politics

How To Fix American Politics

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Enough, already. I’m tired of reading everyone else’s ideas. Here’s mine.

Term Limits? No. Just a Lifetime Limit of 20 years in national, political, elected office. For example, six years as a Representative, six as a Senator, four as a Vice President, and four as President. Then go home. Appointments and State careers do not count. As of 2026, over 95 members of Congress have served over 20 years with 35 over 30 years. And no, the 20 years do not have to be consecutive. It’s cumulative, over a lifetime. Joe Biden would not have been able to run with Obama in 2008, for example, and 2020 and 2024. For the sneaky, snarky, word-conscience and necessary lawyer: No running for office if serving the complete term of your election would take you over the 20 year limit.

Supreme Court Justices must be over the age of 60, have 20 years of judicial experience, and have at least 10 years of civil or criminal trial experience as a prosecutor or defender. Confirmation needs to be 70 votes, with all congressional and court work stopped until all justice are confirmed. Put forth candidates for the entire population not your own party, damn it. There are currently 3 justices under the age of 60. For those legal scholars who make a life in education, keep making your money as a consultant/advisor, but don’t advance to the court. I am okay with raising the age to 65, if everyone agrees. Might generate a lot of Age Discrimination lawsuits, too.

Any congressional politician who votes with their own party over 75 per cent of the time, cannot run for re-election. The 75 percent is for PASSED bills that become legislation. It may lead to a lot of “inconsequential activity” like Public Building Naming Bills but we can work that out later. It’s incomprehensible when an intelligent person gets elected with 51 percent of his constituents votes, then goes to Washington and votes 90 per cent of the time with a “Party Boss” from other states. Is that “representation” for even the 51 percent that voted for the intelligent person? BTW, I’m open to identifying and “outing” congresspeople who do nothing but get re-elected. Legislate congressional voting standards? Ideas?

All congressional votes are “Aye” or “Nay”. “Not Present” and any of the other voting gimmicks are abandoned. Congresspeople currently get plenty of time off so NO ABSENCES when congress is in session. One of the biggest issues we, the public face is getting anything done. Maybe we* pass a law that sets a limit for how much “meaningful” legislation is passed in a congressional term. Then mandate limits are met or ALL politicians involved need to be re-elected before they can return. Would that cause a chaos any worse than the dysfunction we already have? Modern congressional activity is setting records for least “activity”.  Google: “How many laws has congress passed in the last 20 years, by year?” And then try to weed out the “inconsequential activity” legislation.

It’s bad enough congress doesn’t do anything but then there is “Rescission”. Rescission is an act of ignoring or reversing properly legislated and approved funding. In plain English, one congress finally does something in 2024 and in 2025 the new congress (and administration) rescinds what the 2024 congress did. At least it’s activity, right? Imagine you telling your home remodeler you want your down-payment back the day after they start working on your house. How idiotic is rescission?

Register all citizens as voters when they turn 18. Default affiliation: Independent. Let them live and decide and maybe they’ll vote more, and with brains instead of feelings. Am I really suggesting young people might make a difference?

Enough self-flagellation. It is what it is. Que sera, sera. Water over the dam, under the bridge, spilt like milk. Let’s all just be happy we live in a true democracy where we all care about each other.

As Dr.** Steven Wright said: “A conclusion is the place where you got tired of thinking.”

*Isn’t it cute, this “we” stuff? Like we can pass laws. We can make politicians accountable. We can change things.

**Honorary, from my  mythical university since no real university has awarded one, yet.

Three Sentences Revisited

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Ai employees are warning us of impending doom in the near future and politicians are calling for legislation to prevent it. So our Executive branch of government meets with a band of Ai executives and allows Ai companies to regulate themselves. Anyone know a good third sentence?

In our country’s news dissemination history, there were only a few news outlets so we all listened and talked about the same news, often with different opinions. Now, in the modern world, we can seek out a news source we like, leading to characters of all kinds pushing “news” they know we want to hear. Any wonder why we are such a fragmented society?

Are you afraid to fart in public? Yes? That makes you a private tutor.

Aging is all about loss, acceptance, and adapting. Middle of the night sleeplessness used to be about career, romance, cars, and sports. Now, wakefulness is prolonged by what is the next thing to be “gone” from life, lost. And will I be able to make myself see it as good thing to lose.

