Monthly Archives: December 2022

12 Monday Dec 2022

Posted by in Politics, President Trump

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Third Party

        He was elected President once and felt his successor had damaged everything he had done as President. He missed being in the White House so he ran again. His party did not want him so he started, with the support of millions, his own party. He got almost one-third of the vote ensuring no party got half the vote. His new party got more votes than his old party and together both parties got more than the winning party.

            Of course the former President was Theodore Roosevelt and his party was the Bull Moose which rapidly died after he left politics. His attempt allowed President William Howard Taft to be easily defeated and put President Woodrow Wilson in the White House.

            Today we have a similar situation with former President Donald Trump wanting to be President again. Millions of people would like for that to happen again but millions more Republicans want someone else. Trump did not use much of his own money in 2022 election for his handpicked candidates.

            The question is will his ego cause him to start his own party to assuage his ego destroying the Republican Party for a few cycles?

            Theodore Roosevelt is rated as the fourth in leadership behind Presidents Lincoln, Washington, and Franklin Roosevelt. Trump is currently ranked fifth from the bottom. Will he just fade away for the good of the Republican Party and the country on his own or will it be while in jail?

Babysitting Little Johnnie

12 Monday Dec 2022

Posted by in Babysitting

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        I don’t have any kids so I had to check to find out how much a babysitter costs. They seem to charge over $20.00 an hour which for some kids seems to be grossly underpayment.

            Let’s compare a teacher in a public school to a teenager working in the kid’s parent’s home. Some classes have 25 students while others may have 35. Let’s say the class has 30 and the teacher is paid by the babysitter’s rate of $20.00 an hour. That would mean the teacher should be paid $600 per hour. Now granted the school has a building requiring maintenance and people to do the work. It also has utility expenses. The school has administration expenses and an athletic staff and their facilities.

            Based on those other expenses let us assume the teacher who has gone to college at least four years at great expense to the teacher. Often that expense required thousands of dollars in loans to be repaid over many years. The average teacher salary in Northern Illinois is about $30.00 per hour. That breaks down in our average class to a dollar per student. Most teachers are going to have to spend money on supplies which reduces that dollar. That doesn’t include homework and preparation.

            No wonder why parents are glad for schools to restart each fall. Imagine a dollar an hour baby sitter! That dollar was subsidized by those of us without kids in school. Just on my house I have probably paid well over 100,000 dollars in local school taxes. That means the parents don’t pay a dollar an hour for their babysitting teacher who has to put up with abuse from their students and parents who think little Johnnie is an angel.

Executive Privilege

12 Monday Dec 2022

Posted by in President Trump

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        Former President Donald Trump has claimed executive privilege to keep some of his advisors from testifying about his involvement in the January 6 insurrection. Trump is going to try that same tactic to keep former Vice-President Mike Pence from testifying before the Committee or the FBI. If Trump is innocent of any wrong doing then why is he trying to keep people from talking about it?

            If a President stabs someone in the back in the Oval Office and has the Secret Service dispose of the body while his advisors watched should the crime be hidden as in some Hollywood movie? Of course not, because murder is a crime and not something involving foreign or domestic policy. What does either of those reasons have to do with a President committing a crime – like trying to overthrow the government?

            I think when a President commits a crime the rest of America would go to jail for, the President should too. Is trying to overthrow our Constitution and Government any lesser crime? What is Trump so concerned about if he had nothing to do with incitement to riot or the planning and coordination of the insurrection?

            Maybe it is because he allowed it to continue until he was told Vice-President Pence and the other Senators had escaped the mob. President Nixon said “The people need to know their President isn’t a crook” and we need to know how involved President Trump was with the insurrection and other questions, don’t we?

Gaslighting

06 Tuesday Dec 2022

Posted by in Politics

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        I didn’t know how it was decided before the internet was used as a dictionary but Merriam Webster Company has declared Gaslighting to be the word of the year. It isn’t one of those fancy made-up words that will be forgotten in a few years.  Gaslighting has been around for decades, maybe even a century.

            Merriam Webster Dictionary defines Gaslighting as “The act or practice of grossly misleading someone especially for one’s own advantage.” The meaning I grew up with is somebody who can con a person for a long period of time like P. T. Barnum. Bernie Madoff or Charles Ponzi would be financial gaslighters. There have been many political gaslighters going all the way back to our founding fathers.

            A con artist, grifter, or gas lighter usually needs some kind of distraction to keep the victims from catching on to the scam.

            One definition of a con artist is “a person who cheats or tricks others by persuading them to believe something that is not true.” Gaslighting is the way a con artist deceives people. Today we have a person with other persons of influence conning millions of people into thinking things that are obviously false but still believe it. Historically the con artist’s goal has been money but today it is power and ego which are often the same.

            Do we know anyone or group that employs Gaslighting and conning people into believing things that is not true just to satisfy their egos need for power?

Pampered People

06 Tuesday Dec 2022

Posted by in Americans

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        As a news junkie, I find Americans to be a pampered people who have become so used to having the world’s greatest lifestyle they can’t stand a little disruption. Few Americans are old enough to have gone through the depression when jobs were few and growing their own food was a necessity. When Americans encounter someone who lives on the street we think it must be their own fault to ease our minds. Most Americans live in an area where seeing or experiencing a face-to-face criminal activity is remote.

            Now look at the rest of the world. Billions live where food is a luxury. We go to our choice of grocery stores and see shelves full of cheap food when compared to the rest of the world. We haven’t experienced widespread violence since the 1960s while much of the world is awash in unrest caused by religion, race, ethic, political and economic and other reasons. Many people live in war zones where artillery, bombs, and missiles are a constant worry. Over a billion are concerned about this winter.

            More than a couple of billion are concerned about where their next drink of water will come from while the same number is wondering how much of their country will be above sea level before they die. We are concerned about single digit transitory inflation when a billion are experiencing double and triple digit. Not until this month did we have to worry about armed people at polls because some power hungry egoist couldn’t give up his power? Hundreds of millions of children can’t go to any school. Even more are the wrong sex to go past the sixth grade.

            Remember the story about the guy worrying about the condition of his shoes before seeing a man without feet. Billions don’t have feet!