A Christmas Story

The Christmas carol, “Silent Night”, was first performed on Christmas Day, 1814. The song became very popular around the world, and by 1914, a hundred years later, it had been translated into many languages.  On Christmas Eve of that year, the First World War was raging in France.  English and French soldiers in their trenches faced their German enemies across a “No Man’s Land” filled with barbed wire and flying bullets.

No one knows who started it, but some of the soldiers began singing “Silent Night”, and their enemies, also young, lonely and miserable, joined in, each in his own language.  Before long, soldiers all along the front were singing this simple Christmas carol together.  They threw down their guns, and joined each other, sharing comradeship, and even their precious goodies from home, with men they had recently been trying to kill.  The whole war came to a halt for hundreds of miles. 

The “Christmas Truce” of 1914 was unplanned and unofficial, but it really happened, and it lasted several days, the only time in history when a song stopped a World War. Common soldiers, responding to the spirit of Christmas, defied their officers’ orders and risked their lives for a song. Can’t our elected officials defy their party leaders and risk the next election, to work “across the aisle” for the good of their constituents?

We call on all elected officials to respond to the spirit of Christmas. Quit your fighting and come together for the good of all! If you won’t, our response must be, to
      Send No One Back!

The longest-serving senator

In 1977, while running for U.S. Senator from Utah, Orin Hatch, in his first Senatorial campaign, said to incumbent Frank Moss, “Senator, you have served the people of Utah for 18 years; it's time to retire.” Orin Hatch has now been serving the people of Utah in that same office for forty years, more than twice as long as Moss, and is seriously considering running for an eighth term. To put this in perspective, Orin Hatch has been a senator longer than half the people in the United States have been alive.

Senator, it's time to retire! Send No One Back.

A trillion dollars!

The Joint Committee on Taxation, an independent, bi-partisan organization, says the new tax bill will add ONE TRILLION DOLLARS to the national debt every year. Just how much money is that?

One Trillion Dollars = (one million x one million) dollars.

There are about 323 million people in the United States.
Dividing $1,000,000,000,000 (one trillion dollars) by 323,000,000 (three hundred twenty-three million) people, you get

$3,095.98 MORE DEBT for every man, woman, and child in the country.  EVERY YEAR.

That's in addition to the $20.2 trillion we already owe.  It's also in addition to all the other deficit spending they were already doing.

Put it this way:

Congress has already saddled us and our children and grand children with a debt amounting to $62.000 EACH.

For a typical family of four, that means a current debt of $248,000, the price of a new home in most of the country.

And they just voted to add to that debt $12,000 MORE, EVERY YEAR.

Would you vote to take a twelve thousand dollar pay cut every year? 

That's what your senators and representatives just did to you.  SEND NO ONE BACK!

From the news...

Today in the news I learned of a terrible accident. A box truck driven by Daniel Berk slammed into a line of vehicles waiting at a toll booth in Oakland, California, injuring seven other people and killing the toll booth attendant. He was arrested for DUI and vehicular manslaughter. The maximum felony sentence for vehicular manslaughter with gross negligence in California is six years in prison. If someone is killed or injured as the result of driving under the influence of alcohol, the driver can be found guilty of a felony and could go to prison for over a year, and up to five years, with prior convictions.

So, Daniel Berk faces a sentence of from one year to eleven years if convicted of both charges.

In the same news feed I saw the following:

When Sarah Sims' daughter complained she was being bullied in elementary school, the Virginia mother reached out to administrators at Ocean View Elementary School, but getting no response, she sent her daughter to school with a digital audio recorder in her backpack. Norfolk police charged Sims with a felony -- intercepting wire, electronic or oral communications -- and with a misdemeanor -- contributing to the delinquency of a minor. For Class 6 felonies like this, a term of imprisonment of not less than one year nor more than five years is mandated. Contributing to the Delinquency of a Minor is a CLASS 1 MISDEMEANOR, punishable by up to 12 months in jail. So, Sarah Sims faces a sentence of one to six years if convicted of both charges.

