The Biden Aristocracy

Is the disaster of the last years a failure of democracy or a failure of Progressivism?

                                          The Biden Aristocracy

What does the cynical nomination of Joe Biden imply? First, like so many other nominations, it offers a candidate who likely will benefit the party but not the country. No one believes that he is capable of --either campaigning for, or being-- President. So how is this going to work? Simple. Biden will be a charming and incoherent figurehead. The nation will be run by a group of wise and interested people. They will bring with them their own devotions and personal aims.
That is called an oligarchy.

Medicare For All

Has there ever in history been a multiracial democracy aside from America?

                                    Medicare For All

A Ms. Pipes is president, CEO and the Thomas W. Smith fellow in health care policy at the Pacific Research Institute. Her latest book is “False Premise, False Promise: The Disastrous Reality of Medicare for All” (Encounter 2020), which gives you an idea where her thinking lies. She wrote about Medicare for All recently.

A single-payer program would pay doctors at rates similar to Medicare reimbursement levels, already at least 25% less than private insurance pays, according to estimates by Charles Blahous of the Mercatus Center. Under the current legislative drafts of Medicare for All, government rates over the first decade would be 40% lower than those paid by private insurers.

That amounts to an enormous pay cut for doctors. U.S. physicians earned on average $313,000 in 2019, according to Medscape’s international physician compensation report. The average physician in the U.K. earned only $138,000. The Commonwealth Fund reports that American general practitioners earned a little more than $218,000 on average in 2016, compared with $146,000 in Canada and $134,000 in the U.K.

Nearly 80 million people live in areas with too few primary-care professionals, the Kaiser Family Foundation reports. Even under current policies, the country may face a shortage of as many as 120,000 doctors in a decade, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges.

The prospect of lower pay and stressful work would also discourage young people from entering the profession. Medical school is expensive; the median graduate takes on $200,000 in debt. It’s time-consuming, too. The typical doctor spends four years in medical school, followed by three to seven years in residency and fellowship. Lucrative jobs in finance, technology and law require far less preparation time.

One report from FTI Consulting found that Medicare for All would reduce the projected number of U.S. physicians in 2050 by about 44,000, including more than 10,000 primary-care doctors. Patients would have to compete for appointments with a dwindling number of overloaded and underpaid doctors.

Ms. Pipes ended her discussion with this great line about Medicare for All:
Everyone would have coverage, but that’s not the same thing as care.

Sunday/Versus the World

                                                Sunday/Versus the World

Jesus said to his apostles:
“Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me,
and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me;
and whoever does not take up his cross
and follow after me is not worthy of me.
Whoever finds his life will lose it,
and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.

A harsh gospel that unlinks us with the worldly attributes that we recognize today: Family, tribalism, identity, self-determination. And one that the evangelists repeated. It demands self-denial and sacrifice. One wonders how compatible such a message is in a world of success and comfort. In this land, even luxury.

Thomas à Kempiss wrote that if there were a better way to salvation than suffering, Christ would have told us.

To Keep a True Lent

Is this a fast, to keep
The larder lean?
And clean
From fat of veals and sheep ?

Is it to quit the dish
Of flesh, yet still
To fill
The platter high with fish ?

Is it to fast an hour,
Or ragg’d to go,
Or show
A downcast look and sour ?

No ; ‘tis a fast to dole
Thy sheaf of wheat,
And meat,
Unto the hungry soul.

It is to fast from strife,
From old debate
And hate ;
To circumcise thy life.

To show a heart grief-rent ;
To starve thy sin,
Not bin ;
And that’s to keep thy Lent.

Robert Herrick 1648

Stats Stuff

Interesting implications of the dualistic cosmology of good and evil among the youth, the demonstrators, and the universities. They should remember Delphi, the voice of the god, who always spoke the truth--but the truth was often ambiguous and it frequently deceived.



