Maybe next year

Ain't it funny, how time slips away?  Christmas has come and gone and I hope you guys had a fine holiday, however you chose to celebrate it.  No trip to my sister's home this year;  Christmas Eve was spent at my niece's place with the traditional lasagna dinner.  Her new husband is from Lebanon so there was a tasty assortment of Middle Eastern appetizers, which I enjoyed thoroughly.  I like the way my sister's family has developed their own holiday traditions, much different than those of my childhood, the most significant being the Christmas Day foray to the movie theater.  One year we saw one of the new Star Wars movies and watching a movie on Christmas Day is a dumb idea to me.  I must be getting old because it seems to be a popular idea; the theater was packed.  And tonight is New  Year's Eve, so Happy 2020, guys.

-----

It looked like there was some channeling of Herman Melville going on, what with the discussion of whales and such.  Nice job, fellas, but I have a question for you two.  If whales are so intelligent, how can some guys in a rowboat chase them down and stick them with harpoons?  I would think that they could swim fast enough to get away, or at least dive deeply and get out of harm's way but whale behavior and psychology is not one of my strong suits.  There must be more to the tale of the whale.

-----

If memory serves, Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union, wasn't it?  It's hard to tell where Russia ends and Ukraine begins but Putin is playing chess while the Dumpster is playing tiddly-winks.  They are not playing the same game, not at all.  The Russians have a long term game plan, and so far it's working well for them.  I don't think they really cared who won the election in 2016; their goal is to destabilize the US and let NATO fall apart.  A Clinton victory would have just taken more time.  There was a book written in Russia more than twenty years ago, I may have mentioned it before, and it outlines their game plan very clearly.  The title is The Foundations of Geopolitics and I don't think there is an English translation yet.  It's a playbook for the Russian military leadership and the US intelligence community doesn't seem to give it much weight.  Meanwhile the US keeps getting sucked more deeply into Middle Eastern intrigue; today I heard some pundit talk about resuming the Draft if things start going sideways in Iran and Syria, as if they weren't sideways enough already.  Its like Vietnam all over again, this time in the desert instead of a jungle. 

-----

There were times in 2019 when I didn't think we'd make it through the year, and yet here we are, looking forward to a new start in 2020.  Election time, Yippee!  I can't wait  to see how the story will unfold and I remain cautiously optimistic.  Happy New Year!

Should Biden testify?

My opposition was to mandatory armed guards in schools.  A lot of public spaces, especially government places have armed guards and if Walmart decides to hire armed guards, well that is up to them.  The guard in Texas seems to have excellent credentials and is not some mope who is making a few bucks by packing iron.  In this case well done. 

There are many incidents of people with perfectly good firearm licenses for concealed carry shooting people they don't like or shooting innocent bystanders by accident.  I don't post them because they are anecdotal evidence.  There are all kinds of incidents for or against people carrying guns, and if you want to cherry pick just the ones that support your position that will not carry any weight in a debate, and rightly so.


Last Sunday one of the talking heads shows did a thing on misinformation.  In their campaigns the Russkies are not so much interested in presenting a point of view, but in presenting many points of view so that people are confused and don't know what to believe.  For instance there is no proof, not a scintilla, that the Ukraines tried to sabotage Trump's election or that there is some mysterious computer in Ukraine, or that Hunter Biden did anything wrong, but the Trumpists repeat them over and over so people raise up their hands and say this guy says this and that guy says that and I don't what to believe, and thereby a false story gains the credit of becoming maybe true.

I want to say at this point that Biden should not have given his son that job in Ukraine.  Lots of pols, and Trump is the king of offenders, give plums to their kids, but that doesn't make it right.  But still he did do a pretty good job and again there is no evidence he did anything wrong.

Should Biden testify then?  On the one hand sure, he has nothing to hide and maybe this will be a bargaining chip to get some of Trump's cohorts to testify.  On the other hand it won't be an honest interrogation, it will be machine gunner coatless Jim Jordan and his ilk not asking honest questions but spewing bile, and the Trumpists will certainly not reciprocate by allowing any Trump cohorts to testify. 

Well Happy New Years gentlemen.

Speaking of Debates

Nothing is wrong with organized debates, I just never developed an interest in them myself, but there is nothing wrong with other people being interested in them.  I was a busy boy back in my high school days and, if I had joined the debating team, I would have had to cut something else out of my life.

Speaking of debates, we haven't argued about guns for awhile.  I seem to remember that Uncle Ken was of the opinion that armed security guards in schools and other public places would be ineffective.  Since then, lots of schools and even some churches have employed them, with mixed results.  There was one case where the security guard took cover behind his car instead of entering the building to go after the shooter.  Well, nobody said it was a perfect solution.  I'm pretty sure there have been other cases where the guards did what they were supposed to do, but I can't remember a specific one at the moment.  Here's one that happened in Texas yesterday:  Two victims were killed, but a volunteer security guard took the shooter out before he could do any more damage.  There were a half dozen other parishioners who had drawn their weapons by then, just in case the guard needed some backup.  Did I mention this happened in Texas?

https://a.msn.com/r/2/BBYtmdR?m=en-us&referrerID=InAppShare

There was another incident in Texas recently, but I heard it on the TV news so I can't provide a link.  At least three armed men tried to break into somebody's house and the homeowner killed them all with his trusty shotgun.  I think the owner took a bullet as well but, last I heard, he was expected to recover.  The local sheriff reported that there would be an investigation but, if everything is as it appears to be now, those crooks got what was coming to them.

Again from the TV news, I didn't catch the name of the town, but I believe it was in Michigan.  A knife wielding assailant entered a private home and started stabbing people.  One of the occupants got a firearm out of the closet and dropped the assailant in his tracks.  This local sheriff said that, pending an investigation, it looks like it was the access to the firearm that saved everybody's life.

Of course this is anecdotal evidence, which wouldn't cut it in a formal debate, but it's better than nothing.

What's wrong with organized debates?

They were called sophists,  They are first mentioned in Athens around 600 BC.  Just as the Greeks had taken mathematics from the everyday practice of figuring out how to determine the area of a farmer's field by abstracting it into points and lines and developing theorems, they took argument and analyzed it, and discovered rules for arguments that held true no matter what the argument was for or against. 

Aristotle and many of his ilk didn't like them.  At first you would wonder why not.  Didn't the philosophers use argument to make their points?  Didn't the philosopher who had a better argument win the populace over a philosopher whose argument was not so good?  I suspect it was the neutrality of the art of argument that disturbed them, much as it did Beagles 2500 years later in the halls of Gage Park High.  There is an element of underhandedness in it.  If your cause is right and the valor of your army unquestioned, will you still not lose the battle against the army that has invented a better sword or bow and arrow, even if their cause is unjust and their soldiers less then valorous?  If you have a dispute with your neighbor isn't the guy who can afford to hire a better lawyer going to win the case no matter what the merits of the case?

It is more complicated then that of course but I think the sophists were the forefathers of the modern day lawyer.  They arise just as Athens was adopting its limited democracy.  Before that there were tyrants and their was no point in arguing your case because whatever the tyrant said goes. 

You know I am a big fan of Objective Reality and seemingly in an organized argument the weight of the facts would determine the truth, but as you examine the art of argument you can devise strategies that, while not breaking the rules, are a bit underhanded.  When you hire a lawyer you are not interested so much in how scrupulous he is, as you are in whether or not he is going to win the case for you by hook or by crook.

I think there is value in debating for a cause you don't necessarily believe in.  You have to investigate why people believe in the cause you are arguing against and there is something you can learn there.  When making your arguments you have to be aware of what the other guy is likely to say against it, and if in analysis of that you discover that your argument is weak then you will have to abandon it.  This is all for the good.