So, getting drunk and killing someone with a car in California is almost as bad as trying to document school bullying in Virginia. Is it any wonder that people are getting fed up with the way our country is governed?

Better than Gun Control, round two

A friend and I were discussing the efficacy of gun control as a means of saving lives. He suggested that getting the US out of foreign wars would help more. I begged to differ with him. As usual, I had statistics to back up my argument. Here they are.

In 1968, at the peak of the Vietnam War, 16,899 US personnel were killed in Vietnam. That same year, 54,000 traffic deaths occurred in the US. Things are better now. With all our modern improvements, last year, in 2016, there were “only” 40,200 traffic fatalities.

It’s worse when you look at other wars. For example, on D-Day in World War Two, there were 2,499 verified American fatalities. Last year, in 2016, 11,000 American civilians were killed by guns, nearly five times as many people as were killed in the most famous battle of World War Two. But still, barely 30% of the traffic fatalities.

But it gets even worse than that. World War Two lasted four years, and caused a total of 405,399 American deaths. Last year, cigarette smoking killed about 480,000, about twenty percent more Americans than the entire Second World War. In ONE year! That’s forty-three times the number killed by guns. For every American killed by a gun, forty three are killed by cigarettes, and that does not even include other forms of tobacco!

In fact, only one war in US history has killed more Americans than a single year of smoking-- the Civil War (750,000 deaths, counting both sides). If you want to save lives, don’t ban guns or war. They’re nothing compared to tobacco, the real scourge of our time. This is tacitly admitted by our medical establishment. The website HealthCare.gov, used to enroll Americans in “Obama Care”, is permitted to ask just ONE QUESTION concerning an applicant’s medical or physical condition-- “During the last six months, have you used tobacco products regularly?” The answer to that single question says more about a person’s health than any other thing they could ask.

Why Kim Jong-Un ISN’T Crazy

You won’t hear this in either the liberal or conservative media, but he’s perfectly sane, from his point of view, which we in America have become very good at ignoring. But the truth is, he DOES have a legitimate point.

All the media are ignoring the elephant in the room-- the Korean War. If you were born after 1950, you can be excused for not knowing this, as it is never mentioned in US History or World History classes, even in colleges. The Korean War is the longest-running war in US history, and one of the longest in WORLD history. That’s right, in world history. It started in 1950, and has not yet ended in any recognizable fashion.

Wars end in one of three ways:

-- Somebody wins. The winners force the losers to sign a treaty, or destroy them so utterly that the victor is never in doubt. Think of Rome vs Carthage, or the Greeks vs Troy.

-- There’s an armistice-- BOTH sides agree to stop fighting, with both sides claiming victory. A draw. Often, an armistice is a prelude to a treaty, but not always.

-- A cease-fire. Nothing official happens, but both sides quit fighting. The Vietnam War, for  example.

NONE of these three scenarios applies to Korea. We’ve been fighting there for seventy-two years, without a break of even a single day. For comparison, the so-called “Hundred Years War” in Europe actually lasted only thirty-seven years at its longest stretch, though it did stop and start several times ov er most of a century. That’s about half as long as we’ve been fighting in Korea. World War Two lasted less than a decade, even if you count the parts we were not involved in. There are great-grandparents in North Korea who cannot remember when they were not fighting the United States.

We are occupying territory that North Korea claims, and which we took from them by force and still maintain by force. We have more than 100,000 troops in Korea. Not a day goes by without some of them being in combat. The North Koreans never signed a treaty or an armistice, and never honored any requests for a cease-fire. They are still fighting to get rid of us, and we just won’t go away.

Kim believes his is the only legitimate government for all of Korea. (I don’t agree, but I’m neither Communist nor Korean.) To Kim, this makes the South Korean government a “puppet government” of the United States. After all, they adopted our form of government, didn’t they? To Kim, we are the foreign invaders, and he is the statesman who wants to liberate his homeland!

This is not empty rhetoric or self-serving propaganda. He really believes that, and shows it by his actions. And he’s not playing a game. His goal is to force us out of South Korea, so he can liberate it from the capitalists there and unify his country.