                                                    Stats Stuff

Water Everywhere...But

The Bubba Wallace "noose" shows that we humans see the past and present as a Rorschach Test.
                                         

                            Water Everywhere...But

About one-third of all the water used in this country goes down the toilet. According to the experts who keep track of such data, each of us uses 1.6 gallons of water per toilet flush, and we do that an average of 2.13 times day. That adds up to about 102 gallons of water a month for each of us.

That means an office building of 100 workers flushes about 10,000 gallons each month. A school with 750 students, over 75,000 gallons. The Louisiana State Penitentiary, housing about 5,000 inmates, uses 6 million gallons of water every year — enough to fill more than 9 Olympic-sized swimming pools — for the sole purpose of flushing away their processed cafeteria food and iced tea.

Importantly, all this water is processed and treated the same as the water we drink. It’s coming from the same stressed aquifers and retaining ponds that are sucked dry come drought season. And it’s not just toilets. Water for washing cars and clothes, cooling manufacturing equipment, and for watering plants and crops and lawns is all put through the same energy-intensive process to bring it up to the standard we have for the water humans drink. Then we flush it right back to the facility it came from to be processed again.

That’s why in San Antonio, and increasingly across America, architects and engineers are looking to the sky for answers, by catching and processing rainwater that falls on the building to use for purposes other than human consumption.

Water supply and water demand are growing ever more apart in Texas, prompting the state to call for a quadrupling of water capture and recycling. Credit: 2017 State Water Plan, Texas Water Development BoardAll sorts of engineering projects are underway to catch rainwater for use and to separate drinking water from water used in less health sensitive areas.Our water sources are not infinite.


Groundwater is any water found underground in the cracks and pores in soil, sand, or rock. Groundwater provides 25% of the fresh water used in the United States. It is particularly important for irrigation and domestic uses in arid or remote areas, where surface water may be in short supply or far away. Groundwater is replenished when rainfall soaks into the ground, but it can take hundreds to thousands of years to replace what we extract. In arid areas, high demand for groundwater and slow replenishment provide challenges for sustainable groundwater management.

Fresh groundwater and total fresh water withdrawals in the U.S. over time. For most of the 20th century, water use increased to support a larger population. Much of the recent decrease in water use is due to more efficient or reduced irrigation.

Some groundwater is used and then released to surface water bodies, such as rivers or lakes, but it is almost never pumped back into the ground. Instead, groundwater is replenished almost entirely by rainfall. In the United States, roughly one-quarter of all rainfall becomes groundwater. Groundwater makes up roughly 90% of the total available fresh water in the United States,1

The Ogallala Aquifer is the largest aquifer in the United States. It is part of the High Plains aquifer system, which underlies parts of eight states from Texas to South Dakota. 90% of the water extracted from the Ogallala Aquifer is used for irrigation, supplying the water for roughly one-third of all irrigated agriculture in the country.

Since the 1930s, massive water withdrawals have rapidly depleted the southern and central portions of the aquifer. In parts of Texas and Kansas, water levels have dropped by over 150 feet. The U.S. Geological Survey monitors the Ogallala Aquifer through its High Plains Water-Level Monitoring Study, reporting changes in water level and storage to Congress every two years. State geological surveys and other state agencies also monitor the aquifer.

Water withdrawals only tell part of the story. Many water uses involve the borrowing of water - for thermoelectric power generation, domestic and commercial use, mining, and industry - most of which is returned to water bodies after it has been used. Water consumption refers to the water that is withdrawn for human use but not returned. Irrigation accounts for around 80% of fresh water consumption: most is lost to evaporation and the incorporation of water into crops. Although groundwater provides 25% of the fresh water used in the United States, it provides 43% of the fresh water used for irrigation. As a result, groundwater accounts for around 40% of U.S. fresh water consumption.

(From McGraw, dan not don, and an AGI article) As you can imagine, this is an idea just begging for regulations and requirements, just like solar panels. It looks to be an early time to get into a neat little virtual signaling business with some serious income potential. 

