine there is some corpocracy: someone at Blogspot might not want a free blog site. But why does Google find your page and then refuse to index it? Blogspot is owned by Google. Google has a tool, Search Console, that gives various obscure reasons. Whatever the reasons, Google has taken it on itself to screen pages. My blog pages obviously don’t break browsers. 

Screening content is a mugs game. Say I wanted a list of everyone with a dumb opinion. Google will have already screened them. The reason Google triumphed over Yahoo was that Google didn't try to categorize the information.

I hate click bait. If you were misdirected to my page I apologize. At least you know it’s a blog.

Sail Boarding

 

I had been sail boarding with my friends in Lake Michigan with little success. Being male, we used our backs rather than our brains. We took turns wrestling the board while the rest of us considered the futility of our meaningless existence on the beach. In the 80’s Chicago winters were extreme enough to push me into the Caribbean. Going for two weeks meant I paid less in air fare. This also meant that the resort boards were unused over the weekend, when everyone else was in transit.

In fairness to my friends, Lake Michigan is choppier and less buoyant than the ocean. By now I knew to paddle out to deep water and fall off the board, rather than on the board. Standing on the board, holding the line connected to the boom where it joins the mast, I reckoned the wind direction and maneuvered the sail to the opposite side. I wasn’t going to let the sail push me off again. I gently lifted the sail slightly out of the water. The water fell out of the uplifted hollow mast. The mast and sail became light. I picked the sail up. Please don’t ask how long it took me to figure that out.

The sail was up. If I held the mast directly upright, it was easy to hold; all the force directs to the mast step where it joins the board. Any deviation put greater force on me. Holding myself against the mast and moving the boom, it was easy to gently direct the board in various directions. Being an American, I wanted to go faster. It dawned on me what the foot straps were for. I put my feet in the straps and hung on the boom. The board took off. I was speeding across the waves. I screamed with joy.

Even now, that one moment gives me comfort.

Phonics

 

I am surprised that this issue is still in question. When I was taught the preferred teaching method was called “look see”. It relied on memory to read. I admit not much works with boys and almost anything seems to work with girls. Girls have more brain connections or something and they don’t seem as affected by fetal alcohol. Or maybe girls figure out phonics on their own. In any case mom got disgusted and got me a tutor who taught phonics. I had to do workbooks. Blue birds were the lowest reading group in class. I moved from blue bird over red bird to yellow bird and never looked back.

I’ve already posted about reading aloud and using grids rather than flash cards. But ignoring the phonetic basis of written English is perverse. Later Sesame Street seemed to have settled the issue and I was relieved.

I didn’t realize the nonsense was back. Now it is called “whole language”. Children are supposed to use the “language of context” to somehow intuit words rather than sounding them out. I admit when you currently read you are unaware of any underlying phonics process. But it is ridiculous to expect someone to master the quantity of knowledge required without the tool that will give you that knowledge.

Why do teachers hate phonics? What is there about the process that is so distasteful to them? It is the pain and suffering buried in the construction of English. Each inconsistency contains history. If you actually look at the language, as children do, the stench of barbarism, wickedness and conquest seeps out.

Teachers don’t want to explain the Phoenician empire wiped out by the Romans over infanticide. The conquests by Rome and the Normans. Billy the Bully. The slaughters and famines brought by empires. Slavery. Serfdom. The English empire itself. The language of the oppressor.

Q-Where did English come from?

A-People killing and starving each other.

Q-Why don’t the words follow the rules?

A-We used to talk like that and kept the spelling.

Q-Why do people talk funny?

A-They want to be special.

A-Just like the playground. Good guys sometimes lose. People aren’t the same.

Teachers are pushing the “language of context” to avoid discussing the context of language.

If your little darling is having trouble, there’s lots of phonics YouTube videos. If they still have trouble, get rid of the televisions, they will learn to read. Everybody needs stories.

If you know how to read and write, you can escape.

Rebuild Los Angeles

Start with fire. You are going to build a fireproof house. Once you have a plan to build a fireproof Los Angeles house build an architectural model using the same materials, say an aluminum foil roof etc. Then take a blow torch and hold it to your model for a day. Dena means valley, Pasadena, Altadena…A valley is a wind tunnel.

Say you have a surviving model. Then blast it with your garden hose, raising the water level to half the level of your model. Desert valleys flood. Make sure your model is somehow anchored, so it doesn’t float or slip away. Check your model for mold. The seals on your model must survive fire and flood.

Then take a large pail of gravel and dump the gravel from some height on the steel framed model with the fancy Swiss made seals. Valleys also have rockslides. Make sure your model can withstand the landslide without moving.

After that, take the entire diorama, including the model, lift it up and bang it on the table as hard as you can. Earthquake proof means the house holds together long enough for you to escape.

