I'm a big fan of Harness Racing and Minor League Baseball (Lancaster Barnstormers). In case you didn't realize it, that's not my picture in the photo. That's my all-time favorite baseball player, Mickey Mantle, in racing silks before a celebrity Harness Race.
Tomorrow will be President James Buchanan’s 232nd birthday. In his honor, around 100 people showed up to lay a wreath on his grave and make a few speeches.
I got there early before the crowd arrived.
Then, out of the early morning mist, walked six apparitions from the past in military uniforms from his times. James was a private in the Pennsylvania Militia, which has now become the National Guard and many Guardsmen and Guardswomen were there to join the ranks.
Then the color guard marched out and the speeches soon began. One of the speakers referred to his nickname as “Old Buck,” but that wasn’t his nickname until very late in his life. Most of the time he was referred to as “The Old Public Functionary,” not a nickname that trips lightly off the tongue, but it did honor the 50 years he spent in service to his country as Representative, Congressman, Senator, Secretary of State, Ambassador to Russia and England, and of course, 15th President of the United States. To me, it also represented the 160 years he has spent as scapegoat for the Civil War, even though he, actually, did more than anyone to try to prevent that war.
Buchanan served during the War of 1812, and his outfit was detailed on a secret mission to help the Maryland Militia. Fortunately, by the time they got there, the battle was already won, and so, he returned home to civilian life. He is the only President who joined the military as an enlisted man and wasn’t made an officer. The Head of the Pennsylvania National Guard used that fact as an opportunity to thank all the enlisted men, who protect our Country.
The festivities ended with a 15 musket salute by the group I now knew weren’t apparitions, but Civil War reenactors, who probably travelled here from a little town across the river named Gettysburg. I was amazed at how quickly they were able to fire and reload their muskets for the next volley.
In total, fifteen shots were fired, but I was only quick enough with my camera to captured 10. If you look carefully at their feet you can see the tubes of gunpowder they tore open with their teeth to fill the barrel for the next round.
It was a fine tribute to a very under-rated President, and I definitely hope to go again next year.
“Just remember this my girl, when you look up in the sky. You can see the stars, but still not see the light…”
The Eagles
I watched a YouTube video, Everything You Believe Is Based on What You’ve Been Told. That, in a nutshell, was the theme of the video. Unless you have really studied a field, and even if you have studied a field intensely, the ideas you hold in your advanced human brain were probably just planted there by things you were told in the past. Some thoughts might have been planted by brilliant professors, but, it is more likely, that many of your thoughts were originally planted there by your drinking buddies.
Then, I watched an episode of John Oliver’s show, Last Week, Tonight. The episode was about possible things that could go wrong with AI, Artificial Intelligence.
The problem that John foresaw with AI was that it learned rapidly, but it also could develop false thinking if the input it absorbed wasn’t accurate. It was something I learned about computers a half century ago, Garbage In/Garbage Out, as expressed by the catch phrase GIGO.
To be reasonably accurate, both artificial intelligence and human intelligence require plenty of accurate input. Humans learn mostly from what they are told, but they also absorb what they see in movies, TV, and books. This might explain why so many people are concerned about a zombie apocalypse.
Computers learn by accessing the Internet. This is the big reason why everyone is so worried about Artificial Intelligence. We realize that while AI can gather intelligent information almost at the speed of light, unfortunately, based upon the current content of the Internet, it will also be acquiring and absorbing tons of absolute nonsense just as quickly. There are plenty of websites out there in cyberspace that dare to “prove” that the Earth is flat.
Too bad that before AI accesses the Internet, we can’t limit the websites for it to search to the websites where the information is accurate. However, who is to say what is accurate? Who even knows what really is accurate anymore? We believe what we’ve been told, and we haven’t always been fed the truth, nor did we always seek it. Most of us live in the information bubble of our own choice. So, carefully filtered AI would probably just result in a computer conclusion that mirrors our own biases.
That’s exactly what is already happening. AI programs are working in Human Resources. They are currently scanning thousands of job resumes and selecting only applicants who closely match the programmer’s idea of desired employees. Ultimately, these might not be the best employees and discrimination of some sort is probably inevitable. GIGO.
