Rules and Regulations: Who needs ’em

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The last six weeks of the new Administration has been hectic to say the least. One reason is because this administration has eschewed the normal rules, procedures and decorum of government. It’s first 100 days are coming fast and furiously at the Democrats, possibly the bulk of the GOP, the media–basically all of us. The playbook, Project 2025, is the vision on how Trump’s administration will govern.

This playbook is a radical departure from say Franklin D. Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan’s first 100 days in office. Both FDR and Reagan turned the country from a rightward trajectory in the 1930s to a leftward tack and then back to a rightward journey in the 1980s . Since, then we have bounced around like a compass needle seeking true north.

Unlike FDR and Reagan, this playbook is bent on crashing the economy into the ditch and retooling the federal government into a single unchecked branch of government where Congress’s main job is to stand up and chant USA. I always got a kick out of seeing clips from communist countries when they had their annual party congresses. In walks, Stalin dressed in his little premier of Russia uniform to a thunderous welcome. In 1937 Uncle Joe got an 11 minute standing O. No one dares to be the first one to stop clapping let alone sit down.

With the 2025 playbook in operation it has created a lot confusion to say the least, chaos among government managers, mayhem for government workers while the markets double clutch and downshift to unchecked presidential power.

Changing rules of the game is nothing new. major league sports tweek the rules before every season. Take the 1983 NFL season, it started the new season with a rule dealing with snowplows. Just like there is no crying in baseball, there is not suppose to be snowplows in football. But on December 12, 1982 the Miami Dolphins battled the New England Patriots in icy snowy, New England winter conditions that had the teams tied up in a scoreless game late in the fourth quarter. During the game referees were using a small tractor with a snow brusher attached to clear off yard markers.

However, with less than five minutes left in the game and the Patriots on the Dolphin’s 33 yard line, and a timeout on the field, in comes the snow brusher to clear off the spot for the Patriot place kicker. The field goal was good and the Patriots went on to win 3-0. At the time there was no mention in the rules that this was an illegal move by the snowplow operator. The snowplow left Dolphin coach, Don Shula, on the sideline livid. The real kicker in all of this was that Shula was on the NFL rules committee. He made sure no Northern snowbound team would clear off a spot with a mechanical device in the future to make a winning kick.

In my life I have played a lot of games. I have played backyard games like Badminton and Croquet. Badminton was fun until you got the birdie, or the shuttlecock, caught in the net. Croquet was fun but it was much later in life I realized that our backyard rules didn’t quite follow The Official Rules of Garden Croquet. Before we played tag football the out of bounds and goal lines were discussed. We decided if it was two-hand touch, one-hand touch or a touch below the waist only.

Then there was one indoor game that I never got the hang of: Pool. It is a game of angles. A game of precise aim. It is a game where the cue ball has to have the exact velocity to match the distance and force in which to strike the target ball to get the desired results. And with all of that, the shooter has to have the fineses to take into consideration where the cue ball stops to line up the next shot. It is not a game of Whack-A-Mole.

The opening moves and possessions in any game are intended to set the tempo and direction of the game. President Donald Trump’s opening break in his first six week in office has a lot of people confused as to the rules he is playing by. Maybe he has a pool room in Mar-a-Lago. But I honestly think he must have a poor pool player calling his First 100 shots. Even the opening break shot in pool takes a well measured shot to ensure a break that does not end up in sinking the 8 ball. What we are seeing is some guy running around the pool table with a chainsaw. A guy who shows no fineses. A chainsaw mentality might be good for cutting down trees, but it takes a more than a finely balanced cue stick to get around a pool table, surely no place for a chainsaw.

If Elon Musk is calling the shots he is sending balls all over the table. I am not sure, but I think Elon has already put two 8 balls in each side pocket with his break ’em up style of play. This has people wondering how did the other 8 ball get into play. Maybe his young teenage apprentice, “Big Balls” lent him one.

I find it difficult to believe, that Trump a golfer, would let Musk loose in his pool room or golf course. Trump knows you drive for show and putt for dough. To get to the dough you need a well placed drive in the fairway setting up the next shot to the green. With Musk doing the driving the ball is going into the rough from one side of the fairway to the other. And since we are nowhere near the green we are not sure what kind of club Musk will pull from the bag to get out the bunkers he is sure to beach himself into, obviously not a chainsaw. Possibly a shovel, but more than likely a backhoe to dig him out of the hole he is putting the government in.

Then there is the sport term: Flood the Zone. In basketball and football teams utilize what is called a Zone Defense. Instead of a defender assigned to cover a specific offensive player, the defender is assigned an area to guard. One way to beat a zone defense is to flood the zone with more offensive players than defensive players. Supposedly, Steve Bannon came up with this Trump political strategy.

Originally it was aimed at dealing with the media. Bannon called the media “the real opposition.” The best way to “deal with them is to flood the zone with shit.” The key word here is “shit.” Not only do we have a guy running around with a chainsaw, we now we have feces being chucked throughout the government like dung flung in a monkey cage. It is a telling statement. It is hard to tell who is making political decisions: The guy with chainsaw or the host of flies following the shit storm that is flooding the zone. This is not governing.

For almost 250 years the United States has had set of rules and procedures in place for the government to follow. It is called the Constitution. Thirty-nine delegates endorsed the document in 1787. All 13 states ratified it by 1789. Since that time a Bill of Rights was added. It has been amended 27 times, laws have been enacted and its processes have gone through judicial review. It has served us in a Civil War and ended slavery. It has given us the ability to fight two World Wars, a Cold War and ensure order in times of civil unrest. It has given the country a frame work in dealing with economic depressions and recessions–despite differing economic philosophies. Furthermore, the Constitution has even given us continuity through the assassination of four presidents and the natural death of two others.

In all that the Constitution has gotten us through dark times like December 7th 1941, 9-11 and January 6th. Now, all of the sudden it is floundering and needs the guidance from the Heritage Foundation because somebody has decreed America is not great. Somebody who wants to take us back to the 1890s; a time when America was led by President William McKinley and tariffs. America was forging an empire under McKinley. After defeating Spain in the Spanish American War, America picked up territories in the Pacific and Caribbean, Hawaii was annexed. As testimonial to McKinley, Trump says, “He was a very good businessman, and he took in billions of dollars at the time. We were a very wealthy country at the time.” I hate to tell President Trump but America is still a rich country. If Trump’s gage of greatness is on billionaires, we have eight of the top 10 richest men in the world. If we go by economics our Gross Domestic Product is the highest in the world.

What we are dealing with in Project 2025 is a one-way conservative plot hatched in a think tank founded in 1973 to combat a supposed communist/socialist takeover of the government. The main goal is to increase the power of the Office of the President. The Project itself tells us that “the nation’s leading conservative organizations (are) joining forces to prepare and seize the day.” And that “History teaches that a President’s power to implement an agenda is at its apex during the Administration’s opening days. To execute requires a well-conceived, coordinated, unified plan and a trained and committed cadre of personnel to implement it.” This sounds more like the Soviet Union’s takeover of Eastern Europe after World War II. It was a takeover that killed fledgling Democracy in countries like Poland and Czechoslovakia with a cadre of commissars from Moscow strong arming their way into power–its mandate was backed by the Red Army.

If anything the 2025 Project has an interesting interpretation of Article II for re-arranging Constitutional checks and balances. Pardon me, but the 2024 Election was not a mandate for this. The election was more of a sales pitch giving us bait and switch coupon at the grocery checkout. If agencies and programs need to be honed and excesses rolled back there is a legislative process. It is Congress’s job. Not some billionaire with a chainsaw.

Religion, Politics and the Curvature of History

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I often sit down and read short sections of the Bible. A friend of mine, who became a pastor, once told me that the Bible was God’s authorized word; and written by those under God’s direction. I never thought much one way or another about who wrote the Bible. I’ll even go so far as to accept that those who wrote the Bible were listening to God as they inked the pages and bound them together. But now that I think about it, it is not who wrote the Bible but who and how it has been interpreted through the ages, particularly the New Testament.

The same is partially true for our Constitution, our legal Bible so to speak. We know who wrote the Constitution, and we know that before the ink had dried the framers were already debating various interpretations. Particularly differing views from Hamiltonian Federalists and banking and Jeffersonian Democratic-Republicans in foreign land purchases.

