Threats

 

Marine Hymn

From the Halls of Montezuma
To the Shores of Tripoli;
We fight our country's battles
In the air, on land and sea;
First to fight for right and freedom.
And to keep our honor clean; 
We are proud to claim the title  of
United States Marine.

So where are the shores of Tripoli anyway?

In 1805, Marine Lieutenant Presley O’Bannon and eight Marines led a force of mercenaries on a 500-mile trek across the desert. Their surprise attack on the city of Derna, on “the shores of Tripoli,” helped bring an end to the Barbary Wars. It had been the custom of the rulers of the Barbary Coast to seize ships, their crew, their cargo, and their passengers, by piracy, and ransom them to the owners and the countries of those ships. If you paid those rulers a tribute in advance, they would promise not to pirate your ships. “Nice little ship you have there. It would be a shame if anything happened to it.”  A battle has a beginning and an end. The threat of a battle is forever. The US would not negotiate with terrorists and their threats. “Millions for defense and not a cent for tribute.”  Thank you, Marines but what do expect from "Semper Fi", "Forever faithful". 1805! Now THAT is originalism!

Hostage Rescue

 

To Life

Be happy! Be healthy! Long life! 
And if our good fortune never comes
Here's to whatever comes
Drink, l'chaim, to life!

Amen to that!

Israel rescued 4 hostages taken by Hamas on October 7, 2023. That is a reason to be happy.

There are still living hostages who have NOT been rescued. That is a reason to be sad.

One Israeli IDF officer lost his life in the rescue. That is a cause to be sad, but that officer died a hero so be happy for him.

274 Palestinians also lost their life in that rescue. Among them were Hamas terrorists. Those in Hamas did not kill these hostages but taking innocent hostages to pursue their own aims was unspeakably EVIL and deserves to be punished. But many of those in Hamas responsible for the taking of hostages were NOT  killed in the rescue attempt. The fact that all of those in Hamas who were guilty but unpunished is a reason to be sad.

But among those 274  Palestinians were children and others who were NOT members of Hamas or even sympathetic to Hamas. They should not have been punished, especially not by losing their life, and that is a reason to be sad.

Be happy.  To Life.  L’chaim!

Juries

 

I Fought the Law And The Law Won

I'm breakin' rocks in the hot sun
I fought the law and the law won
I fought the law and the law won

And the law used a jury.

There seems to be a misunderstanding as to why there is a jury. It is not to determine whether the law has been broken. The evidence is supposed to do that. It is to serve as a lie detector for the evidence which was admitted. A single individual might be dominant, but in error. As the number of members increases, the number of possible outcomes also.  If all of those members agree, then the evidence is probably true without error.

Dominance is backward looking. Certainty, as used in lie detecting, is forward looking. A jury should have an even number of members so that it is obvious that dominance is never an outcome since a tie is possible. If all members agree, then it is possible to use that with the number of possible outcomes, only one of which is unanimously Guilty, to compute certainty. Thus a jury of 12 members rendering a unanimous verdict of Guilty has a certainty of 99.976%, which rounds to 100.0%. Certainty is sysmetric aound a tie, such that a unanimous verdict of Not Guilty has the same certainty.  A jury of 10 members rendering the same unanimous verdict has  a certainty of only 99.902%, which rounds to 99.9%. You can never get to 100% certainty unless there are an infinite number of members on the jury, but 12 members is the fewest number that rounds to 100.0% certainty. 

The jury system may not be perfect, but it beats the alternative of trial by combat, which can only show dominance not certainty. The fact that a jury was used shows that is not a historic witch trial since those trials assumed that witches float in water and can’t drown but the innocents would drown. With a jury system the innocent does not drown, so I guess using a jury is not a witch trial.

Gold Standard

                                                                     Heart of Gold

I've been to Hollywood
I've been to Redwood
I crossed the ocean
For a heart of gold
I've been in my mind
It's such a fine line
That keeps me searching
For a heart of gold
And I'm getting old

But not a CROSS of gold.

Before 1933, the United States Dollar was on the Gold Standard. William Jennings Bryan famously campaigned for the Free Coinage of Silver, arguing that there should instead be a Gold AND Silver Standard, saying that “You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.” 

Ironically silver historically was long a part of the monetary system:  

• Judas Iscariot’s 30  silver coins; 
• the British Pound Sterling was the weight of a pound of Sterling Silver at one time;  
• the US Dollar was based on a Spanish silver coin that was often divided into “Pieces of  Eight”, such that a shave and haircut was once 2 bits ( 2/8^th  of a dollar, $.25).  

It is only because Isaac Newton as the Master of the Royal Mint, knowingly or unknowingly, set the ratio of monetary silver to gold so low that effectively currency became only a gold standard.

This continued as the basis of the US Dollar until the domestic ownership of gold was prohibited in 1933, making the US Dollar no longer a commodity currency based on gold, but a fiat currency. During World War II, the United States came to have almost all of the international supply of gold. To accommodate international trade, the US entered into the Bretton Woods agreement in 1945 that effectively put international trade on a fiat basis, with the US Dollar at a fixed price of gold (instead of John Maynard Keynes’ counter proposal that the international currency should be a NEW fiat currency, the Bancor.) But the adoption of the US Dollar as the international unit of currency DID not mean that international trade was based on a commodity, but that it was fiat currency whose unit of exchange was also the domestic US Dollar.