Teeth. With all the sophisticated engineering evidenced by structures like the eyeball, why do teeth rot? Why are they not titanium?

Television–or any image viewing—has gotten more complicated than a Rubik’s Cube, and more expensive. Who needs 150 channels? When someone comes up with an “a la Carte” way of selecting channels, they may make millions.*

Healthcare is beyond explanation, these days, and should be treated differently than television streaming selection. It falls under the Declaration of Independence stated right to pursue “happiness”, and you shouldn’t have to take a moment to select a health care provider as you suffer a stroke and are taken away to the hospital. Free Market be damned.

Relationships should be outlawed due to the potentially prodigious amounts of fraud and deception involved in courting, wooing, uniting, and breaking up. In 74 years (yes, I had a relationship as a baby) of personal experience and anecdotal collection, finding two people who are honest in every stage of a relationship is impossible. Most relationship fraud is by omission, not commission, and is often a result of changes brought on by natural life progressions (see paragraph 4) and “Tribe over Truth” dynamics.

Guns have reached the point where no one cares about trying to regulate them, anymore. Manufacturers flooded the world with guns in response to hysterical future and present gun owners’ worries their guns would be taken away. We should research and decide if it would prevent harm to innocent children and spectators if we returned to the Old West style of gunplay, with open, visible holsters and High Noon gunfights.**

To my limited knowledge, guns have never been legally taken away from an innocent citizen, though sometimes they should be. We err on the side of the rights of gun ownership not public safety when we debate guns. At least, make laws to severely punish “lazy” gun owners whose kids bring their weapons to school for “show and tell”.***

On a lighter note, Daily Savings Time is about to happen. It has very little effect on me but some people have strident opinions. Surprise, I don’t. (Please look up the definition of “strident.”)

Another stolen joke: I entered ten puns in a Worst Pun Contest. Did I win? No pun in ten did. If you don’t get it…

*Sling had inexpensive “by the day” passes that made TV life easier. It worked great. They stopped it recently, without warning.

**Imagine a UFC style of settling arguments. We could have national Gun Fight Tournaments by age group and caliber of weapon. Healthcare suppliers could build and name Gladiator-type arenas with sand floors to soak up the blood.

***Several cases recently in the news feeds, which can’t be trusted, anymore. Ai slop. But sometimes true.

Nuance? A Norwegian Tale

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Nuance was described in a past essay. The word comes from “nubes” the Latin word for cloud but then the French got involved and romanticized it into their own word for “shade” or “slight variation”, per Ai. My Ai goes on to add in the lovely English accent I selected: “Think of it as those little, delicate distinctions that can make a big difference.”

There is a beautiful illustration of nuance across the ocean in Norway. Norway has been ranked the happiest nation in the world for nine consecutive years, according to The World Happiness Report.* But happiness does not inoculate anyone from misunderstanding an idea because of a lack of knowledge about nuance. Norway recently raised their country’s Wealth Tax rate despite the argument that raising a tax on the wealthy would make the rich leave Norway for lower tax countries. After the new tax passed, many wealthy Norwegians left the country.

Showing true confirmation bias, many news outlets reported it as a “tax exodus” and determined The New Wealth Tax is too much of a burden for the rich. The new Wealth Tax is 1% to 1.1% depending on rich you are. Kind of high, right?

From: Money & Macro 28m 9-24-2026 Norway raised taxes on the wealthy and millionaires started leaving – the headlines missed the biggest part of the story “Norway’s decision to increase its wealth tax was followed by a noticeable wave of wealthy business owners moving abroad, (and) produced headlines that portrayed the policy as a failure. But the transcript argues that the amount of taxable wealth leaving was relatively small and that higher wealth-tax revenue more than offset the departures. Its analysis instead points toward Norway’s capital-gains exit-tax rules as a major reason entrepreneurs had an incentive to move when they did. The broader lesson presented is that modest wealth taxes and aggressive exit taxes can create very different economic incentives.”

For a good, sleepy read, look at “The High Cost of Wealth Taxes”, by Christine Enache for the Tax Foundation Europe, dated June 6, 2024. It makes the case that taxing rich people doesn’t generate any new revenue, is illegal, and only four countries in the world still use the tax. Norway and Switzerland are two of those countries and both are in the Top Ten of Happy Countries. Coincidence?