So, what is he up to? Is he really going to nuke the US?

Briefly, the answer is, “Yes and no.” He’s not interested in starting a nuclear war with the United States. He knows we can turn North Korea into a parking lot in half an hour. He also knows that we will not do so unless actually attacked. So, he provokes us over and over, to make us look silly, foolish, and weak. This earns him popularity in North Korea. It also distracts us from his long-term objective, which is developing a nuclear retaliation capability.

Kim’s army is nearly as large as China's, and we didn’t beat them the first time around, when they were far fewer. For the past seven decades, any northern invasion of South Korea has only been prevented by our threat of nuclear attack. Kim has no defense against it. But soon, that will change, as he will be able to hit back with a nuke. It’s that nuclear retaliation capability that he’s counting on to neutralize our superiority. Then, it’ll just be our 100,000 ground troops against a million armed North Koreans.

That’s a battle Kim thinks he can win. Perhaps he cannot. But he thinks he can. We didn’t win in Korea. We sued for peace, and didn’t get it. We lost in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Syria. Do we have what it takes to fight Kim, without our nukes? When his army is ten times the size of ours? That’s what Kim is thinking. That’s his strategy, and it makes perfect sense-- to Kim.

Deregulate public utilities?

Some conservative politicians, especially Libertarians, have called for the deregulation of all public utilities. Is this a good idea? This was first called for (in my experience) during the Reagan administration. Liberals said it was a bad idea: public utilities like power, water, and telephones should be granted monopolies, in the interest of efficiency, they said. Conservatives stated just the opposite: if market forces are eliminated, the result is always less efficiency and higher prices. Who to believe?

Even Ronald Reagan was not able to deregulate water and power, and in most of the U.S. they remain government-sponsored monopolies to this day. Only phone service was deregulated. Most of my readers likely cannot remember a time when there was just ONE phone company, but I am old enough to remember. The continental United States was divided into four regions, and in each region, one company provided telephone service. No exceptions. Dire predictions were made by the phone company and their friends in Washington about what would happen. Prices would go up, quality would go down, and phones of one company would not be able to talk to phones of any other company. Did this happen?

Here’s a recent example of my interactions with a public monopoly (Rocky Mountain Power) and a deregulated, non-monopoly.

I applied for power connection for a cabin I am building in rural Utah. An estimator came out a few weeks later, looked over my situation, and gave me a verbal estimate: “about ten thousand dollars.” He explained that the two power poles on my property did not have transformers, and that they could not put a transformer on either pole, as they are thirty-foot poles, and company regulations specify that transformers require forty-five-foot poles. So, one of the perfectly good poles on my land would have to be pulled out and replaced with another one half-again as tall, so they could put a transformer on it. Of course, the wires would no longer reach, and would have to be replaced, as they also are not permitted to splice the wires.

I thought this was outrageous, so I threw several fits, finally persuading the company to send a different estimator. There was no other in the area, so they had to pull one in from another area. He came out a couple of weeks later, immediately noticed that there is a forty-five foot pole with a transformer on it, across the street from my land, and less than 200 feet from my house. When I asked him why the first estimator didn’t see it, he replied, “Tunnel vision.” He left, after telling me that his estimate would be a lot less than ten thousand dollars, but I couldn’t get him to name a figure. He said it would be in the mail soon. Several weeks went by.

Meanwhile, the written estimate from the first estimator arrived in the mail. It came with three copies of a contract for me to sign. A cover letter explained that, upon receiving my certified check for $10,040.00, and all three copies of the contract signed by me in blue ink, I would receive a detailed plan telling me what the company would do for the ten thousand bucks. In other words, they wanted me to send them ten thousand dollars before they would even tell me what I would get for my money! They promised that they would then begin work “within a few weeks.” I started looking up solar power companies.

The next day, we had a visit from the telephone installer of Centra-com, the local phone company. Their phone company “pedestal” is located right next to the power pole that the Rocky Mountain Power estimator wanted to replace. The phone man gave us a contract to sign, ran the wire to our trailer, helped us install our phone, all in the same morning. Total charges: $26.00.