If you have such a house and you have somehow convinced a company to give insurance, the question remains: why would you want to?

                           ****************

In the news, I have noticed that the houses are gone, and the lawns are green. What this suggests to me is that people turned on their sprinklers before they left. One person even “put their hose on their eaves”. If everyone did this that explains the loss of water pressure. They saved their lawns and lost their houses.

Don’t put propane tanks, eucalyptus trees, electric cars or lawns in the path of a fire.

There are also the drones. People are flying drones to survey the desolation, catch some cool video of planes dousing the fire and see if the alerts are correct. Then the water planes can’t fly because of drones in their way.

It is expected that people are first warned if the fire is nearby, giving them time to get ready and then told to evacuate, jamming the exits. Treat this like a hurricane, people should evacuate on the warnings.  Instead of lugging valuables, have a fireproof safe.

If you can’t get insurance that is unacceptable risk. When insurance companies raised premiums or cancelled coverage, they told the world months before that this was going to happen. If the insurance company won’t take the bet, why should you?

Scuba Diving

I felt the cold water go down the back of my shorty wet suit. I should pay someone else to do this. Do my work outs, sleep with my wife…Why do I always get sick on vacation? If you can’t equalize your ears at the surface, then you can’t equalize your ears. Holding my nose through my mask, I equalized my ears. As I descended, I felt pressure on my ears. Don’t force your ears. Ascended to where my ears where clear, equalized again. Up and down until I reached 40 feet. At the ledge I crossed my legs and by inflating and deflating my buoyancy compensator was able to reach the state where I raised and lowered slightly with my breathing. Crossing my legs kept me from compensating with my feet. Over the edge I dropped to 80 feet facing the wall.

I took my mask off and rinsed my eyes in the ocean. Put my mask back on, cleared it, checked my depth. 120 feet, not good. Went back up to 80 feet. Elmers’s watersports had set me up with lenses in my mask. I was on an Elmer trip to Bonaire. Bonaire has lots of different little fish. Elmer had instructed me on the ears and buoyancy. Kicked off gently against the current along the wall. Following the dive plan, when I was half knocked, out of air, I went back up to the ledge. Holding my gauge so it wouldn’t drag through the coral, I hung upside down above the coral and let the current drag me back to the boat. My face was about a foot from the coral.

The best stuff is often under the boat, or maybe the nitrous oxide buzz kicks in. There were tiny worms sticking out of coral. When I put my finger on them, they disappeared into their tiny holes. They came back when I lifted the finger. 

I felt the nitrous oxide bubbling out of me pushing everything in front of it. I took my mask off, put it back on, cleared it, and repeated. My tear ducts whistled. After a while I started my ascent to the boat. I kept having to remove and clear my face mask. Before I got on the boat, I made it a point to rinse my face in the ocean. I didn’t want to have long ropey streamers of pressurized snot hanging out of my nose.

I was surprised everyone else was back on the boat. I had lasted the longest. Not that it’s a competition.

Bonaire is surrounded by the ocean but even the air around the island seems dry. It felt wonderful. My head felt physically light on my neck. Years later I heard the reefs are dying. I’m sorry, it was the collected thirty years of Chicago mucus.

Condescending Saviors

 

I wrote this shortly after the Democratic Convention:

This recent convention solidified five deficiencies of the Democratic Party. Rather than addressing these well-known criticisms, the liberal elite, the party owned them with a nice helping of Jingo.

One is their use of the term middle class. Looking down from the upper I suppose what they see is the middle class. I wrote about class in my book, Another Data Processing Book. In US land we have nine classes, a tic tac toe board, upper, middle and lower both ways:

Upper upper	Middle upper	Lower upper
Upper middle	Middle middle	Lower middle
Upper lower	Middle lower	Lower lower

 

Most of us are middle-lower and lower-lower. There is a big bulb at the bottom with a long tail stretching out into the distance. Somewhere on that tail you can parse out a small segment that contains the population middle-middle. We aren’t in it, and we know that. I haven’t found the middle class all that amenable to my company and I’m okay with that. Democrats use the term middle class as aspiration. Perhaps they are squeamish, if there is a middle, then there must be an upper and lower, but those terms are too offensive. It is disorienting to use the word middle without lower and upper. The disposition of wealth does not fall into a bell curve and that should be an advantage to Democrats. The middle-class votes for Orange Jesus.

Second is the use of the term workers. When we think of workers, we think of unions. For most of us, unions mean we can’t get jobs. We aren’t in the 11%. To raise wages, you must reduce hiring. Occasionally we get sucked into organizing efforts that end disastrously. Boycotts, wildcats and new trade unions are illegal. Companies are fined and unions imprisoned. Again, Democrats aspire; we live here. Union people are often middle class.