This continued until 1971 when President Nixon pulled out of the Bretton Woods agreement and effectively returned international trade to a commodity (gold) currency. That much of international trade was still conducted in US dollars did not change this fact. The Triffin dilemma, the use of a domestic commodity for international trade, was arguably responsible for much of the moderate inflation from 1945 to 1971. However in 1971 , the US dollar whose supply was only intended to accommodate the US domestic economy, competed with US Dollars used in international trade which were NOT constrained. Inflation, heavy at first, declining but persistent, has resulted.  This continued until the adoption of the Euro which became a competitor to US dollars in international trade. While the Triffin dilemma deals with the inflation caused by the usage of a domestic currency as an international currency, Greece and Italy can speak to the reverse-Triffin impact of the usage of an international currency, i.e. the Euro, as a domestic currency.

At the heart of this matter is whether currency, domestic or international, is based on a  commodity which by definition is  a zero-sum game subject to bank runs, hoarding, currency inflation, and currency deflation, or based on a fiat, which is NOT a zero-sum game and can grow. Search for a heart of gold, but do not get crucified on a cross of gold.

GUILTY!!!!!!

 

Ding-dong! The Wicked Witch is Dead 

Which old Witch? The Wicked Witch!
Ding-dong! The Wicked Witch is dead
Wake up, you sleepy head
Rub your eyes, get out of bed
Wake up, the Wicked Witch is dead
She's gone where the goblins go
Below, below, below
Yo-ho, let's open up and sing and ring the bells out
Ding-dong, the merry-oh, sing it high, sing it low
Let them know the Wicked Witch is dead! 

Yes the gender, is different but Cheeto Jesus is Guilty!!!! 

There is nothing more that needs to be said except, thank you New York state jurors for your service.

Standing

 

Stand by Me

If the sky that we look upon
Should tumble and fall
Or the mountain should crumble to the sea
I won't cry, I won't cry
No, I won't shed a tear
Just as long as you stand
Stand by me

Standing sounds kind of important.

Legal standing is at the heart of many of, IMHO, the mistakes and controversies of the Supreme Court.

Life begins at conception. As a Catholic I believe this. However legal status begins at birth. It says so in the constitution, my driver’s license, passport, etc. If legal status does not begin until birth, then prohibiting abortion is the state taking the womb of a woman to protect a fetus which has no legal standing. Requiring a woman to carry a fetus to birth is IMHO a constitutionally prohibited taking by the state without compensation.

Corporations are people and as such they have freedom of speech. How many corporations are there according to the official US census of its citizens and wards?  This is a rhetorical question. The correct answer is zero, because the constitution does not consider corporations to be people. Corporations are special limited liability creations of a state where the assets of the shareholders, officers, and employees of the corporation are NOT subject to liability because those assets of the corporations are separate and distinct from the assets of those people. Freedom of speech is an indivisible right. It can not given it to another, e.g. a corporation, if it is also retained. If that property can not be given to a corporation if it is retained by the people of that corporation, and corporations are not people, then how do corporations have freedom of speech?

It has been long enough. If the offense has been by a system, not by members of that system, then even though are no current members of the system who committed that offense, the offense did not go away. Voting rights abuses were by a state, not the current members of that state. Pre-clearance of voting laws,  should NOT have an implicit time limit.

Husbands (wives) are not responsible for the action of their wife (husband).  Governments make a special distinction for households/marriage. A person may not testify against their spouse. A spouse has special medical and other privileges. The property and income of the marriage household are joint. If an offense is committed by a spouse, and that offense should cause you to recuse yourself, and I am looking at you Justices Alito, and Thomas re: January 6^th, Justice Barrett for Fox’s defamation, and Chief Justice Roberts for any recommendation for lawyers appearing before the court, then that offense SHOULD be properly inferred to be your action not just that of your spouse.  That is what marriage is all about.

An individual has a right to carry a gun. The first amendment is about the  rights of individuals. The second amendment is about the right of a state as opposed to the rest of the United States. You do not have an individual right to bear arms. Your state has a right to arm its militia. As such your state should decide which of its citizens are in its militia (currently called the National Guard) and how the remainder of its citizens should be armed.

Is being offended or hypothetical harm standing? Court cases are about standing. You have no right not to be offended, so that has no standing. You have to have real harm, not hypothetical harm such as  a wedding web designer in Colorado who has designed no websites, a shareholder who does control the assets of an Indian corporation, or a fisherman in New Jersey who might incur harm if he can catch no fish.

Standing does not just determine where you sit, it determines whether you should even be in the room to sit.

The Middle III

 

Stuck in the Middle with You.

Trying to make some sense of it all,
But I can see that it makes no sense at all,
Is it cool to go to sleep on the floor,
'Cause I don't think that I can take anymore
Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right,
Here I am, stuck in the middle with you

It is an HONOR to be stuck in the middle.

If Liberal Democrats want ALL government and Conservative Republicans want NO government, then the middle might be SMALL government. If progressive economists want one regulated market and conservative economists want many unregulated markets, then the middle might be many regulated markets. According to statistics, two thirds of all normal observations are in the middle third of observations, which is why the bell-shaped curve looks like it does. Being in the middle is precisely where you should expect to be. Besides, either extreme is where you will find jokers and clowns anyway.