surreal experience

Today I had a surreal experience.

Each day (almost), I go to visit my in-laws at an assisted living facility. Part of the visit consists of sitting at one of the tables in the common room working a puzzle with my dear, sweet MIL. Its usually fairly quiet in the room, and sometimes other residents will sit with us and help with the puzzle. Sometimes staff will work the puzzle with us while on break. I enjoy it.

Understand that MIL is in a wheelchair, and has to speak very slowly - I'd say the rate is about five words a minute.She is as sharp as she ever was, but the words just don't come when she wants them to.  I'm pretty good at filling in the blanks for her, because I do that anyway due to a moderate hearing loss. Of course, it's hopeless when there is too much noise in the room, but usually the noise level is not so bad.

Today, we were working on a new puzzle, still building the edge pieces, and I had asked her to choose whether she'd like to work on the sky edge, or the grass edge at the bottom. She chose the sky. We got to work.

A woman came into the room and stood next to the table, and I was expecting her to sit down and start putting some pieces together, but she didn't sit down. She stood there and began talking. But she didn't just talk, she gave us a streaming narrative at 350 words per minute. I think she could have given Hilary E., a dear friend who works in radio, a run for her money. The words were clear, they were just fast - and I couldn't quite follow. I prepared to pay attention to her, for patience is one of my spiritual gifts, and has been since I actually requested it during prayer once, a long time ago. That is a request that God never refuses to grant, and he does it quickly. You know what I mean if you've ever prayed for such a thing.

And then something happened. Now, you have to understand that I don't multi-task very well. I can't listen to two things at once, or do two things at once. I am subject to stack overflow errors, to use a computer programming term. As she spoke, I became aware of everything around me, as if in a dream. Behind and to the right the television was playing a comedy of some sort, evidently an adult comedy, because a man announced "I'm gay," and the canned laughter seemed to really appreciate the line. The woman he said it to asked him when  he first knew, and he said, "when you kissed me just now." The canned laughter lost its composure completely.

Behind and to the left, there was a Skip Bo game under way, and one of the ladies was explaining to a  new player that you aren't supposed to set up the next player for an easy play, the idea is to keep other players from being able to play, don't you know that?

A resident in a wheel chair, I think her name is Wilma, asked about her niece. I feel sorry for this woman, because this is pretty much all she does all day: she wheels around and repeatedly asks people about her niece. "Have you seen Vickie?" goes the refrain, and everybody there - residents, staff and visitors - have learned to tell her that Vickie is at work, or we haven't seen her today, not yet. Staff usually promises she'll be by at five, because Wilma won't remember by then anyway. In fact, she'll forget within a couple of minutes, and she'll be asking all over again.

The woman with the radio personality speech habits was explaining that her therapy sessions were being cut off because of Obamacare, but that she was going to take advantage of the RIDES program, which would take her and three friends to a restaurant, if she could get three friends to go with her. The character on TV announced again, "I'm gay," and went on to explain that this wasn't about her, it was about him, but I wasn't sure if he was still explaining to the same person, since the original person would of course know by now, having been told before. Back at the Skip Bo table, somebody asked "Is this like 42?" but I didn't hear the answer. Wilma was asking again about Vickie, and somebody in a uniform was telling her that she was still at work and would be by later. Wilma explained that she needed to talk to her, and did she have the key to the cigarette cabinet? Unfortunately, she did not. But Vickie would know.

Now the lady at our table was telling us that she didn't know if the RIDES program was a taxi or a bus, but it was probably a bus, because it might be hard to fit five people in a taxi, and besides, her painting therapy was coming to an end, unless - unless the RIDES program could take her to the place where they were doing the painting! But if they did, how would they bring back the wet canvas in a taxi, so it had to be a bus. The words "I'm gay" came once again from the television, and I wondered how many people he was telling about his coming out of the closet, since this time he was irritated that apparently somebody had failed to be discreet about it, and had told his family - and again, it wasn't about her, and it wasn't her place to tell his family. Shrieks of laughter came from the Skip Bo table, where somebody had just won or made a mistake, and there was talk of whether it was skill or just luck. I wondered just how many people the gay guy was going to come out to before the show ends.

MIL and I kept nodding and smiling at the right places (I think), and the woman kept talking. A television in a nearby room down the hall was telling us that some politician or another was concerned about the "fiscal cliff" that we were heading for, and then the interviewer let him explain that "we do have to do something about it, and I certainly don't want to leave the burden to the middle class, but we have to ---" and I shut that part out, because it was a politician and they always lie anyway.

Once again we heard the words "I'm gay," completely ignored by the enthusiastic Skip Bo players, and the laugh track continued to have a roaring good time. Then somebody on staff, after assuring Wilma again that Vickie would be there later, came to get the woman and encourage her to go play Skip Bo with the others, since the current game was almost over. Oh, my yes, she certainly would, and she left the table. I wondered if she knew how Skip Bo might compare to 42.

The mists parted, and I became focused again on one thing at a time. Left in relative silence, when I could tune out the next "I'm gay" announcement, I looked down at the puzzle pieces. And my MIL leaned over to me and whispered "You can't work a puzzle like that," and shook her head, and smiled. She is right, you cannot work a puzzle while all that is going on.

I wonder if that's what ADD is like.

Halloween 2012: the Lights

 ©2012, William Payne
Any resemblance to actual persons, living or undead, is coincidental.

It was one of the more desolate places in Texas: within sight of a highway, but far enough from it that you couldn't hear the highway noise unless the air was perfectly still. Just close enough to Marfa that you could see the glow from the city's lights to the east.

