Ginsberg

 Here in this blog are some of my comments on the Ginsberg replacement.

I am a hunter and do not violate the hunting laws.  The deer season has a starting date and closing date, complete with a specific starting time and ending time.  You can only hunt during that specific time period.  I don't see any logic in passing up a big buck just because it is one hour or 10 minutes before closing time.  What do you think?

Look at football.  Is it logical to stop playing 30 seconds before the end of a half or the end of the game?  Why do you think they have clocks at football games that are accurate down to the second?  It is so all the players know what the rules are and that they should not violate any of those rules, no matter what.

When we elect some one to an office, we know that they are supposed to serve for their full term.  Why should we expect them to take off the last week or month of their term.  We should not.  We expect them to represent us, the voter, from the time they are sworn in until their term ends, which is normally at midnight of the day.

As we are getting older, would you expect us to have our birthday party a few days earlier?  How about voting.  If you were just one week short of your 18th birthday, should you still be allowed to vote.  How about buying a beer?  Isn't it the same thing?  Or better yet.  How about getting stopped by the cop for speeding and you claim that the road sign said that the speed limit was "higher" just a mile farther down the road.  What do you think the cop would do?  He would write you a ticket and you know it.

This business of expecting President Trump not to do his job and nominate a replacement for Ginsberg is just as illogical as the examples above.  In the case of Obama, he knows that the Senate takes time to do their job and since the Senate was run by Republicans, they could take as long as they wanted.  Obama did the right thing to nominate someone and the Senate did the right thing when they delayed the consideration until after the upcoming election.

PS--If they don't want the President to nominate a Supreme Court Justice within the last 6 months of his term, exactly when can a President perform exactly what the constitution says he can do?  This is an "analog" point some where from zero days to the last hour he is in office.  Are you starting to see how stupid this whole thing is? The same goes for the Senate. 

If I Can't Have It, You Can"t Have It Either

Is this how you think?  I will explain in this blog.

First off, I want to share a story.  It was Easter back in 1945 when we had an Easter Egg hunt at my Grandmothers.  My father was still in the Navy fighting the Japanese far away.  This Easter Egg hunt was a big deal at the time.  We even had a "Prize" egg.  The person who found the "Prize" egg got a special gift.  We were poor and it was war time, so this was a very big deal too. As it turned out I did not find the "Prize" egg, but my cousin of the same age did.  As a 5 year old at the time, I saw this in a very different light.  I felt that if I could not have the prize, neither could my cousin.  Here is what I did.  I grabbed the "Prize" egg out of his hand in front of my grandmother and smashed it to mush and then stormed away proud of myself!

A couple of days later, I realized what a bad thing I had done and it was the most embarrassing day of my young life. I went over the event in my mind many time, always coming to the same conclusion about myself.  From a proud child, I became an ashamed person for what I had done and more importantly what I was thinking.  I remember that day today as if it were yesterday and I can say that it has had a significant effect on me and who I am today.  What I did was, "If I can't have it, you can't have it either".

Look around the USA today and you will see many people who "have it" and others who "do not".  For some reason, many of those who are rioting are like me when I was 5 years old and did not understand the significance of my actions and thinking.  Why is that?  I learned my lesson when I was just 5 years old.  It is not complicated.  You don't try do destroy what others have to equalize things, you work harder to earn what you want. Why is it that we are not talking about the logic above and just on the police and rioting?

I learned my lesson, not from others, but some place within me. I solved my problem, one person at a time.  I did not learn my lesson in school either.  It came from deep inside me.  Over the years, I have been confronted with may situations similar to that Easter Egg hunt.  I was divorced many years ago and had two young children at the time.  Rather than fight over custody of the children, I thought about the Easter Egg hunt where I fought over the egg and destroyed the egg in the process.  In that case no one won and in the case of my children, they were too important to me to have fought over them risking damage to either one.

This has been one of my most personal blogs and I hope that you see how difficult this has been for me to share, but I feel the lesson is so important that not to share it would be much worse.  There are some things in life that are not worth fighting over and I feel that the USA is now in one of those fights where many are acting like 5 year old's who are risking our whole country in the process. 

Go Along To Get Along

Have you heard this one before?  I know you have.  This blog will explain the significance.