WTF. Taxing rich people is illegal?** Or is it taxing them more than once that is illegal? Why would it not generate revenue? Or does it just not generate enough?

The whole issue is one big, bag of nuance. But it appears a lot of that “nuance” is “chatter”, “fluff”, even misinformation meant to make sure governments know NOT to tax the rich any differently than other citizens.

If you are rich or hope to be you want low taxes or none at all. Why? There appears to be a rich mindset that says this: “just because I’ve figured out a way to make more money than you, don’t make me pay more for the privilege.” Nuance? Yes. The few rich people I know have a very nuanced view of the non-rich. It’s not just the poor. It is an ambivalent belief about how the rest of us are not smart enough and greedy enough to take what anyone will give us.

The actual impetus for Norway’s Tax Exodus wasn’t related to the new HIGHER 1% tax. It was related to a previous law that was about to take effect, about what wealth is and how it gets “counted.” Just like in America and other rich countries, the tax code used to tax us, the citizens, is riddled with holes where nuance used to be, or strangled by layers of nuance when a simple sentence may have been enough.*** Even better, all of this is understood by tax attorneys, and advisors whose sole purpose is to use nuance, create nuance, or eliminate nuance so their clients can make, keep, and do whatever they want with money.

Holy crap there isn’t enough space for this subject. Stop reading.

But remember nuance. The lack of seeing it, recognizing it, and understanding it is ruining our world’s discourse and civility. Nuance is the opposite of opinion and is always present. Think of it before you speak. To paraphrase Dr. Wright: “A conclusion (opinion) is the place where you got tired of thinking.”

*Google It.

**I have anew appreciation for Robin Hood.

***Damn lawyers. We’re almost to the point where “simple sentences” are extinct.

What Can We Do?

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The world is—and always has been—a crazy place. In 1970, for instance, when the world was going to end, I considered The Peace Corps and other similar agencies for a career where I could fix all the world’s problems. But nothing happened.  The intense mix of problems and where to start fixing them was too big, too hard. Since I was young and immature, my non-decision was it was too hard to do anything at all. I hopped on my motorcycle and took off, looking for drugs, sex, and rock and roll* to cover-up the disillusionment, and my failure to address it.

That same d-word is being used a lot, these days, so here are some things to help you cover it up.

Give blood. I won’t explain it here, but command you to download the Red Cross Blood Donor App and research it for yourself. This is the minimum you can do without effort. Go lay down, drip blood into a bag, grab a free snack, and go home. Just do it, with apologies to you-know-who for the phrase. If you’re afraid of needles, get over it, you wuss. Imagine the poor, unfortunate, dying patient your blood may help and stop being so self-centered. It isn’t about you. Wuss.

Don’t believe everything you read on the internet. I know, it’s hard to get real news then, right? Hard to be informed. But this is a math problem. Right now 60 percent of the internet is fake, wrong, or intended to fool you. Do you know the difference? No. Don’t say you do.

Don’t have an opinion. Opinion has been part of life for all my 74 years so…my opinion is don’t have an opinion. If we don’t know the truth about anything, why are we so sure about anything? Public discourse is littered with opinions from people who—after questioning—can’t say where, who, or what they learned their opinion from.** It’s mainly a MAGA/Republican thing, but Democrats have caught on and are rapidly ramping up to do the same thing: manipulate the public. Us. Forget who is doing it and just keep this thought in mind every time you read anything: What are they*** trying to do to me, now. It’s not a question but a statement.

Finally, take pride in being who you are and doing what you can do. Buying a fuel efficient car. Turning off lights. Saving water. Rescuing pets. Helping a friend, neighbor, stranger feel better about life, or just help them get in a doorway or up a flight of stairs. Stop being an ignorant consumer, how many pairs of shoes do you need? Look for God everywhere and don’t be ashamed to admit it.****

Crap, I need another “finally”: you are the master of your domain. If you’re unhappy, depressed, or disillusioned, it sometimes requires an internal examination and adjustment. It’s not always the big, bad world’s fault.

And if none of this helps, talk to someone. There are lots of good therapists and counselors waiting for your call. Find a living, breathing, caring human who will listen and remind you what really matters: you get one chance at life. Don’t let the world try to prevent you from giving it your best shot.