But that’s not the end of the story.

Five weeks went by. Finally, we received the written estimate from Rocky Mountain Power’s   second estimator. Three thousand dollars. However, we would be responsible for putting a three-inch pipe under the street to our property, which means we’d need to get the county’s permission to dig a three-foot deep trench across a public road, re-routing traffic, bedding the pipe in six inches of gravel, finding someone to haul at least two truckloads of gravel, finding someone else to lay the gravel in the trench, then closing the trench and repairing the road, and buying and mouning the metal conduit from the ground up to the top of a five-story high pole, installing a meter box on our property, then connecting the meter box to our house, a hundred and fifty feet away, all according to their regulations and the county codes.

We checked with an electrical contractor, the brother of our next-door neighbor. He says to expect to pay at least six thousand dollars before we ever see any electricity. And that this is NORMAL. So what do we get for our money? Just the ability to buy electricity from Rocky Mountain Power. We don’t own the pole, the conduit, the pipe, the wire, or even the meter, even though we have to pay for all of them. Even though we are legally responsible for their correct and legal installation. For three thousand dollars, they will pull their wire (bought by us) through their pipe and conduit (bought and installed by us) and attach it to their meter (paid for by us) and their transformer. And they won’t connect it to our house! It has already taken two months, and will likely take two more before we can actually get connected and begin using electricity.

Compare this to Centra-Com, the phone company, who signed us up, ran their wire from their pedestal around our construction site to our trailer, and hooked it up to our phone, all on the same morning. Makes me a believer in deregulation of public utility monopolies.

The Golden Rule of the Road

Anyone noticed how rude all drivers seem to have become lately?  When I was young, and learning to drive, I was taught, "Courtesy is the golden rule of the road."  At that time, professional truck drivers were the most courteous.  You could depend on it.  Sadly, that's no longer true.  On a recent road trip to Arizona, we encountered many professional truck drivers who were courteous, but about half were downright rude, cutting off other drivers, passing other trucks SOOOOO slowly, making a rolling roadblock that lasted literally miles, while more than a dozen cars were backed up, waiting to pass, refusing to dim headlights, etc.  All the kind of things you expect pros to avoid.

There have always been some rude truckers, and even now, there are many who are courteous to a fault, but the ratio has changed dramatically.  Truckers used to be models of courteous behavior on the road.  You could depend on it.  The few who weren't were the obvious exceptions.  Now, based on our recent road trip lasting four days, it seems to be reversed:  the courteous ones stand out as exceptional.  What's behind the change?  Are there just more trucks on the road?  Is there more pressure on truck drivers to save every minute?  Or does this reflect on a less courteous population of drivers in general?

I don't know the answer to this one, folks.  But the truth of the observation is out there for all to see.  Just get out on the Interstate and go.  You'll notice the difference right away.

How NOT to drive in the mountains

An open letter to Mr. (Colorado licence plate #) Q**009.

Sir, yesterday I was one of fifteen drivers who had the misfortune of following you down a one-lane road from the top of the Sangre de Cristo mountains in Eastern Colorado, all the way to the western plain. The law in Colorado plainly states that you are to pull over and let other cars pass you if there are five or more trying to pass. You held up all fifteen of us for about thirty miles of steep downhill running. Most of the way, you were riding your brakes. I’m surprised you didn’t burn them out before reaching the stop light at the bottom.

In the steepest part of the road, there’s a turn-out for slow-moving traffic. A big, bright yellow sign about the size of a VW microbus tells you to use it if you are slower than the other traffic. A second sign of a similar size, a quarter mile down the road, states that slow-moving vehicles MUST use the turn-out. A slightly smaller sign warns you that the turn-out is half a mile ahead, and a similarly-sized sign points to the turn-out entrance when you get there. All have huge, black letters on a bright yellow background, and are so large that they dwarf the roadway. You sailed right past the turn-out, forcing all the rest of us to ride our brakes too, to avoid running you off the road.