Early Christians/Jews could not agree on a lot of things from Mosaic law in keeping the sabbath holy to allow believing Gentiles to convert to Christianity. They debated the existence of Jesus as a man of virgin birth; or was he pure spirit; to some was he the Messiah; and then what was his relationship to God. These early Christian churches from Carthage in Africa and the Coptic church in Egypt to Roman Catholic churches in Europe to Eastern Orthodox churches of Byzantine and Antioch in Asia Minor all had differing opinions on Jesus and other conflicting dogmatic matters. It is interesting to note that Christianity is not the major religion in most of these geographical locations today.

Unlike some scientific laws, like Newton’s Laws of Motion or Kepler’s Laws of Planetary Motion, religious and political laws always seem to be up for debate. Debates that in most cases end up having somebody losing a head. As Pontius Pilate said to Jesus in Jesus Christ Superstar: And what is ‘truth’? Is truth unchanging law? We both have truths. Are mine the same as yours?

Much like the early Christians, Americans tripped over some of the same truths. For instance, for many the Constitution was nothing without a Bill of Rights. Since the first Ten Amendments the Constitution has been amended 17 times. But like early 1st Century Christians who were debating who could be a Christian, 18th Century Americans within ten years after becoming a nation were arguing the same point: who could be a citizen, who could vote and who was only a partial person.

Congress, in 1798, passed a series of laws called the Alien and Sedition Acts. The Naturalization Act, included in the Alien and Sedition Acts, upped residency requirements. To become a citizen, a person had to reside in America for 14 years, up from five years. It seems most arriving immigrants sided with Jefferson and his Republicans. Voting immigrants caused some electoral distress among Federalists.

In addition there was the Alien Friends Act. According to History.com, this “Act allowed the president to deport any non-citizen suspected of plotting against the government, even in peacetime.” It is a good thing the mob that invaded the Capitol on January 6 were citizens open to pardons instead of deportations.

But the Act that probably had the most sting was the Sedition Act. This Act, “took direct aim at those who spoke out against the president (at the time, the thinned-skinned John Adams) or the Federalist-dominated government.” History.com says, “Altogether, the federal government tried and convicted ten people under the Sedition Act, including four top Jeffersonian-Republican newspaper editors. Although the Federalists won convictions, they lost politically by creating martyrs and giving defendants a platform to defend freedom of speech and the press.”

 Ironically the Sedition Act, like one of Kepler’s planets, reappeared in 1918. According to the National Constitution Center the 1918 Sedition Act “imposed harsh penalties for a wide range of dissenting speech, including speech abusing the U.S. government, the flag, the Constitution, and the military. These laws were directed at socialists, pacifists, and other anti-war activists.” This is sort of an American Casablanca moment when Captain Renault orders: Round up the usual suspects.

The rounding up the usual suspects could be said of Christianity’s interesting interpretations of Christianity. The Romans had no trouble making sport of Christians in the Colosseum. Christians of later years learned from the Romans. Christians had no problem slaughtering and burning each other at the stake for heresy. Inquisitions were a common occurance well up into the 1970s in Ireland. Being saved was open for debate.

It took more about 300 years from Jesus’s death for churches to start singing from the same hymnal. Roman Emperor Constantine made Christianity legal in the Roman Empire with he Edict of Milan 313 A.D. Before that, the official Roman view of Christianity was religio prava: an evil or depraved religion. It gives new meaning to putting Christ back in Christmas and Nativities down at City Hall.

I am not trying to be sacrilegious but just because Christianity or the Catholic Church was street legal in Rome did not mean the various churches agreed on a lot of issues. Again, it took the Roman Emperor, Constantine, to knock heads together and get bishops in a room at the First Council of Nicea in 325 to hammer out their differences. He basically said your not finished until you come out with some sort of consensus. Hence, we got the Apostles Creed.

There were six more councils with the last or the Second Council of Nicea in 787 dealing with with icons and relics. Some religious scholars of the time, iconoclasts, believed praying to icons was parting from the Second Commandment–worshiping idols, a no-no that got the Jews in trouble with the Golden Calf while waiting for Moses to lead them into the promised land. Iconophiles, on the other hand, where a little more lenient in their views saying God told the Jews to put two Cherubims on the Ark of the Covenant. And, that icons were real proof that Jesus was a real person.

I wonder what these bejeweled bishops would have thought of Rastafari. According to Britannica. com, Rastafari “is a monotheistic religion that originated in Jamaica in the 1930s. It is centered on Africa and is based on the interpretation of the Bible, especially the Old Testament. Rastafarians believe in a single God, Jah, and that Haile Selassie I, the former Emperor of Ethiopia, is the reincarnation of Jesus Christ.” Can you imagine them imparting their religious views on ganja as the sacrament. Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper could have been the first pot party.

When it comes to religion and politics we rarely end up agreeing on one or two things. In most cases, we agree upon nothing most of the time. Eventually the bickering come to an end and people part ways. In 1054 the churches chucked the common hymnal. The Roman (Latin) Catholic Church split with the Eastern (Greek) Orthodox church. It had as much to do with religious dogma as shifting political winds on who would rule portions of the now defunct Roman Empire. The Roman Empire in Europe was a pile of dust that brought life to a new Holy Roman Empire with Papal powers. Also large swaths of Christian Africa and the Middle East left the church for Islam. There was a Muslim Caliphate in Egypt. In-between these two sat an Eastern Greek Orthodox,the Byzantine Empire. Religious clashes now included diametrically opposing views of God’s intentions more often than not settled with the sword.

But one good schism deserves another and the Catholic Church was not through with the splitting process. In the late 1500s the Protestant Reformation spun of all sorts of new religions into orbit. In many ways this reformation was as much a political revolution as it was an attempt at reforming religious thought. The reformation was also causing inner strife within ruling kingdoms of the time–aka Henry the VIII and his wedding/divorce woes. If you don’t like the divorce court’s rulings, start your own religion. And, oh by the way, make yourself the head of the religion.

Eventually some of those religions managed to land upon the Eastern shores of this country bringing their religious strife to the New World. Fortunately for us, political heads prevailed over fundamentalist religious preachers of the time. However, there was one Old World concept that still resonated within the New World: slavery, our original sin so to speak. Much like the Catholic Church during the Reformation, America eventually had s schism in the way it viewed the Constitution

Throughout our history we have had various and changing sects (political parties) and their absolute interpretations of the Constitution. Take the slavery issue and the Supreme Court under Chief Justice Roger B. Taney. In the 1857 Dred Scott decision Taney ruled that basically African Americans (free or otherwise) had no rights under the Constitution. Sticking to the prevailing thought at the time, Taney believed that slaves were property, and hence had no rights he or anybody else needed to respect. The only real reference to African Americans in the United States legally was that they were three-fifths of a person, an economic/political concept that worked for almost 100 years. The Civil War forced a major shift in dealing with more than four-hundred million freed African Americans. They went from property to voting citizens within a decade.

The aftermath of the American Civil War completely altered the way we would look at the law and the Constitution. It was Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity for social sciences. According to howstuffworks.com Einstein’s theory “remains an important and essential discovery because it permanently altered how we look at the universe. Einstein’s major breakthrough was to say that space and time are not absolutes.” The Civil War changed the way America would look at human rights. It threw America’s absolute views into a world of uncertainty.

How was America to view the recently freed slaves? It is sort of like Werner Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle. According to scienceexchange.caltech.edu “the uncertainty principle states that we cannot know both the position and speed of a particle, such as a photon or electron, with perfect accuracy; the more we nail down the particle’s position, the less we know about its speed and vice versa. Post Civil War politics never nailed down African Americans positions in a freed society. The speed of this transition however, was known. It was slow and backwards to those halcyonic antebellum times.

In order to rectify the concept that slaves were property, the Constitution had to be amended. It had to upgrade the African American population to citizenship 3.0. They had to be set free from serving the peculiar institution they were forever indentured to. They had to be made citizens. And, they had to be given the right to vote. Most middle school civics class students would know that this is the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution, amendments needed to make Roger B. Taney’s decision null and void.

In a weird twist of property rights and logic the Supreme Court ruled in the Citizens United case in 2010 ruled that money was free speech. Interesting because money is also property. And corporations are loaded up with money. These monied interests are now granted Second Amendment rights under the law of the land. They can spend their money on elections like a kid at the county fair. Can you imagine after seeing the Israelites dancing around the Golden Calf Moses decided to amend the Second Commandment. What absolute will dissolve away next? With Artificial Intelligence right around the corner, Citizens United may have pushed the concept that if money is property will my laptop eventually get the right to vote. I am just wondering.