It was a famous place. Not absolutely,  household word famous, but if you read a book about weird places, haunted places, or mysterious places, you had a good chance of reading a little about the Marfa lights. Nobody really had a perfect explanation for the phenomenon. Most people had an opinion about them, but nobody had any good ones. Swamp gas? That sounded good, but for the fact that west Texas is a desert, and there are no swamps. UFO's? A good idea, but why would UFO's keep returning to such a place,  night after night? Ghosts? Well... only if you believe in ghosts. And if you do, then there's no real reason to expect science to back up the idea. Ghosts just aren't subject to the rigors of science. But whatever the explanation, there were the lights, seen by many: mysterious, floating colored lights in the distance.

Michelle thought they might be ghosts. And what better time to test the theory than on Halloween night, in the hours just before and just after midnight? She got three other people together to slip out away from the highway after sundown, to sneak through the cactus and yellow grass to get to what Michelle liked to call "Ground Zero," the place where the lights seemed to be. Each of them carried a small flashlight, with an improvised plastic sheet taped on the front to keep the lights from being seen from the highway. "Just keep the lights aimed away from the road, and nobody will see us," she explained. This way, they could avoid walking into a prickly pear or cholla, which nobody wanted to do, no matter how exciting a ghost hunting trip might be.

They found a large flat rock to sit on, and estimated their position as being pretty close to where they had all seen the lights at one time or another. They looked to the highway, and could clearly see three cars in the pull-off where people liked to park when looking for the lights. The moon wasn't full, exactly, but there was enough light to let them count the cars. They hoped that it wasn't enough light to let the people in the cars see them. They weren't really supposed to be there. And so they sat quietly.

Michelle took off her pack, and pulled out her canteen. The others did the same. The night was cooling rapidly, as it always does in the desert, and the dry air made her thirsty. They had agreed  not to talk unless necessary, because it just seemed that a ghost was more likely to appear to you if you weren't chattering on and on about nothing. They had all seen episodes of Ghost Hunter and Ghost Hunter Academy, where people kept asking a ghost to "let us know you're here," and then not shutting up long enough for the ghost to get a chance to talk or make the air colder or anything. They were determined not to make that mistake out here.

Michelle looked out at the road, and saw that there were only two cars now. Somebody had already given up - she smiled at the impatience of most people. If you're going to see ghosts, or anything like ghosts, you have to be patient.

The minutes passed slowly by, at first, like the family viewing a casket after a funeral, but then they began to pass more quickly, like the friends, and the co-workers who didn't even like the deceased and wanted to get the obligation over with. The air was still. When it was this quiet, you could hear distant highway noise, even when you couldn't see the lights of the cars.

At 11:30, Michelle realized that she had nodded off, and rubbed her eyes to wake herself up. She looked toward the highway, and all the cars were gone. The air was still, but cool - almost cool enough to feel uncomfortable, but not quite. Two of her three companions had already put on sweaters. The white limestone rocks around them looked like ghosts on the ground, ready to rise up against them when the time was right.

"Seen anything yet?" she whispered. All three gave her a quiet, negative response. Michelle looked at her little Hello Kitty watch, and sighed. Sometimes people didn't see any lights at all. This might be one of those nights. Still, they had all agreed to stay out in the desert night's cool air until at least 1:00 a.m., lights or no lights, ghosts or no ghosts. She listened, and there wasn't even the distant noise of tires on the asphalt. They were alone.

Soon, midnight was approaching, with no fanfare. "Michelle?" It was Ashley, tugging at Michelle's sleeve.

"What is it? What?" she whispered. But Ashley said nothing more, only breathed more loudly. Michelle turned to see what was the matter, there was Ashley, with a look of terror on her face, and - then Michelle saw why Ashley was shaking. Her flashlight, with its blue plastic cover, was floating in the air about a foot from her face.

The flashlight turned itself on, and shined its blue light into Ashley's face. She looked as if she might cry at any minute.

"Ash, baby, don't be afraid. This is what we came here for. We have a real ghost. Maybe."

"Don't be afraid? Michelle... look around!"

"OK. What? What am I supposed to see?"

"How many - how many people did we come out here with? Do you remember?"

"Four. There are four of us. What - " then she realized that nobody was there but Ashley and herself.

"Where did they go? When did they leave?"

"I don't know where they went. They didn't leave, I didn't see them leave, they just - they just -"

"Stay calm, Ash. I'm going to get my cell phone and get some video of this. Our memories are playing tricks on us."

"Think so?"

"Yeah. Do you remember who was out here with us?"

"No."

"See? It was just the two of us. So stay calm and - and - my phone was fully charged when we left. I know it was."

"Not working?"

"Not working."

"Michelle, I don't mean to keep harping on this, but my flashlight is hovering in the air in front of me. Tell me what to do!"

"I know. I know. Just sit still and don't be afraid."

"But I am afraid!"

At that moment, the flashlight flipped to the other direction, and shined into the face of a young boy. He was looking into the light and tilting his head back and forth. Only his head and shoulders were visible.

"I want to go home! I want out of here!"

"Be still, Ash! it's OK. He won't  hurt you." She reached out her hand to touch him, and she passed through him. "Look. You can only see him where the flashlight shines on him. Outside the light, he's completely invisible. This is amazing."

"Does he know we're here? Can he see us? Can he hear us?"

"He looks kind of like a little cowboy, doesn't he? This explains - Ash, stay calm! I'm going to turn my light on, and see if I can light up the rest of him." She turned on her light, covered with green plastic, and the ghostly boy turned to her light, staring at it in amazement. "I don't think he can see us. I think he can only see our lights."