I know a lot of people who live by this saying, "Go along to get along", and it has served them will.  That is until today.  What we have is a group who is so far outside the norm that going along to get along is suicide.  Think of the kids who used to wear their pants down so low that you could see the crack in their ass.  That was "Go along to get along".  I don't know who started it but it took off and like weeds growing in your garden.  It seems that if just the right bate is put out to the right group of people, it will grow like weeds and you know it. Here is another one. Remember when people wore their baseball hats with the bill in the front?  Then, for some reason, many started to wear the bill in the back.  How did that happen?  Are you starting to see how vulnerable many of our young people are?

This mostly happened to younger kids, but now we are talking about something that affects older kids.  We are talking about BLM, black lives matter.  Think about kids going off to college and they are just as vulnerable as younger kids were to, "Go along to get along".  Why did't this same type of thing not happen back after WWII when all the GI's went to college on the GI Bill?  College kids are a lot different today.  Most have led a sheltered life and this is their first time on their own and they are programmed for the, " Go along to get along".  How do they know that the whole BLM thing is corrupt from the beginning and has nothing really to do with slavery in the British Colonies in the 1600's.  Few know that it was the British who imported the slaves.  Few know that the people who had the wealth to pay for the slaves were connected to the Crown of England who were not simple immigrants coming here to escape hardship in Europe.

Over 90% of slaves that were imported to the New World did not end up in what is now the USA.  Most went South and were needed for the "sugar" trade, not picking cotton.  The British imported slaves to what is now the USA from 1519 to 1790.  The USA did not exist until 1790 and it took less than 20 years for the founders of the USA to stop all importation of slaves to the USA.  From about 1810, the founders agreed to not only stop importing slaves, but to never allow more than half the states to own slaves.  Most did not like the idea of slavery and did not want to make the situation worse while they planned on how to totally eliminate it.  Why is this not taught in our USA history classes in our schools?

Like the "hippie" movement of the 1960's, we now have a group of young people who have been taught to have a "guilt" complex due to slavery in the USA form 1790 to 1864 which was done by the British King and Queen.  Rather than focus on the solution, the BLM's mission is to destroy the USA as we know it.  The solution is for Blacks who now live in the USA to get to work holding up their end in our free society.  The two most recent famous Blacks here in the USA are not a part of slavery.  Obama was, at best, 50% Black with a Black father from Africa here on a student visa and a White mother.  The Vice President candidate Harris is not even 50% Black and her Black father was also here on a student visa and married to an Indian from India who was also here on a student visa.  In the case of Obama, his Black heritage was more likely a slave trader rather than a slave.

What needs to happen is for more people who adhere to the, "Go along to get along" is for them to think before they jump!  They need to find out if the rule they are blindly following can have a double edge and it does. Next time you think about, "Going along to get along", think again.  It might save our country.

Asian Medicine Vs Western Medicine

For years, I had been skeptical of Asian medicine, but I have changed.  This blog will explain why.

My first exposure to Asian medicine was back in about 1949 when I was in San Francisco with my uncle.  He went to an Asian pharmacy to get something for some condition that he had.  I don't know what it was.  The guy behind the counter poured all kinds of leaves and seeds onto a sheet of paper and then folded it up in a very strange way.  He said to make a tea out of this and drink a cup every day.  My uncle came to our house with his herbs and made a cup of hot tea.  We all had a taste and it was terrible.  My uncle did drink a cup, but left the whole bunch of herbs at our house and left.

Latter, I got the herbs out and made another cup of tea and it was just as bad as the first.  I think that part of the cure much have been a "test" to see if you were really sick by drinking the tea.  The paper full of herbs stayed around the house for several months and we tasted it once in a while, but it never got better.  I have no idea what was in it, but it was dark brown and very bitter.  That experience turned me against Asian herb medicine until recently.

I did some research on Asian medicine and found that they have been using this technique for thousands of years.  Some of it was very strange, but it seemed to work.  The life expectancy of Asians is not that much less than ours and for Japanese, it is much longer.  The other thing is that Asian medicine does not cost near as much as our western style medicine and that is a big plus.  After this positive data on Asian medicine, I started thinking about how this could be that it was so cheap and simple yet as effective as our more expensive and complex western medicine.