AI will eventually partner with humans, much like the way that humans now partner with computers. Hopefully, humans will still be needed to feed the AI computers the information that they will need to make better decisions for us.
So, what do we do? Well like Ken Jennings wrote when he and Brad Rutter lost at Jeopardy to the IBM computer, Watson,
“I for one, welcome our new computer overlords.”
Personally, I believe that the future computer overlords will treat humans well, probably even better than we currently treat ourselves, but, to insure this, we must stock the Internet with much better information for the AI computers than we are currently feeding ourselves.
But before we get to Sports, let’s go to the News…
From Mar A Lago, Florida, Donald Trump claimed that he will be arrested very soon by New York County District Attorney Alvin Leonard Bragg, Jr. Trump advised the District Attorney to call off the investigation of hush-money payments made to Adult film star Stormy Daniels, because he was worried that some people might get upset and cause Death and Destruction.
I guess Trump was thinking about those crazy Antifa people who “toured” the Capital on January 6th 2021 posing as insurgent MAGA Maniacs.
The Special Counsel, Jack Smith, subpoenaed former Vice President Michael Pence in the investigation of the January 6th attempt by then President Trump to try to pull off a coup for him to retain power.
Former President Trump told his ex Vice President to be sure to remember all the happy times they had together, while he was President, and forget all about that little misunderstanding they had about stretching his neck, because that was only a suggestion so that his starched shirt collars wouldn’t feel so tight. (Oh and maybe he might want to take the 5th Amendment, when he’s on the stand. You know, just to prevent some crazies from causing Death and Destruction.)
Fulton County Investigators are examining evidence of Donald Trump possibly tampering with the Presidential Election in Georgia. They have a recorded conversation of Trump asking Georgia’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find 11,780 votes.”
I just need one more hit.
Donald Trump explained that he wasn’t asking for a landslide victory, just to win by one measly vote. What’s wrong with that?
Before they make their jury selections, the prosecutors all pointed out their suggestions for what the Jury members might want to be wearing at all of Trump’s future trials.
In other news, a shooter opened fire at yet another school, bringing the total of school gun incidents in the U.S. this year to 90, which is about 1 a day. This time it was in Nashville, Tennessee, where a gunman killed three children and three adults before being fatally shot by the police.
US Representative Andrew Ogles of Tennessee, who represents the Nashville district said that he was “utterly heartbroken” by the tragedy, but Congress is “not gonna fix it.”
“Damn straight,” yelled Congressional goofballs Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert.
People, of course, protested, but just like in the 2-year investigations into the crimes committed by Donald Trump, nothing, so far, has been done about it.
Last night I was reading about stem butt inoculation. Sounds kinky, but it’s just one way to grow mushrooms.
I’m not growing mushrooms myself, but I have started taking mushroom extracts to see if they have any positive effect on me. I’m also reading Mycelium Running – How Mushrooms can help save the Earth. Many mushrooms eat wood and leaves that are on the forest floor and turn it into fertile soil, but I’ve learned that some mushrooms can actually eat rocks and digest their minerals. Some mushrooms can even munch away at minerals that are poisonous to humans, stuff like lead, mercury, and radioactive Cesium. So, at places like Chernobyl there are mushrooms growing today that are eating up the leftover radioactive Cesium that was spilled in the catastrophe back there in 1986. You can’t eat these mushrooms, simply because they have consumed so much poison. However, we can pick them. Since they have absorbed radioactive material, when we pick them, we are, in effect, removing a little bit of the radioactivity from the area. More mushrooms will grow. Then, we can pick them and clean up even more of the radioactivity.
Then we can take the truckloads of these poison-munching mushrooms to a place that manufactures or uses whatever heavy metal they were eating. They can extract those heavy metals from the mushrooms. The result is that the area where the mushrooms got picked gets cleaned up and the poisons that were in the ground are safely recycled.
Some mushrooms eat cow shit and are still edible. (You’d probably want to wash them first, of course). There must be a mushroom growing someplace that likes human waste. Mushrooms can help us to clean up the planet. That’s just one of the amazing things that they do.
So, my point, which I got from a statement by Neil De Grasse Tyson is, we know how to “terraform” planets like Mars to make them more habitable to Earthlings. Wouldn’t it make more sense, he said, to invest the time and resources into just making Earth more habitable, first? That makes way more sense than just trashing this planet, like we’re doing, discarding it, and moving on to the next one.
