Giving Trump A Chance, If Possible

WHEN TRUMP WAS ELECTED, I knew the importance of supporting the new president, and giving him a fair chance. A week and a half into his presidency, I still feel the same way. Unfortunately, the Trump presidency has been a complete travesty and disaster, and during his first week in office the U.S. had more protests against more Trump policies than the entire decade of the nineteen sixties, or so it seems. Any discerning citizen is surely shocked and disappointed at the steady stream of lies emanating from the White House, from both Trump and his press secretary. The relative size of the crowd at the inauguration, voter fraud, the reasons for his infamous ban on refugees; we are being drowned in a sea of alternative facts. Alternative facts may emerge as the signature style of the Trump administration, just as fake news is the foundation of ultra right wing politicians and media. Its hard to imagine anyone approving of Trump's behavior, and that many do is beyond alarming. I heard an interview on national Public Radio in which some benighted American expressed the attitude that anyone who wants to enter this country and stay here needs to leave the head rag and the Quran behind, because, by God, this country is a Christian country, one nation under Jesus, and anyone who doesn't believe that just aint welcome here. Oh really? What do you want to bet that this person voted for Trump? See, the "Treaty of Tripoli", 1797, and notice what it says about Christianity as the national religion, bearing in mind that, according to the United States constitution, all treaties entered into by the United States have the force of law. Better yet, read the first amendment. Of course, one can hardly expect anyone who voted for Donald Trump do do any such thing.

Waiting For The Anti-Trump Uproar From The Religious right

FEW PEOPLE HAVE EVER read the bible cover to cover. After all, it has something like eight hundred thousand words or more. But anyone who has knows what a cacophony this collection of manuscripts is, a hodge podge of different voices and many different unknown authors and editors. It has a little something for everyone. As mark Twain said, the Bible has some noble poetry, clever fables, some good common sense wisdom, a tremendous amount of violence and obscenity, and many contradictions, distortions, and outright lies. You have to sift through it all in careful detail in order to, as Thomas Jefferson said, extract the diamonds from the dung. The bible is the most important book ever written, a cultural treasure to non Christians, and sacred, God given truth, which must be obeyed by devout Christians. Both the Old and the new Testaments tell us to treat strangers as if they were family or old friends. Refugees are to be welcomed, and treated with dignity and generosity, according to Jesus. Hence, you might expect at any moment to be inundated in a cacophonous uproar emanating from the American Christian community, including the American conservative Christian community, since most American Christians seem to be politically conservative. The Bible is quite clear, and the American conservative Christian community is quite large, with tens of millions of born again evangelicals within. And, let's be honest, the American right wing Christian community is rarely, if ever, silent about anything, much less matters pertaining to Biblical morality and their faith. Right about now you'd almost expect a conservative Christian uproar in protest of President Trump's executive order banning refugees from our sacred soil, wouldn't you? Demonstrations all across the fruited plain, perhaps, with signs reading: "Give us your poor", and "Christians 4 refugees!". Perhaps yet another million member mob descending upon the nation's capitol, chanting "Jesus and God love us all. No wall, no wall!" That has a certain ring to it, don't you think? But if I were you, I wouldn't bother to turn on the news or hold my breath.

Trending Hitlerian In Trumpified America

ONE WEEK INTO THE TRUMP ERA, the Trump era shows signs of becoming a gigantic fascist mess. The new president wants to return to the good ole days of using torture against prisoners of war, which everybody in the military and in congress finds repugnant, barbaric, and inefficient. Senator John McCain, who knows a thing or two about being tortured, says that if Trump tries to lay one hand on a captured radical Islamic terrorist, or anyone else, he'll haul the chief executive's gilded ass straight into court, and I wouldn't out it past him. Meanwhile, Trump, who spent the entire presidential campaign ranting that the election was rigged even before it took place, now intends to prove that he wasn't kidding. He really is crazy enough to believe that anywhere from three to five million illegal Mexicans managed to cast votes, and they all voted for Hillary Clinton. The question is whether Trump actually believes this. If he does, he's crazy, if he doesn't, he's evil. Take your pick. It will be most interesting to see how much support for this insanity there is among Trump's right wing confused white supporters, the folks who voted for right wing Hitlerian style demagoguery, and got it. Buyer beware: any conservative American citizen who advocates an investigation into five million illegal votes allegedly all cast for Hillary Clinton is in reality trying to find sneaky ways to reduce the number of eligible voters in America, reduce the number of poor minority voters, in order to enhance our national chances of reverting to a white dominated society.

Everybody Protesting Trump

LAST WEEKEND'S PROTEST MARCH was either for the purpose of demanding women's rights and gender equality, or it was a protest against Trump, or both, depending on who you talk to. Either way, it was such a huge success that people are talking about what the movement will do next, and everyone agrees that the women's movement will continue. Now scientists are wanting to get into the act, and have their own protest march. It will either be a march in Washington advocating for science, or protesting the Trump administrations treatment of science, or both. It could also be considered a protest against the right wing attitude towards science, the disdain for science so evident in the conservative movement. Evolution and human made climate change are treated as if they are matters of opinion by most republicans, which they most certainly are not. The scientists of the world want to make that abundantly clear, that climate change and evolution are real, and that science should be accepted, respected, and included in making public policy decisions in the political arena. There are millions of well educated Americans who support science, and are appalled at the denial of climate change and other basic science by the republican party and American conservatives in general. Many of them are starting to think that it might be time to stand up for science in government, and to protest the complete disregard for science so far shown by the Trump administration. After that, who knows? Occupy Wall Street redux? Why not? Particularly, just as soon as all those millions of white blue collar out of work pseudo-republicans who elected Trump finally figure out what a complete fraud their multi billionaire leader really is.

Using the Media For President Trump's Alternative Facts

THE ALARMING THING ABOUT PRESIDENT TRUMP'S LIES is how obvious they are, how easy to expose, and how little he seems to care, or even be aware how bad it all makes him look. He seems to live in a narcissistic bubble. He is at the height of his popularity right now, having his honeymoon period with the public and the media. And yet, his popularity is about forty percent, and he's already deeply involved in what he calls his "running war" with the news media. Once again he is making the incredible claim that three to five million illegal votes were cast for Hillary Clinton, which is the only reason she won the popular vote. The election was rigged, in favor of Hillary, and he really won the popular vote, fair and square, but got cheated. Does he realize that everybody in the country, as well as the rest of the world, is rolling eyes, dropping jaw, or laughing out loud? Trump also claims that his inauguration crowd was larger than Obama's, and that the media invented the conflict between Trump and the CIA, both of which are plainly false. His approval rating will keep gong down, as every action he takes to reverse Obama's legacy will make new enemies for him, and his constant lies alienate his former supporters. If the President thinks he's going to circumvent and totally ignore traditional media such as television and newspapers, and go straight to the people on social media, he needs to remember that Social media is a double edged sword. Social media is a game we can all play. You can attract followers and increase your popularity, or you can make enemies, and rally your opposition. Trump might rue the day he alienated the traditional media, which is easily accessible for him and hard to access for his opponents. Twitter and Facebook and all other internet social media are perfect vehicles for Trump's opposition to communicate, organize, protest, and resist. It might behoove the president to remember that tens of millions of his opponents are doing exactly that.