Here is what I came up with.  I know that some of the herbs are toxic and contain small amounts of the same ingredients that are in many of our western medicines,  In some reports, the amount of the active ingredients is so small that some don't feel that it could possibly be effective, but I don't think that is how it works anyway.  Here is what I think.  Asian medicine focuses on the person "before" they are sick, while western medicine focuses on the person "after" they are sick.  follow that?  In most cases it is our natural immune system that fights off most sicknesses.  That is why people who are strong and healthy are normally not sick and if they get sick, they get better naturally by their immune system.  I think that most can agree on the above point.

If the immune system is the key, how do we encourage a stronger immune system?  Think of lifting weights.  Your plan is to build a stone wall in you back yard next summer so to prepare for that "work" by lifting weights ahead of time to strengthen your muscles.  Simple idea, right?  I feel it is the same with your immune system.  It needs some kind of work out to strengthen it so that it can deal with a problem when it occurs.  That is where the herbs come in.  As I said, some of the herbs are actually toxic and if taken in large quantities could kill you.  The idea is to take some of these toxic herbs in small quantities so that your immune system gets some needed exercise before it has to save your life.

In western medicine, we start with a weak immune system so it is not ready to deal with a bad problem.  Western medicine thus, has to deal with the sickness after the horse is out of the barn and we know that takes a lot more effort and cost.  I think that is the reason that our western medicine is so complex and costly because it does not take full advantage of our natural immune system.  You know how powerful our natural immune system can be by when it goes wacky and causes a serious problem.  That happens all the time and we need to understand that.  Think of hay fever or allergies.
They are examples of  how powerful our immune system is.

In this current Covid-19 epidemic, I think it is clear that we need to work to strengthen our immune system and that is what the vaccine is supposed to do.  Why don't we hear more about how the Asian style of medicine that might be effective in dealing with Covid-19?  Is there some kind of bias at work here?  You tell me!

Not In My Back Yard

Are you watching what is happening in California?  This blog will explain their problem.

It is very hot in California and they have all kinds of forest fires.  What is their real problem?  They only want "green" energy, but they don't want the generation of that power in their "back yards".  They like the idea of electric cars that run on electricity and don't pollute on the street in front of their house.  They like the idea of an air conditioning unit in their window to keep them cool, but they don't want the electric generator in their drive way.  California has several nuclear plants along their coast, but they have closed many and want to close them all.  They like wind mills and solar panels as long as they are in some other person's back yard.  At least one other problem with wind mills and solar is that they are not reliable.  If Californians wants to keep cool on a part time basis, the wind mills and solar panels can do the job, even if cost much more.  The problem is, what do they do when there is no wind or it is night time?

The fact is that much of the energy that people in California us is generated in some other state or out in the desert where they do not live.  They like the idea of generating the power that they use as long as it is in someone else's back yard.  Given that 1/8 of the voters in the USA live in California there is clearly a danger that California will push their "green" ideas on the rest of the country.

What we need to do is to make it a law that your electric power has to be generated within 25 or 50 miles from where it is used.  Further, we also need to make it a law that your garbage has to be disposed of within the same 25 or 50 miles of your home.  People in the USA can not continue to dump their garbage and generate their power in some one else's back yard!

An interesting side point is that we still need power made from gas, oil and coal as a back up and those plants have to be ready 100% of the time.  That makes the cost of that power much more expensive than it used to be when plants operated at 90% to 95%.  Most Greenies don't understand that.  That means the green power will cost more as well as the back up power.  This is a lose-lose!

Getting Even

This is a blog about Mathematics believe it or not.

Most of us have played on the school grounds and have tried our hand at the teeter-tauter with varying degrees of success.  I don't know if you were the big kid on one end or the little kid on the other end, but we have all been faced with the same problem.  How do we "get even".  Little did most of us know at the time, but this problem was going to confront us and most of the population for the rest of our lives.