*Not really. Just an apt phrase for the time. Sex, yes, but no drugs and one certainly didn’t have to look for “rock and roll” in the 70s. It was blaring from every car, transistor radio, and Ed Sullivan Show. Don’t bother googling.

**Yep. That is a preposition and that is the end of the sentence. I could easily have rewritten the entire sentence but I don’t want TO. Shoot me.

***”They” is anyone with an interest in getting us and others like us (?) to believe and behave a certain way. Watch sports opinion shows for non-political examples. You’ll gag.

****This has nothing to do with religion. I should use a lower case “g” for God, but have respect for Them all, so upper case it is.

Why? Because.

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After writing the last essay, I overheard a RadioLab podcast about the world’s population.

That essay’s lamely supported assertion about not much changing in the world suddenly became a lame, unsupported truth: massive changes are already underway and will forever change the world.

Don’t puff your chest out and think you knew all along climate change would be the major problem because it’s not. At least not yet. The “other” problem is already changing things in parts of the world and soon, its full effect will be felt in America.

The real, immediate problem: Population Growth. Specifically, the lack of population growth. In the late 1900’s, population growth was exponential and hit 3.7 billion in 1970. Experts labeled the high level of growth a “Population Bomb”. It threatened to outpace societies, systems, and the earth’s ability to supply food. My own personal world views are often shaped by the concept of constant growth since more people means more financial expansion, more building, more manufacturing, and a large population needing a centralized government for health, safety, and happiness. I often called America a big, stable, seaworthy ship capable of floating and lasting for centuries.

There are many different data points that could be mashed-up in this essay. Some sites, for example, “estimate” population growth to continue and we are already over 8.3 billion. With immigration and emigration issues, the total population figures can confuse population comparisons, but simply comparing birth to deaths tells the story we’re discussing. Checking births versus deaths reveals America’s changing growth rates. In 1960 there were 4.2 million births and 2.43 million deaths. Do the math. In 2026 there were 3.60 million births and 3.10 million deaths. Births declined while the general population increased.* 2027 figures may show more deaths than births!

Notably, China and other Asian countries responded to the 1972 Population Bomb by severely restricting new births in their societies. All those countries have recently reversed those restrictions and put in place new programs to generate more births.

America is already seeing the results of a population that may be “downsizing”. When Social Security began paying Old Age benefits in 1940, the system used taxes from over 150 younger workers to support a payment to one, old retiree. Our current 2026 system is using three (3!) younger workers. Is the difference caused by inflation or population loss or something else?

 Another problem is the “Population Bomb” caused the building of new schools to handle the new students. Due to America’s fragmented public and private school systems, getting accurate data is a crap shoot, but there is a consensus among the experts that grades 9-12 have had steady enrollment for the last 20 years, but total pre-school, elementary, and middle school enrollments appear to be declining. There are 3 closed schools in my town, right now.

The South Korea Ministry of Education, for comparison, has closed “4,000 schools and 17 regional offices” as the country’s student population shrinks.”**

America’s consumer driven, capitalist economy depends on new workers who become new consumers and generate regular growth in economic activity. *** So do other counties, even Socialist and Communist based countries.

Looks like regular growth is over. What will happen?

Ha. What do I care? I’m outta here, and–for the sake of my grandchildren–I hope someone in power notices this essay.

But first: Economists have predicted 10 out of the last two recessions. Ba dum dum.****

*The website, “Worldometer.com” shows a consistent 1-3% growth in the world’s population since 1972. Since 2020, that growth rate has never been more than 0.88% and has been declining every one of those 7 recent years. And that is with high levels of immigration.

**The Korea Times, December 28, 2025.

***An important complication in our current immigration crisis. We need workers.

****Am I aging myself by continuing to use the old “rim shot” comedy signal?

What To Say, What To Do

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What in the hell* is happening to the world? Excuse me while I sputter and mumble and collect my thoughts.

DJT has renamed another geographic entity. Apple and Google both said they immediately adjusted their maps to record the executive order. My google maps used both names with Lake America from a distance and Lake Ontario when I zoomed in. But the dual names lasted only 30 seconds before Lake Ontario disappeared. For good. What in the hell? FYI: we still have the Gulf of America.