That would have been bad enough, but it’s not all. There are many, frequent speed limit changes on that route. You braked hard to slow down for Every. Single. One.  Even when you were already going much slower than the new speed limit. You were not weaving, having trouble staying on the road, or showing other obvious signs of impairment. There was no one else in the car to distract you, and you did not appear to be talking on the phone.  When I passed you at the bottom of the pass, I could see that you had Colorado plates, so presumably you knew the basics of mountain driving. You did not appear especially elderly, the car was modern, and obviously had good brakes. You did not seem to be a member of a race or ethnic group that could be expected to have trouble reading English.  So what was your problem?  I can’t for the life of me imagine.

Please, as a public service:
1.  Learn the basics of mountain driving before venturing out on one of the more dangerous mountain roads in North America.
2.  Read and obey the traffic signs. If you can’t read, or can’t read English, LEARN.
3.  When you are obviously holding up others who want to go faster than you, PULL OVER and let them pass!  It’s only common courtesy.
4.  Get down on your knees and thank whatever Diety you recognize that none of the fifteen of us was driving a big truck.

Impeach Trump?

I recently got an email with a logo urging “Impeach Trump”. You may have seen it. According to the Constitution, “impeachment” means that a majority of the House of Representatives votes to prefer charges of misconduct against the president (or a Federal Court judge), who is then tried in the Senate. If convicted by a sixty percent supermajority of the Senate, the official is removed from office and and may be barred from holding any future Federal office or receiving any Federal pension to which they would otherwise be entitled.

The U.S. Constitution specifies Treason, Bribery, and “high crimes and misdemeanors” as the grounds for impeachment. Readings of historical documents from the time when the Constitution was adopted make it plain that the Framers expected impeachment would NOT be used lightly. Even a cursory glance at the history of presidential impeachment shows that it has only been used for serious purposes, and has failed every time.  Three presidents have faced impeachment in the two centuries since the Constitution was adopted. Twice the Senate voted against the articles of impeachment.  The other time, the president resigned before the House of Representatives could act.

 If you’re for getting rid of Trump, impeachment right now might not even be a good idea, as it will surely fail in the Republican-dominated Senate, even if every Democratic senator voted to impeach. Even in the House of Representatives, where only a simple majority is required to prefer articles of impeachment, Republicans hold the majority by a large margin.

No President or Justice has ever faced impeachment twice (as of this writing), and it is certainly possible that the Constitutional protection against double-jeopardy might apply. The Supreme Court, packed by President Trump, certainly could so rule. (It didn't.) If President Trump is as smart as he thinks he is, he might even welcome impeachment now, when he can easily win, and then possibly be immune from impeachment for the rest of his presidency.

You can't say that!

Interesting, actual conversation with my adult daughter the other day:
Me: the Negro people in America...
Daughter (interrupting): Dad, you can’t say “Negro.” It’s offensive.
Me:  Okay, the Black people...
Daughter: You can’t say Black either.
Me: Then what shall I call them?
Daughter: You have to say, “African American”.
Me: What if I’m talking about my friend Ed Zayzay, from Ghana. He’s not  American.
Daughter: You can’t mention race at all. You just have to talk about individuals.
Me: What about other groups of people?
Daughter: You also can’t talk about LGBTMNOQ people either. You can’t group people at all.
Me: What if I want to compare Republicans and Democrats?
Daughter: That depends. If you are saying anything bad about them, you can’t group people at all.

I must stress, this daughter is the mother of four children, is smart, and active socially. If she is repeating stuff like this, it must be common. How far we have come from, “I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it!”

Gender ? or Sex?

One’s biological sex is genetic. It is determined by the DNA in every cell of the body. It is determined at the moment of conception and never varies throughout life. Sex can also refer to the physical expression of this DNA in an individual’s reproductive organs. In nearly all live births, this physical sex matches the genetic sex. Intersex individuals, whose reproductive organs are ambiguous, or even opposite to their genetic sex, are extremely rare, on the order of 1 in 10,000 live births.

“Gender” refers to the way an individual is treated, socially, culturally, and linguistically. It is determined by the culture or language of those with whom they associate. There can be more than two genders, and genders may or may not be fixed, depending on the individual, the society, the culture, or the language.