I am going to go off on the deep end. I think history is a lot like curved space time, not linear. History events are like Halley’s Comet. History is a giant mass. And it is not so much that history repeats itself, it is that certain fundamental so-called absolutes, human issues, rights, whatever keeping coming back around in time. These issues are caught in history’s gravitational pull spiraling in on us. Until we sort these issues out, nail down their position and velocity, they basically will keep coming back around and around until they crash in on us, whether they are religious or political.

From Gilded Age to Golden Age

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contemplative images flickr.com

In President Trump’s Inaugural Address he boldly stated, “The golden age of America begins right now.” It has a nice ring to it but when you think about it, America’s last attempt at a golden age was called the Gilded Age.

Our Gilded Age was a time that was between the Civil War and the and turn of the 20th Century. It was a time when America was unfolding itself from sea to shining sea. History.com describes it as an era where “America became more prosperous and saw unprecedented growth in industry and technology.” But it was also an era as History.com says, that “had a more sinister side: It was a period where greedy, corrupt industrialists, bankers and politicians enjoyed extraordinary wealth and opulence at the expense of the working class. In fact, it was wealthy tycoons, not politicians, who inconspicuously held the most political power during the Gilded Age.”

For a Golden Age to be golden it needs to fit the following criteria:

  • The age must have stable economic growth, trade and the creation of wealth;
  • The age must have significant advancements in the arts, literature and science that contributes to the advancement of civilization;
  • The age must be one of discovery and innovation where progress pushes the envelope of what is possible;
  • Finally, it must be an age where there are peaceful relations among citizens and other countries.

Granted very few eras in history have hit all of the above criteria in full. It could be argued that for most of the United States history the US has come close to meeting most of the criteria to some degree some of the time; and at other times completely disregarded others. But even the Gilded Age with its moments of great wealth had its moments of economic panics, followed once again with the creation of great wealth. It was a time when the captains of industry controlled entire industries creating monopolies and trusts. and full employment. But it was a time where workers barley made $500 a year.

 Like today, New York City was the center of the financial system. Between 1863 and 1913, eight banking panics occurred in the money center of Manhattan. The panics in 1884, 1890, 1899, 1901, and 1908 were confined to New York and nearby cities and states. The panics in 1873, 1893, and 1907 spread throughout the nation.–federalreservehistory.org

According to the Thomas Edison National Historical Park, “In 1879, he made an incandescent bulb that burned long enough to be practical, long enough to light a home for many hours.” Within 60 years there would be night baseball.

Louis Bachrach Studios Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress

It was a period of peace and innovation. Inventors like Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell pushed the boundaries of science. Their inventions had a great impact on raising America’s standard of living and helped push the world into an electronic age of light and communication.

Alexander Bell places the first long-distance call from New York to Chicago in 1892. There were no free minutes at that time or unlimited texting.

Gilbert H. Grosvenor Collection, Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress

With the influx of immigrants, a segregated population became more segregated with laws like the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. It was a law that restricted Chinese laborers from entering the country, among other restrictions. It also affected Chinese immigrants already in the country by making them permanent aliens. It was an act of denying them citizenship. It was also a time where women, citizens, were denied the right to vote.

And it was a time of full employment fueled by immigrants, where workers barley made $500 a year. It was also a time dangerous working and conditions for labor. One slip or injury could cause economic devastation for a family. Unions fought for survival. However most were crushed from the weight of business interests working in conjunction with the government.

  • There was the Haymarket Riot of 1886 where workers were rallying for an 8 hour day. A bomb exploded killing workers and seven policemen.
  • There was the Homestead Steel Strike of 1892 where workers battled Pinkerton Detectives brought in by Andrew Carnegie’s chief executive Henry Clay Frick to break the strike. Eventually the Pennsylvania Militia was called out and the union organization was crushed.
  • And two years later there was the Pullman Strike. Pullman manufactured railroad cars. In 1893 George Pullman laid off seventy-five percent of the work force and reduced wages for those still working. The the American Railway Union called for a nationwide strike shutting down rail travel in 27 states. Eventually, President Grover Cleveland sent in 10,000 troops to quash the strike.

The annual income of an American worker in 1890, at the height of the Gilded Age. Adjusted for inflation, that’s just under $1,500 in today’s dollars.–Investopedia

Sticking with the railroad motif, Louisiana in 1890 passed The Separate Car Act. Railroads were required to provide “equal but separate accommodations for white and African American passengers.” Additionally, according to Britannica.com, the law prohibited passengers from entering accommodations other than those to which they had been assigned on the basis of their race.

The argument necessarily assumes … that social prejudices may be overcome by legislation, and that equal rights cannot be secured to the negro except by an enforced commingling of the two races. We cannot accept this proposition. If the two races are to meet upon terms of social equality, it must be the result of natural affinities, a mutual appreciation of each other’s merits, and a voluntary consent of individuals. (From Brown’s majority opinion in Plessy v. Ferguson. In other words, don’t trip over the color line on the way out.

Original published in The American Magazine in 1905 Frances Benjamin Johnston

It is amazing how educated legal minds can interpret the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. When this law was challenged in court it made its way to the Supreme Court. In Plessy v Ferguson, the Supreme Court ruled that separate accommodations did not violate the Thirteenth or Fourteenth Amendments. Justice Henry Billings Brown wrote for the majority. He “argued, because the amendment was intended to secure only the legal equality of African Americans and whites, not their social equality. Legal equality was adequately respected in the act because the accommodations provided for each race.” The lone dissenting vote came from John Marshall Harlan who fundamentally objected to the statute because “it interferes with the personal freedom of citizens.” The ruling gave us the concept of “separate but equal.” A dogmatic principle that hung around for another 50 plus years.

A Golden Age is a term used to describe a period in history where a culture, society, or nation experiences a period of prosperity, peace, and advancements. This era is characterized by significant achievements, significant contributions, and a collective sense of prosperity and unity. Golden ages are often marked by major advances in science, technology, art, and literature.–California Learning Resource Network

Before declaring a golden age Trump and company should look at what they are up against. They may have a hard time competing with the likes of ancient Egypt’s Fourth Dynasty. We might be going back more than 4500 years but in its golden age these pharaohs put up some impressive feats, like building pyramids. According to Pharaoh.se “the pharaohs of this dynasty only ruled for a little more than a century (and we think eight years is a long time), and yet they managed to have the three pyramids of Giza built in that time.” The pharaoh Sneferu started construction of the first pyramid and built three more, (no doubt letting the Nubians to pay for last two).

The Pyramids of Giza
Ricardo Liberato, Wikimedia Commons

His son Khufu continually improved upon his dad’s work. No pressure on Don Junior. In Trump’s first term he could not complete a wall along the Southern Border. (It was foiled when Mexico reneged on its fiduciary participation.) However Trump is proposing the Stargate Initiative. According to Forbes, this is “a $500 billion private sector deal to expand U.S. artificial intelligence infrastructure. Spearheaded by tech giants OpenAI, SoftBank, and Oracle, Stargate represents the largest AI infrastructure project in history.” Move over pyramids because the Yanks are coming! The sky’s the limit when billionaires get together. (At least three have skirted outer space.)

And then there is the Golden Age of Ukraine. If Trump plans to end Russia’s conquest of Ukraine he might want to bone up on Vladimir I or just Vladimir the Great. And no, this is not Putin but the “founding father” of Kievan Rus’. Putin might be using history to repeat Vladimir I’s medieval accomplishments. We have to harken back the 10th and 11th Century when Kievan Rus’ was Europe’s most powerful European state. A state without nuclear weapons. Vladimir I is credited with expanding Christianity to that region. Originally a pagan, much like Saul of Tarsus, he saw the light. When he converted to Christianity he oversaw the conversion of Kyiv and Novgorod to Christianity as well. For kicks he had all pagan idols thrown into the Dnieper River.

And lest not forget what was once “The Red Menace” from the East, China. Any golden age today has to take into account one of the oldest cultures in human civilization. Just look to the Tang Dynasty. Its first emperor was Gaozu (also Kao-tsu, formerly Li Yuan,-tsu (618-626 C.E.). According to ushistory.org, Gaozu “granted equal amounts of land to each adult male in return for taxes and continued the trend of local government rule…he also created a monetary system of copper coins.” Maybe Trump and Friends are onto something with Bitcoin. And he wrote a set of laws that were revised every two decades that lasted into the 14th century and the Ming dynasty. Sounds a bit like our Presidential Executive Orders, subject change but more frequently.