Correcting Invented Facts From The President

YOU HAVE TO GIVE PEOPLE A CHANCE. And, if you can, you have to help, if only by staying out of the way. It begins to appear we must assist our new American president in accepting facts. A Goethe said: "we resist the truth only because we would perish if we accepted it". True enough. We all invent truth, and practice deception, to a point, within reason, but enough is enough. When an America leader, in our great democracy and free market of speech and facts, begins to live in a complete state of fantasy, we, the American people, whom the new leader so passionately wants to serve, must serve the leader."Alternative facts", a term used by the president's assistant Kellyanne Conway to describe her leader's lies, won't do. You start to get that creepy propaganda ministry Hitler Mao Stalin sensation, in which an invented fantasy world, handed down from the fuhrer, is the only politically correct, yes, politically correct version. for those of you who are tired of political correctness imposed by a gang of tens of millions of liberals which punishes you for using words like "nigger", you wanna give political correctness from a single demagogue a shot? How about Donald trump's version of reality, which he expects you to fully embrace. Trump says that the crowd on inauguration day was the largest crowd ever, which it wasn't, and that it extended all the way to the Washington monument and beyond, out into the Maryland countryside and all across the country, which it most certainly did not. The news media corrected the Trumpian lie, and, of course, the news media, having fun afoul of the leader, is politically incorrect, and therefore, according to the politically correct leader, the most dishonest entity known to humankind. What is spooky is how obvious and easily disprovable the Trump lies are, and how violently his team reacts against the truth, and how defiantly it defends the leader's lies. Even more frightening is the willingness of Trump and his gang to passionately defend lies concerning utterly insignificant facts, like the size of a crowd, and how aggressively and savagely they attack fact checkers and correcters. The Trump administration is going to require a national fact checking operation, in which we, the vigilant citizens ever guarding our democratic liberties, are prime participants.

Putting Wolves In the Hen House

ALBERT EINSTEIN ONCE SAID that the sight of men marching in uniform, rank and file was enough to make him question their intelligence. At one point he advocated that all men of military age refuse military service, and he once suggested that the world would be better off if it had only one army, under the control of the United Nations. Not much of a military man, Einstein. A genius, to be sure, but not much of a military man. Not the sort of man you'd want to have as your Secretary of Defense, you'd have to agree. Einstein was so highly regard universally that when the nation of Israel was organized in 1948, Einstein was asked to be its first president, believe it or not. Einstein was amazed at the offer, and thought it was humorous. He politely declined, pointing out that his training was in theoretical physics, not political leadership. You always want people in leadership positions who know and like their job. Trump's choices to head the Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency are the equivalent of putting Einstein in charge of the military. Disastrous. Trump should be impeached for trying to undermine, weaken, and destroy entire parts of the United States government. Its his job to protect the nation and to govern it properly, not to render it incapable of governing. Trump could also very well face impeachment for violating the emoluments clause of the constitution, according to the ethics lawyers for Bush and Obama. If Trump thinks the American presidency is a part time job, and that he can retain his business empire, he'd better think again. He'd also better reconsider the reality of climate change, because the American people accept that reality, and want something done about it, other than destroying the Environmental Protection Agency.

Protesting Trump, Femininely

THE DAY AFTER millions of women around the world, clad in pink pussy hats, marched through hundreds of cities, there appears to have been no adverse incidents of any sort, no violence, only a positive mass movement which made a statement the world can not ignore. The statement was in opposition to right wing extremism and the agenda of Donald Trump, an agenda which is being misleadingly referred to by a pandering pro Trump media marketing machine as "populism", but is in reality human suicide by climate change, combined with wealthy elitism and xenophobia, along with a tinge of racism and misogyny. Millions of women out in the streets, in Washington and everywhere else, and nothing but positive results. A Trump spokesperson says the Trump gang does no intend to sit around and allow itself to be de-legitimized. Let's hope the gangsters mean it. If they want war with their opponents, bring it. The more aggressively Trump attacks his critics and the media, the more people will turn against him. If they want war with the media, we'll see who wins. This could get interesting. The most obvious thing about yesterday's incredible mass female protest is that it worked so beautifully that it should be continued, expanded, and increased and intensified. Also, it should unite with Black Lives Matter, the science and climate change opposition community, the LGBTQ movement, and, of course, the progressive movement in general, including all the males involved. With an approval rating of about forty percent, Trump is outnumbered, at home and abroad, by his opponents. We good loyal patriotic American leftists must unite and support our new president, and this we intend to do by having tens of millions of us strongly encourage him to fight climate change like a real man, stand up to Putin instead of kissing his ass, and fix Obamacare, instead of repealing it, and maybe rename it "Trump Care" to further enhance the president's fame and self esteem. marketability, and name recognition.

Putting America First, and Making It Great, ...Again

IN OUR NEW NARCISSISTIC NATIONAL NARRATIVE, we must make America great again. We must make it great, again, the way it once was, but now no longer is, but can and will be again. Accordingly, the reason America is no longer great is because it has been neglected and abandoned by its elite national political leaders in the district, who have only been looking out for themselves, not the rest of us nor the nation as a whole. After all, it was the elite political class which brought us free international trade, luring American corporations away from home, making Ross Perot's giant sucking sound audible. Furthermore, goes our melodramatic if illusory trumped up national fantasy, America has been doing more to help other nations than its own people, defending foreign borders rather than its own, making other nations wealthy at the expense of its own wealth, generally putting others ahead of itself so self sacrificially that it has neglected its own health and prosperity. The United States of Altruism. A perfect paradigm for a nation of narcissists for whom facts are selected, simultaneously self aggrandizing and pandering. Oh, how noble and great we are, but how misguided we have been. When was America most recently great? Under Reagan? In the tobacco and martini drenched nineteen fifties? Whenever, we shall now put America first, and worry about saving the rest of the world if and only if there is any whitewash left over. In our new cyber surreal twittering world, we omit mention of the inconvenient historical reality that the United states of Acquisition is, and has always been, a self promoting self serving plutocracy, for whom all exploitation of resources, foreign and domestic, natural and human, for power and profit, is explainable as acts of generosity. The multi billionaire Donald J.Trump, a true man of the people, especially the poor. Our new government of billionaires, putting us poor American's first, as we stand beneath and gaze upward, awaiting the trickle down with gratitude for our "populist" billionaire leaders..

