Think Three Times

04 Thursday Feb 2021

Posted by in Hoaxes, President Trump

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            I keep hearing and reading about peoples First Amendment rights are being trampled because some far right, racist, white supremeists and Trump are being prevented from inciting gullible people. Some of those sites are Russians concocting conspiracies that many Americans believe.

            A large minority of Americans are unable to use common sense or to check facts on easily accessed sites. They could even see and hear the truth on TV or honest websites. Did the Russians, Chinese, North Koreans, or Iranians persuade our gullible people to not wear masks or some idiot that is against vaccinations simply forget hundreds of thousands Americans have died because tens of millions haven’t worn masks?

            Trump has been restricted from most ethical websites and other social media because of his fantasies, lies, and rabble rousing rants encouraging unstable people to try insurrection to keep him in office. Unfortunately, humans have not always been able to use common sense to guide themselves. Delusions are easy to believe.

            A poor sick man blew up himself and his motor home in trying to destroy an AT&T building because 5G was causing the virus. How many children and now adults are getting sick, disabled, disfigured, and dying because of a discredited and license pulled doctor said vaccines cause autism — it doesn’t. Don’t forget the deluded man that shot up a pizza restaurant because the political elite had stolen kids in the basement for sale. It didn’t have a basement. Trump won the 2016 election in a landslide.

            Millions believe those stories but are afraid of the truth. Hundreds will go to jail because of Trump’s goading and lies.            

Think once, think twice, and think three times before believing these outrageous lies and conspiracies.

Saving the G.O.P.

04 Thursday Feb 2021

Posted by in IL Representative Adam Kinzinger, Republican Party

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            U.S. Representative Adam Kinzinger isn’t the second coming but he is maybe one of the saviors of the Republican Party. Like Superman, he stands for the truth, justice and the American way. People are whipping him because he doesn’t want his Republican Party to continue to be taken over by a lying con man. He knows Trump is either living in a fantasy world or just can’t help himself to do anything but con people.

            Will all those people still believe Trump walks on water when it comes from his overflowing prison toilet? Kinzinger does not want his party to be one of racists, militants, conspiracy theorists and radical nutcases.

            I didn’t vote for Kinzinger the last time because he voted too often with Trump’s craziness. He didn’t drink the Kool-Aid Trump and acolytes put out as truth. Trump has been supported by brainwashed people who believe the zaniest conspiracies are real. Kinzinger knows what Trump and his advisors have known a few days after the election. He lost! Trump told us that he lost. Trump told us in his own words, “I am a bad loser”.

            Representative Kinzinger doesn’t want the Republican Party of Lincoln, Reagan, and Bush I to be destroyed by a con man. Quit beating Kinzinger up and stand with him to save the G.O.P. or go down the Trump wonderland fantasy.

Grilles Are A Statement

26 Tuesday Jan 2021

Posted by in Electric Cars

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            We need electric vehicles to cut carbon emissions. Americans have designed some beautiful cars and even some trucks are appealing to many. However, the designers are leaving out one element of design which made some iconic.

            Ford has a great commercial about mountain goats and a colt which grows up to be a beautiful horse. It goes into a cave and comes out a Mustang without the grille. What a disappointment. Granted it doesn’t need the air flow through the radiator but the grille was the heart of the Mustang’s design.

            Bloomberg Business’s cover showed Elon Musk driving an electric vehicle out of a factory. It looked like the back end of a car, not the front end. How can someone tell if a car is coming or going without a grille?

            Designers, slap a beautiful grille in front of the blank space between the headlights. Your design will never be finished until ornamental grilles are put on your designs. Remember the ugly boxes you put out in the early 1970s? A car without a grille is as stupid as the magnifying passenger outside mirror.

            Pretty sells cars, ugly doesn’t. What good is an electric if nobody likes their looks?

Lack of Ego

26 Tuesday Jan 2021

Posted by in President Biden

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            It requires a higher than average self-confidence and ego to want to be President of the world’s most powerful country. Carter was an example of a big brain and small ego. His chance of a second term was ended by the Iran Hostage event. Eisenhower was happy to retire but both parties pursued him to take the job. He had plenty of confidence but didn’t really want the job so his ego was almost non-existent.