Great confusion is caused by confusing gender with sex. A person’s genitals can be surgically altered, but this does not change their sex, which is present in every cell of their body. Recognizing this, surgeons now refer to this as “gender reassignment” surgery, instead of the older, and incorrect term, “sex-change surgery”.

There are characteristics that are determined by a person’s sex, besides the appearance of their genitals. Males in any breeding group tend to be larger than females, on average, have greater upper body strength, larger muscles, and lack a subcutaneous layer of fat possessed by females. They tend to have deeper voices, more robust bones, more facial hair, and to lose their hair in certain patterns later in life. They reach puberty later, and die of old age sooner than females, on average. Only males produce sperm cells, the smallest cells in the body. Lacking intervention, a mature male’s testes continue producing sperm cells until the end of his life.

Females mature faster than males, live longer, have a greater tolerance for “g” forces and pain, greater physical stamina, and greater ability to multi-task. They tend, on average, to have greater linguistic and social abilities. Their bones are less robust, their hips can spread in childbirth, and they lack an adams apple. They are more flexible than males. Most can touch the middle of their own back; most males cannot. Females have many bodily structures associated with gestation and suckling of babies. They have a uterus, ovaries, and breasts. Mature females have a monthly menstruation cycle. Only females have egg cells, the largest cells in the human body. A female is born with every egg cell she will ever have. When they are used up, menstruation ceases.

Medical and surgical intervention can alter some of these physical structures, but not all of them. A genetic male cannot be made to produce or gestate egg cells, or carry and bear babies. There is no way to give an adult female the skeleton of a male. There is no way to make a female’s muscles bulk up like a male’s, even using steroids. There is no way to make a female produce sperm cells. In short, while it is possible to make a female look like a male, and vice versa, it is not possible to turn a female into a male, or a male into a female.

Gender is a different matter. Fully grown females in every society can and sometimes do adopt the roles of males, and vice versa. Some have been discovered only upon death. Doubtless many more have never been discovered at all. Many cultures provide ways for individuals to change their gender. For example, in many Native American, African, and Indian cultures, there are males who are assigned to the female gender. Modern Euro-American cultures are beginning to recognize the need for such transgender norms.

Along with recent changes in gender-specific roles, there is now a movement to recognize individuals as changing their actual sex, not merely their gender. We hear that a person can be any sex they want, and can change their mind repeatedly, even regularly. This absurdity depends on the idea that a person’s sex has no biological foundation, but is assigned at birth by the doctor who delivers the baby.

This idea has no basis in fact. A person’s sex (not gender) is not assigned by anyone-- it’s an innate characteristic. The idea that one’s “true” sex is determined by their feelings goes beyond absurdity. For an individual with a penis and testicles to declare that he is “really” a girl, based entirely on his emotions, and then change his mind regularly, is to cast aside all notions of physical reality. Wishing for something does not make it so.

I certainly do not advocate discriminating against such individuals. Let them claim whatever gender status they wish. Treat them according to the gender role they have chosen, consistant with the gender norms of their society. But do not expect those of us, who believe in physical reality, to accept their wishes as facts.

Cultures have gender norms because they need them. In Japan, unisex bathrooms are the norm, and do not cause problems. The people using those unisex bathrooms are steeped in Japanese culture, where public nudity is not taboo, but where women are protected by a strict prohibition against public display of feelings. In the United States, public expression of affection is normal, but mixed nudity is not. In both cases, women are protected, though by opposite means. In Arabic culture, women in public must always be accompanied by a man, and must always wear a hijab. Anything less is seen by Arabic men as an invitation to rape. The norms are different, but the purpose of protecting women is the same.

In the past, American women were protected by gender-specific restrooms. If American restrooms are to become unisex, then some other protection for women will arise. It may be harsher than gender-specific restrooms. For example, women, and even young girls, may begin carrying guns into restrooms, and using them for self-protection. I can foresee serious problems with such a custom, but a solution will be found, as long as women need to relieve themselves. When seeking to change a culture’s norms, beware of unintended consequences!