It Could Happen

I tuned into that killer whale show in the middle, so I don't know if they explained how this cooperative hunting behavior got started but, the more I think about it, I think I know how it could have happened.

Predators are always looking for an easy meal, which is why most of them will scavenge on occasion.  A predator will not last long if it routinely expends more calories hunting its prey than it receives by consuming it.  Perhaps the human whalers were in the habit of throwing their whaling and fishing scraps into the harbor, which would attract the killer whales and other predators.  Maybe a killer whale was observed feeding in the harbor and the whalers set forth to harpoon it.  The killer whale then fled the scene with the whalers in pursuit, ultimately leading them to the rest of the pod which, coincidently, happened to be attacking a large whale at the time.  The whalers then shifted their attention to the large whale, which they ultimately killed and towed back to the harbor for processing. The killers followed the whalers in hopes of recovering their prize, and ended up settling for the discarded scraps.  I understand that whales and other marine mammals are pretty smart, so the killer whales might have deduced that this was an easier way to make a living than hunting on their own.  This is similar to the way it is generally believed that the hunting partnership of humans and canines got started.

On the other hand, the more I think about it, it is doubtful that the Biblical Jonah could have survived for several days in the belly of a great fish because there would have been no air in there for him to breathe.  Maybe it was only several minutes, it just seemed like several days to Jonah.  Then again, what are the chances that the fish would have vomited Jonah out onto the dry land instead of way out in the ocean, where whale sharks spend most of their time?  I have heard that porpoises have been known to save people from drowning by pushing them onto the shore, but it is not known if the porpoises did that on purpose.  Maybe porpoises just like to push things around for fun, and the people who were, coincidently, pushed further out to sea never lived to tell the tale.

I never joined the debating team at Gage Park because the idea of formalized debates never appealed to me.  I particularly didn't like the idea that I wouldn't get to choose what side of the question I would be assigned to debate.

bring back real debates

Yes indeed, I took a lot of liberties in my tale of the baleen whales,  I liked the idea of an animal freeing itself from the surly bonds of the work a day world of hunting for prey and headed into the deep indigo sea where they could just drift the wide and deep oceans absorbing krill as they went without having to really think about it so that they could think their deep thoughts.  Actually it turns out that they do have to seek out the swarms of krill.

I had liked to think that they're mouths had lost the capacity to open and close, and that they had abandoned the world of flashing teeth and blood in the water to just strain their food from the bountiful oceans as they went.  But I was at an uneasy loss as to how that would work, and it turns out that they do indeed open their mouths, wide, and gulp in great amounts of water and then they shut them and expel all that water and that is when the krill are trapped in the baleen net.  It would seem likely then that their great tongues, pretty much everything about a whale is great, to lick the baleen down into the depths of their great stomachs.  But at this point my interest in the subject has faded away


I am a little skeptical (naturally) of Beagles' documentary.  There is doubtless truth in it, but killer whales have no need of puny humans teaching them how to hunt whales, they have been doing it on their own since before we ventured out on our rickety boats.  A killer whale is unlikely to go off like Lassie after Timmy has fallen down the well (again, what is wrong with that kid?) and get the humans to join in because after all what do they bring to the party?  Sounds like maybe they were relating a whale of a tale to their gullible kiddies as adults often do, and then the kids were just relating that tale and adding some embroidery to it as kids often do.  The only part that rings true is how the killer whales finally came to their senses and stopped coming around.  Water mammals have long had a fascination with humans and their doings so maybe they just played along for awhile and then got bored.


Early on in the current procedure I posted a link to a New Yorker article on impeachment.  I thought it was well-written and when I came across a doorstop of a book on the history of the US by the author, Jill Lapore, I snapped it up, but I have to say it is has a lot of propaganda in it, good liberal propaganda, but propaganda nevertheless.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, well not quite we are into the Lincoln Douglas debates and it is about ten years before the guns of Fort Sumter will blast forth.  Anyway the Lincoln Douglas debates caught my attention and I am thinking how different they were from those endless hearings where every fucking rep got five minutes to have his say whether he had anything to say or not. 

I guess the dem primary debates (there will be no rep primary debates) were better, but the whole idea of moderators asking questions seems to me to be basically flawed.  If the candidates have something to say let them say it, and if other candidates disagree let them say why, and let the first guy reply to that and so on.

I was in a debate club at Tilden Tech before I got to Gage Park and I am pretty sure that Beagles was in the one there, and what I remember most was that there were rules.  I don't remember what exactly they were, but it was something like you started out announcing your points and then the two sides debated those points, and here is the thing that I think was most important, you had to keep on point, and you would lose points by going off by calling your opponent a loser.

We need to go back to something like that.

A Whale of a Tale

I am assuming that Uncle Ken's anthropomorphic rendering of his whale story is inspired by creative license, and that he knows that whales did not really evolve on purpose.  The only creature I know of that ever made a deliberate attempt to influence its own evolution was humans.  The science behind it was called eugenics, but it was eventually abandoned after Hitler gave it a bad name.  Then there's genetic engineering, there's no telling where that might lead us.  They are already making fake meat from genetically engineered yeast.  I understand that this fake meat is indistinguishable from real meat, but I'll never know for sure because I have no intention of ever eating that shit.

I remember seeing some whales on TV once that were working together to drive their prey into a tight school by blowing bubbles, and then plowing through it with their mouths open.  I think the food was herring, but I suppose it would work with krill as well.   (I am not making this up.)

Another time I saw a show on PBS about a pod of killer whales in England, or maybe it was New England, that had learned to hunt other whales with human assistance.  They would chase and harass a larger whale for awhile, and then some of them would break off and go get some human help from this coastal fishing village.  The humans would launch their boats and the killer whales would lead them to the targeted whale.  All the humans wanted was the blubber to make oil, so the killer whales got everything else.  This was supposed to be a true documentary, not a work of fiction.  All the men that had participated in this enterprise were dead by then, but they interviewed their descendants, some of whom claimed to have personally witnessed it in their youth.  They said that this had gone on for years until, one year, the killer whales stopped coming around for unknown reasons.

dropping out into the deep indigo sea

Apparently Beagles is plumb tuckered after his journey over the river and through the woods.  I know how he feels, a day with the family can be pleasant but it is also exhausting.


So when we were last with the dogwhales they were spreading deeper across the continental shelf, much like our forefathers moving on when the smoke from the nearest settler's chimneys became visible, and have glimpsed the depths with their siren song.  And perhaps it entered their brains that it would be pleasant to turn on, tune in, and drop out: turn on to the siren song of mother nature, tune in to the currents of the deep and endless sea, and drop out of the rat race of hunting up food whenever their stomachs growled.  But still they would have to eat something,

And here is where krill came in.  I had thought krill were microscopic, but wiki tells me that they are teeny tiny shrimplike things a few millimeters in length feeding on microscopic plants and animals, stuff too tiny for bigger animals to eat so they sort of convert this dust into  bigger chunks, still too small for the big teeth of a dogwhale.  It must have taken some time for them, some trial and error, to come up with baleen, but when it was perfected it was like having a net in your mouth,  It is unclear to me if baleen whales open and close their mouths, but I'm guessing probably not, they just slurp up in the krill. 

I'd have liked to have thought that the baleen whales just cruised through their food, so like they didn't even have to think about it, but apparently krill are swarming animals so they have to hunt up swarms.  I'm going to take a big leap of faith here and assume that it's not that much trouble.  It's not like you have to sneak up on a swarm of krill, you just cruise up to one and then through it.