She thought for a moment. "I have an idea. Be still." She turned her light to Ashley, so she was illumined - and the ghost dropped the flashlight and gaped in fear at Ashley. "He can see you! Smile for him!"

She did. Or she tried to, at least. But he looked at Michelle's light, then at Ashley, than back at the light. He bent down and picked up the light from the ground, and shone it at both of them. He seemed surprised to see the two of them.

"This is amazing, Ash! We're looking at a real ghost, right now - we can see him, and he can see us! I wish I could get video of this." And the ghost grabbed Michelle's flashlight before she could react. She gasped, and her heart was now racing.

The ghost turned both lights on himself, looking into them as if they were a bright kind of magic.  And then both girls could see two other flashlights behind the ghost. They were the colors of the lights brought by the other two girls. Were they... the other two girls? I know they were girls, I know they were our friends. What were their names, she thought. But it was getting harder and harder to think. Maybe it was just Ash and me. Her head felt heavy, her mind felt clouded. Now the lights were floating toward each other, and there were no faces to be seen. When they came together, all four lights, they just disappeared. Only the moon kept them from feeling completely lost. They could still see strange light trails in their eyes. The rocks, after a time of adjusting their eyes, still looked like ghosts in the moonlight. The minutes passed in silence.

"I want to go," said Ashley.

"OK," said Michelle.

They walked carefully to avoid tripping on the rocks or stepping into prickly pear. The moonlight helped, but it was still a little hard to see.

"There were four of us. Weren't there four of us?"

"I think so. But I can't remember... I'm not sure... who the other two were. Do you remember?"

"No. My head feels funny."

They both looked at the same to time to see if there were any cars at the pull-off. There weren't. They walked at an angle to go straight to Michelle's car, parked farther back.

"Do you have your flashlight, Ash?" asked Michelle. "I don't know what I did with  mine."

"No. I.. I must have left it back there somewhere. Should we go back and get it?"

"No... I... I must be tired. I can't remember what I did with my flashlight."

"Me either."

Both were glad when the car started. For some reason, they weren't sure that it would.

Alaska cruise 2012

 Last week, GA and I enjoyed a week-long

 cruise to Alaska.

 We decided a couple of months ago it had been too long since we had done a cruise, so she sat down and did the research, and we booked that puppy for the last Alaskan cruise of the summer for the Rhapsody of the Seas on the Royal Caribbean Cruise Line.
 Did you ever have one of those times when God is with you for the entire event? This one was like that. As we pulled out of the driveway, and the garage door glided slowly down, we did our usual prayer for the house to be watched over, and for the trip to be free of mechanical problems and difficulties that might spoil the fun. Then, on impulse, I added a ps: I asked God if he could, as a bonus, get us through airport security without getting groped. I mean, it can't hurt to ask.
 Believe it or not, we hit the security line, and as we were removing our shoes and belts, GA noticed that the Nude-O-Scope™ was turned off and everybody in our line was going through the metal detector! I was pretty sure that this was going to be a great vacation, because that was like God's initials in the corner.
 We flew to Seattle to spend the night at a Holiday Inn Express using GA's points, and the next morning we got up bright and early to catch the Seattle Express, which GA had arranged. We handed over our keys to the clerk, and GA noticed that there was a Seattle Express just outside the door, ten minutes early. She leaves me with the baggage to go check. They were pulling away, but she banged on their door, they stopped, and it turned out that they had called out our name and somebody else with a similar name (but no reservation) had answered, and had their luggage aboard in our place. We were just in time. I bet they start checking those papers a little more closely now.
 So we get to the port, and go through the line, and eventually board the ship.
 The previous week there had been an outbreak of noro-virus on the ship, and so they were going overboard (so to speak) with the cleanliness. Every room had been sanitized. Everywhere we went, if anybody touched anything, they sprayed it with disinfectant and wiped it down immediately. There were constant reminders to wash our hands after using the restroom (duh) and before eating anything (also duh). We also knew to cough in our elbows, not in our hands as we used to be taught in school. Keep your hands clean, and your chances of getting sick go way down. We also know one other important thing: when leaving the rest rooms, never ever touch that door handle. If it swings out, use your elbow. If it swings in, save the paper towel you used when washing your hands, and use it to open the door. It's a virtual certainty that that handle has been repeatedly touched by people who didn't bother to wash their hands, and therefore will be crawling with e coli bacteria. It's never a good idea to ingest e coli.
 So the first port of call is in Juneau. Now, our good friend Lois happens to be in Juneau, visiting her daughter who lives there. So we got a private tour of the sights, including Mendenhall Glacier, our first ever. It was incredibly beautiful.

 Then they took us to a stream where we saw salmon running up stream,

and when we were a little ways away, we got to see two adult bald eagles and a juvenile, feeding on fresh caught salmon. There were two others perched out on some kind of boating thingy.