Just like on the teeter-tauter, there are two ways to "get even".  You can take weight off the heavy end or figure out how to put weight on the light end.  That is all there is too it.  So why has it been so difficult for most of us all of these years?  We have riots in the streets over much of the USA where people are trying their best to "get even".  There are many who due to decision that they have made in their lives in the past find that today, they do not have much as others.  They are clearly not "even", so what do they want to do to cure their problem?  They want those who have more to have less.  Some even want those with more to give part of what they have to them.  This plan would actually work and many feel that this is the plan that they want, but is it the best plan?  Most of us know that there are other plans out there and we need to consider all of the plans before we pick one.

The plan above ends up making everyone poor, but all are "even".  In math almost any system can be made "even" when the answer is "zero".  The problem is that many feel that "zero" is a good solution that would make them "even",but there is another solution.  What if the little person on the teeter-tauter were to "gain" some weight or grow bigger.  That would make them even with the heavier person on the other end.  In most cases where someone has less than another, it is due to bad decisions that they have made in the past.  That being the case, they only have themselves to blame, not the person who has more.  We all know what those bad decisions were so why is it so hard for them to admit it rather than rioting and trying to take or destroy things that others have?

There is something in the human nature that is complicated and it appears all the time.  I have talked to many people who feel that since they have little that the way to "get even" is for those with more to have less and by any means.  How about this?  Have you ever heard someone who is stuck in mud upto their ass say, "I would not feel so bad if everyone else were also stuck in mud upto their asses too".  It is human nature for many to think this way and I am not sure that it can be changed.

Many of those with less seem to feel that those who have more must have gotten that more by making them have less, but they can never specify exactly how that happened.  When shown the path that those with more have traveled, they close their eyes to the facts and logic.  Why is that?  I knew a guy who had inscribed on his fireplace mantle, "To thine own self be true".  If you can not be honest with yourself, there is no real way that others can ever help you.  This is true of addicts and others.

Rioting and the destruction of the work of others is not the solution,  It only makes all "even" when there is nothing left!

PS--Around the world where there is no "equal justice under the law", people tend to be more dishonest.  Immigrants who come from these places bring with them this corrosive attitude and are not themselves very honest.  You can prove this yourself by looking at communities here that have a high percentage of recent immigrants.

We We

Who am I to be giving advice to President Trump, but I will in this blog.

How about my title, "We We"?  It has more meaning than you might think.  I was talking to a very good female friend who shoots straight.  I asked her about President Trump and if she was going to vote for him.  She is a business owner who is going through some very difficult times. She said that she was not sure and I asked why?  She said that she did not like Trump's attitude.  I asked if she thought Biden would do a better job and she said that she did not think so.  Well, then, why wouldn't you vote for Trump over Biden?  She just repeated that she did not like Trump's attitude.

Here is what I got out of this conversation.  Basically, she did not like Trump talking so much and using the word "I" so often.  If he would just talk less and say "we" instead of "I" that she would feel a lot better about voting for him.  It is clear that Trump is not a polished con-man politician and at his advanced age, he can not make major changes to his personality.  It appears that in Trump's experience that if he does not get something done, it is not going to get done.  He is clearly a doer, where as, politicians are more like members of a committee who, "go along to get along" without any purpose of getting things done.  It clearly amazes most people that Trump has been able to get so many things done in such a short time.  Why is that?  It is because all they have seen for the past 100 years is a bunch of politicians and not businessmen who have had to face free enterprise competition and win.

If you want to see how slick a bunch of con-men can be, all you have to do is to check out preachers, politicians and insurance salesmen.  You will never hear one of these people use the word "I".  They use "we" and "us".  It is part of their genetics to be the way they are and it works.  Sorry, Trump is not a slick con-man,  He is a business man who means "business", which is to get things done, if it means mostly by himself.  He is willing to go it alone, but you can bet that no politician would stand out from the crowd alone.  They lead by first finding out which way the sheep are heading and then going out front of the herd and calling it "leading".  Not Trump.  He knows where the green grass is and he tries to leads the sheep to it.  That is different and people need to start getting use to it if they really want to improve their lives and that of their children.

Now, back to the "We We". If Trump would just adopt one rule of the con-man political class and stop using "I" so much and replace it with "We", I think my female business friend would be glad to vote for him.  She does not like Biden, but has been hung up on the "I" thing like a lot of suburban women.  Trump maybe able to change many things, but he can not change the way that many voters feel about people who use the word "I" even if it is the correct word!

