Culture and Religion

Should Picture Voter IDs be a Requirement?

I have never heard anybody complain that the requirement of a picture ID for any of the above-mentioned activities disadvantages Black Americans.

Arguably, none of these activities is anywhere close as important as voting in our Federal elections. The USA is a democratic Republic. We are a republic, because we have separation of powers, because the people are the ultimate sovereign, because we have a constitution, and because we have a federal structure in which much of the power belongs to the States, to local governments, and to individual citizens. Our republic is democratic because the transition of power is not accomplished by civil war, inheritance, or coup d’etat but by general, equal, free, and secret elections. If we allow the democratic election process to be compromised or corrupted by allowing people to vote who are not legal citizens of this country, we are essentially destroying self-governance and our national sovereignty.

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Political Ideologies

Trump is Hitler, a fascist, a Nazi – say leading Dems. Here is a piece of reality.

this is another issue on which there is no similarity between Trump and Hitler. Trump has an elaborate sense of humor and often even makes fun of himself. One of my distant relatives in Germany was a Nazi prosecutor. He sought the death penalty for a shipyard worker who had written a funny poem about Hitler. The man was shot. Like almost all despots, Hitler had no sense of humor, leave alone self-irony.

Equating Trump to Hitler not only shows a pitiful lack of understanding who Trump is and what he tries to accomplish. It also shows a dangerous lack of understanding who Hitler really was and what he did and the severity of his crimes, his war mongering, his insane ideas of racial superiority and inferiority, and his imperial aspirations. Maybe equating Trump to Julius Caesar works better. Here is Mark Anthony about Trump (loosely based on Shakespeare):

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Science and Philosophy

Lack of Knowledge and Flawed Thinking Breed Bad Politics

Recently, I listened to a Korean communist woman being interviewed about mathematics. She explained how Westerns non-communist logic and science are all wrong. The interviewer responded by asking her if she believed that 1 + 1 = 2. Her response was approximately this: “If you add one drop of water to another drop of water, you do not get two drops of water but one bigger drop of water.” Hence, the equation of 1 + 1 = 2 must be wrong and all math built on this must also be wrong.

What she performed is called a ‘semantic shift’. The term ‘plus’ is equivocal. This means that it can relate to different concepts depending on the context. First, she relates it to numerical addition. When we say, “one plus one” in a purely numerical sense, we are operating within the context of arithmetic where one numerical value plus one numerical value is two.

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Political Ideologies

Kamala Ante Portas – Lord Help us!

In her debate with Donald Trump and in her subsequent interview, Mrs. Harris responded to almost any question with the stereotype: “I was raised in a middle-class family…” Instead of answering the questions, she talked about herself in teleprompter-served cookie cutter bits.

In many public statements, she tried to paint herself as an underdog with the claim that she is a “person of color” who had to “sit in the back of the bus” as a school kid. She also called herself “black” and “African American”. She touts “Joy, joy, joy” and recommends herself as the solver of all our current problems, when she had spent the past 3.5 years as Vice-president creating and/or exacerbating these problems and continues doing so.

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Culture and Religion / Political Ideologies

Russian vs. Yiddish Bagels – An Etude in Communist Propaganda

Bublichki are a traditional Jewish/Russian street food. They can look and taste like bagels or like doughnuts. In 1922, by the Ukrainian Jew Yakov (Davidovich) Jadov from Odessa composed a song titled “Bublichki”, “Бублички” in Russian, and its text was in the Russian language.

The socio-economic context of this song is the NEP (New Economic Policy), an economic policy implemented in the Soviet Union in 1921 by Vladimir Lenin in an attempt to stabilize the country’s economy after the Boshevik Revolution. The NEP was intended as a temporary measure that allowed for a limited amount of free-market capitalism, while the state continued to control the large industries, the banks, and foreign trade. The NEP created a thriving class of small entrepreneurs, but it also led to further impoverishment of large parts of the population, mainly in the big cities. The song reflects the desperation of a street bagel vendor who is trying to sell his last bagels before nightfall.

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Science and Philosophy

Chicken Licken says: Climate Dooms Day is Coming

Alexandria Ocasio Cortez said during a TV interview in 2017:
“The world is gonna end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change.”
A few months after her statement the clock in Union Square was changed to function as a “climate clock” indicating how much time mankind still has until global warming becomes an irreversible run-away phenomenon.

On August 18, 2024, when this was written, the dooms day clock showed 4 years, 338 days, zero hours, 30 minutes and zero seconds till dooms day.
In October of 1958, the New York Times wrote:
“Some scientists estimate that the polar ice pack is 40 percent thinner and 12 percent less in area than it was a half century ago, and that even within the lifetime of our children, the Arctic Ocean may open, enabling ships to sail over the North Pole.”
The article mentions that the arctic ice shield was on average about 7 feet thick then and today, it is still on average about 7 feet thick.

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Economy

The Peace Dividend — A missed Opportunity

US Army statistics show that, during the Vietnam war, it took the US soldier about 200,000 rounds of 5.56 (.223) ammunition to incapacitate one threat soldier. The near-miss distance by which the average US soldier missed a threat soldier was about 51 cm (about two feet). The waste of ammunition was enormous and expensive.

Currently, all man-portable combat weapons still use cased ammunition. The shells are still mainly made from brass, which is an alloy of copper and zinc, both relatively expensive strategic metals of limited availability. All shells from fired rounds are wasted. In war, they end up somewhere in the environment and they can only be recycled when used under controlled conditions e.g., on a shooting range. The brass shell constitutes about 50% of the value of the .223 round. It also makes up over 50% of the space or volume a round consumes.

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Political Ideologies

They only served the law – “Justice” as a political weapon.

When Stalin wanted to get rid of his political rivals or just of people he feared or disliked, he often sent agents of the secret state police, the Наро́дный комиссариа́т вну́тренних дел (NKVD), a euphemism, meaning People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs. Mostly, the person he disapproved of would just be arrested, whisked away, and executed in a dark cell of the Lubyanka prison or disappeared in a Siberian GULAG.

But eventually, Stalin wanted something more spectacular. A procedure that would crush and destroy his adversary and mark him in the eyes of the Soviet population and the global public (the world press) as a common criminal, whose destruction is well deserved by his unlawful actions. This was typically accomplished by a political show trial.

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Science and Philosophy

Motorcycle Riding – a Moving Addiction

I have been riding motorcycles since I was 16. Since then, there have not been two consecutive years in my life when I did not own and ride a motorcycle. I had them all. BMW, Zündapp, NSU, Horex, Münch, Laverda, Benelli, Moto Guzzi, Ducati, Honda, Kawasaki, Yamaha, Suzuki, you name them, and of course, Harley-Davidson. I went through rigorous training in Germany, where my Yugoslav riding teacher even taught me how to act in the event the bike slips on slick autumn leaves or on wet cobble stones. I am now 83. I never had a serious accident, and I am still riding my Harley-Davidson Softail Heritage Custom 200th Anniversary Edition.

I ask myself often: why am I still doing this? It is clearly dangerous, and I know I should quit and yet I would rather sacrifice a few years of my life than give up motorcycle riding. Stupidity? Old-age blockheadedness? Lack of responsibility? Give me liberty or give me death?

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Culture and Religion

Christian Non-Violence and the Sermon of the Mount

During the Sermon of the Mount Jesus is reported to have said this:

“You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if anyone would sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. Give to the one who begs from you, and do not refuse the one who would borrow from you.”

This passage has been interpreted in many different ways.

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