At that point, it was already a magic level vacation. Thank you again, Kelli and Lois, and thank you again, God, for providing a beautiful sunny day!
 Then we did a little caching in an area where the Treadwell gold mine used to be, but which is now being reclaimed by the forest. If you look closely at the photo, you can see a ghost:

We didn't find the cache... can't win 'em all. Kelli got us back to the ship right on time, and so we claimed the cache hidden mere feet away from the security area.
 Next stop was Skagway. We weren't entirely sure what we might see there, but we had two excursions booked (independently of the cruise line). The bus to the high elevation tundra area was interesting and beautiful, but the one we really wanted to do, the one that was the highlight of the trip, was the rafting adventure up the fjord to see more bald eagles, harbor seals, and close up views of waterfalls. We made our way to the excursion meeting/waiting area.
 We were early, but the minutes ticked by, and the time to meet came and went, and nobody came to find us from the tour company. The time to leave on the tour came and went, and we called to see what was up, and all we got was a recording.
 We waited a little longer, just in case, but nothing. So we whipped out our handy Garmin Oregon 450 GPS unit and started the hike to Skagway to look for caches. I was disappointed, GA was very disappointed, but I figured there had to be a reason - I was pretty sure that God was on the trip with us.
So we found this virtual at a building whose front was made with drift wood. We wrote down the answers for the later email, and then got behind the building to get out of the wind, and GA's phone rang. It was the tour company. They had made a mistake, and entered our names on one list, but not on the list for the tour itself. Could we meet them for the 3:00 tour, because if we could they'd let us take the tour at half price. We grabbed a bus and got to the meeting place again. Profuse apologies, and then we were on our way to get suited up. Thank God for cell phones.
 Now, you might be thinking that this was a big FAIL because we didn't get on the tour we wanted. But we got on a better tour. This one had only four passengers, including us, so we got all that extra attention. And by that time, the seas were a bit rougher, so we got a more exciting ride - bumps and jumps and all kinds of fun. And we saw not only more bald eagles, we saw a dozen harbor seals sunning on the rocks as we drifted quietly by, so close we could have conversations with the seals. It was the best time EVER!

 I highly highly recommend contacting Ocean Raft Alaska  if you ever plan to cruise to Alaska and visit Skagway. It's something you won't forget!

 Next day was "at-sea," but it was a special kind of at-sea. Captain Speaking ("This is your Captain Speaking") drove the ship up another fjord to let us take a look at Sawyer Glacier - it reminded us both of the Titanic, because we were slowly making our way between the ice bergs, as the water was mirror smooth, and even looked cold, as opposed to just being cold.You know, Titanic cold. If  you've never seen a glacier in person, you need to add it to your bucket list. There is a cold shade of blue that you can't really see anywhere else or in a photo (it just isn't the same), and between us and the glacier were hundreds of little icebergs, many with harbor seals lounging on them. It's incredibly beautiful. Captain Speaking rotated the ship so everybody could get a good view no matter where they were standing (or sitting, if they happened to be on their balconies). (Note that the link above is to a video I had nothing to do with, but which I think is awesomely cool - but the following photo was taken by GA, and is also cool.)

The food on the ship was as good as ever, except that they no longer have escargot - but then, I think there is a snail shortage going on, so they substituted scallops in garlic and butter, prepared the same way as escargot, and - honestly - it tastes the same, which is to say you taste the garlic and butter and something scallop-like in there somewhere. There was also lobster night. And the desserts are to die for.
 The shows on this cruise were - how can I put this? - relatively lame. On past cruises, they were just short of Off-Broadway quality, at least as good as a Broadway touring cast. This stuff was actually within the lower range of Community theater productions. MCT for example, would have been ashamed to be seen doing what these shows turned out to be. There was a tribute to country music that I suspect was directed by somebody who hates country music. But that's OK... because on deck 6, every evening, we could be a part of the Adult Day Care at Night program, also called the Five Minute Party, with Derek Lewis. Imagine a perfect blend of kamikaze karaoke (meaning you don't pick your song, it's random), stand up comedy, attentive waiters to bring you adult beverages, and a parade of song parodies courtesy of Derek and his electric guitar. I tell you, that was the most fun I have ever had on board a ship. Nothing else in the way of cruise entertainment comes close.

 The last port of call was Victoria, in Canada. We grabbed a cache or two, and were trying to find one called "Little Brown Lamp Post," when a policeman in a spiffy uniform calls out "keep looking!" He wouldn't tell us where it was, but he did tell us we had almost touched it before, which was all we needed to know, and made the grab. He then offered to escort us to another, nearby cache, in the rose garden by the Parliament building. We got that one as soon as the local TV babe finished her interview with some profoundly important figure in Canadian politics, then went into the building to see what there was to see. In that building is a stained glass window commemorating the Queen's Jubilee year. Not the one for QE II, though there was one for her as well - no I mean the one for Queen Victoria! You know, the lady the city was named after.

 We both hated to see the cruise end, but they always do, because there's always somebody else who wants to come aboard and use your cabin when you're done with it.
 So a big thank you to Lois and Kelli, and to whoever broke the Nude-O-Scope™ at the airport, and especially to YHWH, the best God ever.

  

How we lost America

There was a time when elections in America were free and open. There may have been only two strong parties, but any competition was welcome to run for office on a level playing field. That was the law. Our representatives had to answer to us, the voters. Does anybody want to argue that such an America still exists? If so, stop reading, you're beyond hope.

How did this happen?

One of the benefits of being such an old fart is that I remember this stuff. I was here. So listen, my children, and consider what I have to say, and if I'm wrong, then go back to listening to CNN or Fox, as you choose. Soon enough I'll be in a rest home and I won't remember either. So bear with me, I'm going somewhere with this.

I remember when the IRS laws were changed to allow us to establish Individual Retirement Accounts. It seemed like such a good idea - we could defer taxation of some of our income and put it into an IRA until we reached retirement age. The net effect to the IRS was nil, since they simply raised the tax rates, and since they eventually get to tax your income when you get old enough. The effect on you, the taxpayer, wasn't as great as you imagined, because (yes) they simply raised the tax rate, but also remember that if you didn't put some money into that Mutual Fund then you just got socked a little harder than otherwise - so you kind of had to do it. But the effect on corporate America was amazing. Once things got going, they could count on investments from millions of workers - workers who can't take back the money for a long, long time. More important, those were workers who were very unlikely to show up at board meetings and question the actions of the CEO or the board members.