Emperor Gaozu was a Sui military commander who led a rebellion against his former masters, seized control of the state, and founded the Tang Dynasty
Public Domain

There is a cautionary tale here: “One of Gaozu son’s, General Li Shih-min, succeeded in eliminating all political rivals of the Tang and established firm control of the Tang dynasty over the newly reunified China. He then proceeded to murder his brothers, and forced his father (Gaozu) to abdicate the throne to him. Preferring his temple name, Tai-tsung took the throne in 626 C.E. The Golden Age of China had begun.” Nothing like a little fratricide and shoving the old man off the throne to get a golden age kicked off.

And if Trump wants to purse a Mideast policy he might want to look into the Islamic Golden Age. According Islamic History this golden age “is traditionally dated from the mid-7th century to the mid-13th century during which Muslim rulers established one of the largest empires in history.” It was period when artists, engineers, scholars, poets, philosophers, traders contributed “to agriculture, the arts, economics” mathematics and science. This was a time before OPEC, BP, Mobile, Exxon and Chevron–and Israel.

A little closer to our time the Elizabethan Age between 1558 and 1603 is referred to as a Golden Age of England. “According to Britannica, “it was a span of time characterized by relative peace and prosperity and by a flowering of artistic, literary and intellectual culture.” It was a time of Shakespeare.

With America’s stable economy and government, great universities and innovative thinkers, Trump has a lot to work with in getting a golden age cranked up. A lot of the elements needed to create a golden age are already present. They just need to be combined and conducted into a fine symphony. However, it is going to take more than handing out fries under the Golden Arches to create an age greatness.

The Phony Political War is Over

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Now that Donald Trump has been inaugurated and all the campaign’s bombastic swagering, threats, ranting and hectoring are over, we can get down to Trump 2.0. We have endured more than two months of Biden’s phony rule. Some of have been dreading the day when he steps down, while others have been on the Capitol steps just waiting to get started in making America great(er) again, emphasis on the again.

I liken the political time we just experienced to the lull in World War II after the fall of Poland. It was obvious that France and Britain were going to square off with Germany. But, for six months before the Battle of France both sides danced around each other with clenched fists before the beat downs began.

Phony War, (1939–40) a name for the early months of World War II, marked by no major hostilities. The term was coined by journalists to derisively describe the six-month period (October 1939–March 1940) during which no land operations were undertaken by the Allies or the Germans after the German conquest of Poland in September 1939.–Britanica

Since the election, Democrats and Republicans have been like two dogs running along the fence barking at one another. Snarling over cabinet appointments, growling about who closed the peace deal between Israel and Hamas, who caused the California Fires: the real dog fight can begin now that Trump has been unleashed. This time there will be no question about who turned the dogs loose, and there will be nobody running through the neighborhood with leashes to get them back in the yard. But that is what the people voted for, the ouster of a woke, liberal dog catcher.

The Germans were never one to forget how they were not beaten in World War I. Paybacks can be a tough check to cash. The Germans forced the French to sign an armistice at the same location and in the same railway car that the ended World War I.

For the last two months squawking heads from all points on the media scale have been pontificating on the path our country will follow in the next four years. Making predictions if the economy is going to tank or soar to even greater heights under Trump’s proposed tariffs. There is speculating on the overt reach of billionaires: is Elon Musk going to be given space grants to industrialize the exosphere much like in the 1860-80s when the government gave thousands upon thousands of square miles of federal land to railroad barons for laying tracks that crisscrossed the hinterlands. Will the Pentagon become world’s largest twenty-four hour men’s only lounge? Will the government turn the US Postal Service over Jeff Bezos, where voting by mail will be a guaranteed two day delivery where you can track your vote.

Fortunately, we are not at war. In fact Trump sounds very Wilsonesque in keeping America out of wars. Wilson tried for fours years in keeping the US out of World War I. Let us hope Trump’s art of the deal with Putin in Ukraine is better than Neville Chamberlain’s “Peace for Our Time” with Hitler in 1938. That peace lasted for about a year.

British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, proudly showing the Anglo-German Declaration commiting both countries to peace after his return from Munich on September 30, 1938.

The real question about peace for our time is how well Democrats and Republicans can get things accomplished now that the phony talk is over and the gavels are about to drop in Congress and in the courts. Are the MAGA forces going to try and blitzkrieg the Democrats? Are the Democrats going to roll over in the first 100 days of Trump 2.0 like France in 1940? Or, are the Dems going to proclaim they will never surrender.

Pardon my French but you can…

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Many years ago I was taken aback when a female coworker admonished a colleague in a loud and brusk way. It seems that the colleague was getting on her for some work-related mistake. I was not privy to the conversation until the woman in question, a big ole country gal, boldly and loudly said, “If you ain’t ever made a mistake then I’ll kiss yar ass.” A creative statement that puts a lot to imagine.

You must pardon my retelling of this tale. I normally try to shy away from “fruity language.” It is not that I am against somebody cursing a blue streak. It is so many of us do it with little tact and grace. It usually is, as the above example, the closing statement to a forgone conclusion. However, I can really appreciate those who can poetically string together obscenities. They can be pearls on a necklace worn on the right occasion. And that is the point. If one wants to learn how to use profanity I would suggest a good primer is the movie The Big Lebowski. Jeff Bridges and John Goodman thread the pearls of profanity as if they were knotting The Barado Pearl Necklace. But it is not the profanity I want to address. It is the pardon, or the reason for the profanity; or the lack of contrition that brings on the profanity; or being the first to throw the proverbial stone.

 A perfect judge will read each work of wit
With the same spirit that its author writ,
Survey the whole, nor seek slight faults to find, –Alexander Pope An Essay on Criticism

The word pardon is being thrown around lately as if it was some sort of profanity. People are up in arms chucking rocks one way or the other about President Joe Biden’s pardon of his son Hunter. Republicans are losing their minds on setting free a key member of the Biden Crime Family; and Democrats are flopping around like a hooked bass on the bottom of the boat, gaffed upon ethics that only they follow. For them the worst thing that Old Joe did was telling a simple lie when he said he would not pardon his son. It’s not like he was selling cigarettes without the Surgeon General’s warning on the pack. Lying to the public is nothing new, and lately it has been elevated to a national past time. Organizations have made a living counting public lies. To paraphrase the lyrics to the theme song of the TV show Psych: I know you know I am not telling the truth. But yet here we are.

 Avoid extremes; and shun the fault of such,
Who still are pleas’d too little or too much.
At ev’ry trifle scorn to take offence,
That always shows great pride, or little sense; –Alexander Pope An Essay on Criticism

Biden did nothing wrong. Article II Section 2 of the Constitution gives Old Joe the power to pardon. It says nothing about family and relatives or the qualifications for a pardon. It simply states: “and he shall have power to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States, except in cases of impeachment.” I wonder if we ever have a female president the phrase and he shall would exclude a “she” and God forbid a they, it, them from pardoning somebody. Something that slipped the framers mind in 1787. Strict interpretation of the Constitution, right up to where the First Amendment delineates money is free speech.

The other thing that has the Dems going is that the pardon sets a bad precedent. The pardoning of a convicted felon, by-passing the legal system. A president doing something that “bends the law.” Come on man, the Supreme Court has taken care of that. A president can now break the law with impunity. Biden could send in Seal Team Six to bust Hunter out if he wanted too. The Glorious Era where the rule of law really matters is over. The rule of law is now just a lukewarm suggestion and only applies to those who can’t afford a well paid team of legal assassins. If anyone making under $50,000 a year was convicted of three felony tax offenses and six misdemeanor tax offenses; or 34 felony convictions on falsifying business records, they would have already been fitted with the orange jumpsuit. They would be well into the first year of their sentence. Let’s get real on governmental norms and precedents, that rocket left the solar system at warp speed when it was launched from a golden escalator in 2015.

But most by numbers judge a poet’s song;
And smooth or rough, with them is right or wrong:
In the bright Muse though thousand charms conspire,
Her voice is all these tuneful fools admire, –Alexander Pope An Essay on Criticism

The MAGA crowd on the other hand sees the pardon as a reason to set free the January 6 storm troopers. I hate to tell them but when President Elect Trump takes office he doesn’t need a reason to pardon that crowd of tourists. He claims that they have been subjected to America’s twisted legal system. I would say manipulated legal system. So don’t be surprised when he pardons the 1,000 or so people who have pleaded guilty or convicted in crashing the Capitol gates. These J-6 Patriots that were armed with hockey sticks, fire extinguishers, knuckle gloves and even a pitch fork were not looking for the District’s Pickle Ball court. And yet somehow they were ensnared in a weaponized and very corrupt legal system.