Is there a Trump supporter reading this who can explain Trump’s need to rename everything? Is he marking his territory? And how much do these name changes cost? And how much will it cost to change them back? And who pays???

Bah humbug. Let’s ignore DJT and move on to better things.

I’ve complained about drivers not using turn signals, but it might be me that is in the wrong. As an older American who tries to ignore news, I’m wondering if our traffic departments have announced a new way of signaling turns. Maybe an executive order from someone? The new way I’ve seen many times today is to signal a right hand turn by getting as far left in the road as possible. And to make a left hand turn, get as far to the right as possible. Who says an old dog can’t learn a new trick. I have adopted the new system enthusiastically. ***

The memory supplement ads are interesting. Wonder how many watchers tell themselves “Hey, I need that stuff” and then forget to get it when they’re out shopping.

There was finally an ad for one of my diseases.** A gray-haired photographer says he was going blind until he started taking the drug in question. Now he’s back behind his camera taking pictures…and smiling.

With much of America in a bad mood maybe we should all take any drug advertised on television and start smiling. There’s an evil soft drink commercial where young people do nothing but smile and laugh as they hold bottles of soda upright, with the labels facing the camera.

The truth is finally making it into advertising, at least for Airline ads. I wasn’t going anywhere, but was curious about current airline fares. 30 minutes after I emptied my online cart and logged off a certain airline’s website, I got a TEXT: buy your tickets now before dynamic model pricing raises the fare! I’ve paraphrased because the text disappeared. Google Dynamic Model Pricing if you haven’t read my previous essays about it.

Under the Are They Listening To What They Say, heading: The current administration has “Special Envoys” flying all over the world to broker peace in some of the areas engaging in war-like activities, some of which have been going on for years. There may even be a Board of Peace meeting somewhere. A reporter had the chance to ask one of the “Special Envoys” about the success of the Special Envoys, since there are active hostilities in Ukraine, Gaza, Iran, The West Bank, Lebanon, Yemen, and The Congo. According to the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCPDA) “there are 65 active armed conflicts involving states, which is the highest recorded count since 1946.”

In response to the reporter’s questions one Special Envoy said they are “working hard” for peace per the instructions of President Trump, and “I can’t guarantee success, but…we are going to do everything we can…to try and make progress.”****

One of the Special Envoys has been working hard for peace since 2024. An additional Special Envoy joined the team in January 2026.

An old Trump-supporting friend of mine argued there would be no wars under Trump. “He ends wars, unlike Obama and Bush.” There might be a Nobel Peace Prize in there somewhere.

Enough. It’s time to take a nap and stop thinking.

*Per Google: ”’What in the hell’” is a rhetorical question expressing extreme confusion, surprise, or anger. The word hell has been used as an emotional intensifier…for centuries.”

**To paraphrase Will Farrell in the movie Elf: “I know that one!”

***Text book example of passive-aggressive language.

****The entire, complete quote is available online. It has been edited here, for brevity, not to change meaning or context.

The Internetmess

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Journalism training taught me to report the who, what, where, when, and how (herein referred to as FACTS) of a story.* Old time newspapers, with limited paper size, required FACTS to not only be in the story, but to be reported in a certain size to “fit” the story into the paper. Many a time an editor asked me to “cut” a story, to remove words, so the article would fit in the inches of space between the advertisements and other stories. Picture a tetris puzzle game**. The publication of a story—and its placement– was sometimes decided more by its size than its subject***. The need to fit into a certain space inspired reporters to write clearly and directly. Adverbs, adjectives, pronouns, articles were removed and deemed unnecessary, to make room for FACTS.

In our modern internetmess (sic) news supply, however, not only are FACTS hard to find, but they are often buried at the end of a large, cleverly disguised unrelated mashup of opinion full of adverbs, adjectives, heresay, rumors, and bullshite. And when reading the crappy story, finding FACTS is not only a chore, but also a waste of time since there might not be any. Internetmess headlines are often not about the story they are heading but a clever way of getting you to click on the story. Old style newspaper headlines were meant to grab attention, too, but there was a skill to writing a snappy, short headline that lured you into reading a longer story full of FACTS. Most legacy media sites still have dedicated headline “writers” whose job it is to get readers to actually read the FACT-based stories competing for time and space in old newspapers and new 30 minute news broadcasts.