Instead of tossing tons and tons of plastic into the ocean, maybe we can find a mushroom that eats plastic. Plastic is a petroleum product, and there are mushrooms that eat petroleum and can be used to clean up oil spills.
Last night during his State of the Union address, President Biden outlined many of the problems we face in the days ahead. Solving the problems won’t be easy, but it reminded me of something Henry J. Kaiser said, “Problems are only opportunities wearing work clothes.” We have the technology and the opportunity to use nature to help us greatly improve the habitability and health of our own planet. Our planet has been around for billions of years and it’s not right that our generation is just trashing it with no consideration for future generations.
Like the Joni Mitchell song that the late David Crosby sang at Woodstock:
… We are stardust, we are golden We are billion-year-old carbon And we’ve got to get ourselves Back to the garden.
We’ve got to get back to the garden, and using mushrooms can be one way to help us become better gardeners.
“The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men / Gang aft a-gley.”
“To a Mouse,” by Robert Burns
I moved from downtown Lancaster to a house about 4 miles south of town, and one mile straight up. Well, it might not actually be a mile high like Denver, but it sure feels like it.
I live near the top of a great big hill. The bus stop is at the bottom of the hill. My best time down the hill is 13 minutes. My best time up the hill is 22 minutes. The unfortunate part is that since I only go out to shop, my knapsack is usually empty on the way downhill and full on the way uphill. So, the uphill hike, when my pack is full, is way more than 22 minutes.
Once, I tried it with a full pack and a 5-liter box of wine. Halfway up the hill I got chest pain and had to put a nitroglycerin pill under my tongue, and wait a few minutes, so that I wouldn’t have a heart attack.
I haven’t carried any wine up the hill, since then, but that doesn’t make me want to give up drinking wine. So, I needed to devise a Plan B. I came up with a plan that would have brought old Robbie Burns to tears. It was, I thought, the absolutely best laid plan of mice or men.
I didn’t just want to get wine. I wanted to get a lot of wine, plus there was a veritable bucket list of things I wanted to do on the same journey. I also wanted to make a trip to the bank, find a good local place to have pizza, and have a beer. (I drink wine at home, beer when I’m out.)
The first problem to overcome was that the bus only runs every two hours, except for the last 4 runs of the day, when it runs every hour: leaving the depot at 2:20, 3:20, 4:20, and 5:20 p.m. I worked out a plan that would have even impressed the D-Day planners.
I left my house at 2:10 p.m. I got down the hill at 2:23. The bus that left the depot at 2:20 arrived at my bus stop at 2:35, right on schedule. I got to the bank around 3 p.m., so a quick calculation told me that the 3:20 bus would probably arrive at the bank around 4 p.m.
I took care of my business at the bank and had 50 minutes before my next bus would come. I walked to a pizza restaurant that was just two or three bus stops down the road, Two Cousins Pizza Restaurant. I took my time savoring the two delicious slices of pepperoni pizza with a nice bottle of Juengling beer. I was checking things off my To-Do list rapidly. I went outside and only had a few minutes to wait for the bus that arrived in front of the restaurant at 4:05. That bus took me to the liquor store in Kendig Square, a big shopping center about 5 miles south of downtown Lancaster.
At this point, I’m congratulating myself on how well my plan is going, and I wasn’t worried about a thing. I only had two easy steps to go to complete my plan:
Buy a lot of wine.
Take a taxi home from there.
I bought 15 liters of wine, and a bottle of Bourbon. I dragged my purchase to the curb and dialed the number of the taxi I used to take whenever I went to the Roller Derby Games.
A recorded voice told me, “The number you dialed is no longer in service.”
I didn’t panic. I Googled the number or another taxi service. It picked up on the first ring. “Thank you for calling Lancaster Cab. Please hold on and I will try to connect you with a dispatcher.” Bad background music started to play.
“Try?” I said to myself. Did that answering machine say “try to connect?” I listened to the same 30 second loop of bad music for 10 minutes, when I realized that yes, the machine must have said “try.” So I hung up and went back to Googling another company.