And if the means be just, the conduct true,
Applause, in spite of trivial faults, is due.
As men of breeding, sometimes men of wit,
T’ avoid great errors, must the less commit: –Alexander Pope An Essay on Criticism

But this is not the first time a president has pardon a group who could have easily been convicted of treason. Trump’s pardon would fit right in with President Andrew Johnson’s end-of-term blanket pardon of ex Confederates. According to usnews.com, “Andrew Johnson, on Christmas Day 1868, granted full pardons and amnesty to soldiers who had fought for the Confederacy against the Union in the Civil War. Critics say President Johnson was being too lenient with traitors, but Johnson argued that it was time for a massive gesture of reconciliation.”

On the other end of the gun in 1976, President Jimmy Carter pardoned 200,000 Vietnam War draft dodgers “in still another bid for reconciliation.”

According to NPR President Biden “announced he is commuting the prison sentences for nearly 1,500 people and pardoning 39 others in what the White House says was the largest act of clemency in a single day in modern presidential history.” But this in not the first time Biden has had a mass pardon. He issued a presidential proclamations pardoning thousands of people convicted for attempted marijuana possession, simple possession of marijuana and for using marijuana. Talk about rigged system. I think the Feds pulled pot laws right out of the Catholic Church’s “Bless me father” playbook: It is against the law for wanting to smoke pot; it is against the law for having (and not smoking) pot; and it is against the law for smoking pot. The problem, it was not three Hail Marys and an Our Father as penance–and you are back on the streets, as George Carlin joked about confession.

Of all the causes which conspire to blind
Man’s erring judgment, and misguide the mind,
What the weak head with strongest bias rules,
Is pride, the never-failing vice of fools. –Alexander Pope An Essay on Criticism

I am not sure if English poet and satirist, Alexander Pope, realized the conundrum he would create in the future when he wrote in 1711, “To err is human; to forgive, divine.” Back then the clergy had the power to forgive or sell an indulgence. Indulgence was based on the belief that in purgatory one could do a little time and wipe out their earthly transgressions. Then they could climb the stairs to the Pearly Gates with their Get Into Heaven Card. Forgiveness is also couched in Jesus asking a group of men who had already passed judgment on woman with questionable credentials. They were ready to exact the needed social religious punishment. With stones in hand, Jesus simply asked the men, who here has not sinned? Jesus did not ask them to pardon her. The thud of rocks hitting the ground followed.

But forgiveness is not the same as a pardon. Jesus made the stoning of Mary Magdalene personal. The men had to search their concessions in regards to their actions, not hers. A pardon is not personal. It is a government legal decision to overturn another government legal decision, for whatever reason or no reason at all. It could be argued in Biden’s case, the pardon was personal; for him but not for me. I did not have a rock in the fight.

As long as humans are around someone is going to trip over the rules; someone is going to deviate from the norm; someone is going to hop the fence and find themselves trespassing on Mr. Gilmore’s property. Hunter Biden is that someone. I know he tried to manipulate a weaponized legal system; but I don’t recall him saying, boldly and loudly: “If you ain’t ever made a mistake then I’ll kiss yar ass.”

He didn’t have to. His Daddy did, figuratively speaking that is.

Mars Attacks! Alien Invasion at the Border

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The 2024 Presidential election has opened up a new topic for squawking heads, political pundits, and anybody with a social media account as how the Democrats lost to Donald Trump for the second time.

Since I fall in the “anybody” category I, too, have a reason why the Democrats lost. Many believe it was “the crisis” at the border that shifted just enough voters across the spectrum into believing we were being invaded. Trump said that Harris had “unleashed an army of migrant gangs who are waging a campaign of violence and terror against our citizens.” And, if enough people believe that our country was a “dumping ground” or “garbage can for the world,” then maybe we are. So it is settled, immigration and not the economy stupid that tipped the election to Trump.

The GOP campaign made good use of the collective consciousness. They utilized the natural fears of invasion and immigration that lingers in the depths of every human. It is the visage of Mongol Hordes streaming across the steppes of Eurasia. But for us, it was much more subtle. The GOP was able to frame it not as an invasion, but a “Crisis at the Border.” This, despite the fact that “this crisis” has been going on in some form or another since the Reagan Administration. Additionally, they were able to give Joe Biden and Kamala Harris each a violin to play Cotton-Eyed Joe at the border, much the same way Nero fiddled away as Rome burned.

The GOP kept it in the realm of reality without creating mass hysteria like Orson Welles’s War of the Worlds. Immigrants at the border were not carrying ray guns. They were just plain old common everyday thugs, murderers, rapists and the criminally insane. According to Reuters, Trump in a campaign speech in Wisconsin said, immigrants “who had committed violent crime (were) “monsters,” “stone-cold killers” and “vile animals”. Anybody who watches the myriad of Law and Order or CSI shows can relate to the vile scum that walks our streets. Despite some of the harsh rhetoric and images, the GOP did kept it comical with hungry dog-eating immigrants chowing down in “Oh me-o, oh my-o, oh” Springfield, Ohio on all sorts of stray pets. These comments create graphic images.

The Democrats, on the other hand, put to much emphasis on Democracy and Fascism. Fascism is real life crisis but a nebulus one at best. I ask, how many fascist are crossing the Rio Grande? My only real understanding of fascism is a graphic picture of Benito Mussolini hanging upside down with his mistress and two other unfourtants in Milan in 1945. Without a doubt fascism played a huge part in World War II. And in the wrong hands, it is a form of government without checks and balances. Collectively speaking, about 80 million Italians and Spaniards were under fascist rule. Americans: zero. Hitler and National Socialism is a whole other political animal. That’s a topic I will leave to the Tiki Torch Brigade.

The Democrats, with their Hollywood connection should have dipped into the movie vault to combat the Trump campaign’s attacks. They should have taken their cue from hundreds of alien invasion movies. They should have embraced holding the borders as if it were the last line of civilization. Harris and Walz should have been channeling President Thomas Whitmore and General William Grey in the movie Independence Day. With the world in flames they were marshalling every available resource to avoid the eradication of the human race.

To many voters Harris did very little to halt the “crisis” at the border. It never reached her to do list. If I was in the inner sanctums of Harris campaign I would have strongly suggested that they watch Mars Attacks! They should have seen the disastrous effects on how not to handle an alien invasion. Although Earthlings were able to beat back the Martians, it took a toll on our government. As President James Dale said after the Martians blew up Congress: “I want the people to know that they still have two out of three branches of the government working for them, and that ain’t bad.” Something that we can attest to now. The real question is which branch is falling to the ground at any given time.

It is interesting that the movie is based on Topps Trading Cards, the same company that gave us Baseball Cards. In 1962, the year after Maris and Mantle were swinging for the fences, Topps released a 55-card set Mars Attacks! Today it would be a graphic novel. The Democrats could have taken a cue from Donald Trump. Trump has his own brand of trading cards and other marketable collectables like Bibles, watches and top secret documents. Dems could have gotten into the collectables business. They could have marketed immigration. They could have gone to Topps Trading Cards to get them to reissue the 55 card collection and handed the cards out at every Harris/Walz rally. They could have enhanced the cards by saying collect them trade them; collect all 55 and you can set yourself in a sub level Cabinet position, or become an ambassador to one of the many “shithole” African countries.

Every generation dating back to the Irish Potato Famine to Cubans fleeing Castro has dealt with some sort of alien invasion. But nothing brings a chill to the spine then movies like the 1951 hit The Day the Earth Stood Still, the 1996 film Independence Day to the 2024 Alien: Ramulus, a continuation of the 1979 movie Alien. People get the idea of Arnold Schwarzenegger battling an outer space predator with his bare hands. The Democrats failed to depict Harris as battling to save our country. Instead, Harris let Trump paint her as being “mentally impaired.” Democrats should have headed General Decker’s advice to President Dale in Mars Attacks! when Dale’s aides were advocating negotiating with the Martians, “They don’t know what the hell they’re talking about.” Decker ranted. “Liberals, intellectuals… peacemongers, idiots!!” Decker encapsulated the John Birch society’s mantra that has resonated through the conservative soul for decades.

Whatever your views are on immigration, Trump played Harris like a set of bongos. Harris, much like President Dale, who did nothing to stop the invasion, ended up supine on the floor.

