Pro-Choice II

The Struggle for Guadalcanal 

And when I Get to Heaven
To St. Peter I will tell
Just one more marine reporting, sir
I've spent my time in Hell

What if our universe is Hell?

We shave been taught that there are three domains: Heaven, Reality and Hell.  This is at odds with a belief that Heaven is where God dwells.  If we also believe that God dwells everywhere, including Reality, then there are only two domains, God's and the absence of God's.  Reality may then only be the interface where a choice is made to join God or join God's absence.  In that case, Reality is both Heaven and Hell.  The choices that are made in Reality detemine whether after life you enter Heaven.

If there are no choices in Reality, then no one can choose God and enter Heaven.  In Other Words, God must be pro-Choice, for every choice.

No Man is God

 

With God On Our Side

So now as I'm leavin'
I'm weary as Hell
The confusion I'm feelin'
Ain't no tongue can tell
The words fill my head
And fall to the floor
That if God's on our side
He'll stop the next war

And a powerful man on your side, such as Peter Thiel, Mark Zuckerberg, or Elon Musk is NOT God.

It makes no difference whether that powerful man has views with which you agree, such as Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson, or George Soros.  A human is not, can not, ever be God.  A man may act like God, but if we also act like that man is God, then that is our mistake.  If as humans, we defer to powerful rich men, believe that they are on our side, then it is better that we pluck them out than let that cause the rest of us, our body, to stumble. 

And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for
thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.

Matthew 5:29

The Election of a Speaker of the House II

 

Hey There Little Red Riding Hood

I'm gonna' keep my sheep suit on
Until I'm sure that you've been shown
That I can be trusted, walking with you alone
Awooh

MAGA Mike Johnson has been called Jim Jordan with a jacket and a smile by a Republican colleague.

While the speaker’s race has mercifully ended, the conservatives crazies have won.  The candidates desired by the Republican moderates, Steve Scalise and Mike Emmer, withdrew from the race when it became obvious that they would not get the crazies’ vote.  Mike Johnson was not opposed by Donald Trump precisely because he was one of the architects of Donald Trump’s election denialism.   That he was not well known by the public is no excuse for the moderates backing him. 

While the Senate and a Presidential veto may keep the bad bills passed by the House in check, but the Speaker's House still needs to originate among other things appropriation bills. Stopping bad bills can be expected, but no good bills can also be expected.  Humoring the “Freedom” Caucus is appeasing the ”Freedom” Caucus, and that is not so funny.  If the moderate Republicans voted against Jim Jordan, then they should also have voted against Jim Jordan with a jacket and smile, i.e. his sheep suit.  Don't we deserve someone who can actually be trusted, not someone who can deceive us into being trusted.

The Election of a Speaker of the House

 

Burning Down the House

Ah, watch out
You might get what you're after
Cool babies
Strange but not a stranger
I'm an ordinary guy
Burning down the house

Watching the Republicans in the speakership disaster is watching them “Burning Down the House”!

Mike Emmer has joined Steve Scalise in withdrawing his name from the Speaker’s race after winning the support of a majority of the Republican Conference.  The problem is that while there are  two parties in the House, the Republican Conference is in fact a coalition of the “Freedom” Caucus and moderate Republicans versus a coalition of Democrats of all persuasions.  While the coalition of Democrats has remained firm, the coalition of Republicans has been anything but firm.  Since the job of the Speaker is to govern a coalition of the entire House of both parties, a Speaker who can not even win the support of a coalition of Republicans can probably not do the People’s business. 

Because the Speaker of the House is the third in line to the President after the Vice President, maybe the People are better served by no Speaker until a new House takes office in January of 2025 than having a Speaker who has the support of those who want to burn down the House.  Matt Gaetz is like the dog who chased after trucks only to catch a truck. That dog did not know what to do after he caught that truck. Matt Gaetz did not know what to do after he removed Speaker McCarthy.  The People should watch out because Matt Gaetz got what he was after!

Perfection is the Enemy of the Good

 

If I Can’t Have You

If I can't have you
I don't want nobody, baby
If I can't have you, uh-ho-oh-oh-oh

Love the One You’re With

And there's a rose in a fisted glove
And the eagle flies with the dove
And if you can't be with the one you love, honey
Love the one you're with

Dueling lyrics to show that "Perfection is the Enemy of the Good.”

Stating an absolute position sounds admirable, but it is limiting. “All, or nothing at all” means you will accept the absolute, perfection, or will accept nothing. Like teaching sex education to teenagers.

Should unmarried teenagers be having sex?  Probably not. 

Will teaching sex education make unmarried teenagers have sex? Probably not. 