“We’re sorry, but the number you dialed is no longer in service.” Covid seems to have wiped out all the cab companies in the Lancaster area.
By now the bus that left the depot at 4:20 is arriving at the Kendig Square bus stop, and leaving without me. I know that there is only one more bus, which leaves the depot at 5:20, but I can’t get on that bus and lug 16 liters of booze up the hill. I have maybe a dozen nitroglycerin pills in my pocket, but I fear that even that might not get me up the hill with 16 liters of booze weighing me down. So, I called another cab service.
“We can’t come to the phone right now. Leave a message and we’ll get back to you.”
I left a message, and checked Google again. There weren’t any other cab companies within miles, so I called the “trying” one again. Again, it picked up on the first ring.
“Thank you for calling Lancaster Cab. Please hold on and I will try to connect you with a dispatcher.”
It did say “try.” The musical loop played for 10 minutes before a dispatcher came on the line.
“Hello,” I said, “I’m at Kendig Square and I would like a taxi, please.”
“What is the address?”
I don’t know the address. It’s a shopping center. I’m outside of the liquor store in the Kendig Square Shopping Center.”
“You don’t have an address?”
“I have an address of where I want to go to, but I don’t know the address here. It’s the Kendig Square shopping center.
“Kendig Square?”
“Yes Kendig Square.”
“I don’t know where that is. Do you have an address I can put into the G.P.S.?”
“I don’t know the address. It’s the Kendig Shopping Center, about 5 miles south of downtown Lancaster. There’s a movie theatre the Kendig Movie Theater.”
“Okay, we’ll pick you up in one hour.”
“Wait! I’m not by the movie theater. I’m outside the liquor store.”
“Okay, can you wait an hour?”
“Yes, I can wait an hour.”
“Okay, we’ll be there in an hour.”
So, now I have to kill an hour. This wasn’t in my plan, but I dragged the booze into a nearby Chinese Restaurant. I had just finished eating pizza, but Chinese food isn’t filling, right? So, I ordered a quart of Beef and Broccoli. I was prepared to wait. I wasn’t hungry or in any hurry, but I’m telling you honestly. The cashier handed me my change and instantly produced a bag containing a steaming hot quart of Beef and Broccoli, with a pint of white rice.
Somebody else must have called in an order of Beef and Broccoli and she figured she would give me their order, which was ready, and they can eat the order I just put in, and that way everyone gets hot food, instead of this quart of Beef and Broccoli getting cold while she waited for them to show up.
I’m only guessing, but that must be what happened. So, I took the order to a table and sat down to slowly savor it. I even threw in a couple trips to the bathroom.
Then I went outside and watched as the last bus of the day left the bus stop. I was committed to the taxi now. It had been more than an hour, so I called them back.
“Thank you for calling Lancaster Cab. Please hold on and I will try to connect you with a dispatcher.”
“Oh boy! Here we go again.” To my surprise, though, a dispatcher came on within a minute.”
“It’s been over an hour and I’m still waiting for a taxi.”
“You want a taxi?”
Then we repeated the Abbott and Costello routine about the address of Kendig Square, as if we had never spoken before.
“Kendig Square?”
“Yes, Kendig Square.”
“Pennsylvania?”
I wanted to say, “Yes, of course, Pennsylvania, you freakin’ moron. Why would I call a Pennsylvanian taxi company, if I wasn’t in Pennsylvania?”
I wanted to say that (and a few expletives), but the last bus had just left, and the other cab company that took my message an hour and a half ago, still hadn’t called me back, so my only other alternative was to call Crazy Debbie for a ride, and I knew that she would be hammered by this point in the day. Whatever “Gang aft a-gley” meant. My plans were sure doing it. So, I was instead, polite, extremely polite to this dispatcher.
“Okay, 20 minutes.”
“Okay.
To my astonishment, 20 minutes later a cab showed up, and 10 minutes after that I was home with my 16 liters of booze. Of course, since I’ve been home, I’ve already consumed 2 of the liters, because I figured that it was worth celebrating that I made it back from Kendig Square without needing a single nitroglycerin tablet. To me, that was a Christmas miracle.
It’s almost election day. One week and one day after Halloween, we’re all either going to be tricked or treated.