American Protesting

SOMEBODY SHOULD WRITE the definitive history of protest in the United states, starting as early as the Boston tea party, or even earlier, and going up through Trump's inauguration. For that matter, over the next four years, as Trump's programs are paraded one by one before the American people, there may be as much protesting as there has been since Viet Nam, and that's going some. The History Of American Protest Movements will need constant updating during Trump's first term, possibly. Of all the many protests in American history, there is hardly one that I don't admire, with only an exception or two. For the most part, I never met a protest I didn't like. As a child, I was against the Viet Nam war, and in favor of the protesters, but I dared not let anyone know, most of all my parents. Protesting the Viet Nam War was unpatriotic in mainstream American circles, and could get you a bad reputation. The Viet Nam protesters were brave, and, let the record show, quite correct in their cause, as have been almost all protest movements, from woman's suffrage, to black civil rights, to gay rights, to transgender rights, to protests against our eminently protestable American wars. Many protests, all valid, all morally correct and justified. Finally in 1991 I got my chance to protest a war, and made up for missing out on the Viet Nam protests due to excessive youth. It was exhilarating. Walking down a crowded street with hundreds of other people, carrying my sign which said "No War For Oil". The protesters at Trump's inauguration may have had the right idea, but regrettably, some of it got out of control. Whatever throwing rocks through the window at Starbuck's has to do with dangerously bad presidential policies is quite beyond normal human apprehension. Not to worry, however. Over the next four years, patriotic Americans will have ample opportunity to perfect their proper protest skills.

Populism Losing Popularity

SO, WHAT'S BEEN GOIN' ON, all across Europe and the United States, and who knows where next, is an epidemic of anger and fear in which loud mouthed right wing tough talkin' super patriotic nationalistic demagogues are gaining popularity and in some benighted places actual power. This is being called, for some strange reason, "populism", perhaps because it has the support of a lot of working class poorly educated low income right wing ethnic majority Donald Trump wannabes. Populism, as in popular amongst the teeming masses. A strong man for all the people, to lead the people and the nation back to the glory days of old. Less, popular, is this populism, among the elites, real and imagined. The populist creed is to make the fatherland great again, like it used to be in the good ole days when men were men and America had but one culture, with a single language and pigment. Strong man populism promises to stop foreign exploitation by tearing up and replacing trade deals and by stopping immigration, and to stimulate the capitalistic economy to create more and better jobs, by getting government out of the economy and, by any means, bringing back jobs long gone overseas to cheap labor sources. Business billionaires are being trusted to lift up the teeming masses from working class joblessness and stagnation into middle class prosperity, without even allowing government to assist the process. Its a virtual miracle, the revival of trickle down economics as the method of choice to lift up the poor, without so much as bothering to raise the minimum wage. How to achieve all this? By bullying corporations into halting all investment in foreign countries, thus ending the new world order, the era of free trade? Shall we become Luddites, and fight the robots and all automated technology? Since two thirds of Americans accept the reality of human made climate change, and the need for more economic equality, Trump's brand of so called "populism", in which tax cuts for the wealthy miraculously trickle down to us all, can never be truly "popular", as indicated by his current forty percent approval rating. It'll go down further soon enough. Isn't it strange and interesting how a group of billionaires led by a billionaire is going to make prosperous all the poor?

Word War Mongering

OBAMACARE IS BEING DESCRIBED as everything from "a complete disaster" to "contrary to every core principle America holds dear", a complete, unmitigated failure which must be abolished immediately, for the sake of saving the country. evidently, te simple truth, that Obamacare is largely a success with some shortcomings which need to be addressed, is too complicated, and too positive. What, if anything, we replace it with is utterly immaterial, merely by doing away with the Obamacare nightmare we will be getting back on the right track. So goes the right wing propaganda lie mongering, as usual. Why don't we take a quick survey, interview all twenty million or so who have health insurance under the Affordable Care Act who had none previously, and find out if these recipients believe Obamacare is a complete disaster. Twenty million people having health insurance on acceptable terms for the first time is, sanity would suppose, not a disaster, but a great triumph. But alas, welcome to super narcissistic America, where we all have our own truth, our own facts, and words are a weapon to be used cleverly. The election was a complete repudiation of Barack Obama, goes the right wing drivel, even though Hillary Clinton got three million more votes than the twitter man. Accordingly, when the Environmental Protection Agency issues a ruling requiring chemical corporations to clean up their toxic chemical waste, the EPA is "out of control". One creative Obama hater accuses the outgoing president of "neutering the military". Excuse me? Neutered? When one considers the emotional overtones of the word "neutered" one envisions the American military as having been rendered completely languid, passive, flaccid, limp, prostrate. Its horrible. Its also another example of twisting the language to influence attitudes and perceptions. Heaven forbid that we ever examine a situation realistically, and tell the factual truth about it. no, we must color our words with emotion, for impact. We must use words to accomplish our political goals, to twist reality to suit our personal emotional needs. its quite humorous, really. There must be close to one million words in the English language. If more of us knew more of them, me would perhaps feel a bit more confident in our ability to use words as tools of truth, and less need to use them as weapons of deceit.

The Divided States (people) of America

THE UNITED STATES IS MORE DIVIDED NOW than at any time since the Civil War itself, the war between the states, the division to end all divisions. If today's polarization gets much worse, we might be in trouble. Look for Texas to secede on the right, and California on the left, with the good ole U.S. of A. tucked in between. Precisely how are we divided? By race? Rich versus poor? Left versus right? Even though we know not for sure the exact nature or cause of this division, we know its here, all around us. Whatever it is, I would personally like to be part of the solution. At present, I am part of the problem. Oh well. At least I'm involved. I lost friends over the election. So did millions of us Americans. Families were forced to cancel Thanksgiving celebrations. The friends I lost I consider to be on the other side of the great American divide, but who knows? Perhaps it is best to nurture friendship with people on the same side of the great American divide. Perhaps the division is not into two groups, but into hundreds of millions. Maybe we're not so much polarized, as atomized. American culture, studies reveal, is currently engorging itself on narcissism. Does that mean we spend most of our time taking selfies? Self awareness is healthy, self absorption is not. Diversity of opinion and circumstance is healthy, hatred and violence are not. We don't want another war between ourselves, but the last thing we want to do, here in the U.S. of A., is to go through some super melodramatic national healing process, and embark on an orgy of nationalism and hyper patriotism, similar to that which infected Germany before both world wars one and two. Our modern American wars do more to divide than unify us, and we sure as hell do not want another World War Two to bring us together. And I wouldn't put it past Trump to try just that. His approval rating, as president elect, is barely forty percent, pitifully low, but not nearly as low as it might soon go. If Trump declares war on China or the American media or the America left wing, most Americans would probably sign up to fight for his chosen enemy.