I like to think that they're minds are free, free to think deep thoughts as they cruise the depths, flying without the need to flap wings constantly or search out a rising current, between daytime and nighttime just by rising and falling. 


Kind of in the doldrums here, the Sargasso Sea between the holidays, barely in 2019, almost into 2020,  New Years Eve, I am guessing it was the same for Beagles as it was for me, since we were so close in space and time, God knows what it was like in the faraway north side for Old Dog five to ten years later, but we had an array of noisemakers and when the clock stuck exactly twelve we were out onto the front porch banging away to beat the band, and so were the people in the next porch and the one after that.  It is a sweet memory.

Christmas Eve, Gentlemen

Christmas eve.  I don't want to revel in the inhumanity man shows to his fellow man to keep salsa from the tables of the diners in Cheboygan, I'll leave that for Beagles.


I don't remember where I heard it, seems to me it may have been on I Remember Mama, which makes me think that it came from the Norsemen.  Seems to me the sort of thing that they might have thought though they weren't much in the way of Christians until maybe a thousand years ago, but you know how it is with converts. Anyway the story is that our animals can speak to us on Christmas eve.

Seventy some years with cats and I can't say that I have ever heard so much as a howdy do.  I just asked Buddy, if he had anything to say and he looked at me like he was choosing the words that he would speak, but then he didn't say anything.  Well that's pretty much the way with cats every day. they always look like they are about to do something and then they don't do anything.  Even if they could, excuse me, choose, to speak I don't see them as being chatterboxes.  Your dog on the other hand, you know he or she would talk your ear off. 

In fact isn't Beagles' full name Talks with Beagles?  So I guess he would know something about it, maybe that's why he no longer has dogs, got tired of having his ear talked off, and not to sound like a cat snob, but I just don't think that dogs would have that much to say.

Those baleen whales, from that show that I saw last week that has stuck in my mind, their forebears were not unlike dogs rooting about in the seashore for prey, then hearing the siren call of the sea.  I used to hear the siren song of the sea, whenever I was at a lakeshore or an ocean and the waves came lapping out onto the beach and then slowly receded, and if you listened closely to the hiss of the water you could hear, come to me, return to your mother.  Well I could, but then I used to do a lot of drugs.

But anyway those whale forebears probably heard that too, they went deeper, they stayed longer, they noticed with a bit of alarm their legs melting into fins, but then they noticed how much better they could swim.  At first I imagined it worked pretty well, food was aplenty and living was easy.

Too easy, the shore became replete with dogwhales and a guy had to hustle to keep a full stomach.  Sometimes chasing prey and avoiding competition a dogwhale would come to the edge of the continental shelf.  Whoa, the floor dropped completely away, how deep, how dark, how fearsome, but somewhere from the depths he heard, come to me, return to your mother.


To be continued, possibly killing time tomorrow before I board the train to the north shore while Beagles drives over the river and through the woods, and Old Dog makes his way to his sister's, hopefully with a mincemeat pie that he has just baked.

Last I Heard

"As for that correction,  Isn't it marvelous what you can do when you separate children from their parents and keep them in cages?.  I reckon you are pretty proud.  Is immigration low enough for you now, or do you want to keep still more out?  Do you still want that big beautiful wall?"

Last I heard, they were no longer separating the children of illegal immigrants from their parents.  I seem to remember that that was stopped some time ago by a court order.  Of course court orders can be appealed, and I don't know the current status of that one.  Also, last I heard, the reason they were keeping illegals in cages was because there was no room left in the regular jails.  These people have committed a crime, and they need to be locked up somewhere at least until the overburdened courts can resolve their cases.  Also, last I heard, another court order said that they can only lock up illegal immigrants with children for 20 days.  After that, they were being released on the U.S. side of the border to await their court appearances.  I have heard that most of them were not showing up for their court dates, but I have also heard that most of them were indeed showing up, so I don't know what to believe about that one.  

I have said many times that I'm not a great fan of Donald Trump.  I disagree with some of his positions, but I do agree with him that illegal immigration should be curtailed.  The ham handed methods he has used to accomplish this goal might be necessitated by Congress's lack of effort to reform our immigration laws, but maybe not, since ham handedness seems to be Trump's preferred approach to most issues.  I was pleased to hear that illegal immigration has declined by 70% in the last seven months.  At that rate, it will be down to zero in another three months, which is where it should be.  Of course there's no guarantee that it will continue to decline at that rate, but one can only hope.  I have also said before that the Wall alone will not keep them out, but it might slow them down a little, which is better than nothing.  

Get Together

As for that correction,  Isn't it marvelous what you can do when you separate children from their parents and keep them in cages?.  I reckon you are pretty proud.  Is immigration low enough for you now, or do you want to keep still more out?  Do you still want that big beautiful wall?

Here's a little excerpt from a letter I wrote  to the girlfriend of Craig, another beer-drinking Champaign buddy of mine who died recently.  I thought I would pass it along.

We moved into 501, our great hippie house on the banks of the Boneyard river in September of 1968, about nine of us, but the numbers kept changing.  We weren't peace and love hippies just beer-drinking, dope-smoking hippies.
 

A couple of the guys were still in school, Slivon, who I've written about previously, had done his time in Vietnam, another guy  was in the national guard,  and one of us was a woman.  My 2-S was gone and I was sweating it.  That was in between the dope and the beer of course.

There was another guy who stayed there for awhile, Schroeder, a high school buddy of Craig.  He was back from Vietnam and he was rah rah about it, not like Slivon who didn't like to talk about it.  But other than that he was okay, we made fun of him a little.  One night we were sitting on the roof drinking beer and we noted his Chrysler, he had a new Chrysler, parked in the back.  One by one we stepped to the edge of the roof and peed on it.  As the last one of us was zipping up we heard him yelling from inside and we all laughed.

It wasn't a big deal, if any of us had owned a Chrysler, or a car of any sort we would have pissed on that too.  Like all guys just back from Vietnam he had plenty of money and he was generous with it, and we liked  him okay, and he became less rah rah about the war.

There was something called The Mobe (short for mobilization), an anti war conglomerate, and maybe it was them or somebody else, but sometime in the summer of 1969 there was an anti Vietnam war day.  We weren't marching types but we thought we should do something.
 

Craig, the guy who collected the rent and walked it over to the bank who owned the place and was sort ot our leader bought a minute on the local tv channel, the sound was the Youngbloods Get Together, the video was a still of a peace symbol and the words were Brought to you by James Schroeder and his peaceful friends.  Craig didn't want his name on it, and probably we thought that having the name of a Vietnam vet on it would give it more heft.

I'm not sure if it had any heft.  I don't remember anybody saying much about it afterwards.  We had a working tv at 501 at the time and several of us gathered to watch it, on a commercial break from Dialing for Dollars I think.  Then I'm sure we had a beer or a joint, and that was it.
G

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_inXx-J3nU

Correction

I was mistaken about the number of illegals entering the country lately.  Apparently it was closer to 144,000 than 160,000, and that record was set last May, not last March.  Furthermore, the number of apprehensions has since declined by more than 70%, which puts the current number well under 100,000 per month.  The good news is that this seems to indicate that Trump's efforts to reduce illegal immigration are working.  Just think how much good he can do if we give him another four years!

"Arrests on the U.S. side of the border with Mexico have fallen more than 70 percent since May, when 144,116 migrants were taken into custody amid a record influx of families and children from Central America."

