Honor Joe Biden!

 

Chad Gayda

Then came the Holy One, blest be He,
And destroyed the angel of death
That slew the butcher
That killed the ox
That drank the water
That quenched the fire
That burned the stick
That beat the dog
That bit the cat
That ate the kid my father bought for two zuzim.
Chad Gadya, Chad Gadya

Chad Gadya Joe Biden!

How should next Monday’s Democratic national convention honor Joe Biden? Will he be remembered in the future? The song above is song by children after a Passover seder.  Every Passover Moses is remembered, even though it has been more than thousands of years. Moses was an adopted Prince of Egypt, who gave it all up to lead the People of Israel in service to the Holy One. Not only did Moses free the Israelites from slavery in Egypt, part the Red Sea, receive the Ten Commandments, and lead the Israelites in the desert, but he did not enter the Promised Land.

“Then Moses went out and spoke these words to all Israel:  “I am now a hundred and twenty years old and I am no longer able to lead you. The Lord has said to me, ‘You shall not cross the Jordan.’ The Lord your God himself will cross over ahead of you. He will destroy these nations before you, and you will take possession of their land. Joshua also will cross over ahead of you, as the Lord said.” Deuteronomy 31:1-4.

Sound familiar? Will you be fondly remembered, Joe Biden? Oh you WILL be fondly remembered, ....you definitely WILL be fondly remembered..... if not for thousands of years, for a very long time.  Joe, come on in and sit a spell. There will always be a place at the table for you!

Tim Walz

 

I am the Walrus

I am the eggman,
They are the eggmen,
I am the walrus,
Goo goo g' joob.

I might be the walrus, but Tim Walz is a batman!

Not THE Batman, the Dark Knight. Alfred is Batman’s batman, just as Sancho Panza is Don Quixote’s batman, Bernardo is Zorro’s batman, Bunter is Lord Peter Wimsey’s batman and Samwise Gamgee is Frodo Baggins’s batman.  Batman comes from the French word for pack.   It is a term for the orderly, typically a common enlisted man, who served, carried the pack, for a British officer.  That officer might be able to do great things for the group, but only with the assistance of his batman.  That batman might sometimes disagree with that officer but kept his promise to serve that officer as long as that officer served the group. I'm with Master Sergeant Walz, how about you?

Corruption III

 

You’ll Be Back

When you're gone, I'll go mad
So don't throw away this thing we had
Cause when push comes to shove
I will kill your friends and family to remind you of my love

But if the King does it is the law, correct?

King George was admittedly a mad tyrant. The United States was founded by fighting a revolution against his tyranny. But maybe he was just in the wrong time and place. According to the US Supreme Court decision in 2024’s Trump v. US, anything that the Chief Executive does in his official capacity is legal. So everything that King George did was legal because he was the king, and everything George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and the rest of the founding fathers did was illegal. I guess the  Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, etc., might have been moral documents but they were all illegal documents.

There is a considerable difference between legality and morality. King Henry II of England uttered to his court ”Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest.”  Legally this was not a command to his assembled court. However four knights  present took this to be an instruction to murder Thomas Beckett. According to the recent Supreme Court decision King Henry committed no crime. However that was not the moral opinion. King Henry was deemed morally guilty of the murder of Thomas Beckett, and was forced to do penance for that crime. There is a difference between legality and morality. There shouldn’t be, but there is. The Supreme Court may be legal, but it is immoral.

 

Inequality II

  

I Have A Dream

Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children.

It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality.

It is not only morally true, it is mathematically true.

If the absolute is perceived to be in flat space, its variance is 1.41, which is the rounded value of the square root of 2 . If it is curved hyperbolic space and the imaginary axis is considered, the variance is 1.47, or ~1.5.  According to wave theory the amplitude squared should be twice the variance, which makes it approximately 3.  100% of the absolute should be within 3 times its standard deviation, σ. If a function is confined to only one value of the imaginary axis, i.e. the coefficient of the imaginary axis is 0, the perceived variance is limited to this reality, then 100% of the absolute should exist with 3 times the standard deviation divided by ~1.5, or 2 times the standard deviation. This is equal to 5/6 σ².