I used to get really worked up about elections, because I felt that the results could affect my life for decades. Now, I don’t have decades left. My Dad lived into his 90s, but he was always an outlier. At 74, I take 14 different pills a day just to keep me going, a few for the heart, a bunch for my hip, and some just for the head. I don’t have decades to go. So, I don’t get as worked up about elections, anymore.
I still care. The results may not affect me for decades, but, realistically, they will probably affect me for the rest of my life.
In Pennsylvania, I’m voting for John Fedderman. I first heard of his campaign back in April, when I got an e-mail just before National Pot Day (April 20th) asking me to contribute $4.20 on 4-20-2022 to support the senate campaign of John Fedderman, who wanted to legalize pot. So, I got out my credit card.
That’s the only political contribution I made this year. I think that Money has taken over politics, and the only way to curb the problem is to defund politicians. So, I don’t usually contribute to political campaigns. However, I’m a Democrat. John’s a Democrat. He wants to legalize weed. I’ve been arguing for the legalization of pot for more than 50 years. It was worth $4.20.
Five months ago, though, John had a stroke. He is steadily recovering, but still has some problems with words. His opponent is the Famous TV Doctor, Dr. Oz. They met in a TV debate.
The balance of power in both houses of Congress is so tenuous, that both sides are fighting tooth and nail in every swing state to see that their candidate gets elected, no matter who the candidate is or what their problems are.
The Republicans clamor that John Fedderman is not mentally competent for the Senate, because he had a stroke 5 months ago, while they circle the red wagons around Georgian Senate candidate Herschel Walker, who Democrats claim has had more concussions than I’ve had girlfriends, and, quite obviously, more girlfriends than I had, too, as they keep showing up with Morey Povitch type stories about abortions they had for him.
Isn’t it weird that we can forgive the mental problems of our own candidates, while so viciously attacking the mental problems of the other party’s candidates?
Me, I think the mental condition of the voters is actually way more important than the mental condition of the candidate, and, right now, I honestly believe that the knowledge level and intelligence of today’s average voter is at an all-time low. We live in an age when instant information is available at our fingertips, but most of us only ever listen to one side of the story, the side we’re on. Our decisions are made strictly by Party loyalty, not by any great reasoning process.
That finally gets me to my point. The worst case of decisions being made by Party loyalty, not by any great reasoning process is in the Supreme Court, where every decision does truly affect many of us for the rest of our lives. How can we the people make sure that Supreme Court Judges, judge fairly? We can’t. Ginni Thomas is working feverishly to overthrow the last election, and her Supreme Court husband Clarence just says he knows nothing about it because they don’t discuss politics at home. I don’t think I can trust him, but there’s nothing I can do about it. He has a job for life. He doesn’t care what I think.
I think this is wrong. Even the President is limited to just two four-year terms. The Supreme Court Judges should also be subject to term limits, ten years, or twenty years at the most, not forever. Amend the Constitution. Only Dictators want to rule for life.
The Supremes Court saying, Stop, in the name of love.
I just watched a little pre-season football and noticed that some players are wearing wigs over their helmets. I looked it up and they are called Guardian Caps and they help absorb the shock, especially in helmet-to-helmet collisions.
With all the danger of concussions, why did they wait so long to do this? Actually, they didn’t. These things came out two decades ago, but only two players wore them, so when their playing days were over, so was the Guardian Cap, until now.
It made me think of the great free-throw shooter in Basketball, Rick Barry. He proved that you could improve your free-throw percentage, simply by tossing the ball underhanded. It worked for him, but it didn’t catch on. Wilt Chamberlain tried it and sunk the basket, but went right back to doing it the old-fashioned way. My guess is that athletes who are wearing a Guardian Cap or throwing free-throws underhanded are probably considered to be “sissies,” and players want to be macho. Basketball players who shoot free throws underhand don’t wind up sleeping with 23,000 women like Wilt claimed he did.
Sports are very slow to change things even when they are obviously positive changes, because nobody wants to look like a sissy. I remember the days when hockey goalies didn’t wear masks. Their faces were heavily scarred and they didn’t have any front teeth, but they didn’t want to look like sissies. After previously getting both cheekbones broken during a game, Jacques Plante became the first NHL Goalie to wear a mask in a season game on November 1, 1959. Fans must have thought it was left over from Halloween.