Ironically, the movie ends with a Mariachi Band playing The Star Spangled Banner on the steps of the destroyed Capitol. There is some interesting symbolism there.

Mars Attacks Cards: The Ultimate Collector’s Guide

The MAGA Drama Continues with The Return of Trump

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In August of 2018 I made a political prediction that Trump would win the 2020 election. It was 20/20 that Trump would win in 2020. I was wrong. However, I am double downing on Trump. I predict Trump will return for the final MAGA Saga act. In 2018.

I felt that all the drama that Trump created would propel him to another four years. in 2020. Instead viewers, and make no mistake we are no longer voters, canceled Mr. Trump goes to Washington after six seasons. Season one premiered with the Golden Escalator ride in June of 2016: Gold Digger of Manhattan. It ended dramatically with lost tourists storming the Capitol in quest of public restrooms in “Who left the Dump Cake?” So much of the saga was left untold. And here we are eight years later anxiously awaiting Trump’s Washington return.

The shocked Trump, and the GOP, was surprised that a show with such a large following was canceled. So many questions. How did a bunch of pointy-headed liberals turned woke warriors manage to pull off an Ocean’s Eleven stealing millions of votes in so many swing states? How could a vast empire be brought down by just several million viewers scattered in key swing slots? How did they turn off the MAGA channel? It had to be election legerdemain. It is impossible to dupe so many Americans.

However, there was still a well-funded PAC production companies a (Fox) studio and plenty of advertisers to keep a Trump show on the air. Undaunted, the GOP tried several Trump spinoffs that flamed out: Dr. Oz Medicine Man bombed in Pennsylvania. And in Georgia the remake of the movie Running Man starring Hershel Walker had a good opening in Georgia but could not get enough market share in Atlanta to get a coveted Senate seat. Other spin offs never got beyond the pilot production.

Despite losing Washington DC production rights, the GOP decided that what MAGA needed was slight face lift, a new location, like so many CSI spinoffs. It needed some glitz beyond the Trump Tower. And despite Trump’s cancellation for a second running, the GOP looked at is a stolen victory. They decided that Mr. Trump goes to Washington would be the first show in the trilogy of The MAGA Saga. Production moved to South Florida and within weeks the second series, It’s Always Sunny in Mar-a-Lago became a hit. But despite the cheery title the show is film noir. The writer cast Trump as the the cynical hero seeking out retribution, a hero standing up for the common man who can take the law into his own hands.

The plot is loosely based on the 1956 film The Searchers starring John Wayne. In this classic John Ford Western, Wayne is searching across Texas for his niece kidnapped by Comanches. In this remake Donald Trump portrays a modern day Ethan Edwards seeking revenge on raping, pillaging and dog eating immigrants. Writers of the show do not deviate from the main themes of Mr Trump Goes to Washington. By now that Trump is unbogged from the Washington swamp, he can now show how truly the demented liberal agenda is in turning the United States into North Mexico.

The final series in the trilogy is The Return of Trump, MAGA Strikes Back. It is set to premiere in late November. The GOP has combined two Star Wars film titles for dramatic cinematography effect. It begins with the triumphant Trump returning to Washington with galactic powers. Backed by a Supreme Court that, in its judicial wisdom, has bestowed total immunity for Trump. He is finally allowed to rule as a modern day Caesar. Who needs executive orders when laws become mere suggestions. Most of the scripts are still works in progress but episode one: Mass Deportations will be followed by the creptic: “Tales from the Swamp: How Federal Bureaucrats Resisted President Trump.” Cut loose of the bothersome bureaucracy America will finally be able to embrace its true conservative, Christian values.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Running_Man_(1987_film)

https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-the-searchers-1956

Protecting Your Home: You’re in Good Hands with Jesus; But Colt if you are of Little Faith.

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A family moved into the neighborhood not too long ago. Shortly after they moved in a sign appeared in their front window proclaiming that Jesus Christ and the Second Amendment was protecting their new home. I thought this is an absurd statement. I also thought is there a crime wave in the neighborhood that I don’t know about. A year or so ago we did have bears in a neighbor’s backyard.

There is a mutual compatibility in believing in both Jesus and the right to own a gun, and protect your property. When Jesus sent out 70 or so of his disciples to spread the word he sent them out as lambs among wolves, and unarmed. He also told them when they enter somebody’s home they should first say, “‘Peace to this house.’ If someone who promotes peace is there, your peace will rest on them…”

I just can’t help thinking there appears to be some sort of fallacious reasoning going on behind the window. First off, I am not questioning or condemning anyone’s Christian beliefs or the Constitutional right to bear arms. It is the mutual exclusivity that confuses me. It is the lumping Jesus Christ with the Second Amendment as protectors of a house.

I thought maybe it was the Fourth Amendment, the one guaranteeing us the right “to be secure in their (our) persons, houses, papers and effects against unreasonable searches…” But for some reason this does not include internet searches and hacking–something Madison and Friends were unaware of at the time of ratification. After all, this was a time of Mercantilism. The Industrial Revolution was just on the horizon and the information age a space age away.

But the Fourth Amendment really deals with government warrants and the “deep state.” Those who wrote the Constitution, in their infinite wisdom, foresaw a billowing government turning into a hidden futuristic monster. The Fourth, however, lacks the punch that the Second provides. I do not think the Fourth protects you from someone busting through your sliding glass door at 4 a.m. It would be at this time the Second Amendment might kick in.

What I find fallacious in the above sign is we are comparing a man, notably the Son of God, to 27 words in a Constitution. This fallacious equivalence makes it almost impossible to make a sane comparison. It goes way beyond “apples and oranges.” It is more like apples and orangutans. It is this sort of reasoning that is running rampant today, particularly among politicians who operate in the thin, upper stratosphere of reasoning. In this case, there is not a single shared characteristic or attribute that I can see between Jesus Christ and the Second Amendment. It is as if Jesus Christ sat on the First Congress’s Joint House Senate Conference Committee of the United States and voted to send the 12 proposed Bill of Rights Amendments to the States for ratification.

Believe me, if you are a devout Christian and you believe that you can never be out of God’s or Jesus’ watchful eye, I get it. I will not argue that point. As the song goes: “He’s got the whole world in his hands…” Using that logic it would seem to indicate if he has the whole world in his hands, and if the house is part of the world then I can see how Jesus would protect the house and those inside it, even at 4 a.m. As the psalmist says: “if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there.”

It reminds me of when his disciples were huddled on a boat in a “great tempest.” Nothing like water coming in over the gunnels and no life preservers on board to get your heart racing, to put the fear of God in a man’s soul. Those swimming lessons at the YMCA would have come in handy right about now. For those disciples they did not have to search far for God. At some point in the storm they decided it was time to wake Jesus up yelling, “Lord, save us: we perish.” Jesus sat up, looked around and said, “‘Why are ye fearful, O ye of little faith?’ Then he arose, and rebuked the winds and the sea; and there was a great calm.” If you have faith that Jesus can calm a storm I think you can go ahead and cancel your homeowner’s insurance. Unfortunately, mortgage companies do not have that kind of faith.

There is so much going on in that sign. I just don’t get the juxtaposition of a cross with a gun, and not just any cross, the symbol of Christianity. As if one is dependent on the other. If this were a Venn Diagram where would the Jesus circle intersect with the Second Amendment circle? It would seem to me that if Jesus was protecting the house, Jesus, a man who could cast multiple devils out of one man, head those demons into a herd of swine and then off a cliff; a man who could feed thousands would have little need of a gun. If guns were around in 33 AD. So, protecting a house would be nothing to him.

Then there is the Second Amendment. It is only 27 words:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

It could easily be said that they are the most picked over 27 words written in the Constitution. Some argue that the Amendment is anachronistic and incongruous with the present times. The Second Amendment was written when powerful European countries were perched on our borders like alligators hanging under an Egret’s nest waiting for a falling fledgling. It was a time when a well armed “regulated “(and I use regulated losely) citizenry was the first line of defense. Taxing for a standing Army and a 300 ship navy, national defense, wouldn’t come until post WWII.

The British have come and gone and we have been at peace with Canada for the better part of 200 years. The National Guard is our well regulated militia today. If the Russians are coming they are not coming by land or by sea. Red Dawn was a great movie but I do not think Cubans and Russians–Iranians or North Koreans–are going to be falling out of the sky any time soon. It will more likely be through cyberspace.

