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Category: Essays

  • Happy Holidays and A Merry Xmas 2016

    Happy Holidays and Merry Xmas

    Happy Holidays 2016

    We have a lot to be thankful for.  We enjoyed eight years of relative peace. Yes, even though the stock market has reached new all-time heights, mostly only the top 25% within the world economy are affected by that. However, during the Obama administrations many people in the middle class and even the impoverished have made small strides.  More

    Hope that we can improve our own lives.

    The housing crisis and the cost of education problems have not been adequately addressed, but at least everyone knows about it.  People are no longer suffering in silence, all alone. There are amazing new companies who are working hard on addressing it.  For instance the Khan Academy provides assistance for free that literally change people’s lives.  Here is one example of their many Thank You letters the Khan Academy deservedly received.  Robyn, December 4, 2013: “I am currently in high school, trying to get into university for engineering. I just recently started using Khan Academy, and I am already hooked. I just wanted to say that it is truly amazing what you are doing. If there was ever such a thing as a saint: you would be one. Providing the world with easy access to education is something that nations upon nations have failed to do, yet you accomplished starting with just some simple videos available for any one to access. Thank you for restoring my faith in people.”   More

    Amazing scientific breakthroughs that will change our future

    In 2016, Scientists have tested the world’s first minimally invasive brain-machine interface, designed to control an exoskeleton with the power of thought and gets people with paralysis back on their feet.  More

    In 2016, 3D Printing research shows promises for medicine and manufacturing that are mind-boggling.  In the future organs and bone may well be printed from your own tissues and thus move medicine into an entirely different sphere. More

    Artificial Intelligence had several major breakthroughs, not least of which is that Google’s AI engine reorganized “itself” to write a better translation system.  And this indicates that AI is here to stay at an entirely different level.  More

    Social Trends that bring families together

    At the home front things have changed as well.  Now for the first time in since the year of 1880 more children and young adults (18 to 34 year olds) live with their parents than live away from their parents.  More  The economy that squeezes the life-style of most Westerners (75%) financially, combined with the aging of the baby boomers is moving families closer together.

    The ever shrinking middle

    Yes, the share of the middle class has been shrinking and unless corporate officers start waking up to the fact that a shrinking middle class means a shrinking customer base, this trend will continue for years to come.  More

    We enjoy enough food, clean water (most of us, ahem, Flint), a roof over our heads and more of us have our families with us.  Life is good, we can always go online and improve it ourselves.  So now think about all the good things in your life and share them with your family over some cookies.  Merry X-mas or Happy Holidays, whichever you prefer.

  • Death of our Democracy: The Carolinas show us how right wing tendencies will ruin us unless we stop their March toward a Dictatorship.

    The Picture of a Racist
    The Picture of a Racist

    “Somebody had to do it,” Roof said of the slayings. He added that “black people are killing white people everyday… What I did is so minuscule compared to what they do to white people every day.”  He researched Charleston, scouted the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church and then acted alone. Yes this time there is a guilty verdict by the jury of the avowed white supremacist, Dylann Roof, on his federal hate crimes on 33 charges of federal hate crimes resulting in death, obstruction of religion and firearms violations.

    Meanwhile in North Carolina, Pat McCrory, a renowned right-wing GOP governor rolls back laws and passes laws that will prevent his democratic follower from ruling the state.  The Right Wing agenda is to wall in and to fortify their absolute power legally.  He and his fellow lawmakers, who control the General Assembly, introduced measures to end the governor’s control over election board’s requiring State Senate approval of any new governor’s cabinet members and to strip his power to appoint University of North Carolina trustees.  This is right-wing agenda in action to ease their white supremacist agenda.  If you can’t strip the people of their right to vote, we all know they tried.

    A press release in November 2016 states:

    "NCGOP leaders will discuss final Get Out The Vote efforts and encouraging Republican gains in final Early Voting numbers when compared to 2012. Republicans historically vote in far greater numbers on Election Day itself, these great strides in Early Voting when compared to 2012 show evidence of underestimated statewide ground game and deep volunteer base. Chairman Robin Hayes: “I am encouraged by the excitement and work ethic of our volunteers and the numbers don't lie—the Republican ground game is showing that motivated statewide volunteers and extensive ground game are better indicators of electoral success than the number of candidate-specific offices one has.

    Despite this effort and one before to change local laws that the federal court deemed illegal, North Carolina GOP Gov. Pat McCrory, who signed the 2013 voter-ID law which a federal court rolled back this year for illegally suppressing African-American votes, claimed in November 2016 that massive voter fraud in his state swung the 2016 election against him, as McCrory’s campaign continues to challenge Democrat Roy Cooper’s thin lead two weeks after Election Day.

    The example of voter suppression is right here.  Despite that it is perfectly legal to vote if you are temporarily absent.  If a piece of mail with an out-of-state address is not returned before the vote that vote does not qualify.  If there is another person with the same or similar name at an out-of-state address on Facebook, your vote no longer counts in North Carolina.  If you put your vote into the voting box, instead of giving it to a racist woman who deems you as rude, your vote no longer counts.  If there is a dead person of the same name in another county, your vote no longer counts. Check out this real document with these types of feeble attempts to change the voting results.

    Now despite this arduous effort to control and influence the North Carolina voting results, the Democrat Roy Cooper won the election as governor.  Now the White Supremacist Offensive goes on the full on offensive.  The current General Assembly held an emergency meeting and stripped Governor Rye Copper of the powers to govern.  It affects and takes away his ability to govern the State Board of Elections, State Ethics Commission, State Board of Education and the regulation functions of the Secretary of State, and the choice to appoint the head of the Industrial Commission.  It is a well-known fact that the Koch Brothers aim to make North Carolina a model state of the private takeover of a government.

    Rep. Nelson Dollar, a Republican from Cary, disputed the portrayal by opponents of the GOP strategy to cut the governor’s authority as a “coup.”  It is a coup and it is only the first of many in States that have a strong element of white supremacists.

    We can learn a lot from North Carolina about how a Democracy can be demolished with a few strokes of the pen by white supremacist lawmakers.  Perhaps it is high time to read  For Whom the Bell Tolls again.