Celebrating Twice As Hard

HAPPY RELIGIOUS FREEDOM DAY! This great American holiday takes place on January 16 every year, and MLK Day does not, so we're just lucky to have two great American holidays coincide. And, its a doubly bad day for Christian conservatives, because Martin Luther King was a radical liberal, hated by the Christian right during his lifetime. Religions Freedom Day affirms the great truth that the United States of America is not a "Christian Country:, nor was ever intended to be, but rather, a country of religious freedom, meaning diversity. Our nation's framers were mostly deists, sons of the scientific enlightenment. Jefferson wrote the statute for religious freedom in 1777, not long after he wrote the Declaration of Independence. He intended it to guarantee religious freedom for the State of Virginia, and thanks to James Madison it became part of Virginia's constitution in 1786, on January 16, where it remains to this very day. Our conservative Christian colleagues must accept and understand the fact that when one opens a business, he or she enters into a social compact with the public, to serve the public, without discrimination on account of sex, race, religion, or age. Refusing to sell a gay couple a wedding cake on religious grounds is not freedom of religion, it is imposing one's religious values on others. Suppose a Muslim or Jew walks into your cake shop, and you refuse to serve him. That's illegal, discrimination on religious grounds. Same thing, even if the refusal to serve is based on your religious grounds, rather than the customer's. Its illegal discrimination. In America, civic society is secular, there is no established official public religion, and civil rights are secular rights. We should never have the freedom to impose our religious views on anyone, nor discriminate against anyone on account of our own religious values. Martin Luther King didn't like being excluded because he was black. Had he been gay, he probably would have felt the same way.

Trump, Burning Bridges

IT IS UNCERTAIN WHETHER DONALD TRUMP understands the relationship he has with the media, and the relationship he will have with them in the future. He seems to harbor the strange illusion that he can and is going to have complete control over that relationship. If so, he is sadly mistaken and shall soon be rudely awakened. His recent brouhaha with CNN may verily be a harbinger of ominous portent for the incoming president. Trump had better learn to be careful about burning bridges to the American people, which is what, after all, the media provide. If he establishes adversarial relationships with one, two, then more and more media companies, and starts to pick and choose which to admit to his glorious presence and which to exclude, as Newt Gingrich and others advocate, the day will come, soon, when Trump will rue the unintended consequences. What Newt Gingrich wants Trump to do, basically, is to exclude all media companies and reporters from access to Trump who are not conservative and sycophantic. Blatant censorship, pure and simple, and if it begins to happen, the whole country will rise up and put a stop to it. The american people will only put up with so much censorship, propaganda, and misinformation from even the great Trump. Depend on it. Trump is not going to get away with having one press conference a year, with reporters from FOX News scribbling away, all by their lonesome. He, as president, will grant wide access to the media, on the media's terms, or he will soon be seen as a tyrant, Putin style. That leads to a leader's downfall. Just ask Hitler, or Caesar. Powerful though Donald Trump may be, the American media is more powerful still. Nobody knows how much money Trump has. He brags about his wealth, but carefully conceals the numbers. But the American media have more, much more. And, the American media has a veritable army of fresh young idealistic truth seeking journalists entering the fray each year after graduation. The president elect communicates with his country by tweeting on Twitter, and avoids press conferences with freedom of the press, and tries to totally control and orchestrate them. The president elect accuses CNN of creating "fake news" with the story of Russia having damaging information on Trump. There is nothing fake about it. The most fake news comes from Trump, in the lies in the twitter tweets lies he hides behind, and later denies. Trump's attitude about himself, the media, and dealing with facts and criticism is incredibly juvenile, narcissistic, manically tyrannical, and therefore extremely dangerous, potentially, to us all.

America, On A Wild Ride

IF PRESIDENT ELECT DONALD TRUMP'S press conference is any indication, this administration is going to be a lot of fun to watch. Trump doesn't like press conferences, because they require one to match wits with bright people who are trying to make one look foolish in front of millions of people, and that doesn't suit Trump's proclivities or abilities. So, he has a press conference about twice a year, a practice which will have to change, whether he likes it or not, because if it doesn't, President Trump will face an avalanche of criticism, which he will, actually, anyway. The American president absolutely must have press conferences, in accordance with their traditions, rules and procedures, dealing with difficult questions in front of the whole nation. He must have them reasonably often, as often as all the recent presidents, if not more so. This will give Trump plenty of opportunities to blow up, melt down, go off, and show his ass, yet again, in front of the entire nation, which heretofore does not seem to care greatly how badly he behaves, which is quite. Unless Trump's tempestuous tweet mentality improves, this great nation may start to tire of his juvenile behavior. This time he told us that he had a chance to make two billion dollars in Dubai, but he turned it down, because he loves the American people so very very much and wants to show how non greedy he is. Then he told us that if he wanted to, he could run his entire business empire, massive that it is, and run the country, both at the same time. There would be nothing illegal about this, Trump wants us to understand, just as there are no conflicts of interest in having his sons run his business. The experts in legal and financial ethics all disagree. Trump evidently has the idea that the American Presidency is a part time job. One can only hope that he will soon learn otherwise. The way he's going, he's going to have every media organization and media employee loathing him, but he doesn't seem to care, yet. Trump might also find out eventually that simply replacing the Directors of the CIA, NSA and other intelligence gathering agencies does not replace thousands of employees in those organizations, who so far have good reason not to be pleased with the president elect. Plus, we await the protests at the inauguration, and up and down Pennsylvania Ave, in Washington D.C., all the way from Capitol Hill to the White House, when we start talking about Obamacare seriously. Hang on tight. Its going to be a wild ride.

Breaking the Bubble

SUPPOSE YOU ARE a hard right conservative Christian capitalist. This should be easy for many Americans to do, since there are so many of them You believe in America, Jesus, the G.O.P., the second amendment, and the free market. A person who might be called a "Jesus, guns, and Money American", and damned proud of it. And yet, you like the military, the local police department, the local fire department, and you really have no trouble with the notion that government at all levels, municipal, county, state, and federal, are responsible for the construction and maintenance of roads, bridges, and highways. No, this infrastructure should not be in the hands of the free market, with private ownership, most likely corporate ownership. What this means, of course, is that you realize that it is not feasible to operate an entire modern economy according to the free market, there are certain shared needs within the community, local, state, and national, which can only be addressed by all of us together, acting cooperatively, using government to provide necessary services. This, dear friend, is socialism. You are part socialist, even the most staunchly free market capitalists among you, the ones who decry socialism at every turn, who claim that socialism has never worked anywhere it has been tried, yes, you are, admit it or not, part socialist. And let's take you, you die hard left wing democratic socialistic utopian visionary. have you ever, just once in your cooperatively enlightened life, wanted to buy some personal item, like a quick lunch or new underwear, and given some thought to just exactly where you might get what you want for the lowest price and with the highest quality? Sure you have, which means, of course, that there is a bit of the capitalist in you as well. We are all mongrels. If we here in historically polarized America are to ever again get along, it might do us well to remember that whatever traits we see in others we ourselves possess, at least to a degree. All points of view have merit, no matter how little. If we could ever manage to unlick ourselves from the confinement of our own bubbles, and go out and about a bit, we might learn to see someone else's point of view.