"The Trump administration has implemented deterrent measures making it significantly more difficult for migrants who cross the border to qualify for U.S. asylum protections. Since the beginning of the year, border officials have sent more than 53,000 migrants back to Mexico to wait outside U.S. territory while their asylum claims are processed."

https://a.msn.com/r/2/BBYd6yO?m=en-us&referrerID=InAppShare

whale dreams

Impeachment is done.  I never said Christmas wouldn't come, and it hasn't yet, but you don't hear me commenting every day that Christmas isn't here yet.  I think it's a Christmas favor that Nancy has done us, so that our yuletide season is not spoiled by the sight of snarling republicans one after another, hysterical to a man.  It's probably good for them too, some of them looked like their tickers were about to tick off. 

Looks like it has also snarled the snarler in chief and now he is back to having a circus instead of a stately bit of pomp.  Good.  It will keep us warm through that slow snow slog to Groundhog Day.  The Solstice is tomorrow and the days will be getting longer and we our on our way to spring.  And you'll notice that I won't be noting every post until then that it is not yet spring.

I have been painting alleys lately, and have been getting a few comments about how I should put rats or cats or worst of all, people, in my alleys.  If it's not a painting of people I never put people in it.  You can paint purple mountain majesties, golden plains, skies abrim with combating cumulus clouds; you can skew perspective amusingly, make a symphony of textures, use your burnt sienna more deftly than ever before, but if you put in even one tiny, barely more than a stick, person, way over to the side in a part of the painting where nothing much is going on, that will be all that people will see.  Gone will be the purple and gold, the skew, the elaborate pattern of textures, and that deft burnt sienna, because all they will be seeing is that guy and wondering if his girl dumped him just as their girl dumped them, or if he had his candy bar not drop after he put in his 85 cents just like happened to them.

I had whales on my mind, glorious leviathans, sailing from pole to pole like we step out to the Seven Eleven to get a pack of gum, and all Beagles has to respond with is some obscure biblical fable. 

I meant to do a bit of reading on those fantastic baleen whales but the candidates were debating, felt it my civic duty, you know a democracy if you can keep it, and all.  Seven of them, fighting it out to be the one to slay the dragon and bring peace to the kingdom, and even in the midst of a bit of petty squabbling I have to say, how much more pleasant to behold than the Trumpists.  Folks you would be pleased to invite into your home for a cup of Joe or a cold one, whereas if one of those reps came walking across your lawn, and they would walk across your lawn even if they had to go out of their way to do it because Goddammit, that's why Goddamnit! you would be pounding nails into the board you put across the door and calling the cops.

I used to be a Warren guy, and I guess I still am, but not so gobsmacked.  I don't like Biden much, four years of listening to his self righteous bogus tough guy talk, not appealing, but whatever it takes to win.

Got in some baleen wiki-ing, not much, but enough to discover, as I always do, that it is more complicated than I thought it was, so I think I will just go with how I thought it was.

More on the baleen whales next week. 

Now What?

I heard something about this on the TV news this evening, and I wasn't sure that I undersrtood it until I found this on my news app just now:

"Meanwhile, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi hasn't immediately sent over the impeachment articles to the Senate as she awaits the trial rules. The California Democrat suggested late Wednesday that she couldn't commit to transmitting the articles until she could be assured of a fair trial. But on Thursday, Pelosi indicated that they're waiting to see what's agreed upon in the Senate so that she can name the House managers who will present the articles and evidence to the upper chamber."
https://a.msn.com/r/2/BBYaZjU?m=en-us&referrerID=InAppShare

Apparently, thus impeachment thing is still not a done deal.  It seems the Senate has to decide on the format of the trial before Pelosi will formally present them with the articles of impeachment.  If that never happens, and she doesn't do it, then what?  Does that make the whole thing null and void?  You know, I never said that it wasn't going to happen, I just said that it hasn't happened yet, and it apparently still hasn't.

One thing I know about whales is that the Biblical Jonah was not swallowed by one.  The Bible says that he was swallowed by a "great fish" and, of course, whales are mammals not fish.  There is, however, a fish called the "whale shark", which is not really a whale at all, and not much of a shark either.  This guy goes around with its mouth open sucking in krill and other small stuff. kind of like a baleen whale, but not exactly.  It has at least two stomachs, maybe more, I don't remember.  the first stomach acts kind of like a bird's crop, just storing the food until the second stomach is ready to receive it.  The opening into the second stomach is restricted so that nothing very big can pass through.  If something that is too big gets into the first stomach, the whale shark eventually expels it, so the story of Jonah getting "vomited out onto the dry land" after spending several days in the belly of the great fish is not so far fetched after all.  Of course that doesn't prove that it really happened, just that it could have happened.

somewhere beneath the sea

Beagles you are the only one, possibly in the western world, who thought impeachment might not happen so it is no big deal,  The senate will acquit.  There was some talk that Trump wanted a circus, but he has quieted down, though he may change his mind tomorrow.  The real object, the 2020 elections will decide and if the polls continue the way they are going it will not be good news.

I had lost track of what was going on after the committee voted to impeach.  Then they had some kind of hearings, then they had the impeachment vote.  All of these involved long long sequences where everybody in the fucking house got up to speak, and there were only so many things to say so they repeated themselves endlessly.  If I were in charge I would have had each dem just lay out in proven detail what went out with withholding aid to Ukraine, the same simple two paragraphs that drive the point home so clearly.  But maybe they thought that that would be too boring, so they went on, with just stuff.  Perhaps they were influenced  by their far more colorful counterparts the reps.  They had more things to say because they often went off subject into things like how the dems were traitors and how wonderful Donald was, but still there weren't that many different things so they tried to compete with each other for Donald's ear with histrionics, weeping, wailing, gnashing.  Mostly gnashing, anger is the mother's milk of the party of Trump.

And for all this nature is never spent
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things
And though the last light off the black West went
Oh morning at the brown brink eastward springs - 
                                        - G M Hopkins

Down at the end of my cable dial there are a few channels, Science, NatGeo, and Smithsonian, who despite their high toned names usually show the usual crap, you know about space aliens, but sometimes they come through.  The other night one of them had a lovely show about the moons of Saturn, so far from the madness of earth.  Inspiring.  Last night one of them had a show about the evolution of various animals and the one that struck me was the one about whales.

They were just long-snouted doglike animals rooting around the seashore for fish and small animals, and I guess they just became more fond of the surf than the turf and their nose went to the top of their heads their legs became fins, stuff like that and then they were of the sea, but then some of them who went to sea developed baleen, which is where your teeth become like a comb and you just cruise through krill, and when you do that you can go deep, deep beyond the continental shelf, deep beneath the surface, oh and you grow huge, huge. 

One of the things we admire about the animals of the wild is that they never have to go to work, but orcas and their related small whales have to hunt, which is a sort of work, but baleen whales they just cruise following their mysterious paths.  Because their bodies are huge so are their brains, and what do they think when they are one with the sea eating the sea?

 I have to learn more about them.

Where We Was Before We Was?

An old friend of mine was telling this Polish gentleman, for whom English was a second language, about his new bride. At one point the Polish gentleman asked my friend, "Who she was before she was?" After some discussion, my friend determined that the Polish gentleman was asking him what his wife's maiden name was.  It occurred to me that this was a good way to refer to an interesting question that Uncle Ken has brought up:  Where were our souls before we were born into our earthly existence?