How about a nice, plush non-profit?

shark attack

The Bubba Wallace outrage cum fiasco is telling. This is an accomplished guy who saw a threat where there wasn't one. He probably has a right to be hypersensitive but others have a right to be innocent. In an instance like this, the imagination rules. And it can never be satisfied.




                                        Shark Attack

A shark attack death has closed the beaches in an area of southern California for four days. Why four days? Do they think the predator, with time,  will become a vegetarian?

These victims are usually young, vigorous people; the future of the nation. (People with walkers are usually not such victims.) The loss and damage to such people are is a heartbreaking event for friends and families--and a national loss. So, why don't we stop it? Why don't we just say "No."

There is a way to guarantee safety--and this will work completely: Outlaw recreational ocean bathing. Ban anyone from going into the water. Ever again. Collateral advantages include no drownings, lower medical costs, no safety administration costs, and decreased skin cancer rates as starters.

We know this will work. So why don't we do it?

The Johnsons, Honest and Dishonest Graft

Error has become a curious historical burden. An error in the past can sully a reputation. That Aristotle was wrong about the stars sully his insights on Tragedy?


                The Johnsons, Honest and Dishonest Graft

Here's a little political history from Robert Caro, Lyndon Johnson's biographer.

In 1943, the year Lady Bird Johnson purchased KTBC, the Federal Communications Commission, which reviewed all broadcast-license transfers, was close to being abolished, Caro writes. Lyndon Johnson used his political influence in both Congress and the White House to prevent that from happening. The FCC was among the most politicized agencies in the government, Caro asserts, and it knew who its friends were.

Johnson socialized with FCC Commissioner Clifford Durr at the time, “sometimes at Durr’s home, sometimes at his own,” although Durr says Johnson never mentioned Lady Bird’s application for KTBC’s license. Lady Bird, however, directly approached Durr about the station, and Lyndon phoned James Barr of the FCC’s Standard Broadcast Division. “He wanted to get a radio station, and what I remember is, he wouldn’t take no for an answer,” Caro quotes Barr.

Legendary Democratic fixer Tommy “The Cork” Corcoran also helped with the KTBC application—”all up and down the line,” is how Corcoran put it. Asked in an interview whether Johnson’s status as a member of Congress helped his wife’s application, Corcoran said, “How do you think these things work? These guys [FCC staffers] have been around. You don’t have to spell things out for them.”

The Los Angeles Times and USA Today obituaries make it sound as if KTBC were a congenitally unprofitable station at the time of Lady Bird’s bid and give the impression that she was the lone suitor for the property. That was not the case, as Caro documents the identities of the other interested bidders.

Once Lady Bird completed her purchase of KTBC, the “five years of delays and red tape, or delays and unfavorable rules” from the FCC that had stymied the previous owners “vanished … and slowness was replaced by speed,” according to Caro. In short order she got permission to broadcast 24 hours a day (KTBC had been a sunrise-to-sunset station) and move it to 590 on the dial—”an uncluttered, end of the dial” where it could be heard in 38 surrounding Texas counties. It was no coincidence. Lyndon and Lady Bird recruited a new station manager, promising 10 percent of the profits, and Lyndon told him that the changes in the license restrictions that would make KTBC a moneymaker were “all set.” In 1945, the FCC OK’d KTBC’s request to quintuple its power, which cast its signal over 63 counties.

When Lyndon visited William S. Paley, president of CBS radio, and asked if KTBC could become a CBS affiliate and carry its lucrative programming, he didn’t have to spell out why the request should be granted. The radio networks feared the regulators in Washington as well as the members of Congress who regulated the regulators. KNOW in Austin had been repeatedly denied the affiliation because a San Antonio “affiliate could be heard in Austin.” CBS Director of Research Frank Stanton approved Johnson’s request.