Investigating Trump

OBAMA INHERITED A FAILING, COLLAPSING economy, and used his (in)famous bailout of too big to allow to fail bankrupt corporations and huge nearly trillion dollar stimulus package to stop the bleeding, and turn it around, and begin the process of recovery. He leaves office with an economy which has been healing and growing for over six years. The only complaint conservatives can muster is that the economy isn't growing fast enough. Well, tough tit, as they say. we're lucky to even have an economy, which we would not have, had conservatives been able to enact conservative responses to the great recession; the policy of leaving government out of the problem, and letting the economy repair itself, magically and automatically, just like it did, or didn't, from 1929 to 1933. Historians are likely to give Obama the credit he is due, and to consider him to have been an effective president, limited only by six years of obstructionist conservative hatred aimed against him in congress. Obama's eloquent, intelligent and moving farewell address was a humorous contrast to Donald Trump's juvenile twitter tweets, which read like the musings of a fourteen year old with a bad grade in English having a temper tantrum and lashing out with infantile accusations and lies. So now it turns out that indeed the Russians did hack into Trump and the republicans, and may have extremely damaging secret information about Trump, which could bring him down. Also, there may indeed have been communications between Russians and the Trump campaign during the campaign, and if so, those communications may have been concerned with stealing the election from Hillary Clinton. Only a proper investigation will provide the answers. It may well be that Trump's crimes include more than racist business practices and sexual molestation; he may have conspired with a foreign nation to steal the election, a crime punishable by impeachment and imprisonment. At present, it appears Trump is trying to destroy the United States government by appointing people to lead it who hate it and want to destroy it. Surely that is worthy of scrutiny and dangerous enough to merit forceful opposition.

Waiting For Smart Phones To Go

AS THE smart PHONE celebrates its tenth birthday today, i still can't decide whether to get one. Maybe in a few years. maybe never. Right now I prefer doing my telephoning the old fashioned way; the phone is a box, sitting where it sits, and when it rings, I have to get up, walk across the room, and answer it. Why exactly i prefer it that way is hard to say, other than it saves money and reminds me of my happy childhood. When I was ten years old, I watched Kirk and Spock use their communications devices, and I wanted one, badly. I figured if I waited around long enough, I would eventually have one, just like I would eventually have a flying car, a place on Mars, and extremely long life. I recall how people in the nineteen nineties made a habit of talking on their cell phones while driving, deliberately, just to be seen doing so, because doing so was a sign of wealth, status, importance, and technological savvy. You don't see people doing that anymore, because having a smart phone is no big deal. Everybody has one. Now I wonder if there will ever come a time when everyone in public is not staring dazedly into his or her smart phone, and punching at it with both thumbs. There will, of course, somehow, somewhen, and I can't wait. Each new device is better than the last. bring it. We must not be afraid of implanting computer chips in our skulls, but we must defend staunchly our right not to do so. The advent of new technology does not invalidate old technology. Television did not kill or replace radio. Smart phones will never replace good old fashioned face to face same room real time real space real human chit chat, and vinyl is coming back.

Russians Stealing The Election For Trump?

THE ELECTION OF DONALD TRUMP is of highly questionable legitimacy, due to Russian interference. The question now is: exactly what did the Russians do to influence the election, and what impact did it have? It may be very difficult to answer this question, but most likely achievable, certainly not impossible. Using advanced statistical methods, causal connections between large numbers of people acting under numerous influences can be analysed with remarkable precision. We could look at exactly what information the Russians stole, fabricated, and dumped into the mainstream media, and its probable impact on voters. Also, what ever happened to those seventy thousand ballots cast in Detroit which were filled out completely, except for the presidential contest, which was left blank? Why would anyone, let alone seventy thousand people, go to the trouble of getting to the polling place, standing in line, and filling out a ballot properly and completely, and then leave the most important box blank? It really makes no sense, unless those ballots started out with votes for Hillary Clinton, then got erased through hacking and vote tampering. Surely, all these questions will be answered. First, Trump loudly proclaimed through twitter, his platform of choice, that the Russians absolutely had absolutely nothing to do with election interference. Then, he was proven wrong, and tweeted that their interference had absolutely no impact on the election, as if he has any way of knowing. Trump's lackeys inform us that Trump now accepts the reality of Russian hacking, but that it happens all the time, so its no big deal, and besides, its all the fault of the Democrats, for not stopping it in the first place. Can you believe that? No, you can't. What a bunch of clowns, losers, and liars, these Trump lackeys. Now, Mr.Trump wants to forget about the whole Russian hacking thing altogether, and just "move on", as he so eloquently tweeted. But why? What's the hurry? What, if anything, does Mr. Trump have to hide? Surely, nothing! This is an important issue, and must be thoroughly investigated, including the impact of Russian involvement in the election, which the CIA, FBI, and NSA did not address. Now, its time to address it, by whatever means necessary. The Departments of sociology, Political 'science, and Computer Science at Harvard could probably get the job done. Did the Russians actually steal the election for Trump? One thing we know for certain; they tried to.

Trump Changing

WHEN TRUMP FIRST ENTERED the race, I was excited, like everybody else, because I thought it was healthy having new blood in politics. Trump seemed practical and flexible, and not religiously devoted to any political ideology. He seemed, and still seems, like a person who could be very conservative in some ways, but still progressive on certain issues. Like everybody else, I thought he had no chance to win. I still think that he is basically non ideological. Most devoted conservatives and liberals will do everything humanly possible to maintain ideological consistency and purity; Trump doesn't seem to care. Its easy to imagine him waking up one day and deciding: "what the hell. Let's cut through all the red tape, and just have a straight single payer health insurance system, like most of the rest of the world." That could actually happen. Trump once allegedly favored a single payer system. Maybe deep down he still does. Some fine day Trump may say: "I still believe that climate change is a hoax, because people have been trying to use it for political purposes. At the same time, it is real, and humans are partly the cause, and I intend to lead the way to solving the problem, as only I can. I hereby direct the EPA to plant one trillion tress by the beginning of my second term." Can't you see that happening? Trump can totally reverse his position anytime he pleases, without the slightest hint that he was ever wrong or inconsistent, if he thinks it suits his purposes, and he does not care whether he is conservative or liberal; he just wants to be popular. He already has the money and power. We must convince Trump that he can be a national hero by installing Trump Care, and with the Trump climate change initiative. Its all about Trump, and its all about ego.