I don't think the Bible has a lot to say about it.  In the Genesis creation story, God made man out of mud from the river bank, and then breathed life into him.  The ancient Greek word for "spirit" is the same word for "wind" or "breath", which would seem to indicate that Adam's soul first came into existence when God breathed it in to him.  Furthermore, it is written in the Book of Ecclesiastes that, when we die, our bodies return to the dust from whence they came, and our souls return to God from when they came.  This would seem to be consistent with the Hindu and Buddhist belief that, once a soul has been purified by the experience of multiple incarnations, it is reabsorbed into the soul of God and loses its individual identity.  On the other hand, the Mormons believe in something called "the pre-existence".  The soul goes through several stages of development, of which the earthly life is only one, and not the first one either.  We are sent here to learn things that can't be learned anywhere else, and then we go back and learn some different stuff.  When we have learned enough stuff, we become gods ourselves, each one of us with our very own planet to rule over.  We can't have Earth, however, that one has already been assigned to Jesus.

What do I personally believe about it?  I don't know anymore.  The possibility has occurred to me that the whole idea of a soul existing separate from a physical body might be nothing more than wishful thinking.  Ancient people noticed that there is a difference between a living body and a dead body, and it has something to do with breathing.  When a person ceased to breath, they figured that his soul or spirit had left his body and must have gone somewhere else.  People have been speculating about that ever since.  Many people claim to have found the answer but, truth be known, they are still just speculating.

Well, we can stop speculating about Trump's impeachment, it's finally official.  Now all we've got to speculate about is the Senate trial and, after that, the next election.

the slap and the wa wa

Here's another way I heard the golden rule explained you take some kind of computer simulation of the world, oh let's make it the country to make it simpler, which mirrors the current state of affairs between the races/  And by races I mean the non-biological way like on the surveys, Black, White, Asian, Amerind, and Aleuts and Pacific Islanders too, just to round them out.  The subjects of this experiment are able to manipulate the relations between the races anyway they choose, but they have to remember that they have no choosing as to what race they will be when they get into the game, they could come into it as any race, and this tends to make them all choose for equality in the relations. 

I'm not sure if that actually happened or whether it was just a thought experiment..  It sounds a little bogus because although you told them they could come in as any race they know that would never really happen.  Maybe it's better expressed like in playing a game.  If nobody knew whether they would be the shoe or the iron in a game of Monopoly they wouldn't agree in advance to any special rules for any marker.

Or how about an economy?  What if before you were born you were shown schema of various economic situations from one where the one percent owns ninety-nine percent of everything to where everybody has pretty much the same amount,  and you can choose any one of them but not where you end up in it, like in the first one you have a one in a hundred shot of being in the one percent, but otherwise you end up in the hapless ninety-nine. 

I've always had this picture in my mind, perhaps from my days at Elsdon Methodist, although this is not their dogma, that there is this long line of souls, probably in heaven somewhere and they are all lined up next to a hole in the clouds, and when you make the jump you are headed for the next opportunity, first come, first served, and maybe it looks like you are headed for a cozy childhood in  a rich family in Boston, but for some reason that sperm doesn't stick and you end up under the hot sun of Bangladesh to a family if dung collectors. 

I'll leave it to the biblical scholar to add anything to this, but I don't think that the bible has much to say about where souls are before they inhabit a body  I guess maybe they just don't exist at all, but I kind of like the idea of this endless ghostly line each one eyeing the other nervously and then the plunge and then the slap and the Wa Wa.  Oh I guess I am just a silly sentimentalist. . 

An Interesting Chart

This chart is not about the number of immigrants coming in per year, it's about the total number living in the country at the time and their percentage of the U.S population.

"The term "immigrants" (also known as the foreign born) refers to people residing in the United States who were not U.S. citizens at birth. This population includes naturalized citizens, lawful permanent residents (LPRs), certain legal nonimmigrants (e.g., persons on student or work visas), those admitted under refugee or asylee status, and persons illegally residing in the United States."

My estimate of a million illegals per year is based on the news report that a record number of apprehensions (about 160,000 in one month) were made, I believe it was last March.  I haven't heard of another record breaking month since then, so I assume that the current rate is somewhat lower.  I don't know what that rate is, but I would be surprised if it was much less than 100,000.  At 100,000 per month, that would total 1.2 million per year, so my estimate of a million per year might be conservative.  Any way you look at it, it's a lot of illegals, and that's only counting the ones who were apprehended.

According to the chart, the immigrant population has never been much more than 15%.  It trended downward from about 1910 and bottomed out in 1970 at 5%.  It has increased from there, and now is back up to about 15%.  That doesn't sound alarming until you realize that the total number of immigrants has tripled since 1970, so three times the number of immigrants represents three times the percentage.  Math is my weak subject, but I think that means the native born population has remained stable, while the immigrant population has tripled, which would be consistent with what both Uncle Ken and I have asserted.

Where Uncle Ken and I differ is in our opinions about whether or not a growing U.S. population is desirable.  Uncle Ken, the city mouse, believes the more the merrier, while I, the country mouse, just vant to be left alone.  I am not hoping for Social Security to fail, but I would rather have that happen than to see the pristine swamps of Beaglesonia over run by the hungry hordes.

People have been fighting over real estate since forever.  Non human animals and even plants do it too, so it must be a natural thing.  That doesn't mean we shouldn't try to find a better way to live.  One theory is that, if we can bring our population growth under control, we won't need to periodically expand our range at other people's expense.  For that to work, however, everybody has to do it.  If we do it and the others don't, it will just insure that we will be the next victims trodden underfoot and  cast upon the ash heap of history.

the golden rule

My forefathers got here before WW I also. Although the severe immigration laws of the 20s were not yet in place there were plenty of people calling for them at that time.

I thought that Beagles' claim of a million immigrants a year sounded awfully low.  I went to this site https://www.migrationpolicy.org/programs/data-hub/charts/immigrant-population-over-time which said it was 44 million.  Rereading Beagles I realized that he was talking about illegal immigrants.  If that number is correct than only one in forty four immigrants are illegal, which doesn't sound like that many to me if what you are interested in is driving down the population so far that social security is in jeopardy, which I have to say does not sound like a very laudable goal to me.

It was some years ago that we had a fairly long discussion of racism in The Institute.  Oh my goodness, a quick search reveals that it was just July of this year.  I haven't had time to go over the material, but I'm pretty sure that part of the definition was thinking that the race in question is inferior to other races, and I don't think the white race is inferior.  But I don't know if Beagles believes that some races are inferior to others, or if it matters because what matters to him is that he is white, so he is for white people, and he thinks other white people should think the same way.

Speaking of the Indians Beagles sez:Too bad for them, it's our country now.  See now this just sounds like white people for white people and fuck everybody else.

I was pontificating at the Ten Cat last Friday,  The subject was racists and Trumpists and I was saying that they are not bad people, they love their children and all that, they are just misinformed, they are not in the habit of thinking things through very deeply, and /I was searching for some universal truth of goodness, and I came up with, as I often do, the golden rule.  Here in America we think of it as a Christian thought, but all religions have it in some form. 

The attitude that we took this land away from others and too bad for them, and we should fuck over other races to keep it for ourselves, it just doesn't sound very moral to me.

Too Many People

"When our forefathers got here things had already been settled with the Indians, the people who did not want to let them in were the white people who had gotten here before our forefathers.  People like Beagles.  If Beagles' ilk had had their way Beagles' forefathers would never have been allowed in."

I don't know about Uncle Ken's forefathers, but mine were all here before World War I.

According to historian Mae Ngai, before World War I, the United States had "virtually open borders".^[6]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_Act_of_1924

According to Wiki, U.S. immigration law has changed many times over the years.  I just picked out this one point because it refutes one of the points made by Uncle Ken.  I have said in the past that the main problem I have with the immigration issue is the sheer numbers of immigrants currently being allowed to enter the country illegally.  Last I heard, it was estimated at upwards of a million a year, which is more than has ever been allowed under any of the quotas set by the various immigration laws.