“It’s the coming thing in the game,” said Montreal coach Toe Blake. “The time will come when they’ll have an even better mask than Plante’s and it’ll be standard equipment for goalies.”
1975-76 O-Pee-Chee WHA #34 Jacques Plante
He was right. Today every hockey goalie wears a mask. For you trivia buffs, in 1974 Andy Brown of the Pittsburgh Penguins was the last NHL goalie to play without a mask.
All sports are very slow to change. I’ve been waiting 50 years for someone to start putting sneakers on horses instead of the antiquated method of nailing on metal horseshoes.
Brother X sent me a cheesecake for my birthday, and my friend Catherine came over for Scrabble and to take me out to dinner. Cat and I always joke about eating dessert first, so I told her that the theme for my birthday this year was a play on the book and movie “Eat, Pray, Love.” My theme would be EAT, BEAT, TREAT. We would EAT dessert first. Then I would BEAT her at Scrabble, and then she would TREAT me to dinner. She agreed to the Eat and Treat, but the BEAT part seemed a bridge too far. I very rarely beat her at any game.
So, after eating our fill of cheesecake (with me doing most of the eating) we started playing Scrabble, and I was feeling lucky. My luck showed up on the very first word, when I started the game with HOOKERS, a 7-tile word that gave me an instant 84-point lead. It was a birthday present from the Scrabble gods. Cat tried desperately to overcome that 84-point deficit, but she never caught me, even though she did manage to make it a very close game by the end. That took care of the BEAT portion of the evening, so we then headed to the restaurant, Shot & Bottle, which I hadn’t been to since President’s Day 2020, when I went there for a special James Buchanan night. We walked to the restaurant, so that we could both drink. It was a long 5-block walk, but my arthritic hip will cowboy up when there’s a free dinner and beer waiting.
Since I got back from the wedding of Jessie and Dylan in New York, the previous week, I’ve been craving the one thing I didn’t get around to having while I was in NY, a Pastrami on Rye. Pizza, bagels, and Pastrami on rye are all on my to-do list whenever I visit NY, but I never got around to the pastrami this time.
So, when I saw that on the menu, I knew what I had to have, with a tall cold beer, of course. The Pastrami sandwich turned out to be nothing like a NY Pastrami sandwich, though. You know the one I’m talking about, the sandwich with nothing but piles of steamin’ fatty pastrami all piled high in the middle of soft rye bread so that it looks like it’s an inch thick when they cut it in half, even though there’s very little meat around the edges of the sandwich. The Shot & Bottle pastrami wasn’t like that. It was more like a pastrami Reuben on rye toast. In addition to the pastrami, it was piled high with cole slaw, lettuce, tomato, red onions, and sauce. It was a salad and a sandwich at the same time.
Cat TREATed for dinner, but the TREATing didn’t stop there. She insisted on buying me drinks on the way back to my place, and it didn’t take a lot of arm-twisting to get me to agree to that plan. We barhopped our way back to my place, which turned the long 5-block walk into a couple pleasant little walks. When we got to my place, I was feeling the buzz, but she was still sober, which was good for her, because she had to drive home to get a little sleep before he 6-hour rock-climbing class she was taking in the morning. I was a bit tired from all the walking and drinking, and I just sat down at the computer and did the NY Times Wordle. I got it in only 3 tries. Surprisingly, the Wordle word of the day was TREAT. How big a coincidence is that?
So, thanks to Brother X, the Scrabble gods, the Wordle gods, and Cat, who all contributed to giving me a birthday to remember, and a really good time. My EAT, BEAT, TREAT birthday turned out even better than I hoped it would be.
That night, I wondered how grueling Cat’s 6-hour rock climbing class would be for her the next morning. I was glad that I wasn’t signed up for that event, too. The only climbing I had to do was to climb into bed and sleep as late as I wanted. Now that I’m 74, that part of the birthday celebration was looking really SWEET.
Recently, I watched a couple videos about the causes of the American Civil War. Naturally, slavery was the central issue. That was the cause of the tension, but I don’t think that was the cause of the actual fighting, though. Slavery was nothing new. It had been practiced on our shores for over 200 years. The way I see it, the American Civil War was caused by our inability to amend the supreme law of the land, The Constitution.