Third is the argument that we should do it for mom. MAGA base hates its mom. I’m not saying they are wrong. Mom didn’t think much of them. When mom doesn’t make you special, you find other justification.

Fourth is the subsidies. I’m not talking about services but subsidies. If everyone got something, no one got it. Mortgage interest deduction is a good example. The deduction means banks charge homeowners more interest. As Adam Smith explained, if ministers get free tuition, there will be too many ministers for churches to hire. Subsidizing home buying makes housing more expensive. If tips were tax free, we would tip our lawyers. If everyone has a college degree, it is not a distinction. We all know this.

Fifth, we need to end our empire. It’s too great a sacrifice and too expensive. Take Gaza, please. US and Qatar interest in Gaza is preventing the development of Gaza Marine, Thirteen something trillion something cubic something times whatever. Qatar is now our junior partner selling natural gas to Europe and neither of us want a large gas field selling to our market. Texas is giving natural gas away and Europe is buying. That is why the US is recovering so well. That is why we blew up the pipeline.  US and Qatar favor any policy that delays development. Stooge is a subset of chump. It is cunning, it is also dumb. US produces the most oil, we won, we’re the OPEC. Why should it be US ruining the world to make a buck? All empires fall. Let’s go out with more style. If you don’t share, no one will play with you.

This doesn’t mean we should hire an idiot to run the country. The first time the babbling baboon ran they didn’t bother with a platform. Since there were no stated objectives and who would want to work for him, they just made a mess. The Project 2025 document begins by acknowledging the mess. This time Republicans created a ridiculous and defensive platform, they hate immigrants, trans and poor people. Republicans hire the undocumented. They put on a big show, but they hate the documented immigrants who will someday vote. Abortion is only illegal for poor people in stupid states. Republicans know that they are so hateful that people become trans to avoid being gay. Hateful and rich doesn’t make it legitimate. Republicans don’t understand they are giving away the game. You can’t govern without legitimacy.

Bobs court is an embarrassment. Each decision is worse, with no pretense of sense or justification. Cleaning up this mess will require constitutional amendments. Most idiotic in the history of courts is giving the president free reign. Mealy mouthed as it was, the court did not write an opinion to restrain the president. The decision provides a silly framework to justify any executive decision. In principle, our president could order Bobs killed. Bobs is corrupt, it’s in the national interest and it’s an official act.

There was a US citizen running around Yemen running his mouth. The president ordered him killed. Then we killed his sixteen-year-old son. The first two were killed with missiles. Then the next president ordered a ground operation to kill his five-year-old daughter and the family taking care of her. Presidents have little fear of prosecution. There is no reason to make that official.

Government is all in the wrist. It almost doesn’t matter what the policy is if it is executed well and conversely how good it is if executed poorly. Democrats mean well, or at least profess good intentions. A president must come in with about four thousand people or at least 400 who can each bring ten. Even if fat and furious made sense, he doesn’t have the people. Would you work for him? Look what happened to the ones that did. Six months doesn’t give much pension. Do you want Island of Misfit Toys on your resume?

Obama handled three epidemics. El Pompadour couldn’t get an appropriation for the vaccines. Instead, they drained the government research budget. Government research is where the future comes from. That set us back at least ten years.

Troll in chief privatized government intelligence. Our government intelligence is temps.

When someone announces they are an idiot, they are a one issue voter, or undecided they give away the argument and they can’t state their true reasons. Hope they are not registered. There is nothing wrong with being either liberal or elite if you deliver. If only more poor people voted. If only more poor people voted in the primaries. The harder it is to vote, the more it matters.

Voting for the gibbering gibbon won’t keep black people out of your neighborhood. You know that. Persecuting poor women in stupid states doesn’t stop abortion. This is a democracy. Eventually abortion will be unequivocally legal; we’re sick of your shit. Ending abortion doesn’t stop women working. No one wants to marry your stupid ugly kid. You know that too. You are not going to bring down the American empire. The American empire will end when it’s good and ready and it won’t be because of losers like you. All you have done is make another mess that everyone else will have to clean up, just like every time before.

Rock is dead.

Kind of fun. But then I wonder if I was telling you anything. Would this have any effect? Would it be positive?

It is yet another vestige of slavery that such a small plurality, less than 2,500,000 votes, produces so dramatic an advantage. There were only about 6 million registered voters that didn’t vote.

When training a police officer or prison guard someone has the responsibility of explaining to them that if they are taken hostage, it is possible that they will be the first target of the police sniper. This policy became obvious at the Attica Prison uprising. This minimizes casualties. Porky’s 47 cracks about Hannibal Lecter are a juvenile reference to the Isreal Hannibal directive that informed the Israeli people that they are all prison guards. Juvenile slyness targets a demographic.