PS---They really don't "lead" sheep, they "herd" them!

Life Years

Back on 4/19/2020, I posted a blog on "Life Years".  If you have not read that blog, you should.  This blog builds on that blog.

Exactly how do you compare different things, like apples and oranges?  What you need to do is to "normalize" the data so that it can be compared on a basis that is common to each.  You could compare apples and oranges on the basis of  "weight" or "diameter", but not something that they do not have in common. If you follow this, how can we compare the Covid-19 with other health related events of the past.  How about comparing it with polio from the 1950's or measles?  How would you actually do that?  Each has had a different impact.  You could compare them on the basis of the number of deaths or the number of days in the hospital.  It is almost unlimited.  Here is how I feel we should compare Covid-19 with other diseases.

I don't think we should compare Covid-19 just on the basis of the number of cases. I think that its impact on "life years" is more appropriate.  That is, how many years has it reduced the life expectancy of people?  New data shows that 94% of those who have died of Covid-19 not only were older, but also had other serious life threatening conditions.  The old data showed that the "average" age of those who died from Covid-19 were78 years old.  With that data the average number of years shortened by Covid-19 was about 6 or 7 years, but with this new data it is reduced by at least half!  That is very significant and is difficult for many to understand if they do not compare the numbers based on "life years".

In my 4/19/2020 blog, I pointed out how that a tornado or hurricane that killed far fewer people, actually had a much greater impact on "Life Years".  Look at the shut down of the economy and hospitals for normal health care.  That has caused more deaths and those deaths are much younger people than who have  died of  Covid-19.  That means that this single item has had a much larger impact in terms of life years than what most people realized.  I could go on and on adding up the impact of the shutdown on life years.

One problem is that many people keep stressing that we need to follow the advice of the "experts".  As I have pointed out in the past, these experts are only focusing on a single factor and that is the number of deaths in what we know now is that 94% group who only have a few more years to live.  What is needed is a more balanced basis for the final decision making.  The medical experts are only representing a single factor.  Any mature person knows that most decisions turn on the combination of a lot of factors.  That is why the correct decision can be so difficult to come too.  The news media who wants to get their message out as fast as possible tend to focus on a single factor just like the experts.  This is why you have to go well beyond the data supplied by the new media needs to be taken into account.  How many times have you ever heard the news media focus on "Life Years"?  It is "zero".  Does that tell you something about how they operate?  Use your own brain and look beyond single factors and to something like "Life Years"!

Fungible And Trump

Have you been following President Trump's idea to suspend the Social Security deduction?  This blog will clarify a few things about it.

If you don't know what "fungible" means, I suggest that you consult your Webster.  What President Trump is proposing is that until the end of the year we should suspend the deduction of Social Security form people's pay checks.  That would put about 6.5% more money into the pockets of people who earn less than $2,000 per week.  At a time like this, with the Covid-19 pandemic it would help to stimulate the economy.  I pointed out in a prior blog that the economy is the "care giver".  If we don't take care of the "care giver" we risk losing our country.

The advantage of suspending the Social Security deduction is that it will keep the "hands" of politicians out of the money pot.  You know how they act like a pack of dogs when they see a pot of money going thru the congress and senate.  The liberals claim that if people don't pay into the Social Security fund, it will go broke and it will not be available for needy people on Social Security in the future.  Does that scare you?  Maybe we need to revisit "fungible"!

The alternative that the liberals want is to borrow the money from our children's future and use that money to stimulate the economy and leave Social Security alone.   As pointed out above, this will allow greedy self serving politicians to get their hands into the pot for their special interests.  If you now understand the meaning of fungible, then you know that there is no difference between borrowing the money to be used to stimulate the economy or borrow it to keep Social Security healthy.  With President Trump's proposal, there is no need for complex legislation and time delays.  Isn't that a much better way to go?  Further, we can all be sure that the money ends up in the pockets of those who need it and not in the pet projects of greedy politicians.

Now that you understand "fungible", maybe you will see politics and economics in a different light.

PS--President Trump's idea goes into effect 9/01/20, which is today untouched by the greedy liberal  politicians!