Trump's Trap

THE HEAD HONCHOS OF EVERY MAJOR U.S. INTELLIGENCE AGENCY, including the CIA, FBI, and NSA, made the pilgrimage to the elite heights of Trump Tower Friday afternoon, for the express purpose of assisting the President Elect in abandoning his fantasy world and returning to the real one, which might prove impossible. Its worth a try, through, because our live may all be riding on it. The group of directors told Trump that the Russians for sure hacked into the election, and tried to help Trump win, in several different ways, including dumping harmful information about Hillary Clinton into the social media alternative universe, and encouraging the American public to distrust their own political process. They told him that the order to conduct the campaign to sabotage the election came directly from Vladimir Putin, and they know this because they bugged his office, the little darlings, and have Putin's conversations on tape. isn't our American intelligence gathering community simply grand? They further told Trump that they have no idea whether the Russians actually changed the outcome of the election, because, they said, that isn't their job. Exactly why it isn't, they apparently didn't say. So now further investigations should be conducted to find out exactly what happened, and how it affected the election, because, whatever it was, it affected the election, one way or another. Meanwhile we wait and see whether the president elect admits that he has been wrong on this issue; he probably never will, which is an alarming indication of his character. So, Trump is trapped in his admiration of Putin. Will he have the guts to change course, and to loathe Putin like all good Americans? Or, will he stick to his love of Putin, and separate himself from everyone else in the country? Trump says he wants to "move on". Will he still say that now? If we merely move on, what will we move on to, a world in which the Russians steal us blind every time Putin orders it, and President Trump turns his head, looks away, expresses his admiration of Putin, and moves on?

Getting Trump On Track

REMEMBER A WHILE BACK when the CIA and FBI caught the Russians stealing info from the United States, and Donald Trump acted like an idiot? Who could forget? Here's what he should have said: "I am satisfied that the men and women who work in intelligence gathering are good hard working loyal Americans, not sinister conspiratorial forces who have been politicized or radicalized. While we must always be careful about making accusations against other nations, and must be skeptical of our own research and thorough in doing it, we must also work towards a better world in which the internet and our ooh so very fabulous computer network are used to enhance human progress and prosperity, not as weapons. I'm sure Mr. Putin and I, and the world leadership can arrive at a sensible plan to eliminate state sponsored computer hacking." ..... Notice how this statement gives Trump a chance to be Trump, with the cute little phrase "oh so very fabulous", which is exactly the type of inane juvenile drivel he seems to prefer using..........there are so many reasons why the above statement would have been better, that we needn't go in detail. For one, it praises the CIA instead of ridiculing it, and it acknowledges Russian crime, instead of ignoring it, without sounding hostile towards Putin or Russia. But instead, Trump started sending out a flurry of one hundred and forty letter twitter tweets, first, calling the CIA incompetent, standing up for Russia instead of his own employees, then, sending out a stupid sounding tweet saying he is a "big fan of intelligence", as if he were talking about Mariah Carey or Taylor Swift. Mr. trump, one is not a "fan" of the CIA. One takes the CIA seriously, respects it, and uses it property, as commander in chief. Furthermore, sir, teenagers use twitter, but Presidents do not. Sit your vain ass down in front of a camera, look straight into it, and say things like the proposed statement above, and dump your inane juvenile teeny bopper big haired twitter tweet chitty chat.

Resisting Trump and His Gang

SENATOR JOHN MCCAIN does not have a very favorable opinion of Vladimir Putin, to say the least. The terms "killer" and"thug" were used. Meanwhile, president elect Trump says the Russians are innocent of hacking and interfering with the election because Julian Assange says that Wikileaks never got any help from the Russians. Somehow, that is less than comforting. That tells you something about Trump's judgment in choosing his sources of information. He rejects the information from the CIA, which assures us that indeed the Russian government is invading the United States with computers, and he trusts Julian Assange. That is remarkably alarming, as is Trump's continued admiration instead of loathing for Vladimir Putin. Is Putin Trump's role model, a shining example of what he himself wants to be, and plans to become? There has been a strangely surrealistically Hitleresque tone to Trump's political career, with his angry mass of white followers chanting their hateful slogans and Trump's extreme right wing appointees to government positions. There might well emerge in America a hard core extreme right wing group of congresspeople, administration people, and supporters who now proceed to try to impose their agenda on the country, opposed by a huge majority of Americans who see trough it, and end up resisting Trump and his supporters so strongly that the right wingers are run out of town, out of government, and Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, Obamacare, and Planned Parenthood are saved for future generations. To borrow a quote from Lord Cornwallis: "we'll see who takes the glory from this field of battle."

Letting In Syrians, Loving Taco Bell

DONALD TRUMP DECLARED some weeks ago that as long as he rules, no Syrian refugees will be allowed into the United States. He said something to the effect that: "We don't know who they are, where they're coming from, what their purpose is, we have no documents, we have no way of vetting and background checking them". Actually, we know all that stuff, and more, because each and every Syrian refugee is thoroughly checked out in advance of being allowed into the country, over a long period of time, sometimes as long as two years, using extensive documentation. But facts don't matter when you have decided that you are entitled to your own facts. Thus everyone from the middle east is a terrorist, as well as every Muslim, and every woman wearing a head scarf. One percipient citizen said that he did not want any Syrians coming over here and turning the United into Syria. Yes, an American actually said that, incredibly. And he seemed intelligent. "If the Syrian refugees will have a pizza, some beer, and some chicken wings", he continued, "that's fine, but they need to assimilate into American culture"... The pizza and beer I can see, but chicken wings? We Americans are crazy to eat chicken wings. Why bother? No meat. Precisely how many Syrians would be required to enter the United States in order to turn America into Syria wasn't specified. At least several million, wouldn't you think? Probably more than all the Syrians in Syria. There are at least fifteen or twenty million Mexicans living in the U.S. now, and although Mexican food is very popular all across the fruited plain, and you see a lot of Spanish on advertising, still, we gringos must admit: America is still very much America. I, for one, would be lost without Taco Bell.......PLEASE SHARE THIS SITE WITH OTHERS.THANKS!

Attacking Obamacare, and Its Benefactors

EVERY CIVILIZED COUNTRY in the world has some form of nationalized, socialized health care. For the most part, they all work quite well. You just don't hear any great or even mild uproar among Europeans to scrap their health care systems, and return to the days when the free market determined health care costs. In the United States, you hear the ceaseless droning of the right wing propaganda machine, trying to tell us that socialized medicine doesn't work, nobody in Europe is happy with it, socialism has never worked anywhere its been tried, and so forth. But actually, its works just fine, just as Obamacare works just fine in the United States, unless you listen to the great droning right wing machine, which most certainly you ought not. It lies. One question worth asking is: how many people have quite acceptable health insurance through Obamacare who would otherwise not have it, and how many people are paying too much for Obamacare, and how many have been unable to keep the doctor they want to keep? Twenty million people have Obamacare, far greater than the number of people who have it and are unhappy with it. Ironically, a large portion of Obamacare recipients are blue collar workers in rural areas of rust belt industrial states which voted heavily for Trump, and tended to vote for republicans in general. As Trump and Congress launch their attack on Obamacare, worth noting is how these Obamacare recipients in republican areas respond to the attack. It is also worth noting that no alternative plans have been put forth, even after six years of Obamacare. If millions of Americans suddenly lose their health insurance through repeal of Obamacare and are given nothing to replace it with, the uproar may well begin in earnest.