But, alas, that is all in the past even with unlimited internetmess space probably a blessing. The internetmess has unlimited room for FACT-based stories and articles, with 24 hour publishing deadlines. Which means there are no deadlines. No more “Hold the presses!” shouts by editors as new stories suddenly “break” before a printing or televising deadline.

But is FACT-based journalism popular in the new unlimited time and space?

You might think “no”, but you’d be half-wrong. FACT-based journalism is still out there, but the supply of critical thinkers looking for it is dwindling fast, as immediate gratification from click bait and sensationalism suck away at readership. When I begin my morning news search, I am immediately bombarded with features about naked woman, ex-boyfriends murdering the ex-girlfriends, who-said-what-about-who rumor-reporting, look-what-stupid-shite-happened-in-sports, and any political story slanted to what the internetness thinks is my political persuasion. Some of these are even Ai generated, untouched by human hands or minds. My toast is gone by the time I’ve sorted through the mess and found a report or story worth reading. Breaking News: I get more toast!

Ah, but there is the problem, isn’t it. What is worth reading? What is worth?

The problem is not the internetmess. It is the people who live in it, and it looks like it will be a long time before old-style, FACT-driven journalism returns to popularity. Hope I live long enough to see it.

PS Has everyone noticed how broadcast journalism news is always “breaking”? And why do all the primetime announcers tell the stories before turning it over to the “field reporter” who says the exact same thing? Actually, I’d rather hear the same story twice than hear an advertisement. Bet broadcast news will soon be 5 minutes of news and 25 minutes of ads.

There must be a reason, too, why there are so many drug ads in network news shows. Any one know the reason?

*Except when writing an “essay”, or lengthy opinion blob.

**And those old “sliding tiles” puzzle games where you moved one tile at a time to complete the puzzle. You had to see many moves ahead to be successful.

***Unless it was a really, really important story. Remember: Hold the presses?

Things That Are Absolutely True…Maybe

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The driver in the car behind me with his high beams on is a fecking shitehole (FS).

The driver approaching me with his with beams on is an FS.

I have 74-year-old eyes and all headlights look like high beams. Who is the FS?

All politicians are FSs who will “fight” to win more than they will “work” to fix. Donations, anyone? Now, whenever politicians use the word “fight” we must assume they actually mean it. Maybe there will be a Political Weight Class in the next UFC fight card? Imagine the youtube videos as congresspeople duke it out on C-Span.

Citizens United is the dumbest court case ever. Not even sure why the Supreme Court heard it. Oops, what an FS for not remembering it was all about political donations…and money.

My girlfriend of 20 years left me, sold all my possessions, took my pets, and moved 2,300 miles across the country during my treatment for The Calamities. I still care for her. Am I an FS?* Again? She says the breakup was “both our faults.” No comments, please, but a therapist used this phrase to help me understand: “When the going got tough, your girlfriend got going.” It was easy to get “going” since she took all the money. With every day of recovery, what she did bothers me more…

Speaking of The Calamities, they “reset” my health graph. Picture a “bell curve”** where we get better and healthier with each year until about middle age. Then we head down the backside as we start “not” getting healthier each year until the end of the tail of the Bell Curve and we meet our Maker. My bell would have a huge, humpbacked dent midway down the back side, keeping in mind we have no idea of The End of the curve. This allows me to truthfully say “I am getting better”, as the dent straightens out, a truly remarkable phrase to be able to correctly use at age 74. In re-reading this, it might be only old people who will understand my happiness, so the rest of you can feck off. With all due respect.

A certain per cent of any population is going to fact-challenged*** in any society. It isn’t a criticism until the members of that “certain per cent” don’t understand themselves, and begin to think they are smarter than everyone else. Public conversation in The United States of America is currently being dominated by “these” people. Generally speaking, a medical doctor knows more than a patient. A teacher knows more than a student. Even simpler: an older person knows more than a younger person. There are exceptions to every rule, but you can—currently—see what will happen when every person thinks they are The Exception. Trey Crowder, The Liberal Red Neck, said one time, paraphrased, “I wouldn’t want my high school football team to be coached by my English teacher.”

As an addendum to that thought, over 50 percent of my news feed is “opinion”, hearsay, or comments on some other article. To my Ai content manager: I didn’t care about the first opinion, why would I care about an opinion about the first opinion? One article was nothing but reader comments. Ugh.