Johnson shook down powerful companies to advertise on the station. Local businesses that wanted Army camps to remain located in Austin knew one way to secure Lyndon’s help was to advertise on KTBC. Caro writes:

… Mrs. Johnson’s ability as a business woman was not the crucial factor in the acquisition of the station or, once it was acquired, in its early growth. … Lyndon Johnson had worked at politics for years to achieve power; now he was working at politics to make money.

Under Texas law, the station belonged solely to Lady Bird because she purchased it with her inheritance. But as her spouse, Lyndon owned half of all the profits. He was ultra-active in recruiting staff and running the operation, and by 1948, Caro writes, he was telling his friends that he was a millionaire.

The Johnsons earned thousands from their radio station but millions from their TV stations, writes former FCC official William B. Ray in his book, FCC: The Ups and Downs of Radio Regulation. The commission allocated one commercial station to Austin in the early 1950s, and the Johnsons were its sole applicant. “Filing a competing application would have been a waste of money,” Ray writes, because of the Johnsons’ political clout. “Whenever there was a business matter to be discussed between CBS and the LBJ stations, Johnson would summon the appropriate CBS personnel to the White House to discuss it,” he continues.

Was it graft? The crooks of Tammany Hall distinguished between honest graft—which they considered respectable—and dishonest graft. Honest grafters used political connections, such as tips as to where a new bridge was going to be built, to make surefire investments. Dishonest grafters stole directly from the treasury.

You can rest in peace now, Lady Bird. Your honest-grafting days are over.

******

From the Johnsons’ hometown newspaper, the Austin American-Statesman 

The Frantic Present

One possible explanation of the reluctance of carbon activists to incorporate nuclear power in their solution is that it holds the promise of preserving the level of development in the culture, a level the activists may not wish to maintain.

                             The Frantic Present

One increasingly obvious problem in America is the loss of coherent threads in public debate. While the absence of good political leaders may be a factor, there is a growing impression that political beliefs have melted away before an incoherent progressive heat.
Henninger has an article in the WSJ predicting gradual decline of the cities and contained these good lines:

"Historically, the media and press have served an arbitrating function among competing urban forces. No longer. Through the pandemic and now the protests, much of the urban-based media have become bizarrely invested in apocalyptic story lines, picking at scab after scab and problem after problem, with not much effort at sorting substantive policy alternatives other than heading deeper into the progressive frontier.

The message being sent is that progressive governance is, at best, ambivalent about maintaining civil order. The net result the past three months has been a sense in many cities of irresolvable chaos, stress and threat.

I think many younger, often liberal families would stick it out if they thought there was anything resembling a coherent strategy to address this mess—the new health threat, the homeless, the rising crime, the filth, the increasingly weird school curriculums. But there is no strategy."

Sowell and a Mr. Dumpty

There is a creepy change in America. Some elements are beginning to attack the founders of the nation personally, judging them by criteria not present in their time. But if a standard-bearer is attacked, will his ideals be next?



                           Thomas Sowell and a Mr. Dumpty


"‘When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.'

‘The question is,' said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things."

‘The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master—that's all.'"

Sowell on the manipulation of words, as collected by Ebeling:

“Public service” means not the private market’s provision of goods and services desired and valued by the consumers of society. Instead, it means governmental employment in which the state preempts the voluntary wishes of people with the preferences of those who control the state. 
“Greed” refers to the peaceful, market-oriented attempt of people to improve the circumstances of themselves and their families. “No amount of taxation is ever described by the anointed as ‘greed’ on the part of the government or the clientele of government.” 
“Responsibility” does not mean the individual’s accountability for his own actions and their consequences; rather, it refers to the collective guilt of society for creating poverty, crime, or racially biased attitudes. 
“Rights” do not mean the inalienable liberties that all men have, and which may not be abridged without causing real injustice; instead, they refer to the ever-expanding redistributive “entitlements” which governments are to give to some at the expense of others in society.