Changing Nuclear Course

IN 1980 A WORKMAN dropped a wrench from the top of a rocket gantry, it fell eighty feet, hit the fuel tank on the rocket, punctured it, and the fuel started leaking. It was a huge rocket with a full load of fuel and a huge atomic bomb on top. Nobody had any idea what would happen or what to do about it if it did. Maybe the fuel would just all leak out then stop, requiring a clean up and damage repair, and a new fuel tankk fill up. Maybe the atomic bomb would go off, kill hundreds of thousands of Americans, and radioactively poison millions more, a self inflicted accidental one bomb atomic attack against our own country. Nobody had any idea. So, they kept it a secret, and tried to get as many people as possible out of the area. The fuel leak started in mid afternoon, and continued through the night. Finally, about four in the morning, the remaining fuel exploded, killing one person, and making a hell of a noisy flashy uproar. The actual nuclear warhead was tossed about a hundred feet from its original position atop the rocket, but did not explode, thank heavens. Then there was the time that an American B52 accidently dropped a full load of atomic bombs on Portugal, none of which exploded because they were not armed. Accidents at nuclear reactors are famous, particularly the very famous incidents in Russia, the United States, and Japan. They are impossible to cover up, while mishaps involving atomic bombs can, to a certain extent, be covered up and lied about. The bottom line is that both nuclear reactors and atomic bombs are deadly dangerous, even in the best and safest conditions, even when entirely under competent control. And now the incoming American president says he wants his country to have more nuclear bombs, even when it already has more than all other countries in the world combined. There is no way in hell that a majority of the American people are in favor of that. Five'll get you ten that nearly every senior level officer in the military, every diplomat, and every historian in the world thinks its a bad idea to start another nuclear arms race, and to reverse decades of trending towards global nuclear disarmament. Ronald Reagan understood that we must work towards world wide elimination of nuclear weapons. We could really use Ronald Reagan about now.

The GOP Bringing Danger

THE REPUBLICAN PARTY is the most dangerous organization in human history. If you happen to disagree with that statement, you're not arguing with me, which would be hard enough, you're arguing with Noam Chomsky, Professor Emeritus at M.I.T. Not long ago I was at a friend's house, and in the middle of a good political conversation my friend told me that Noam Chomsky had died. He was absolutely sure of it. I was shocked, and overcome with grief, until I got to a computer and found out that no, indeed, it wasn't true, thank heavens. My friend said he must have been thinking of someone else. Ya think? Not only is Noam Chomsky alive and well, but he has made some remarks about the election of Donald J. Trump and the ascendancy of republicans in government, and I would recommend to anyone to google "Noam Chomsky on Trump". In his post election comments, Chomsky focuses on climate change, and the extremely strong strand of denial among republicans, many if not most of whom fall into the climate change denial demographic. Chomsky, like all progressive intellectuals, is quite well aware of the shockingly rapid advance of climate change over the past couple of years, and the urgent need to address it single mindedly, immediately. But the republicans do not see climate change as a real problem. It now appears that the republicans are not only in a perfect position to dismantle all American climate change response, it appears that this is exactly what they intend to do, starting any day now. This may prove disastrous for the human species, and all other species as well. The rest of the world is already moving ahead, however, as are large parts of the American population, in fighting climate change by investing in solar energy and other sustainable programs. So, maybe there's still a chance to save ourselves. All the dangerous organizations throughout history are now in the past, and for the most part can no longer harm us. But the republican party is here and now, is perhaps Chomsky's main point, and because of certain strange cultural phenomena is now in a position to bring its dangerous ideas directly into our lives.

Believing Anything

THE AMERICAN FOSSIL FUEL industry receives all kindsa tax breaks and other help from we the American people for the purpose of building its infrastructure. Thousands of miles of pipeline, over time, develop numerous leaks, which result in millions of gallons of fuel being leaked into the environment, polluting, and raising the cost of fuel as the expense is passed on to you know who. Evidently enough natural gas is lost each year to power seven million homes, according to the industry. Under Obama, the Environmental Protection Agency, doing the job for which it is intended, issued a ruling, an order if you will, or call it a regulation that all leaks must be repaired by the various corporations at their own expense. Sounds reasonable enough, don't you think? Repairs are necessary, and seem to be slow getting done, and whose responsibility is it, really? The owners, perhaps? Guess who the most outspoken opponents of this regulation are? Yes, the usual suspects. First, the owners. The fossil fuel companies themselves, Trump, the republicans in congress, the incoming EPA director, and conservative America in general, including, presumably, the evangelical wing of the right wing. This regulation is a prime example of the odious, burdensome, government overreach which hinders business and slows the economy, according to the conservative republican Trumpified segment of America. Corporations, required to repair their own equipment to avoid polluting. How horrible! For the corporations, it is far less expensive to charge the American consumers for the cost of the lost fuel, rather than to invest in repairing infrastructure, so quite naturally they are vehemently opposed to the regulation. Every fossil fuel company insists that it cares deeply about the problem, and plans to take action to solve it, and does not require any government interference to do so. And if you believe that, you'll believe anything. And just as a warning; beginning anytime now, we can expect to see many regulations attacked by the new federal government, and the tragedy is that nearly all of these regulations are for our own good, and should be kept in place.

Misapprehending

WHEN I WAS IN SIXTH GRADE, in 1966, I had a crush on my teacher, and, I got to be a "Patrol Boy". I put on a bright orange Sam Brown belt and directed students across the street coming and going to school. It was a prestigious position. My guess is that now there are so such things as patrol boys, that all this traffic and pedestrian control is accomplished through highly trained adult police officers and computerized stop lights. Too bad. One day on patrol I started trying to imagine what cars would look like in 1968, which was two whole years into the remote future. Since the future was so far away, I assumed that by 1968 cars would look like science fiction inventions like spaceships or something, and might even be able to fly. On course, none of that ever came true, and now the distance between 1966 and 1969 seems much smaller. In 1969, wide eyed, I saw the classic movie "2001: A Space Odyssey" on the big screen, and I firmly believed that it was an accurate portrayal of the future. I thought that when I became a middle aged man i would have my choice of living on the moon or Mars. I was wrong about other things too. In 1969 I read the book "The Population Bomb" by Paul Ehrlich, who I believe still teaches at Cal Berkeley, and makes no apologies for the fact that his dire predictions and warnings about over population and mass starvation in the nineteen nineties did not, thank goodness, materialize, mainly because of revolutionary agricultural developments. The year 2017 always seemed like the remote, science fiction filled future, and now, here it is, much different than what most of us would have expected. It is now obvious to me that the world we have now is the one we were making in the nineteen sixties, unpredictable as it was back then, and that we are now making the future world, the one in which our great grand children will live. I hope we do a good job.