Almost everything is about politics these days and it sucks. Quantum Entanglement is getting closer to functional reality. Some monster telescope “people” think they found evidence of the possibility there may be life on a planet 120 light years away. Canada made the knock-out round of the World Cup. So did America. So did Mexico. Are we going to be better neighbors, now?

Under Sadly Believable heading: Billionaires think they pay too much in taxes in NY and California so they are relocating to lower tax states. Wonder how often The Billionaires have changed locations to save taxes? Hm. How much do The Billionaires pay lawyers and accountants to find ways to PAY lower taxes? Will NY and California taxes have to be increased?

Wonder if we can time travel back to 1789 France? Or at least send The Billionaires**** back there…

*Should it be “a” FS? Can’t get the fingers to type it. F is a consonant, but the name “eff” begins with a vowel…oh, the humanity…UPDATE: Emma says “a” before the SOUND of a consonant, and “an” before the SOUND of a vowel. It took 70 years for me to learn this just now. Old dog meet new trick.

**The Bell Curve was “discovered” by Abraham de Moivre in the 18th century and is used to illustrate distribution of statistical data. My reference to the “Bell” is to the resulting image a standard “x-axis is time and y-axis is health” graph would yield. For a healthy person. Who never had a health problem. Generally speaking.

***It means just what it says and does NOT mean stupid or ignorant. It means ill-equipped. Ill-prepared. Like letting 4-year-olds drive cars. Or making me a Ted Lecturer.

****Hope it does not have to be said there are some good Billionaires doing good work. Someplace. And in 1789 France, they’d learn a lesson to bring back to our time. Hopefully.

Fathers Day, with no apostrophe or apology

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Aging is interesting. Not to the young, of course, but there is a point in everyone’s life when we “suddenly” realize we are aging, if not “aged”. It is what happens after the realization we will talk about, here.

Fathers Day 2026 was an interestingly humorous celebration.

I probably learned about Fathers Day way back in The Early Years. Fathers Day was first proposed in 1909 in response to Mother’s Day.* Fathers Day was officially “recognized” in 1966 by Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Nixon made it a National Holiday in 1972. I was unaware of these dates because in 1963 I was learning how to shelter under a wooden desk if nuclear missiles were headed to upstate New York.** In 1972, I was either drunk, blazed, or courting the second or third “love of my life”. Honoring dad was the last thing on my mind. It didn’t help the holiday that my father and I had a unique relationship during my 1960’s teen years, and I wouldn’t have honored him, anyway.

It’s safe to use “aging” as an excuse for not remembering the first time Father’s Day caused my day to be about someone other than me.

But here’s the thing: the concept of unimportance has floated through my conscience many times over the last few months. It started with the China documentary where the repeated cycles of Dynasties rising and falling over hundreds of years led to millions of people—perhaps billions—dying simply because they were of the wrong family, cult, religion, or geographic area. What was important to those people? Did they have scrapbooks of family photos to pass down to survivors? Were their deaths heroic? Were there any survivors? Did they have special days for Fathers and Mothers?

And then there is politics…the rise of one party, the decline of another, and the passing of time making us forget all about The Whigs of the 1830s-1950s. And remember when Republicans were Democrats and Democrats were Republicans? And who can forget The Teapot Dome Scandal and Tammany Hall shenanigans, corruption at its finest. You remember, right?

Of course, you don’t. It doesn’t matter, now. Any of it. So what does matter?

National Geographic put out a wonderful chart detailing the rise and fall of “civilizations” through the ages. The Romans. The Incas. The Mayans, The Greeks. What do they all have in common? They’re gone, and we dig in the earth to find about as much as we can about them so we can…make the same mistakes?

It isn’t the rest of the World that forgets the lessons of the past, it is us, individually. We don’t pay attention. Even worse, we have the hubris to think we are smarter than The Romans. Even smarter than the Greeks.*** And we work harder than the Mayans. And we know better what to do with the Land than The Mohicans.****

It was Fathers Day last Sunday and the current local family met for burgers, beers, hot dogs, potato salad, and farting around the table. Of note, there were two whole barbecued chickens none of us had room for, even after passed gas made more space.