            Reagan had both with some administrative experience as Governor of California. It is the same with Clinton, with above average smarts. Obama was very smart but lacked the administrative and legislative experience of recent Presidents.

            Bush I may have had the deepest amount of experience of any previous President. He knew how government worked and was friends with most world leaders. A few phone calls put Desert Storm Alliance together. He was a true moderate in the Republican Party.

            Today we have a President that may be almost as knowledgeable as Bush I. President Biden was retired from the Senate and still grieving the death of his son who he wanted to be President. The party stalwarts talked him into running again to stop the left wing. He had the experience to bring back bi-partisanship and put the country back on track. The pandemic war shows he believes in following expert advice, reactivating relations with the rest of the world’s leaders, and fixing our economic problems.

            With Biden we have the Carter ego and the Bush I moderation and experience. Most of Americans, and the rest of the world, are happy with the return of stability and reliability.

Don’t Let History Repeat Here

26 Tuesday Jan 2021

Posted by in Adolph Hitler

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            I am aware most Americans are mostly unaware of history which is why we keep repeating it. The last five years have been an excellent example. I have a sizeable library on World War II including the Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. It was packed with facts about Adolf Hitler and his rise to power. He was an extraordinarily charismatic man who had an uncanny ability to see wedges in populations and exploit them.

            His first objective was to make the German people feel they had been betrayed by the elitists. The German army would have won the war or at least gotten a good peace and not the vindictive, nation destroying treaty they signed. Hitler wasn’t the original leader of the small group until he decided the other leaders weren’t needed. His first try was to storm the Reichstag (Capital Building). The band was arrested and jailed where he wrote his treatise, Mein Kampf.

            After he was released he took a more public role and built up a large following of loyal people who felt the government and the elites were against them. As the Brown Shirts organization grew he split off the Jewish population as an object of hate. When his Brown Shirts became a problem he formed the Black Shirts who became the vaunted S.S. The S.S. killed of the Brown Shirt leadership. He won his first election but didn’t have total control of German government until the suspicious fire in the Reichstag, allowing him to take full power and martial law.    

By then, his propaganda expert, Joseph Goebbels, practicing the “Big Lie”, had convinced millions to join the Nazi party. Many of Hitler’s ideas and recruiting methods are used today by some extremists groups here and abroad.        

Gullible and Foolish

20 Wednesday Jan 2021

Posted by in Gullible

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            All of this violence can’t be pinned on President Trump’s lies he has been using to con people into thinking he is the greatest President ever. White supremeists and other far right militias have been around America since Hitler’s minions started them over eighty years ago.

            However, Trump’s verbal support for them and his lies have strengthened militias and grew their membership. His lies about actually winning the election by a landslide have allowed all these radical elements to coalesce into what we saw at the Capital January 6. Somehow they have been pulled into his fantasy even though Republicans in the battleground states have said the count was accurate.

            Trump’s attorney wrote up a speech for him to say he did not want riots or vandalism and to obey law enforcement orders. He might have said Biden won the election because seven million more people voted for him or the Electoral College legally and rightfully confirmed the fact Biden won. Most would then begin to understand the great con had deceived them and made them feel foolish and mad at the conman.

            An old saying; “You can fool some of the people some of the time, most of the people all the time, but you can’t fool all the people all the time.” Where do those people who stormed the Capital and those who stayed home believing he has never lied to them fall in the axiom? He has conned the first two parts and believes the third doesn’t apply to him since he thinks he can deceive everyone.

Our Most Important Resource

20 Wednesday Jan 2021

Posted by in Water

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            One of the most up-setting regulations an earlier President tried to put in effect was the restricting of fertilizers and manure runoff. Thousands of square miles in the Gulf is dead because of the runoff from the Mississippi River. North America has almost one-quarter of the planets liquid fresh water. The regulation was designed to preserve it and keep it safe to drink.

