Isn’t it
convenient that just as the Jack Smith report was released on New Year's night,
showing that Donald Trump was responsible for the insurrection of January 6, and
as more and more of the Epstein files are released, showing a close
relationship between Trump and Epstein, we suddenly find ourselves attacking Venezuela,
turning the attention of the American public to war news?
the Ol’Buzzard
I’ll make
this short and simple: If the Democrats shut down the government again to
protest healthcare cuts, then we will have fumbled the ball on the one-yard
line.
People are
hurt during a government shutdown. A
portion of people will not be able to pay rent, put food on their table, or pay the fuel cost to heat their homes during the height of winter; and they, their friends, and their families will not forget come election time in November.
the Ol’Buzzard
I
There is
something I don’t understand about government finance. Republicans go on and on about paying down
the national debt while at the same time exploding it with their tax cuts.
Who the fuck,
what country, is lending the United States trillions of dollars that we are
obligated to pay back?
To my
understanding, we are the richest country in the world, so what country has
such a financial excess to the extent they can lend us trillions of dollars, or
is this some kind of creative accounting where we spend more than we earn from
taxes and then just write it off as an IOU to ourselves?
We keep
hearing about paying the interest on the debt; but to whom?
There was a
time when I was young that I paid only the interest on a loan for several
months because I couldn't afford the monthly payment. That certainly wasn’t a sustainable solution
to debt.
The answer
to me is clear: everyone making over one hundred thousand dollars a year pays
five percent income tax – no deductions – no tax shelters. Businesses valued over a million dollars pay
ten percent of gross. In return, a cap
is placed on government spending, and we receive universal healthcare at 100%.
We know who
is making the money under the present system: and it ain't us.
the Ol’Buzzard
A history lesson you won’t get on Fox News.
In the
1940’s and early 50’s, the main political power in the South was the Democratic
Party. My grandmother raised me, and her
sister was married to Fielding Wright, who was the governor of the state of
Mississippi from 1946 to 1952. Even
though politics was far from anything I was concerned with, it existed in my
peripheral world.
President
Truman had desegregated the military, and the powerful Southern political
figures of that era were concerned about a possible move to desegregate the South. In 1948, they came together in a common
effort to oppose racial integration and to retain Jim Crow laws and the Southern
racial segregation status quo.
Mississippi Governor
Fielding Wright, Mississippi Senator John Stennis, Mississippi Senator Allen
Eastland, and South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond were among the movers and
shakers of this movement. It was
decided that if the Democratic Party introduced a platform of integration at
their 1948 convention, the southern democrats would break away and form a third
party.
As expected,
Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota made a speech urging the party to adopt an
anti-segregationist plank, and thirty-five southern members walked out of the
convention.
The States’
Rights Democratic Party (Dixiecrat) was formed with a party slogan of
‘Segregation Now, Segregation Forever!’
The party ran Strom Thurmond for President and Fielding Wright for Vice
President.
On Election
Day, the Thurman-Wright ticket carried Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and
South Carolina, receiving 1,169,021 popular votes and 39 electoral votes.
The defeat
of the Dixiecrats was the defining point at which disenchanted southern
Democrats began to change party affiliation.
Over the next twenty years, most southern, segregationist, white fundamentalist
Christian Democrats were assimilated into the Republican Party
It is
remarkable when you think about it: The Republican Party, once the party of
Lincoln and champion of human rights, slowly became the party of the financial
elite, white southern Christian fundamentalists, and covert racists, while the Democratic
Party became the party of the middle class, the ethnic, and the poor.
Republicans
can no longer call themselves the party of
Lincoln. Lincoln would not be
welcome in today's Republican Party.
the Ol’Buzzard
HAPPY HOLIDAYS
On this day of
the Solstice, where the seasons realign themselves, I hope that everyone can
take a breath and step away from the insanity of politics that seems to
permeate our daily lives, and whether you are Jewish, Hindu, Christian, Sikh,
Buddhist, Muslim, or Atheist, look around and accept:
That we are more alike, my friends, than
we are unalike.
Anyone
predicting the future of AI on the human race is like a monkey throwing a rock
at the moon: bravado and conjecture.
We are on the cusp of the birth of AI.
The programmers who instruct computers
to learn, themselves don’t know exactly what is happening inside the computer self-programming.
We are, with
AI, where computers were in 1984, with an Apple II-C loaded with 128 KB of RAM.
Who could
have envisioned, in 1984, the fantastic capabilities of our cell phones only
forty years later?
It is safe
to say that AI will revolutionize our world.
The powers of this science are yet to be tapped and are even hard to
imagine.
Politicians
are discussing government controls on the use of AI, but if the science is
there, it will be pursued – especially by the Military.
(See Accessory
To War, by Neil DeGrasse Tyson and Avis Lang)
Remember
that in the first atomic bomb test on July 16, 1945, the scientists had agreed
there was a slight chance that the bomb could cause a chain reaction in the
atmosphere with catastrophic consequences, but they continued.
(See American
Prometheus by Bird and Sherwin)
It was also unnecessary to drop the second
bomb on Nagasaki, but scientists and the government wanted to see the power of
the plutonium-fueled bomb.
Computers that
can think, independent of human beings!
AI will
benefit us in many ways, but there is always Yin and Yang.
If we build
it, they will come
or
If we build
it, they will use it
the Ol'Buzzard
We kept our
day temperature at 72, and lowered it to 66 at night when the outside
temperature was well below freezing. Even at 66, our furnace still ran at increased intervals
all night. In the morning, it would take half an hour or
more of constant running to bring the temperature back to 72. The countertops
were cold, the walls and all appliances were cold, and the whole house had to heat
up to 72.
I am not
convinced that dropping the temperature at night actually saves heating fuel.
the Ol'Buzzard