Sunday/Sparrows

                               Sunday/Sparrows

Today's gospel is the Sparrow gospel where Christ presents some serious concepts.
"Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father."
Here is the oneness of Nature and the interest in God in its minute workings. No watchmaker He.
Shakespeare was impressed. So Hamlet says:
 "There is a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, 'tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come - the readiness is all."
Christ may well have been smiling when He said this. A sparrow is a noisy bird without a song. As we may be.

 Bede wrote a history of the Anglo-Saxons and this text is Bede's account of the Anglo-Saxon's religious beliefs around the year 627 A.D. as they debated the merits of this new Christianity:
  Another of the king's chief men signified his agreement with this prudent argument, and went on to say: "Your Majesty, when we compare the present life of man on earth with that time of which we have no knowledge, it seems to me like the swift flight of a single sparrow through the banqueting hall where you are sitting at dinner on a winter's day with your thegns and counselors. In the midst there is a comforting fire to warm the hall; outside, the storms of winter rain or snow are raging. This sparrow flies swiftly in through one door of the hall, and out through another. While he is inside, he is safe from the winter storms; but after a few moments of comfort, he   Even so, man appears on earth for a little while; but of what went before this life or of what follows, we know nothing. Therefore, if this new teaching has brought any more certain knowledge, it seems only right that we should follow it." The other elders and counselors of the king under God's guidance, gave similar advice.

Graphs and Stuff

If bigotry is the generalization from small samples, what exactly is the value of social media, which can only disseminate a personal opinion?  Isn't its value not the individual but the collective, a consideration of multiple views and experiences?  Discussion, not proclamation.

                                    Graphs and Stuff

                                         Underutilization.



                                   Crime




                                         Incarceration


These last two reflect Nixon's War on Drugs, which Ehrlichman claimed was a war on blacks and the left. 

Democratic Socialism

We have become obsessed with the outlier. Strange and outrageous behavior by one individual has become generalized to be representative of large groups. So one lunatic cop is representative of all cops. And those cops are representative of all society. The wide generalization from small experiences to large populations is a virtual definition of bigotry.

                          Democratic Socialism

The phrase "democratic socialism"  mixes two entities, a governing system and an economic one. But the freedom of the vote in no way bleeds into any freedom in the economic system. It is at best a misunderstanding, at worst malicious marketing.

Once the tribe voted for the war chief, individual decision-making was gone. So voting for socialism displaces a lot of the decision-making, by definition. It's not necessarily an oxymoron but rather the decision changes the political landscape. In a strange way, individual freedom stops at the ballot box. That's what happens to democracies in wartime. The outrage over the internment of the Japanese in WW11 misunderstands this fundamental change.

"Democracy" implies "virtue" to our arrogant minds. It is not. It is a simple way of deciding which, in the American example, is ingenious--but only because of the guardrails created by its founders. (Imagine the current politicians trying to sit down with any of those men in revolutionary Philadelphia.)  Hitler was elected.

Here is some of something I forget the origin of:

"Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and other contemporary American advocates of democratic socialism lean heavily on the democratic part, which is at least in part a matter of marketing.


……..


In the United States, we use the word “democratic” as though it were a synonym for “decent” or “accountable,” but 51 percent of the people can wreck a country just as easily and as thoroughly as 10 percent of them. That is why the United States has a Bill of Rights and other limitations on democratic power.


………………


The destructive nature of socialism comes not from its tendency to trample on democracy (though socialism often does trample on democracy) but from its total disregard for rights — rights that are, in the context of the United States and other liberal-democratic systems, beyond the reach of mere majorities. We have the Bill of Rights to protect freedom of speech, freedom of the press, the free exercise of religion, etc., not because we expect that majorities will reliably support and protect these rights but because we expect that majorities will be hostile to them." (from somewhere) 

Doing this by vote is neither right nor good any more than voting to sack Canada is. Socialism is a silly idea but it not made any less silly--or given any more dignity--by voting for it.