I also remember when any voter, or citizen, could donate to any political campaign as desired, and print political posters and distribute them with no government oversight. This was the essence of Freedom of Speech and of the Press, as per the First Amendment, which we used to cherish. But as the corporations began donating to political candidates, parceling out the money depending on who is friendly to them when it comes to legislation, we began to hear complaints about how money was corrupting the political process. Somehow we didn't notice that the money was coming from corporations - it was just "Big Money" buying the elections. So we began to see a series of Campaign Finance Reform laws. Soon, you could no longer just print up some posters - you had to have an organization with a treasurer, and you had to state on each poster who had paid for that poster. Such limits, of course, didn't inhibit the Big Money interests - just the average Joe Voter.

But there was still "too much money" in politics, and it had to be reformed, and so eventually we had laws that limit how much an individual can contribute to a political campaign. I think right now your limit is $2300, but I'll need to research that. It isn't really relevant exactly how much; the point is that you are limited.

Yet you can look at the campaign donations and you'll see that the candidates are receiving millions and millions of dollars. And if you look even closer, you'll see that the bulk of it comes from corporations. And if you look still closer, you'll see that those corporations are donating to both parties. Why would they do that?

Let's step back and consider the whole picture. We now have a system where the individual voter can only offer the candidate one vote and a maximum of $2300. But a corporation can offer him millions - without which he cannot possibly get elected, especially if his opponent is getting similar financing, which he is. Even better, a third party has no chance at all, or rather so little chance that we don't have to worry about him.

And that means that any man or group of men who owns 51% of a corporation can control the way the laws are written. And they don't even have to use their own money. They simply use yours. They take money that should have been paid into your retirement fund, and offer it to a politician, and that politician cannot afford to refuse it. This means that your representative owes you his rhetoric, but not his vote.

But it might be a bit much to expect a corporation owner to fund any third parties who may appear. And that could happen as more and more voters realize that the lesser of two evils is still an evil, though that strategy has worked well so far. Voters keep switching back and forth between parties, and they see their liberties disappearing, and they keep responding to the wild claims that get spread with each election. It's the other party's fault, you have to keep electing our party, not them over there, or it will get even worse!!! But the Republicans never end a single government program as promised, and the Democrats never get us out of a single war. They just promise to. Nothing changes, except for the worse.

But remember that they can't afford to allow a third party to get any traction, because if you actually have a choice, you might reject the parties they own. How do they prevent that? Well, besides rhetoric like calling them  "spoilers," it's really simple: they do it with ballot access laws in most states. Take Oklahoma, for instance. In that state,  your party cannot get on the ballot unless it has received a given percentage of the vote in the previous election. And that's hard to do, since they also made write-in voting illegal. The only way to do it is to collect a given number of signatures and submit them to the state during a narrow window of time. You can only hire signature gatherers who are Oklahoma residents, just to make it harder. And even then, the state can invalidate your signatures on a whim, which means you have to go back and prove they were valid. That's why they always gather about 20% more than the law requires. This is not a free and open election in any universe.

Now you're thinking "why don't they file a lawsuit? The state constitution guarantees free and open elections!" Well... they did just that. A joint lawsuit by the Libertarian and Green parties, possibly others, was filed, and the Oklahoma Supreme Court simply ruled against them. No explanation, really. Just... nope, these laws are perfectly Constitutional because we say so. And we are the law.

This is how dedicated to open elections you can expect your two parties to be. I guess it's no real surprise, since they depend on the money coming in from the corporations, who stole it from you.

So expect your Congressman to tell you what you want to hear. Don't expect him to represent you.

Now... what can you do about it?

In terms of legislation, we should throw out most if not all of the campaign finance laws enacted during the last four decades. Replace them with one law: no candidate for public office shall be permitted to accept a contribution from any person or entity who cannot legally vote for him. (Matter of fact, I'd like to see that as a Constitutional amendment, but for now a mere law will do).


Of course, our representatives will never enact such a law without some serious pressure. Anyone who introduces such a law is dead politically. Anyone who votes for it is, too. Rush Limbaugh will declare that money is speech, and Mitt Romney will declare that "corporations are people, my friend." But if money is speech, why has our own speech been limited to $2300? And the idea that corporations are truly "people" is laughable. They are not. They are merely owned by people.

The Democrats are no better. They are possibly worse, depending on how you look at it. Not that it matters. They're owned by the same people.

But what you can do now is to stop rejecting a candidate based on the idea that he cannot win. When you are told that a candidate cannot win, you are being told that he has no money. You are being told that he does not enjoy the support of Big Money. You are being told that he just might represent you rather than Monsanto, or the other corporations that run this sad, tired world.

Vote for people who lack the support of the TV networks. Vote for people even if you hear them called loons, idiots, wack-jobs, and so forth. Those accusations are ultimately coming from the Powered people. Listen to their positions for yourself. Examine the reasoning. Think! Stop letting Corporate Power tell you who to vote for. Their aim is to screw you and screw you big.

Anyway, that is how we lost America. And you have a hint how to get it back.  Your play. This crazy old man will now go back to sleep.