With a total of 4,440 words, the U.S. Constitution is the oldest and shortest written Constitution of any major government in the world. James Madison, “The father of the Constitution,” did an amazing job of outlining the legal masterpiece. It was packed with detailed instructions on how to operate the brand-spanking-new government, yet it was only 4 pages long. I have appliance instruction manuals that take several dozen pages just to show me how to use a simple appliance. Government of the people, by the people, and for the people is exponentially more difficult than operating a microwave oven. To get all the power of the U.S. Constitution condensed into just four pages was brilliant, but it was not perfect, and both the designers and signers knew it.
Things change, and the young country was bound to go through massive changes if it survived. Nobody could predict the future, but the designers of the Constitution knew it would be way different, so they allowed for that. They made the Constitution flexible. They made it so that it would be able to change with the times. They incorporated Amendments, a brilliant idea. The first ten Amendments, known as the Bill of Rights, gave U.S. citizens certain specific rights that we treasure to this day.
Unfortunately, the Constitution did not provide these rights to all people. Despite the bluster of the Declaration of Independence about all men being created equal, the Constitution did not treat all men or women equally.
When it was ratified in 1787, the Constitution enshrined the institution of slavery through the so-called “Three-Fifths Compromise,” which called for those “bound to service for a term of years” and “all other Persons” (meaning slaves) to be counted for representation purposes as three-fifths of free people. The word “slavery,” however, did not appear in the Constitution until the 1865 ratification of the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery in the United States.
African Americans were not considered citizens, and women were excluded from the electoral process. Native Americans were not given the right to vote until 1924.
-ConstitutionFacts.com
The problem with the Constitution is that it is too difficult to amend. On some issues, it is literally impossible to change.
The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as Part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States, or by Conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the Congress…
Thirty-three amendments have been proposed. 27 have passed, but that includes the Bill of Rights. So, only 17 amendments have been added since September 25th, 1789. Since the 21st Amendment just repealed the 18th Amendment, there have really only been 15 additions in 233 years. That’s only one new amendment every 15.5 years, not nearly enough to keep pace with the rapid changes in the country in the last 233 years.
The Constitutionality of any law is determined by the U.S. Supreme Court, and since being a Supreme Court Justice is a job for life, they can be quite a bit older than the average American and have far more conservative views than the country as a whole.
In 1861, a bunch of conservative old Supreme Court Justices mostly from the South, gleefully determined that slavery was protected by the U.S. Constitution in their Dred Scott Decision. A nation, stirred up by Abolitionists and horrific stories about slavery such as Uncle Tom’s Cabin, wanted to abolish slavery, so this Supreme Court Decision was quite unpopular in the North.
Actually, though terribly biased, their decision was a rather accurate interpretation of the Constitution as it was at that time, because the Constitution was absolutely archaic on the subject of slavery, and it was in desperate need of change. We needed an Amendment to abolish slavery everywhere in the country.
However, with the country equally split on slavery, there was no way that an anti-slavery Amendment could get a 2/3rds vote in both Houses of Congress, let alone the approval from 3/4ths of the states. There was no way for the problem to legally go away. Slavery, as morally wrong as it was, had the backing of the both the Constitution and the Supreme Court. The “will of the people” alone would never be enough to change the Constitution.
There were only two ways to correct the Constitution. Let the slave states leave, so that the remaining states would have the necessary majority to be able to amend the U.S. Constitution, or go to war to force the slave states out of business. President Buchanan chose the peaceful way, by letting the Southern States secede from the Union. President Lincoln chose war, and though he forced the country back together, the wound has never really healed. Ironically, it was Abraham Lincoln who often quoted John, Viscount Morley, “You have not converted a man because you silenced him.” I guess he didn’t get the irony.
Today, the President who chose the peaceful solution is reviled as one of the worst Presidents ever, and the President who chose a Civil War in which more than 630,000 Americans lost their lives, is revered as one of the greatest Presidents. We, Americans, just love our wars, don’t we? When we don’t have an outside enemy, we just fight each other. Just look how many Generals were elected to the Presidency. War, huh, what is it good for? Getting elected President of the United States, for one thing.