Making Us Better

RACISM IN AMERICA is a core value, because it emerged early as a justification for one of America's founding institutions and principles, slavery. The abolitionist movement was never strong enough to transform American society, and the government was in the hands of self serving slave owners. Legalized slavery was finally replaced with de facto slavery, segregation, and racism. Ever since, the only forces that have mitigated racism in America have been sustained protest movements by small percentages of minorities, and modern government. Although America remains a racist nation, whatever progress had been made in racism's mitigation has been forced down the throats of the mainstream American culture by the federal government, through agitation, legislation, regulation, and social engineering. This has been acconplished through a sustained, albeit precarious and painful effort. The fundamental characteristic of traditional conservatism is its belief in small government, its adherence to the doctrine that society should be allowed to evolve naturally, without government interference. This is seen as freedom from tyranny, and freedom to hold unpopular or undesirable opinions and beliefs. The incoming President and Attorney General are people who believe that laws prohibiting racist actions are examples of government overreach, alarmingly. It took the American government a long time to start trying to force racial equality down the American throat, because racism enjoyed its status as a core value. Without government intervention, as it became obvious that American society, left to its own devices, was never going to evolve into a racially egalitarian culture; it was only going to enshrine racism and inequality ever more securely. The persistence of racism in America is a testament to the limits of government action. The progress in eliminating the most egregious racist institutions in the United State is a testament to the effectiveness and desirability of using the power of the federal government to assist American society towards desirable evolutionary directions it would never follow otherwise. We want the freedom to behave badly, but only to a point. We need government in America, because, whether we like to admit it or not, government can make us better people.

Going In The Wrong Direction

ITS OFFICIAL. 2016 was the hottest year on record, breaking last year's record, which broke the previous year's, and so forth. 2016 was the second hottest year in the United States, close enough to the top to cause concern. Climate change is real, its bad, and its getting worse fast. It may be too late already to do anything about it. Even if all fossil fuel burning were stopped now, global warming would continue for the next fifty years, and it will get bad. Climate change is already obvious, no matter where you live in the United States, with ever more violent weather events, and extremes. But not only are we continuing to use fossil fuels, we are increasing their use, which may be enough to destroy human life by the year 2117. And now, of course, Donald Trump might actually reverse the progress made under President Obama, which could be the final straw. Hard core American conservatism is the source of climate change denial. The incoming head of the Environmental Protection Agency should be professor Michael Mann, chairperson of the atmospheric studies department at Penn St., whose latest book is a must read, entitled: "The Madhouse Effect: How Climate Change Denial is Damaging the Planet, Destroying Our Politics, and Driving Everyone Crazy". Instead, the incoming EPA chief is a person who denies climate change, and hates the EPA, as evidently Donald J. Trump also does. If a scientist who understands climate change were placed in power, we could move ahead with rapid solar energy development, and renewing the planet's tree canopy with genetically engineered super trees which could absorb millions of times more carbon than ordinary trees. Its all possible. But the way we are currently headed, and the people who are going to form American climate policy, we are doomed, unless the rest of the world and the leader's of America's cities and states can compensate for the lack of federal programs to fight global warming. If only Jerry Brown had been elected president.

Squabbling At the Senior Center

AT THE SENIOR CENTER I don't mind hanging out on the edges. I'm the second youngest one there, and many of them are not terribly friendly. Even the ones who constantly volunteer and serve the community are not necessarily friendly, even though they're wonderful people. Unless you force yourself on them with eye contact, smile, and greeting, many of not most of the over eighty crowd neither speaks nor initiates contact. Sometimes you wonder what kind of attitude folks have, and how much underlying fear and anger built up over a lifetime. I noticed that the Bible study group had stopped meeting, so I decided to ask about it. I offered to start another Bible study class, and indicated that I intended to teach it the way Bible study is taught at Harvard; historical, critical, factual, scientific. The Director didn't directly answer my question about the former study group, but vaguely alluded to the fact that it had broken up and ceased to exist due to disagreements of some sort among those participating. I didn't have to use my imagination much to imagine various possible scenarios. The Director further indicated that she was skeptical about the Harvard approach, because she assumed that all the historical scientific factual stuff would leave out the spiritual inspirational devotional part, and, to a point, she is right. Of course, rigorous academic Bible study needn't replace devotional Bible study; it can add to it. Or maybe not. Just the other day there was an senior center meeting, anyone was welcome, to make decisions concerning the Bingo program, which is a good fund raising activity. On the surface, this topic is neither earth shaking, controversial, nor rocket science. How ugly can a community meeting to discuss senior Bingo become? Very, evidently. At least, it evidently can at our senior center, here in the middle of small town American nowheresville. One lady reportedly walked out, crying. Fpr real. Now, that just aint right. Something is very wrong here, right? Remember, we're talking about the salt of the earth here. Conservative Christian rural Americans in their seventies, eighties, and nineties. So, what's the problem? Bible study and bingo? Really? You have got to be kidding me, but tragically, you aren't. You, the Christian conservative wing of the republican party, really are that angry. Can you imagine these people trying to have a civil discussion about politics or public affairs? As if a little gay marriage and transgender civil rights and a few million Mexicans can piss off so many Americans that we elect Trump, and fight over Bible study and bingo at the senior.

Asking Sensible Questions

WE BEGIN THE NEW YEAR the same way we ended the old one - in mortal danger, with imminent doom. We have only ourselves to blame, and a reasonable chance to change course and become healthy. Reversing climate change and eliminating nuclear weapons from the planet is where we need to start. For this to happen, we must have leaders who recognize these as problems. We also need to figure out a way to make sure computers can not and are not used by nations as weapons against each other. That's a tall order. The internet is a jungle, with no rules, and evil powerful forces can cause havoc at will. Just the other day an American company announced that it had found malevolent malicious and very Russian software on its computer. Gee, how surprising. Contrary to what Donald Trump and his Russian friends, Putin and company, might tell you, not only can the CIA and FBI tell the difference between advanced Russian spyware and a teenager in his parent's basement. So can anybody else, especially corporations and computer experts; everyone except, evidently, Putin and Trump. Do you think it might be a good idea for every company and government agency in America to check its computers for spyware? Do you think maybe Putin wanted to get Trump elected for a reason, just maybe? Is it remotely possible that this reason is that Putin wants to invade any and every computer system in America which has important information on it, and steal the information, and he thinks he can get away with it much easier working with Donald Trump, who denies that its happening? Maybe that's why Putin did not respond to Obama's sanctions. Maybe Putin is simply waiting quietly for Trump to take over, so he can finish his project of conquering the United States with computers. Who knows?