 "Without immigrants our population is shrinking.  If the population continues to shrink then there will be fewer people to pay into social; security.  Immigrants are living in the United States and paying into social security."

That's one of my main points,  I want our population to shrink because there are too many people in this country already, both natives and immigrants.  If that means we lose Social Security, so be it.  Some things are more important than money.

About racism:  It has occurred to me that Uncle Ken's ilk is just as racist as my ilk, the only difference being that Uncle Ken's ilk is against the White race, which is puzzling seeing as many of them are White.

Cutting it short this morning

That doesn't sound at all like social security.  As far as putting money into it expecting to get more out (which by the way, is another reason it's not like a ponzi scheme, about half the people putting in will get less than what they put in, and they know that going in), that's the same thing as buying a
CD.  Every morning I scoop some of my yogurt onto the tinfoil yogurt cap to give to Buddy, one of my cats.  We both like maple syrup yogurt.  That doesn't make me a cat nor Buddy a human being.  If you had wanted to be honest you could have said something like social security has some things in common with a ponzi scheme, but you chose to be untruthful in order to make some point,.  Knowing something is wrong and doing it anyway sounds like sin to me.

Without immigrants our population is shrinking.  If the population continues to shrink then there will be fewer people to pay into social; security.  Immigrants are living in the United States and paying into social security.

When our forefathers got here things had already been settled with the Indians, the people who did not want to let them in were the white people who had gotten here before our forefathers.  People like Beagles.  If Beagles' ilk had had their way Beagles' forefathers would never have been allowed in.

Beagles does not get his ideas from Trump. nor does Trump get his ideas from Beagles, the two of you just drink from the same muddy well of racist crapola.

I've got some kind of flu bug this morning so I am calling it short, also maybe the reason I was so short with Beagles this mornig.

A Ponzi Scheme Indeed

A Ponzi scheme (/ˈpɒnzi/, Italian: [ˈpontsi]; also a Ponzi game) is a form of fraud that lures investors and pays profits to earlier investors with funds from more recent investors. The scheme leads victims to believe that profits are coming from product sales or other means, and they remain unaware that other investors are the source of funds. A Ponzi scheme can maintain the illusion of a sustainable business as long as new investors contribute new funds, and as long as most of the investors do not demand full repayment and still believe in the non-existent assets they are purported to own.

• 
  Wikipedia

Sounds a lot like Social Security to me.  Well, not exactly, but pretty close.  There are no profits or illusions of profits, but the part about the whole system being dependent on new money constantly coming in is spot on.  The money we are now collecting doesn't come from the money we paid in while we were employed.  That money is long gone, paid out to retirees who were drawing from the system at the time.  Importing more people will not help as long as they keep exporting jobs at the same time.  People need to be employed in the U.S. to pay into U.S. Social Security.  People employed in Red China might be paying into the Red Chinese Social Security, but they are certainly not paying into ours.

Of course we don't have problems with crime, traffic, and pollution in Beaglesonia.  That's why I moved here.  If, however, thousands of people a day started swarming in here, we would soon be having those problems like every other overcrowded place.  When the cities and suburbs run out of room, all those extra people will have to go somewhere.  I will likely be long gone by then, but I would prefer to leave this land in better shape than I found it.

It's true that we are all descendants of immigrants, and that the indigenous people did not always welcome them with open arms.  Too bad for them, it's our country now.  Allowing different immigrants to take it away from us will not result in the land being returned to the original occupants, it will just give both us and the originals a different bunch of usurpers to deal with.

I didn't get any of these ideas from Trump, for all I know he got them from me.

A new more modern statue for Liberty Island

I have to wonder about how much traffic and crime is a problem in the swamp and its nearby hamlet.  As for pollution, under wise democratic rule and even some republicans we have cleaned a lot of that up.  Lately we have seen much of that reversed, which, from what Beagles says, he was happy to go along with because he got those supreme court judge picks.  We should be glad that those third world countries are having a lot of babies like we Americans were doing when we were a third world country because they are putting money into the social security system such as we did for our elders when we were young blades.

I do not believe for two seconds that Beagles considered, for any seconds at all, not signing up for social security.  He may have muttered some blather as he did it, but that pen hit the paper as soon as the paper arrived.  I assume Beagles knows what a Ponzi scheme is, and knowing that, he knows social security is not a Ponzi scheme.  It is a common practice, especially currently when truth has lost much of its currency, to wildly exaggerate something in the belief that one is making a stronger point. But rather than strengthen the point all it shows is the writer's disregard for the truth, and such tactics are unseemly in these hallowed halls.  Okay I may do it myself a teeny bit, but I deserve to be called out when I do so, and that is why we have The Scourge.

I don't know what meaning Beagles is attempting to ascribe to those lines on the Statue of Liberty. but I always liked them, made me proud to be an American you know, and I'm sure that Beagles is aware that our forefathers were among those huddled masses cranking out babies like there's no tomorrow. that some of the guys already here, who according to Beagles were in their right mind, did not want coming in. I reckon Beagles would be happy to replace that old timey statue with a new shiny one of a scowling Trump giving the finger.


Speaking of the truth losing its currency.  I have been watching those, oh let's just call them hearings, for like the last two weeks, well anymore they are just background sound.  If it's a southern accent  I know it's a Trumpist, if it's a black accent I know it's a dem.  If it's a woman I look at the screen and if her hair is finely coiffed she's probably a Trumpist and if her hair is a bit in disarray I know that she is a dem.  The most reliable tell though is the anger.  In admiration of their leader, and because they know He is watching them, their outrage knows no bounds, none at all, no Sirree!    Especially admired among them is Machine Gunner Coatless Joe Jordan, and they all emulate his style and some of them do a pretty good job of it.

Where it's at right now (I think) is it's time for amendments to the motion to impeach.  The Trumpists are proposing amendment after amendment knowing that none of them can possibly pass.  The dems can shut this down at any time but they don't want the Trumpists to be able to say that the dems shut them down.  Everything there is to be said has already been said, but as one wag noted, it won't be over until everybody has said everything there is to be said, and now they are on their second or third iteration of everything.  It's a big game of chicken and I suspect the dems will have to shut them down because Machine Gunner Coatless Joe, is like that bunny in the old commercials, can just keeo going and going and going and going and going and going.

Quality of Life

"I reckon that one of the things that upholds Beagles quality of life is his social security check.  What keeps it solvent is young people joining the work place and paying their FICA taxes.  Without immigrants we will not have enough young people to do that." - Uncle Ken

Actually, I wasn't thinking about my Social Security check when I said "quality of life".  I suppose that financial security is one aspect of the quality of life, but I was thinking more about things like crime, traffic, and pollution, all the problems that become worse as the population density increases.  Since the alarm was raised back in the 50s, the US and Europe have done a pretty good job of bringing their population growth under control, while most of the Third World countries have kept cranking out babies like there's no tomorrow.  So why should we bear the consequences of other people's irresponsible conduct?  This must be what that famous poem about the Statue of Liberty was talking about:
"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yeaning to be free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shores.
Send these, the homeless, tempest tossed to me.
I lift my lamp beside the golden door."

Like the Pledge of Allegiance, and quotes from the Bible and Shakespeare, we all grew up hearing this so often that we have committed it to memory.  But, if you really think about it, why would anybody in their right mind want something like this to happen to their homeland?  We already have more of those kinds of people than we can take care of in this country, we certainly don't need to import more of them.