If unmarried teenagers are not having sex, then do they need sex education?  Probably not.  But if they do have sex, then at least they will know what then are doing.

Humans are not absolutes. We can approach an absolute but can not attain that absolute. IOW, we exhibit exponential behavior. Saying that you will only settle for an absolute, IOW perfection, guarantees that you will attain nothing.  On the other hand, if you accept less than perfection, then you will attain something.

When disaggregating an Origin-Destination table, such as USDOT’s Freight Analysis Framework, or any matrix which is itself an aggregation, or expansion of a survey,  then there is one unique outcome that is related to that aggregation or survey, IOW is accurate. However, there are many possible outcomes, e.g. disaggregations, many of which are virtually identical and some of those are also the most numerous, probable.  That most probable outcome may not be ACCURATE, but it is available and can be solvable.   Or as statistician George Box famously put it, “All models are wrong, but some are useful”  A most probable solution may be wrong, but it may be useful.  Use the solution you can solve, e.g. love the one you’re with.

Dr. Suess vs Mother Goose

 

Teach Your Children

Teach your children well
Their father's hell did slowly go by
Feed them on your dreams
The one they pick's the one you'll know by

All you really need to know you learned in Kindergarten.

As children we learned from Doctor Suess, not Mother Goose and maybe that is the issue.  To be fair the Little Red Hen was written by Mary Mapes Dodge, not Mother Goose.  But the lesson of the Little Red Hen, like much of Mother Goose, is that if you don’t work you will get no benefit.  However the Little Red Hen did not ask why no one else in her group would help her.  She ignored that her growing of the wheat depended on the weather being good, there being enough rain, there being no pests, etc. IOW, luck.  And when she ate the bread, it was not clear than she could actually eat all of the Bread instead of sharing it.

Doctor Suess instead taught us that 

“A person’s a person no matter how small."

“Maybe Christmas, the Grinch thought, doesn’t come from a store.” 

“Why fit in when you are born to stand out”. 

“Unless some like you cares a whole awful lot.  Nothing is going to get better. It’s not”.  

Thank you, children, for listening, and not giving up on the dream.

Business

 

Taking Care of Business

And I'll be taking care of business (every day)
Taking care of business (every way)
I've been taking care of business (it's all mine)
Taking care of business and working overtime, work out

Is the Business of America, Business?

The business of a business is to make money, to seek the user equilibrium of their business. The business of America is America, not business, to ensure that a system equilibrium is reached and to ensure that each individual, including businesses, have the resources available to be able to do business. This may mean spending money on the group rather than making money on every transaction.

In order to do business, those businesses have to access to goods. Goods are classified in two dimensions by economists: rival (priced) and exclusive (only one person can use that good), not just one dimension as private and public property. There are private goods, and those are priced and exclusive, using a good prevents another from simultaneously using that good. Government, the group, has a role in ensuring that private priced and exclusive goods are not taken without compensation. That is why there are crimes against stealing and a police force to deter that theft. There are Public Goods and those are unpriced and nonexclusive. Government has a role in ensuring that everyone has access to those goods. Individuals can not demand access fees from others to public goods.

It gets more complicated for Common Resources, which are unpriced but exclusive. These are not necessarily free or unlimited. Businesses may not be able to function unless these resources continue to exist. An educated workforce is one example. Each business may depend on, take advantage of, but not pay for, the education of the workers that it employs. But that education has a cost which is covered by the government with no expectation that it will make a profit, or even cover those expenses.

It also gets more complicated for Club Goods, also called Public Monopolies, which are priced but nonexclusive. While they are priced, using that good does not prevent others from also using that good.  Unless they are protected in some fashion, those goods may not be produced. Government may license those goods, for example a cable TV system, or may issue copyright or patent protections to ensure that these goods are not copied without compensation. The government may not receive a profit or even cover the expenses for the license, copyrights, or patents.

Why is this an issue? The Constitution says that a Postal Service will be provided to ensure the free exchange of ideas among all of its citizens. It may not be profitable to make this service available to citizens living in rural areas. But we currently have a businessman in charge of the United States Postal SERVICE (emphasis puposefully added), who is discounting or curtailing rural service that does not make a profit. Duh,…. it is called service because it is NOT always expected to make a profit or even cover its costs. But that does not mean that it is not essential. No one is saying that a service should be provided at any cost, but a small loss does not mean that the service ( there is that work again) is not essential. And that is the difference between America and a business, America seeks a system equilibrium, an a buisness seeks an individual user equilibrium. Taking care of business means respecting and cherishing that difference.  In other words, viva la difference.