Yes, it could be argued that things are not so swell south of the Rio Grande. We are dealing with what some would call a “crisis,” an invasion at our Southern border. However, it is not an armed-hostile attack. It is not even like 1916 when General John Pershing and the 13th Cavalry were chasing Pancho Villa all over Mexico after Villa raided Columbus, New Mexico. The Second Amendment may have kicked in with armed citizens rallying in a moments notice to defend hearth and home. Villa wasn’t escorting new settlers. It was probably the last time individual Americans had to face down a foreign attack. My question is why did Villa pick a town where an US Army base was.

But it really is not so much about foreign invasions today that our personal weapons would supposedly be used for. Some will argue the Second Amendment is the only thing keeping the “deep state” from enslaving us all into some sort of socialistic, DEI, wokism state. Take away our guns and you take away the right to protect our freedoms. This sort circular reasoning is pointless. The Second Amendment will never be repealed so we will never know if owning guns or not goes beyond fending off Big Brother or Pancho Villa. If anything, it enhances the belief without any real proof that God, guns and guts made America free–let’s fight to keep all three–and Jesus will lead the charge. A nifty statement but is it really provable.

Now here is where it really gets dicey. Some Second Amendment advocates try to use the Bible to back up their beliefs that Jesus would be an advocate of gun ownership. Depending on what Bible you want to use there are nearly 800,000 words, give or take a couple thousand in both Books. The Old Testament ,”eye-for-an eye, has more than 600,000 words compared to the New Testament’s “love thy neighbor’s” 180,000.

Now it is obvious there were no handguns, long rifles, assault rifles in First Century AD. In the Holy Land during this era it’s more than likely that the Roman short sword was the personal weapon of choice. Easily concealed under a tunic or a cloak, and possibly easily acquired on the black market. In fact when the Jews came to arrest Jesus it was Peter who pulled out a sword “and struck the high priest’s servant, cutting off his right ear”. It would not be until the 1850s that the pistol would be the real choice for in close killing. But a cross? You don’t hear about too many people being clubbed to death with a cross. And crucifictions went out with the Romans.

Of the 180,000 words in the New Testament it is 30 that basically form the intersection of Jesus and the Second Amendment. Luke 22:36: He (Jesus) said to them, ‘But now if you have a purse, take it, and also a bag; and if you don’t have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one.’” Biblical scholars can pick that verse apart much like Constitutional scholars pick apart the Second Amendment. And since I am neither I am going to let it go at that.

And now it is my turn to make a ridiculous comparison. One might channel Han Solo just after eluding Imperial forces. He tells Luke Skywalker that: “Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a blaster at your side.” In our time and galaxy that might be a Glock 19. Or you can channel the father who was seeking out Jesus for relief of his son, who was afflicted with “a dumb spirit.” Granted, it was not Darth Vader. The father said:  “And ofttimes it hath cast him into the fire, and into the waters, to destroy him: but if thou canst do anything, have compassion on us, and help us.”

Jesus said unto him, “If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth.” If you believe Jesus protects your house why do you need a gun. Or if you have a gun do you really need Jesus. I am just asking.

Trump was Turned Inside Out

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Like 50 to 60 million other Americans, I watched the Presidential Debate between former president Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris. I also watched the first Presidential Debate where Joe Biden’s political career dissolved much the way the Wicked Witch of the West fizzled away in The Wizard of Oz.

To many MAGA people, and many on the right, there was reason to cheer the demise of the leftist leader. “Socialism is Dead,” “Hail to Trump!” Trump was all set to grab the burning broom and fly into history. The polls were tight but Trump seemed to have a solid edge in the presidential grudge match. Biden’s quick exit from the ring was like some sort of pro wrestling cage match where the loser leaves. And this could literally be true. With Trump in control of the broom, and the Ruby Slippers, most of the criminal charges against him go away, along with his political antagonists. Trump has made it clear retribution will be swift, unlike his court cases. And sticking with the movie theme, Trump may start to channel mob boss Don Vito Corleone in The Godfather: “Revenge is a dish best served cold.”

But not so fast, as different as the two debates were, there are some stark comparisons. The two debates could have similar endings. After Biden’s debate, I would say crash and burn but that would mean he actually left the runway and got airborne. The Democratic Party pulled Biden out of the pilot’s seat and managed to park that plane quickly showing Biden the door. Biden was Chauncey Gardiner, Peter Sellers, in the movie Being There, leaving the garden he worked in most of his life. Whatever your political bent is, it was sort of sad to see Biden’s slow, mental meltdown, like a bowl of ice cream in a sauna. I believe it surprised Trump that after 90 minutes he was debating a man who could have been described before the debate as Rocky Road but was now just warm, sticky, mushy Cookies and Cream.

The Trump/Harris debate was different. As the debate went on I thought Harris was channeling Bugs Bunny, leading Trump down a series of rabbit holes as if he were Elmer Fudd wondering if he should have taken a left turn at Albuquerque. To some, Trump is a Looney Tune, but no Elmer Fudd. The longer the debate went on the more he reminded me of Anger, the Lewis Black character in the movie Inside Out. I could visualize a blue blaze of jet flame shooting out of the top of Trump’s head. The only time he opened his eyes was when he was mad.

As for Harris, when she added to the Bugs Bunny rif, she expanded her persona. If we stick with the Inside Out motif, I would say she added equal parts of Fear, Disgust and Joy. During the debate she may have been short on specific policies, but she played upon the Democratic Party’s anti-Trump emotions: Fear, if he gets reelected and the disgust of actually having to live through another Trump administration. But most of all the joy if he loses.

In the first debate we saw President Biden fall off the stage and carried away. In the second debate we may have just witnessed another president exiting the stage. It is hard to judge the impact of the debate on November’s election today. The question is: Will the debate be a reason American voters shove Trump off the stage for good.

Capitalism is Catching up to College Football’s Players

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College Football kicks off in early September and it is the first season with the emergence of two supper conferences and a corporate 12 game playoff system in place. The game was once dominated by Ivy League elites, it is now in the hands of TV and two giant cartel, conglomerated-conferences. Let’s just call the Southeastern Conference and The Big Ten Conference the Goliaths of football, the Goliaths of the gridiron. All the other conferences are Davids, or slain Davids who got in their way, like the PAC 12. For those who do not follow College Football, and for many that do, we are unlikely to realize the economic morphing that has been taking place since the game’s inception.

According to the NCAA the first collegiate football game took place in 1869 between Rutgers and Princeton. It was probably a game that looked more like a combination of Rugby and Soccer. I liken the economics of the game at that time to a feudal game played between various colleges. The manor being the university and football players being the gallant knights of the field. A 19th and early 20th Century jousting match without horses and lances. More of a rugged, and some time fatal, version of the elementary and middle school game of capture the flag.

“These tournaments (took place) where knights fought in mock cavalry battles (mêlée), with the object of capturing as many of the opposing team as possible.”– World History Encyclopedia

College Football at the time could be just as vicious as bunch of armored men with lances and swords riding around on horseback. According to History.com, President Teddy Roosevelt said in 1903, “I believe in rough games and in rough, manly sports. I do not feel any particular sympathy for the person who gets battered about a good deal so long as it is not fatal.”

However it was more than just getting battered about. “The Chicago Tribune reported that in 1904 alone, there were 18 football deaths and 159 serious injuries, mostly among prep school players. Obituaries of young pigskin players ran on a nearly weekly basis during the football season.” And in 1905 another 19 recorded deaths along with 137 serious injuries.

One newspaper editorial extolled that “The once athletic sport has degenerated into a contest that for brutality is little better than the gladiatorial combats in the arena in ancient Rome,” Thank god today we have mixed martial arts fighting where we can watch both men and woman beating each other into submission.

Roosevelt used the “bully pulpit” to get College Football to enact rules that would make the game less fatal to the players. In 1906 an intercollegiate conference, the precursor to the NCAA, revolutionized football by legalizing the forward pass and outlawing massed, arm-in-arm formations. The game was blemished, to say the least, with fatalities, but moving towards safer play.

As the game became more popular the economics of the game moved from the feudal system into a more socialist economic barter system where universities set prices, a non-monetary barter system for a players labor. Because players were amateurs there was no wage consideration. It was forbidden for colleges to pay them for their athletic skills. The best universities could do is offer athletes a scholarship for their athletic prowess.

In 1934, according to Time.com, the “the U.S. Office of Education surveyed the nation’s colleges about the cost of attendance and found that the average cost for one academic year was $630 ($11,300 today).” Those figures do not include room and board and other fees. But still, not a bad deal if you consider that the median yearly income of a White male was a tad more than $1,400. Almost $700 dollars-a-year if you were a Black male. And we will not even discuss what women made.