The Gravity of the Law

Science does not enjoy or encourage error; nor does it despise or reject it. Science does learn from error, as error directs its thinking. That is not true for politics. Error in politics is a disaster and the focus of vilification and ridicule. White-coated scientists on the dais with politicians is an oxymoron.



                                     The Gravity of the Law

This is from Munger.

I told the story of a federal government scientist who entered a DC Metro station eating a candy bar. A DC Transit cop noticed this (they were passing on escalator, down vs. up) and admonished the scientist. Scientist nodded, ate the last bite of the candy bar, and headed toward the subway platform.

The cop hurried back down the escalator, and aggressively confronted the scientist. (Both cop and scientist were African-American women, if it matters). The cop roughed up the scientist, and then aggressively searched her, going so far as to put her hand up and feel around inside her bra.

Some people at the time thought the cop had just gone crazy. That view makes the mistake of “falling out only with the abuse.” This was not an abuse of the system; it is the system. To paraphrase Chris Rock, “That cop didn’t go crazy. That cop went cop!”

What I mean is that violence and literal enforcement of the law is not a distortion or perversion of state power, but is rather the essence of state power. The law said “no eating.” The person was eating. That person must be aggressively prevented from flouting the law. I’m not sure exactly what the scientist should have done, since she couldn’t spit out the candy bar. But when she ate the rest of the candy bar, after being told that eating was illegal, the state had to come down hard.

In the past few weeks, we have seen videos of police violence targeted at civilians. I started to say “innocent civilians,” but that’s not true. In an environment where a police order to “get off the streets, move away” has been issued, the failure to move away is very much like popping the rest of the candy bar in your mouth. The state, in the form of police violence, is asserting its power to control the population. Once you begin to see like a state, you recognize that failing to use violence to exert control would deny the nature, and in fact the very self-justification, of the enforcement power.

A government does other things also, of course, but the ability to survive and to use violence to force citizens to obey, is the core function of the state.

"Lateral Thinking"

In chess, why does white move first?


                               "Lateral Thinking"

Edward de Bono, a Maltese physician and medical researcher turned his back on academia to become a student of creativity. de Bono’s "Lateral Thinking" is a classic in unexplained psychology. A lot of soft science have imaginative writers. In his first book he attacked traditional logic, identifying it as the enemy of insight and invention:

By far the greatest amount of scientific effort is directed towards the logical enlargement of some accepted hole … Yet great new ideas and great scientific advances have often come about through people ignoring the hole … This hole-hopping is rare because the process of education … is designed to make people appreciate the holes that have been dug by them … Many great discoverers like Faraday had no formal education at all, and others like Darwin or Clerk Maxwell had insufficient to curb their originality.

To demonstrate the limitations of orthodox hole-digging, de Bono proposed this dilemma. Whether it reveals a different thinking process is debatable but it is a clever little story with a folktale feel. But this is what all stories are: insights from another lens. Whether it classifies as a philosophy....

A London merchant owes a large sum to a moneylender, and is in danger of being imprisoned for his debts. The moneylender, who has designs on the merchant’s daughter, suggests a bet. He will take two pebbles from his garden path, one black and one white, and place them in an empty money-bag. The young woman will pick out one of the pebbles. Black: she’ll become the moneylender’s wife, and the debt will be cancelled. White: she’ll stay with her father, and the debt will still be cancelled. Reluctantly, father and daughter accept the bet. However, as they stand in the moneylender’s garden, the young woman notices that the two pebbles that he picks up, placing them quickly in the money-bag, are both black. What should the young woman do? How can she think her way out of her predicament?

According to de Bono, logic demands that she either refuses to take a pebble, or take the black pebble and sacrifice herself. What this situation requires, he maintains, is the wide beam of lateral thinking, which will shift attention from the pebble that is selected to the one left behind. Through lateral thinking, the woman will discover that she has a counter-ruse at hand. Pick a pebble from the bag, fumble and drop it on the path, and while cursing her clumsiness, declare ‘Never mind – if you look into the bag, you will be able to tell which pebble I took.’