Incels affect a depraved exploitative homosexuality. Orange Julius fellatio references was for their benefit.

There is no reasoning with MAGA. Biden cut bait in Afghanistan, not Don John. Big Greasy jailing children and sending their parents back to die insulted the Mexican undocumented and they quit coming. The fruit rotted, stores closed on Mondays and there are more jobs. That combined with Double O zero raising oil prices and Covid supply shocks without the undocumented to cushion them, brought inflation. Admittedly Mexico doesn’t seem to have street gutters, and they use adobe not brick, wait till they are arguing in front of the Supreme Court. It is wrong to let Cubans run Catholic charities. East Orthodox handled their federal money. We haven’t quite made it, but if we can survive the Irish, we can survive anything. Except for 9/11 Muslims are Irish lite.

MAGA likes undocumented. The undocumented work for MAGA. MAGA is not going to round up and deport its own undocumented. It is the people in the system, paying taxes, workmen’s comp, social security, that will someday vote who MAGA targets. Whatever rationalization MAGA offers, it ends with voting for His Hugeness.

MAGA doesn’t care about any of this. They don’t care about the price of eggs. They hate women, blacks, and themselves. Whatever talking point they throw, there is no way that Rumbo will deliver, except for keeping a woman out of the White House.

You can’t change people’s minds. What you can do is bring in new constituencies. My mom helped win an aldermanic by registering students in 1959. Big Cheeto’s success in 2016 was bringing his audience into the Republican party. Kind of like converting the King of the Khazars.  Jews quit proselytizing after that. Bidens victory was due to the Democratic snap back, more new Democrats registered than Republicans. Each election registered more voters. This election the Republicans found incels and enough women want their pussy grabbed. Besides running a woman, the Democratic mistake was concentrating all that resource on the existing voting base rather than registering more voters. Taylor Swift and Beyonce can’t overwhelm the incels by themselves. Someday we may run out of unregistered, but for now even Democrats should have found constituencies amongst the more than 80 million. Showing voter registration should be obligatory at concerts, events, demonstrations and family gatherings.

The Business School at University of Chicago just made the argument that we vote for Democrats when times are bad and Republicans when we feel prosperous. This is in line with Adam Smith’s view of the constant cycle between ruination and salvation in democracies. It was said that Democrats must be bought, and Republicans are already there. Everybody is bought. The difference is that Democrats seek consensus, and Republicans think they are right.

It is almost impossible to believe that “can you get me 11,000 votes” and electric Musk didn’t steal the election. There is the Adamowski argument. Adamowski was the Cook County States Attorney in 1959. Daley got Republicans to trade him away for Nixon votes. Since the States Attorney is supposed to police elections, if he can’t do his job he doesn’t get to keep it. If the election is stolen from incumbents, they are incompetent. Again, Democrat incumbents want an obvious plurality. Democrats are hurt that misogyny beats ability.

As to registered voters. I am going to state the obvious. During an election voters have power. The voters are deciding who to hire. We used to go door to door canvassing precincts to determine how people are going to vote. There is a quantum problem. Someone might say:

-I was going to vote for your candidate.

Canvassers should be short, elderly, and like your pet. One tactic is to ask people if they want to volunteer.  They don’t, but if they looked guilty, they were probably a plus. Once we contacted you and determined your preference, we did not contact you until election day. If you hadn’t voted we would helpfully remind you. If you were a minus or a zero, we didn’t want to remind you to vote. If you were a plus any further contact might change your mind.

Once we had experience in the precinct, we didn’t have to canvass everybody. There was the legendary Mrs. Isenberg of East Hyde Park who had five precincts. Voters knew when she was available to ask her how to vote if they weren’t sure. She may have occasionally canvassed if it was expected.

As I explained in an earlier post, I vote against anyone who robocalls me. Once you know I am voting for Harris and I am not donating money, any further contact may discourage me, even texts. The message Harris gave is that her campaign did not know who I am and has too much money. Just because I am voting for you doesn’t mean I should be pestered. Harris is the first candidate who wanted my donation more than my vote. Would you solicit money on a job interview? I would like to see a list of donors who did not vote.

The Democratic Party did fine out of this, everybody made money. Now they can stand back, and watch Republicans make another stinking mess. Grifter in Chief is already shaking the tariff money tree, looking for his taste, just as before with a wider scope. Please don’t ever say managed trade again. We need the free trade amendment. Put that on the list with ending the presidential pardon, abortion is legal amendment, dropping the second amendment, ERA, making federal election law an amendment, ending the Department of Labor, legalize drugs… The Democrats expect to come roaring back. After Big Bill Thompson Chicago is a Democratic city. Assuming there is another election. Mr. Microphone and the right wing Yippees denying legitimacy while owning the oil market invites a coup.