Getting back to Social Security, I never expected to get a dime out of that Ponzi scheme, so anything I get is just found money.  I considered not signing up for it when I became eligible, but then
I thought that, if I don't collect it, somebody else will.  Why shouldn't I get my share before it's all gone?

the princess and the playboy

It seems to me that capitol punishment is one bitter pill that we don't have to swallow.  We haven't been swallowing it much lately (except Texas and Florida, and I'm not sure if they are wolfing it down like they once did), and there have been no ill effects, except that we have to pay for giving the murderers a lifetime stay in the steel hotel, but that's not too bad a price to pay to ease our consciences about the innocent guys we have put to death previously.  Certainly a woman who is raped should have access to an abortion, but shouldn't her sister who wasn't raped have access also?

For a long time I preferred Trump to Pence because I thought Trump would be more harmful to the Republican party, but lately I have come to prefer the white ghost to the madman. 

I'm not sure what Old Dog thinks the Russkies are happy about, the impeachment or the success of Trump in general.  I am guessing the latter.  Nowhere in the labs of Boris and Natasha with all the greatest commie minds could they have ever come up with a more potent weapon to pierce the heart of the USA than Trump.  Of course this reminds me of Princess Diana.  Much of England felt sympathy for her because she was running away from those awful royals, but it wasn't like she was running away with some bold English yeoman, she was running away with a dissolute Egyptian playboy.  Likewise the Trumpists who are usurping the rule of law are not following some Thomas Paine kind of guy, they are following a cheating, philandering, lying sack of shit.

There is always somebody talking about impeaching the prez from the day he is elected, but the dems haven't seriously brought this up until the Mueller report, and our leader, Nancy, has not been for it until a few weeks ago.  To say otherwise is to borrow the talking points of the cheating, philandering, lying sack of shit.  It always seems odd to me that the reps keep claiming that the dems are trying to impeach Trump (only) because we hate him.  Of course we hate him, we hated W too, but we never impeached him.

No they haven't impeached Trump yet.  It is also not Christmas yet.  Geez.

I know I have chastised Beagles in the past for not knowing stuff because he doesn't read much news, but now it looks like he doesn't even read the annals of The Institute.  I've said three or four times that Trump will never be indicted and that the focus is on the election of 2020. That is the point.  It will change no minds among the hard core Trumpists but there is a soft core among them and if we can convince them and add them to the majority of voters who do not like Trump we can unseat him in 2020, though it's unlikely that we can take the senate.  It looked like a good strategy going in, but lately not so much, but if Trump makes too much of a circus out of the senate hearing we may yet succeed.  We dems have long been looking for the straw that will break the elephant's back, but we haven't seen it yet, so I don't know.

I reckon that one of the things that upholds Beagles quality of life is his social security check.  What keeps it solvent is young people joining the work place and paying their FICA taxes.  Without immigrants we will not have enough young people to do that.

"Let's Do It"

These were the last words of Gary Gilmore, who was executed by firing squad in the State of Utah back in 1977.  The firing squad was his choice.  The law in Utah at the time allowed a condemned person to chose his manner of death, and Gilmore chose a firing squad.  He also told all the people who were trying to save him to quit already and let him die in peace.  This memory came back to me as I was trying to think of an appropriate title for a post about the impeachment thing.

I don't remember saying that they would never impeach Trump, just that they haven't done it yet, and they still haven't, although they have been talking about it since the day he was elected over three years ago.  Last I heard, nobody expects the Senate to convict, so what's the point?  It has occurred to me that this is just an election tactic, trying to make Trump look bad to the public, as if he needed any help with that.  Funny thing is that, in spite of everything, I understand that the people who liked Trump in the beginning still like him, and the people who have never liked him still don't.

I thought that new NAFTA thing was Trump's agenda.  I have read that it's not much different from the old NAFTA, but Trump likes to brag about his accomplishments, real or imagined.  It then seems that, if anybody would hold the new NAFTA hostage it would be the Democrats, unless I'm missing something.

Why would the Russians be happy about Trump's pending impeachment?  I thought they were on his side, or he was on their side, or something like that.

"Speaking of birth rate, it's at an all time low.  The only thing keeping us growing is immigration, but let's not bring that up today."  Uncle Ken said this yesterday, so I see no reason not to bring it up today.  I didn't get a vasectomy back in the 70s to make room in this country for more immigrants, I did it to preserve the quality of life for the people who are already here.  

Getting off my butt

You guys do such a delightful job in your discussions that I'm perfectly happy to kick back and read them but I guess I should weigh in more frequently, lest you feel abandoned.  I was going to make a clever comment about some topics not being a matter of life and death but guess what?  They are.  How else could you describe abortion and capital punishment?  Let me dig into my pockets to see if I have two cents to add...

Nope, got nothing but I'll take a penny for this thought: Life is precious and at the same time, Life is cheap.  It depends on whose life you're talking about, and what value society places on those lives to maintain stability and security.  I don't like the idea of abortion, nor do I like the idea of capital punishment but both are bitter pills that we may be forced to swallow.  I don't see any benefit in forcing a rape victim to bear a child, nor do I see any benefit in keeping someone like Jeffrey Dahmer alive.  It's a tough call, and I'm glad I don't have to make it.

-----

I'm not following the impeachment circus too closely but there is one thing I find regrettable, and it's that regardless of the outcome, Trump will be a tragic victim in the eyes of his stalwart base and who knows what they will do; I sure don't.  I shudder to think what they may be capable of and the thought of a president Pence is frightening.

The Russians are probably happy, though, and maybe they'll relax a bit and be reasonable in their diplomatic efforts.  Their plan seems to be working well for them and strategically they kicked our asses.  That's what happens when smart guys and gals are in charge and don't mind breaking a few eggs to put that omelette on the table. 

-----

At this time of year, with the great influence of Santa Claus, it's easy to forget there are other characters for the holidays.  You may already know of Krampus and Black Peter, but how about Frau Perchta?  She's a witch, just what we need to balance out that jolly old elf.

the circus after Christmas

I wonder if now Beagles will admit that impeachment is going to happen and was always moving inexorably in that direction even as Beagles was ho humming and acting like it was all talk and nothing was ever going to happen?.  I do favor keeping it to two issues, sharp like a shiv.  Moscow Mitch is hoping to make it a calm little affair, quickly over without much ado, but Trump is insisting on a circus and I guess we all know how that is going to end up.

Yes indeed the board has decided it would rather risk anarchy by not enforcing a stupid rule than to honor yours truly, the spokesman of the people, by admitting that of course he was right all along.  I kind of feel like making a bit of todo about this, but it's probably best not to get myself in that state of mind again.

When I think of the death penalty I think of the example of the tiger or elephant who kills one of its handlers.  If the animal hasn't been killed in the incident they examine it and if they find it to be demented or something then they kill it because what good is a demented animal?  If on the other hand it appears that it is perfectly fine and the handler's death was due to some cruelty or mistake of the handler generally they will let the poor animal live.  If it's a human however if they find him of sound mind and body he is liable for the death penalty, but if he is found to be crazy he goes to the nuthouse; 

This new NAFTA thing, which I hear is not that different from the old NAFTA thing, except maybe a little bit more on the dem's side, I'm going to make a prediction that it is not going to happen. It has the votes to pass now but Moscow Mitch is putting it off until after impeachment and I can see it becoming a hostage.  If the dems want it, Trump is going to want to make them give up something for it, which they are likely not to do because they have learned that Trump never comes through on his part of the bargain..  And you know Trump, he likes to brag about his accomplishments, whether they are real or not, but he soon bores of it because there is just not as much fire and fun in being for something as there is being against it.  That the dems are for it is going to increasingly rankle him until he declares that his negotiators have been bamboozled and worse they are most likely traitors because he has no regrets in tossing his people under the bus.

Speaking of which where are all those findings that Giuliani is bringing back from Ukraine?