Today the average shelled out for a year at a four-year in-state public university is around $9,500–give or take the interest on the student loan. For a private school it is closer to $32,500. Neither of those figures include room and board.” And the tuition jumps about $20,000 a year if you head off to an elite Ivy League type school. As a side note, I wonder if that extra $20,000 is worth the money considering that some of our more prominent politicians hail from such schools. It makes you wonder if you put 100 monkeys in the Senate could they compete with a group of Ivy League lawyers. I am sure the extra $20,000 has not given us better football players because it sure hasn’t given us better legislators.

So the value of the scholarship may vary from university-to-university based on tuition, fees, required books and room and board. Any additional perks for playing at a particular school would more than likely be an under-the-table-agreement with a Booster picking up the tab. Thus, enhancing the predetermined socialist benefits provided by the university.

Winston Churchill once said, “The inherent virtue of Socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.” I am not sure if College Football players were sharing any sort of misery but they were beholding to the university for the fruits of their labor.

But things were about to change. Two dates that sent seismic tremors through the economic structure of College Football are October 8, 1929 when radio station KDKA-AM aired the first college football game between Pittsburgh and West Virginia University. The other date: September 30, 1939 when NBC televised the Fordham University and Waynesburg University game on W2XBS. The economic volcano of money was starting spout some capitalist steam.

Technology is the accelerant to the Time, Space, Continuum. It may have taken all day for someone on a plodding-horse to make the round trip trek into town. Today, we can make the same trip in a car in less than an hour. If technology is the accelerant then money is the black hole that sucks everything into its gravitational vortex. In 12 short years College Football changed more since the 1906 season when the forward pass was legalized. The money hounds would soon be sniffing and scratching at the door.

The money ball began rolling in 1951 when universities and the meek conferences of the day turned their television rights over to the NCAA. In 1952 NBC had the exclusive rights for weekly games for the tune of $1.4 million. Texas Christian University and the University of Kansas kicked off the capitalist era on September 20 of that year. Corporate America got its nose in the College Football tent.

New technology and money expanded the playing field, so to speak. Universities and Conferences were showered with TV money and free sneakers. In 2020 Disney’s ESPN finalized a $300 million deal with the Southeastern Conference for per season broadcast rights. Yahoo!Sports says that this deal is at least five times the $55 million per year fee that CBS was paying the SEC. According to The New York Times that rounds out to about $20 million-a-game. Not a bad pay day for one day’s work. The SEC said that it doled out $741 million to its 14 schools in the 2022-23 fiscal year, meaning an average payout of $51.2 million, about a $2 million bump from the last season.

The other Goliath, The Big Ten consummated a $7 billion deal that will allow games to be broadcast across “three major networks each week.” According to the Associated Press this deal “will allow the 16 member universities to share in $1 billion per year.” As for the players, its like what Forrest Gump said about being shot in the buttocks, “They say it was a million dollar wound, but the Army must keep that money ’cause I still haven’t seen a nickel of that million dollars.”

With all of this money falling on the field, the X-factor in all of this capitalist expansion is the player. With all this TV money floating around, everybody is trying to grab as many dollars from heaven as possible. American capitalism leaves no money on the table. The problem for the players, is that It has always been the NCAA’s belief that it is their money. The NCAA believes in the amateur model: no pay for play; why start to compensate workers who have worked the last 100 years basically for room and board. According to sporstkeeda.com, there are close to 20,000 Division I scholarship players. And this does not include walk-ons. That’s a lot of compensation. It carries over to the old Southern plantation owner’s attitude: Why complicate matters with a payroll.

The Sherman Antitrust Act refers to a landmark U.S. law that banned businesses from colluding or merging to form a monopoly. Passed in 1890, the law prevented these groups from dictating, controlling, and manipulating prices in a particular market…The act aimed to promote economic fairness and competitiveness while regulating interstate commerce. –Investopedia

Enter the ghost of Teddy Roosevelt. Any high school students who could stay awake long enough in their American History class has heard about, I will not say remembers, Teddy as a Trust Buster. Using the Sherman Antitrust Act Teddy took on some of the most powerful captains of industry of the time. He took on John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil and J.P. Morgan’ s railroad conglomerate: National Securities Company. So how does Teddy trust bust into College Football?

In 2008, Ed O’Bannon took a page from Teddy’s playbook. O’Bannon was a former UCLA basketball player from 1991-95. When he saw his image and likeness on an Electronic Arts (EA) video game, a company that developed video games based on college football and basketball, O’Bannon realized he never gave his consent and was never compensated for the use of his image and likeness in the video game. O’Bannon sued the NCAA and the Collegiate Licensing Company.

Here comes Teddy riding Little Texas up the virtual San Juan Hill of College Football. According to the American University Business Law Review, O’Bannon claimed that “the NCAA’s amateur rules prevented student-athletes from being compensated for the use of their NILs (name, image and likeness) and was an illegal restraint of trade under Section 1 of the Sherman Act.”

A class action suit was filed in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The court found in 2015 for O’Bannon. It turns out that the NCAA’s amature model of no pay for play in some cases is a flawed system. But there is nothing flawed when it comes to the NCAA profit-driven system. According to ESPN, “The NCAA generated nearly $1.3 billion in revenue for the 2022-23 fiscal year, more than half of which was distributed back to Division I members, according to (NCAA) financial statements.”

Any college (football player) student who has taken an Economics 101 course is aware of the Four Factors of Production: Labor, Land, Capital and Entrepreneurship. I did not graduate from the London School of Economics but if you remove labor costs from your business model profits have to go up considerably for the owners of land and capital. Capitalism has never been about sharing profits, particularly with labor. And it does not take an entrepreneur genius to see that this decision to compensate players has changed College Football’s business field of play, much like in 1906 with the forward pass. For the entrepreneur, it is how much of this largess is up for grabs.

Property is the fruit of labor; property is desirable; it is a positive good in the world. That some should be rich shows that others may become rich, and hence is just encouragement to industry and enterprise’” Abraham Lincoln–1864 in a letter to the Workingmen’s Association of New York

Since the Supreme Court upheld the Ninth Court of Appeals decision there have been other legal ramifications put in play. For instance, In 2019 California passed The Fair Pay to Play Act. Athletes can be compensated for promotional opportunities. So far 29 states have passed similar laws giving new meaning to states’ rights. It also raises the question are athletes now state employees and not student athletes?

And to reinforce player non-academic compensation, the Supreme Court upheld another Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in the Alston case saying that the NCAA was restricting the compensation colleges and universities may offer student athletes who toil away on their fields. It is now more than room and board–and free sneakers.

What will be interesting is to see how technology accelerates the economic process. What happens in the next few years when tech entrepreneurs jump into the money vortex. Take Oklahoma State’s efforts put a QR code on their football helmets to promote NIL. The NCAA said there will be no scanning today. Is this tomorrow’s court challenge?

“As we enter this new age of college athletics, the Big 12 Conference welcomes the opportunity to be at the forefront of innovation and creativity,” (Brett)Yormark (Big 12 Commissioner) said. “I look forward to partnering with the NCAA and my fellow conference commissioners in an effort to modernize legislation that enables our schools to drive value for our student-athletes.”–ESPN

And then there is unaccounted blitzer, the 12th man so to speak, Congress. The only play Congressi calls from is its playbook of late is the Punt. If there were penalties in Congress they would be continuously flagged for delay of game. They cannot sort out a federal budget. College Football could really get more mucked-up in the next few years if those knuckleheads get involved. Just look at what they have done at the border and with abortion. Dose College Football want Congress calling plays from DC.

And then what happens in the next 10 or so years when TV contracts come up for negotiations. The way technology is moving who knows what is next. Maybe AI will generate all future games. We won’t need to pay players or coaches because we want need them. Maybe then universities can get back to what they were intended to do: Educate.



https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/capitalism.asp

https://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/41070382/ncaa-bars-oklahoma-state-placing-nil-linked-qr-codes-helmets

https://www.bakertilly.com/insights/ncaas-restrictions-on-compensation-ruled-a-violation

https://www.history.com/news/how-teddy-roosevelt-saved-football

https://www.sapling.com/8144923/history-sports-scholarships

https://www.on3.com/college/wisconsin-badgers/news/alston-awards-ncaa-v-alston-supreme-court-of-the-united-states-brett-kavanaugh/

https://harvardlawreview.org/print/vol-135/ncaa-v-alston/