What I've Learned So Far This Year

• A GFI (Ground Fault Interrupt) electrical outlet connects to two sets of wires. The LINE is the one that comes from the breaker box. The LOAD is the one sending power to the next outlet on the circuit you want to protect against ground fault. The outlets downstream won't have reset buttons, but may have little GFI stickers. Most important to know: these things get more sensitive with age, and may need to be replaced if they start tripping for no reason.
• Hunger isn't controlled by your brain. It  happens on a cellular level, and your will power has nothing to do with it.
• We've been completely wrong about how fat cells work. And the government is still recommending a diet based on that 5-decades-behind bad information. What they want you to eat may actually make you gain weight.
• We've always thought of fat as storing food energy for much later on, in case there's a famine, in case we can't find any game to kill, in case of a starvation event. But that's not how it works. Fat cells are designed to store fat and release it, alternately, throughout the day and night. Whether it's storing fat or releasing fat (as fatty acids) depends directly on the level of insulin in your blood. The level of insulin depends on how recently you've eaten, and on the proportion of carbohydrates in the food you ate, relative to the protein and fat. And if you consumed processed (white) flour or sugar, your body was able to break it down too quickly, resulting in an insulin spike, resulting in your fat cells storing lots and lots of fat, at least until the insulin levels drop again.
• If you occasionally indulge in white flour or sugar - say, a party and you eat cake and a soda - your body handles the insulin spike as it was designed to do. But if you indulge every day, having a soda with each meal, and a sweet, sugary dessert as well, your body is in a constant state of high insulin, storing fat most of the time and never releasing it, and this results in weight gain. This is how sumo wrestlers get fat - they consume high-carb low-fat food on purpose.
• You need insulin for your muscle tissue to make use of the energy from the food you eat. If you keep this high-carb diet up as a lifestyle, for years and years, your muscle tissue develops a very unfortunate tolerance for insulin, and thus needs more insulin just to keep you moving around. Your pancreas steps up the production of insulin, and a vicious cycle begins. Muscle tissues get more tolerant of it, as a sort of addiction, and the pancreas keeps increasing its production levels. Fat keeps getting stored, and  never released, and if you restrict your calories and fat intake like your doctor says, your metabolism slows down to keep you from starving. Eventually, you get diabetes when your pancreas can't keep up with the demand for insulin.
• Since I read about this in Good Calories, Bad Calories three weeks ago, I have cut out refined sugar and flour from my diet completely, and confined my carb intake to "carbs that matter," such as fruits and vegetables, and I have not made any conscious effort to control my caloric intake. I have lost 3.5 pounds, or about a pound a week. I find that I get full with less food, and I don't miss the sweets all that much. (I use Splenda in my coffee.)
• So those health food nuts that told us to avoid white flour and processed sugar... were right.
• There will be an annular solar eclipse soon, visible in the American west. An annular eclipse is when the moon blocks the sun, but it's too far away to block it completely, so you see a ring of fire around the sun. You still can't look directly at it, but it's still neat.

Way to go Catholics!

Hey, there, Catholic Church!

Yeah, you. No, I'm not a Catholic, just a friendly bystander who shares some of your beliefs, though not all of your doctrines.

So anyway, you guys have been advocating Government-run health care, or Obamacare as we libertarians like to call it. You know, the system where the government "pays" for everybody's health care, only they really don't, they take the money from us and pay for it that way. Sort of the collectivist principle. You wanted this because you saw some "right" to health care,  not really understanding that there can be no "right" that has to be paid for by somebody else - but we'll let that pass, because your heart was in the right place. You wanted the poor to have health care, and it was cheaper to let the politicians take care of it.

So  now everybody can have health care, and the world will be a better place. Good for you!

Thing is, any time you hand over responsibility to the government, you hand over the authority, too. Somebody else gets to make the decisions. And that's what you did - caring for the poor is the responsibility of the church, it's part of your mandate, but that's OK, you can trust the guys in Washington to do the job right, and it's not your problem anymore.

Oh, wait. You still have to pay for the insurance you provide to your employees. Well, that's OK, you can afford it. Wait again. What? They're making you cover what? Birth control pills? Oh, that's not good. You guys teach that those are a sin to use, right? So you have to pay for something that you consider sinful now. Oh, that's bad. Not really fair. But on the other hand, if the feds are going to be in charge of medical decisions, they have the authority to decide what's medically necessary. So birth control is now necessary. Sorry guys.

I wonder if abortion is medically necessary. I'm sure you guys would say no, but it's not your decision anymore. Well, you can always start some petitions if you like. But if and when those folks in Washington say that it is... well, it is. They can do that now. Thanks to you.

So next let's put them in charge of food. Um... what's the carb count on those little wafers?

Adjusting the paradigm

I was recently discussing logic with a friend, and we agreed that two of the most common logical errors made by intelligent people today are:

1. Extrapolating from assumptions and then forgetting that we started with an assumption. You almost always have to start with an assumption, so it's OK to do that, but you have to remember that when you do, your conclusion is itself an assumption, and not necessarily a fact.
2. Not checking your work for errors. When we find a conclusion that sounds good to us, we have one more step before we have something resembling facts. We have to check our work for flaws. We have to test our "facts" with an open mind, and that's most easily done by listening to people who disagree with us. Listening to them doesn't mean agreeing with them, it means considering what they say, and understanding what they mean, and checking their point of view for bad assumptions and errors... objectively. Are you a socialist? You should listen to a Libertarian and a Conservative. Are you a Libertarian? You should listen to the other two. And so on. Try to see errors in your logic, rather than in your conclusion. You should be able to tell if the other person is presenting a logical argument or just spouting doctrine.