Additionally for a value of s=½, the range parameter of a logistic or hyperbolic secant squared distribution, the Probability Density Function, PDF, of this normal distribution must be 50% at the mean/median/mode, μ. For any value of s, to be a normal distribution, the mean must be less than 1.44 times the value of the median.  This requires that for a system of n individuals to act as if they were a normal absolute, the mean of the system should be no more than 1.44 times the median of the system.

If the observed mean is more than ~1.5 times the median, then it is suggested that the distribution is NOT normal in that therefor some of the n individuals in the system will have more than 100% of the absolute.    To prevent this merely requires that at equilibrium, no individual should have more than 5/6 of the variance, σ², which is equal to μ+2σ, or the system is abnormal and is NOT acting as the absolute.

In 2022, the report of the distribution of wealth by country according to the Global Wealth Databook published by USB, formerly by Credit Suisse, shows that in most countries the mean wealth was fairly stable in the past but has become more inequitable over time.  https://dbeagan.blogspot.com/2024/02/distribution-of-wealth-iii.html 

In the United States the distribution of mean to median wealth was 4.7 in 2000 and increased to 5.1 in 2022. This increase in wealth has largely come because the US tax code has increased the discretionary income available to the highest percentage, This means that more of that discretionary income could be saved and invested.  The tax code changed in 1981 so it is hardly surprising that the inequality  has been increasing since that time. Not going back!

Corruption II

 

Anything Goes

Good authors too who once knew better words
Now only use four-letter words
Writing prose
Anything goes

Does it have to be in prose, written down, for it to be obstruction?

In its 2024 decision in Fischer v. United States, the Supreme Court, SCOTUS, opined that obstruction of justice only involves written evidence. Based on that decision SCOTUS has shown that morally it is no better than a mob boss. A mob boss depends on the absence of any written evidence of his crimes. The saying is that nothing should ever be in writing. It should not even be said if a wink or a nod will do. A crime can be committed without written evidence as far as the mob is concerned. Obstruction to commit a crime therefore can not be limited to just written evidence. Morally Al Capone was a gangster. Legally he might have been not convicted of any  crime except tax evasion, and that is not typically  considered to be the crime of an gangster. Expect that this Supreme Court might use the definition of an honest man which echoes the mob definition, that an honest man is one who stays bought, while morally the definition of a honest man is one who can’t be bought.

Leaders

 

Moses

As Moses supposes his toeses to be!
A Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose is
A rose is for Moses as potent as toeses
Couldn't be a lily or a daphi daphi dilli
It's gotta be a rose cuz it rhymes with mose!
Moses!
Moses!
Moses!

Let's hear it for Moses!

Moses famously did not enter with the Israelites whom he was leading into the Promised Land. Joshua did.  But that did not mean that Moses turned the Israelites around and forbade them from entering the Promised Land.  Luthen in the  Star Wars series Andor says that “ I burn my life to make a sunrise that I know I’ll never see.” The saying is that  a belief in the future is why old men plant trees and young men go to school. The future is uncertain and scary.  There is no guarantee that the promised land is better, …that the sunrise will ever come,… that the tree will grow… or that the education will pay off.  All of these things may benefit the group. They may not benefit the user.

We count on those individuals that think more of the group than themselves if we are part of that group. Thank you Joe Biden for being our Moses, and Kamala Harris for being our Joshua.  Embrace the future.  Not going back.

Corruption I

 

Hazy Shade of Winter

Time, time, time
See what's become of me
While I looked around for my possibilities|
I  was so hard to please
Look around
Leaves are brown
And the sky is a hazy shade of winter

Does time matter in a bribe?

According to the 2024 decision of the Supreme Court in Snyder v. US, a payment after a transaction such as the awarding of a contract for garbage collection, is a gratuity, a gift.  A payment before a transaction can be considered a bribe, a pay-off.  This use of a moment of time is NOT in accordance with the popular perception of a bribe, pay-off.  For example, if Judas Iscariot had not received his 30 pieces of silver until after he betrayed Jesus, the popular perception is that those 30 pieces of silver would still be a bribe, not a gift.  The time at which a bribe occurs should have no bearing on whether it was a morally a bribe. According to SCOTUS, legally it might not be a bribe, but morally it is, and will always be, a bribe.