The Press

Black Lives Matter has been copyrighted. By whom? It has a website. Is it a charity? Deductible? Where do donations go? Who determines that?




                                     The Press

From journalist and Rolling Stone editor Matt Taibbi’s article “The American Press Is Destroying Itself“:

It feels liberating to say after years of tiptoeing around the fact, but the American left has lost its mind. It’s become a cowardly mob of upper-class social media addicts, Twitter Robespierres who move from discipline to discipline torching reputations and jobs with breathtaking casualness.

The leaders of this new movement are replacing traditional liberal beliefs about tolerance, free inquiry, and even racial harmony with ideas so toxic and unattractive that they eschew debate, moving straight to shaming, threats, and intimidation. They are counting on the guilt-ridden, self-flagellating nature of traditional American progressives, who will not stand up for themselves, and will walk to the Razor voluntarily.

They’ve conned organization after organization into empowering panels to search out thoughtcrime, and it’s established now that anything can be an offense, from a UCLA professor placed under investigation for reading Martin Luther King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” out loud to a data scientist fired* from a research firm for — get this — retweeting an academic study suggesting nonviolent protests may be more politically effective than violent ones!

Now, this madness is coming for journalism.

The Biden Nomination

If Trump is not representative of any political thought and really not a Republican, the Republican Party might recover. But will the Democrats survive the Biden nomination?


                     The Biden Nomination

I no longer watch the news so I am out of the current news loop and cycle. This may have been around a while. But, that being said, unless this is some doctored tape, this is a bloody scandal.  I am no fan of politicians and I can hardly watch this. What possible thought process could motivate a democratic political group to offer this poor man as its candidate for any office? What corruption, what sacrifice of national good for individual gain, does this imply? And how can anyone in the voting world take this candidacy seriously?
At least Trump was an accident. And Lear was the inadvertent natural decline. This is simple malice of forethought.
THERE WAS A LINK HERE BUT IT WAS UNTRUE

Sunday/Corpus Christi

                               Corpus Christi

"I am the bread of life." This quote, in the gospel of Corpus Christi, caused a lot of trouble among Christ's followers and led to many leaving Him.
There has been debate over communion since. Some have argued communion a reward, as the Jansenists. Some as a salve for the sinful. The English poet Herbert had Jansenist leanings.

 

Love

LOVE bade me welcome; yet my soul drew back,
            Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack
    From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning
            If I lack’d anything.

‘A guest,’ I answer’d, ‘worthy to be here:’
            Love said, ‘You shall be he.’
‘I, the unkind, ungrateful? Ah, my dear,
            I cannot look on Thee.’
Love took my hand and smiling did reply,
            ‘Who made the eyes but I?’

‘Truth, Lord; but I have marr’d them: let my shame
            Go where it doth deserve.’
‘And know you not,’ says Love, ‘Who bore the blame?’
            ‘My dear, then I will serve.’
‘You must sit down,’ says Love, ‘and taste my meat.’
            So I did sit and eat.

GEORGE HERBERT

Graphs

"Harrow" has farming roots. It means "to rake" and became "to despoil" or "distress." Injustice is a harrowing quality in a society. It can destroy. The problem comes when outliers, like police murders, are seen as institutional. So is the release of O.J. and the non-conviction in Jean Benet evidence of evil in the culture? Or are they examples of isolated incompetence?

                                      Graphs







"The average millennial has experienced slower economic growth since entering the workforce than any other generation in U.S. history:"



Estimated deforestation by type of forest and time period, pre-1700-2000 – FAO (2012)

Age of democracies at the end of 2015

Shown is the age of each democracy in years at the end of 2015. A country is defined as democratic if it meets specific
conditions for contestation/election and political participation (see Sources tab for more information on these criteria).