One of the paradigms almost universally accepted by both capitalist conservatives and leftist socialists, is this three-tier income paradigm, where we have a bottom layer we call the "poor," which most of us define as people with less money than we have. (That's another logical error, by the way: not bothering to define your terms as you build your argument). Then we have a middle class layer, which we all tend to think of ourselves as living in. Above that, we have "the rich," obviously people with more money than we have or earn. Thus, a poor man in India believes that the guy in the USA standing on a corner with a cardboard sign is "rich." The guy on the corner thinks the guy who works at McDonald's is rich. The guy asking if you want fries with that thinks you're rich if you have a retirement plan, and so on, until the small business owner thinks the banker is the rich guy.

This image always makes a kind of sense to us, but it is flawed because it isn't and can't be uniformly applied, which means that we use the terms differently when we discuss or listen. Undefined terms are worse than useless, since they actually distort communications without us even realizing it. Worse, they distort thinking itself. Like the useless word "evolution," we think we're using it to reach a logical conclusion, but we allow it to mean one thing in this sentence, but another in that sentence. Or worse, two different things at the same time!

Try this way of thinking, though - four layers of wealth. Yes, I said four. You see, one of the layers we've been using is actually two layers with strongly differing characteristics.

The Poor: people who struggle to pay for necessities, and know luxuries as a rare gift. This group ranges from a person who has nothing but the clothes on his body, and never knows where his next bite of food is coming from... to the family collecting public assistance in order to eat and stay warm. He doesn't pay taxes that he knows of, except for sales tax.

The Middle Class: you can disagree on the definition for your own reasoning purposes, but for now let's use mine.  This could be a person who has a job, can pay for a small apartment, buy food regularly, and pay for some minor luxuries. It can also be the small business owner who manages to make enough profit to keep things going, feed his family, and save some of it for retirement. He may own his own home, though it's probably via a current mortgage. You probably already put yourself here, since we're a very large group.

The Successful: This would be the folks who would  normally be stuffed into the "rich" category, depending on who is drafting the argument. Many who are in this category are well-meaning socialists who mean somebody else when they say "rich," because they think of themselves as middle class, while those working for income redistribution are, if fact, targeting them, because that's where a lot of the money is that can be tapped. Think orthodontists who invest carefully, business owners with more than a dozen employees, people with, say, an annual family income of a quarter million a year or less.Shoot, make it a half million, with inflation the way it is.

The Extremely Rich: Now we have those who own several factories, play in politics, and use their money for more than just making more money - changing the world, for example, which is a code phrase for controlling other  people - we're talking power. These are the people who can have their taxes raised, and never know it until they check the ledgers prepared for them. If they pay an additional million or so in taxes, it will make no difference in their lifestyles - they will eat in the same restaurants, buy the same toys, live in the same houses they would have chosen before the tax increase. These are the movie stars, the politicians, the bankers, the true elites of the financial world. George Soros, Donald Trump.

Now let's look at a cliché we argue about every day.

"Make the rich pay their fair share." When  you heard this before, you thought "the rich" meant the Extremely Rich. But is it so? Or, depending on your own income level, maybe you thought they meant the successful and the Extremely Rich, didn't you, because you had them in the same group. But when you hear this from politicians, they secretly know that they don't mean the Extremely Rich, they mean the Successful - and actually the Middle Class, meaning you - yes, you. If you have a computer, my friend, you are not poor.

Now understand this: The Extremely Rich control the politicians these days, ironically because of Campaign Finance Reform, so when taxes go up, they do so in a way that benefits them, and not you.

Are you getting the picture? Bear in mind that the people at the top of the food chain, the Extremely Rich, already see the classes this way, and use it to their advantage.

Now that you have the new image to use, the new paradigm I'm offering, lets look at our situation in the American economy.

Virtually everyone in America understands that we are in a desperately precarious position economically. The politicians and the Extremely Rich want to hold onto their money and power, so they need to keep the wars going, and they need to keep the economy from collapsing, and they need to keep the voters supporting them - or they're going to have to  "take over the country," as it were. They mostly keep the masses supporting them by pointing to the other party - we have to elect Democrats or the Republicans will take away our rights, or we have to support the Republicans or the Democrats will take away our money. Every election we are told that this is a crucial crossroads, and we dare not consider a third party or the [other party] will win. But when the Republicans had a majority in both houses, had their president in place, and even had a majority on the Supreme Court, did they undo any programs enacted by the Democrats? No. When the Democrats had the same majorities in their turn, did they repeal the Patriot Act or bring any troops home? No, they expanded the Patriot Act, and started even more wars. So both parties, or at least the people who control them, are different only in degree and rhetoric. (The difference in rhetoric is spectacular - unfortunately, words are useless in this case).

So the spending and the reduction in our liberties has continued to be increased in turn, as we change from one party to the other, and back. We abandon one in disappointment, then give the other one another chance, and they keep driving us to the killing pens. But there's a problem. They've kept increasing both the deficit and the debt, generation after generation, passing it on to the children, then to the grandchildren, postponing the pain of paying for it all, while honest economists (not the ones bought by the politicians, real ones) kept trying to remind us that eventually it has to be paid for, and the longer we wait, the more painful it's going to be. And each time they tried to remind us, the party in power minimized it, while the party outside told us we have to fix it, and soon, because it's always good to accuse the other party, even if the accusation is true.

So here we are, at last. We can't leave it for the next generation to feel the pain, because the problem is no longer over the horizon, nicely out of sight. It's looming. It crouches over us, fangs bared. So what are the politicians (and those who finance them) going to do? They've been misleading us for so long that they can't really tell us the truth, that we're going to have to get ready to feel some economic pain. But we and they all know what happened in Greece, and we know that it will happen here if we don't fix this.

 OK, the laws of economics are not breakable, they can only be bent. We have to get more money from somewhere if we intend to keep spending it to keep the powerful in power. So let's look at the options.