            Soon, many states will be like California and drying up from climate change. Periodic rain and snow storms may help to prolong the inevitable return to a desert environment displacing suburban housing and agriculture. Millions will move to states and areas with fresh surface water. With the oceans rising and flooding coastal cities, their populations will also look to areas with surface water.

            The great underground aquifers are being sucked dry from residential and agricultural use. The Great Ogallala Aquifer of the Plains States is rapidly growing lower with little surface water to replace it. Life on the Plains will have to change.

            Where will the millions of people move to — The Mississippi River and its tributaries, and around the Great Lakes? We must start to be real stewards of our surface water and try to refill the aquifers that the melting glaciers had filled. We must stop polluting our surface water with agricultural, industrial, and municipal waste. Almost every year a majority of Lake Erie is covered with poisonous algae from farm runoffs.             Often we must have some sense and keep ourselves from doing things that harm us and our planet for short term gains. I hope the Biden administration will put us on track to preserve our most precious resource. Where would we be if government didn’t care more for our health than we do?

History Almost Repeated

20 Wednesday Jan 2021

Posted by in History

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            As an amateur World War II historian I have wondered why critics and followers of Donald Trump could not see a close comparison of him and Adolph Hitler.

            The invasion of the Capital Building was much like the storming of the Reichstag by Hitler’s brown shirts in his effort to take control of the government. Granted Hitler shared control of the mob he had incited and led instead of going back to the White House to give out Medals of Freedom to his golfing friends. On the other hand, Hitler could not have watched his followers on TV while resisting sending National Guard and Police from outside D.C.

            Trump has followed the teaching of Hitler’s communication minister Goebels. His mantra was called “The Big Lie.” He said if you tell a lie often enough people will believe it. Trump has told tens of thousands lies, many over and over, until his gullible followers believed them. His most egregious one is the root of the violence in D.C., and around the country. He lost the election and the count shows many people voted for all the Republicans except him. It was enough to flip Georgia to Biden.

            During the last few weeks of the war, Hitler decided the Germans weren’t fully committed to holding off the allies in the West and the Russians in the East. Hitler ordered the destruction of what we hadn’t bombed out. This had the effect of leaving little for the next government to work with. Trump has put through a similar policy of rules dealing with the defense, environment, interior, and others making roadblocks for Biden’s effort to normalize America.

            Hitler went to jail after the Reichstag, will Trump? Unfortunately Hitler wrote Mein Kampf in jail and got became powerful.

Right Man, Right Time

20 Wednesday Jan 2021

Posted by in Crises, President Biden

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            Joe Biden’s first term faces the greatest challenges any American President has faced before. Biden’s biggest problem is probably the pandemic killing thousands of Americans every day. The second may be the economy wrecked by the pandemic. Third may be the Trump’s lies to millions of gullible Americans and how to get them to understand the truth. Fourth could be the overwhelming National Debt and ways to start reducing it. Fifth is the income difference in America. Sixth is the structural and social racism in America. Seventh is our law enforcement and criminal persecution laws and practices. Eighth is to undo the damage Trump has done to our Government, society, culture, and environment. Ninth is to move his nominees and agenda through the Senate while they manage the impeachment process in the Senate. Tenth, of course, is the former President’s continued “Scorched Earth” damage through his lies and leadership of radical right’s white racists and fascist groups.

            When Lincoln took office he had a divided country, Wilson had the Spanish Flu, FDR came in during the Depression, and LBJ had unrest. Biden’s first day means he has to battle all the crises of four Presidents at once. An old saying is “the right man at the right time” may never have had a more appropriate person to manage these huge challenges facing us at this time.

History Can’t Repeat

20 Wednesday Jan 2021

Posted by in History

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            Each morning I watch the BBC’s World News to get a picture of what happened around the world yesterday. They devote a minute to the past major events which occurred during that week. Recently it has shown America’s space exploits, Viet Nam, Hurricanes, 1960s Race marches, and other admirable and despicable events.

            I am sure the invasion of the Capital will be one repeated year after year during the week in which January 6 falls. I hope the following week doesn’t reach the status of being a worthy news item. May nothing like the happenings of January 6 ever be repeated on BBC’s “Week in History” ever again?