Making it Official

I think that Michigan abolished the death penalty by law in 1847, except for the crime of treason, although nobody has ever been executed for treason against the State of Michigan.  We usually think of treason as a federal crime, but I suppose it's possible to commit treason against a state.  The only incidence of it that comes to mind is Shay's Rebellion, which was between the American Revolution and the enactment of the U.S. Constitution.  I seem to remember that was against the State of Massachusetts, which didn't have the resources to put it down at the time, so a bunch of rich businessmen raised their own private army.  At any rate, Michigan's abolishment of the death penalty was put into the new state constitution that was being drafted in 1962.  The only difference is that the Michigan State Constitution can only be amended by a direct vote of the people, while state law can be changed by the legislature and the governor any time they want.  The story I read about the original 1847 law was that there was a big uproar when a popular saloon keeper was executed for killing his not so popular wife, and Michiganders wanted to make sure that something like that would never happen again.

As I understand it, the articles of impeachment have been drawn up, and now they have to be discussed and voted on by a committee.  If that passes, then the whole house has to vote on them before it can be said that the president has been officially impeached.

https://a.msn.com/r/2/BBY10gz?m=en-us&referrerID=InAppShare

Funny thing about those Christmas lights.  Sounds like the board lost their enthusiasm for the ban, but didn't want Uncle Ken to think that his efforts had anything to do with it.

At least the red and green is shining at Marina City

I read an article lately that reported that abortion  was down in the United States and I wondered if this was because of all the abortion clinics that have been shut down in the red states.  But no,  if that were the case the birthrate would have gone up and it hasn't.  The writer's theory is that birth control has become so ubiquitous that unwanted pregnancies are not happening as often as they once were.  My memory was that the morning after pill is currently available, and looking it up I was confronted by a plethora of ads from drug stores.  It was pretty cheap and did not require a doctor's prescription so I bet that it has cut into the abortion rates.

Speaking of birth rate, it's at an all time low.  The only thing keeping us growing is immigration, but let's not bring that up today.


I wonder what the story was behind Michigan abolishing the death penalty in 1962, that was not a particularly liberal time in the country.  I guess they figured as Beagles said before that they had lived without it for so long and had no problems why bring any up now.  Actually that was one of my arguments in the great Marina City Christmas lights controversy of this summer, why bring up a law that we have gotten along without for so long and there has been no trouble.  And now that the Christmas season is here I see a lot of colored lights hanging from the balconies and those threatening announcements have not appeared in the elevators.  Another one of my arguments was that if it was so hard to overturn this rule why not just not enforce it, and they all threw up their arms in dismay, why that would be anarchy.  But now the lights are gleaning and nobody is saying boo and blood is not running down the aisles of Marina City.  Maybe they just didn't want some upstart telling them nothing.


I guess there are more impeachment hearings going on today.  I don't know why.  The dems lay out over and over the simple story of Trump withholding aid to get Zalensky to announce an investigation, and the republicans scream about the procedure, the whistleblower, debunked conspiracy theories, when to call a lunch recess, whatever, anything  but the case at hand.  Then the dems repeat more forcefully the case and the reps more forcefully obfuscate and so on and so on, and meanwhile the needle of public opinion does not seem to be moving, and I fear we are charging into the valley of death.  But the prez is likely to do something nuts to make a circus of the senate, and we are playing a long game beyond the Senate and into the 2020 elections so there is yet hope brother.

Getting Soft

I must be getting soft in my old age because I'm not nearly as opposed to abortion as I was back in the 70s.  That doesn't mean I would vote for it if it came up on a ballot proposal again, I suppose it would depend on exactly what was being proposed.  Early in the pregnancy, the fetus is indeed just "a clump of cells", but at some point it starts to grow arms and legs and look more like a real baby.  I seem to remember that, in Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court ruled that a fetus could be aborted if it was too young to survive its premature birth.  Since then they have been saving earlier and earlier preemies, but I don't know where the cut off point would be today, or if they are even still using the same standard.  Last I heard, people were arguing about "partial birth abortion", which is where they crush the baby's head as soon as it pokes out.  Back in the 70s, there was talk about a "morning after pill", but I don't know if they really had it then or if they were just talking about it.  I seem to remember that they were still arguing about it a few years ago, so maybe it never did actually become available.  I suppose I should become more informed about this issue if we're going to discuss it intelligently.

I did look this up just now because I knew that Michigan abolished its death penalty back in the 19th Century, but I didn't remember the date:

The death penalty has been constitutionally banned in Michigan since 1963. Famous cases ... Treason remained a crime punishable by the death penalty in Michigan despite the 1847 abolition, but no one was ever executed under that law. In 1962 a constitutional convention passed a proposal to abolish the death penalty for all crimes in Michigan by a 108 to 3 vote.

Michigan | Death Penalty Information Center

www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/michigan-0

I don't remember how long I lived in Michigan before I found out that we didn't have a death penalty, but it was about that time that I stopped being in favor of one.  I might feel differently if Michigan had a death penalty and someone was trying to abolish it but, since we don't have one and it doesn't seem to be a problem, we must not need one.  I have always believed that, when there is no need to pass a law, there is a need not to pass a law.  Actually, I think the original quote was: "When there is no need to change, there is a need not to change."  - source forgotten.  I think the death penalty is on its way out anyway.  I read somewhere that a person condemned to death in this country is likely to die of natural causes before he is eventually executed.

party issues

Well I hate it also when somebody expresses an opinion but then won't discuss the facts and reasoning behind why they hold that opinion.  I suppose to turn around your argument one of the guys at the mill could have asked if you think it's ok to kill a full-grown human (who may or may not be guilty, (a disturbing number of guys on death row turn out to be innocent)) but you balk at killing a small collection of cells?

Maybe what your curiously reticent pals at the mill meant by saying that they are different things is that a fetus is not a baby.  It will become a baby, but at the time it is aborted it not yet one,  Between the time when the sperm hits the egg and the baby emerges from the womb is a grey area.  A lot of the argument about abortion is at what point you decide that it becomes a baby.

Another point is practicality or social good.  If women can't get legal abortion they will get illegal abortion which is not safe.  And still another is that raising a baby costs considerable capital which a teenager likely does not have and there goes her opportunity of getting a good education and a good job, and the pro life people are the ones who oppose the state providing means for those in the baby trap.

I'm not against the death penalty for those who commit some horrific crime.  I have no problem with, for example, killing Timothy McVeigh or Richard Speck.  Why spend the state's good money, which could be better spent on providing care for newborns whose mothers couldn't afford it on feeding and housing these murderers?  The problem is that the death penalty does not fall only on the guilty.  When George Ryan decided to end the death penalty in Illinois it was because half the people on death row turned out not to have been given a fair trial or were innocent of the charges. 

But still it seems a little odd that they should be so closely aligned with either party.  There used to be pro-lifers among the dems and pro-choicers among the reps, but I don't think there are any anymore, probably the same with the death penalty but it is just not much of an issue these days.

There is a kind of bundling going on.  If I am a pro-choice dem and you want ,my help on your gun control measure I am going to expect you to oblige me with help on my pro-choice measure, and if I am a pro-life rep and you want my help on your anti gun control measure I am going expect your help on my pro-life measure.


How about Trumps weird response to that Florida shooting where Trump doesn't want to call it terrorism, though if it was any other flavor of Arab he would be screaming bloody mary, and the way that he expects it all to be smoothed over by the Sauds giving some cash payment to the families of the victim like they do in their feudal country.  Putin, the Saudis, Erdogan, they all have, in the colorful language of LBJ, have his pecker in their pockets.