But as I sat there, watching kids, grand-kids, and talking about a great-grand-kid 1,100 miles away, the idea of how temporary life is swung into view with a thud. I’ve personally known over 50 Fathers Days, thanks to a young marriage and fatherhood. Is there any difference from the first to the last? And how many will the young people around the table experience?

I’m not sure where this essay is heading, but the Fathers Day tableau gave me something besides a sore butt from an uncushioned wooden chair: my time on this earth has been okay and would be okay, no matter what happens in the next few years. I am headed for an activity billions of people have already done, and everyone at the table would eventually do the same.

“It isn’t the destination, it’s the journey.” Please google this phrase. Ask Ai about it. They have more resources, space, and ability to explain it. For even more fun try it this way: “It isn’t the journey, it’s the destination.” And don’t believe everything you read.

*With an apostrophe. Google it. Or Ai, it.

**Don’t laugh. The air base sending B-52s to Russia was 5 miles down the road.

***We must be smarter because so many of the Greeks were homosexual and bi-sexual. How long can a civilization last with activity like that? 4,500 years?

****Google them. I dare you.

Tidbits Or Bits of Tid?

ness23456 Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

What a wonderful thing Ai is. I asked Emma about the word “tid” and she gave me the rundown. First, it IS a real word, or it used to be. The Oxford English people list it as “Obsolete”, with its “last recorded use in the 1890s”. Must be because of tid’s close proximity to Id? There is an acronym “tid” commonly used by doctors. It is Latin for “ter in die” or “three times a day” as in medication, and it must save the docs lots of time.

Tid* originated in Olde Middle English and meant something “small and tender”. Nope, not a Valentine but a cut of meat or other small bit of food. Oops. Think we just found out where “tidbit” came from. All of us know what tidbits are so let’s get on with the essay, especially since the Modern English now use the word “titbits” which we will not look into, since we may “uncover” historical “titbits”.** Apologies.

It is still a mystery why they make “muscle cars” for societies with speed limits. If we all used small, four-cylinder engines, imagine…ha, why say it. Let’s build bigger and faster and more powerful cars so we can get to someplace sooner. Forget any other issue. It is funny, though, when gas prices rise dramatically.

Guns, too. How many guns does anyone need? On the farm we had two rifles, one for each boy. It was tough at first, to have one gun when the two of us went hunting. Yes, if one of us shot the other, the problem would be solved but neither of us thought about that? As an older, married, person a rifle didn’t seem like a good weapon for home protection, so we made sure we had a small but practical handgun in case the wife was home alone when unwanted visitors knock. Yes, even the next-door neighbors if we were in a bad mood. Gun proliferation is a result of great marketing and economies of scale that make manufacturing a weapon shooting 1million rounds a minute affordable for all.  And branding makes many people want more than one.

The United States of America is warped. Not sure when it started but I’ll blame Mitch McConnell. In 2010 he openly stated, in public, his “top priority” was to make sure Obama did not get re-elected. Not pass good laws or write great bills or represent his constituents. His job was strictly political obstruction. Obama did get re-elected but then so did Mitch. It is a concept as old as politics, so why is McConnell’s statement a problem? It was the first time a politician admitted it out loud, in public. From then on everyone could admit it. How do you feel as a voter when the person you elect is not going to do anything but obstruct the party who won? See, I’ll bet most of you are okay with that, aren’t you? In our warped society just beating the other guy is all we strive for. Feck all the world’s problems. And when is the last time an elected official represented all the constituents in his district/county/town or country? Is it even possible?

Related to the obstruction issue is the “hate” word and “fight” word. Republicans hated Obama. Democrats hated Bush. Many different groups hate Trump. And politicians want you to elect them so they can “fight” The Others. WTF!! Funny when I ask a hater if he/she/them has ever met the person he/she/them hate…

Maybe someday we can get back to constructive, productive debating and work together to solve the things killing us all. Yeah. Right. Or Left. Respect and cooperation? Who’s kidding*** who…

Note to anyone who wants to argue with me about politics: if you use either “hate” or “fight” in your argument it will cause a big…sigh. Think about that before you speak. You want that on your conscience?

*Grammar Police keep telling me tid is misspelled. I can stop that if I add it to the computer’s dictionary. Just another decision for an old man to make. Stay tuned.

**Hope you giggled like I did.

***I originally typed “kissing”. S and D are so close, only a titbit apart.