We could raise taxes. That's what the left wants to do. But...

• You can't raise taxes on the poor. They don't have the money to pay.
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• You can't raise taxes on the Middle Class, because they will have no choice but to spend less, which means profits go down for the corporations, which means less money flows to the Extremely Rich, which defeats the purpose of taxing the Middle Class.
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• You could raise taxes on the successful. But if you do, they will invest less in the corporations, they will hire fewer people for their own businesses, and actually they will lay off some of their existing employees, rather than operate at a loss.  When they do, the economy goes into a deeper recession, less money is spent on consumer goods, and you've defeated the purpose of taxing them, too.
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• You could raise taxes on the Extremely Rich, and that will probably be done - but only to an extent that won't be painful to them, because they control the people who write the tax laws and spend the money. Once it starts to hurt, they will hand off the hurt to the other three classes, because - well, because they can. In any case, it won't be enough, not even close. It wouldn't be enough if you hit them with a 100% income tax rate.

Well, we could cut spending.

No, I don't mean the way they're doing it now. When they talk about spending cuts, they really mean just cutting the rate of increase. Instead of increasing spending by a trillion dollars, we'll only increase it by a third of a trillion, so we have a spending "cut" of two thirds of a trillion. You think I'm kidding? That's not even new, Bucky. They've been plying that fraud for decades. You could look it up.

I mean actual cuts. Eliminate several departments, such as the Department of Education, the Commerce department, with all those czars and bureaucrats. Get rid of those thousands and thousands of TSA employees and the jobs program that the TSA really is. End the block grants. Stop building the empire and bring the troops home and commit them to defense rather than nation building and trying to bring "freedom" to people who want no part of it. End the drug war, which hasn't worked and never will. Repeal Obamacare. Tighten up social security eligibility. This would actually work, and would be less painful than a collapse. It's what serious economists, libertarians and that crazy old man Ron Paul are suggesting. But it would mean less power for the incumbent politicians, so it's unthinkable.

Or we could print more money, aka "monetize the debt."

And that's what they have decided to do - and will keep it up as long as we can until the collapse, while preparing shelters for themselves for when it does. You don't know it, because they reworked the formulas for calculating inflation and cost of living data. But they're printing money like Guido and Louie down in the basement. That is why your money buys so much less than it used to - whether you buy gasoline, groceries, or a home. Services you contract with keep raising their rates, medical care keeps going up, pretty much everything you pay for. Which means it's really an "inflation tax." They print the money to pay bills, and you pay for it because it makes your money worth less. And since they reworked the spreadsheet, your COLA you were so proud of won't begin to keep up. If you're on a fixed income, it's even worse. So you feel the pain, but you don't know why.

The Extremely Rich own the banks, and charge you 25% interest on your credit cards, but if you save  money with them you earn less than 1% - so they're not feeling any pain. And the money keeps flowing from you to them via the tax laws and spending policies, though you have this image that the money really flows from them to you somehow. So you resist the idea of cutting that spending. And you call for more taxes on the rich, but those taxes won't hit the Extremely Rich, they will only hit the Successful, and you.

It's a neat trick. And they get by with it, because you don't follow the rules of logic, and define things, and recognize false assumptions when you try to figure things out, and listen to opposing views when you can.

Logic would be your friend if you would only let it.

Political fallacies

I keep seeing these posts on Facebook that are supposed to wake up the reader, but actually just offend people and have nothing to do with rational thinking. I suppose it's an election year, and a hotly contested primary, but some of these posts actually turn the truth upside down.

Example: A cartoon shows Jesus talking to a disciple, with the label "Republican Jesus." He is saying something to the effect of "Feed the poor? Of course not. If they don't want to be poor, let them get jobs like anyone else."

Put aside for now the question of whether the poor want to work, or if they can find jobs. The point of the cartoon is that Republicans don't care about the poor, and that they should, if they are at all Christian. (I should point out here that I am not a Republican; I am a Libertarian).

The truth is that according to surveys and tax forms and so forth, rich Republicans donate far more of their own money than do rich Democrats. I suspect that Libertarians donate even more as a percentage of income, but of course nobody researched that. Besides, there are no rich Libertarians who will admit it.

A more important point is that Jesus never advocated socialism. He did not say "Render unto Caesar so that Caesar can feed the poor." He said "Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's, and render unto God what is God's." In other words, pay your taxes to Caesar as he demands, but give your tithe to God, to feed widows and orphans (those who cannot help being poor), and to support the church (or synagogue).

When government feeds the poor, they remove any ability to help or encourage the poor to learn  how to feed themselves. It cannot distinguish between those who can't help being poor, and those who are poor because they want free money without anyone telling them how to live their lives. Both are out there in abundance, and anyone who has worked with a charity of any kind knows it from experience.

Further, the more money the government takes from people (rich or not), the less they have to give to charities. So when government increases its expenditures on behalf of the poor, they are not adding to what the poor man can get... they are merely shifting money from the private sector to themselves, and taking a cut off the top while they're at it. In effect they are taking away your right to decide who gets your charity dollars, and telling you whom you may give it to - and it can't be a religious institution because of the 1st amendment. So you have to support their approved charities first, through your taxes, and then you can optionally give a little more if you want to.

So that cartoon is profoundly dishonest and misleading.

Once again, liberty demands that government get the  hell out of the way. Let us keep our own earned money, and let us decide whom, if anyone, we will give it to when supporting causes we believe in.

If you believe in anything, if you are passionate about anything, for the love of God don't pass the responsibility to the evil of government. Do it yourself. Calling for the government to do it for you doesn't count. It's the lazy way.