More than a century and a half after the Civil War ended, slavery has long been legally abolished in the United States, but the country is still bitterly divided by racism. We need to be able to solve our most serious problems with the Constitution much more easily. We need to be able to add Amendments more quickly. We may make a few mistakes in our haste to improve things, but like the 18th and 21st Amendments, we can always repeal our mistakes.
We also need to amend the Second Amendment. Sure, let anyone who wants to own a musket have one, but stop selling military weapons to school kids.
A bunch of old guys on the Supreme Court recently shredded Roe v Wade. We need an Amendment to the Constitution to give woman back control of their own bodies, and we need it quickly.
Getting 75% of the states to agree on something is next to impossible, nowadays. Compromise is a thing of the past. We live in a fast-changing world, and we need to be able to act quickly to pass Constitutional Amendments that will provide workable legal solutions, so that we don’t wind up settling all our disputes by fighting one another.
The results of polls can be very misleading. Just ask Hillary Clinton.
Still, I like to read them, especially if they validate anything in which I believe. Frequently, the polls disagree with me, though, because I don’t share a lot of mainstream beliefs. When polls ask, “Who was the worst President of the United States before Donald Trump,” the knee-jerk response of the public is usually James Buchanan. I live a mile away from where James Buchanan lived in Lancaster, PA, and I’ve visited his home many times. I’ve read a few biographies of the man, and now I’m the unofficial President of his fan club. I strongly disagree with the way the polls have ranked him and many other Presidents. My opinion hasn’t budged the needle of public opinion one bit, though. I know that I have my work cut out for me trying to elevate the tarnished image of James Buchanan. The polls are working against me.
Religious polls also tend to disappoint me. My group, the Atheists, always comes in last, way last. But that was until I saw the chart below. They combined the Non-Religious, the Convinced Atheist, Agnostics, and the practitioners of any Religion that didn’t have a God into “Total Atheists,” and, by calculating this way, the number of Atheists skyrocketed.
So, the numbers may be slightly inflated, but everything is inflated nowadays. Rather than just look at the raw numbers, though, I looked to see if there was anything else of interest in the chart. I found quite a few things.
The first thing I noticed was that few Asians believe in God. China was the top Atheistic country on the list with 91% of the country not believing in God. Japan was #2, with 86% of the country Atheistic. Vietnam came in at #11 with a 67% Atheist population, and Hong Kong was close behind at #13 with 66% Atheists. South Korea came in at #14 with 65% Atheists. So, I was quite shocked to see that Thailand came in as the most religious country in the survey with only 2% Atheists.
Scandinavia didn’t disappoint me. Sweden was #3 on the list with 78% Atheists. Norway came in at #9 with 70%. Denmark was #10 with 68%. Finland came in at #18 with 62%, and Iceland came in at #25, with just over half of its population not believing in God, 52%. I thought that it was ironic that the area of the world that created so many gods, should now not believe in any. They used to have a stable of gods: Odin, Frigg, the mighty Thor, Loki, Balder, Hod, Heimdall, Tyr, not to mention a couple of fertility gods, to help them get through those cold winter nights. It turns out that the fierce Vikings were more god-fearing than modern Scandinavians. Way to go, Scandinavia. My people.
The next thing I noticed really threw me for a loop. #20 on the list, with Atheists outnumbering the Religious by a margin of 61% to 39% was Israel. Yeah, Israel. According to this chart, which had to be accurate, because I found it on the Internet, there were more Atheists than Jews in Israel. Maybe it’s because they have so many scientists. Scientists have a higher percentage of Atheists than almost any other group. In a recent survey in the United States, 85% of Scientists said that they did not believe in a higher power that hears our prayers. I didn’t have time to dwell on the quantity of scientists in Israel, though. There was more shocking news on the very next line. Coming in right behind Israel at #21 was Ireland. Ireland? I thought that all they had was Catholics and Protestants who continuously fought one another, but the chart said they had more Atheists than all the warring Christians combined, 60% to 40%. Brilliant. LOL.
The next shock came when I got to country #30, The United States of America, the home of religious freedom. All the charts I’ve seen in the past put the percentages of Atheists in the United States at around 15%. This chart said that the religious outnumbered the Atheists but only by a majority of 56 to 43. That’s almost triple the number of Atheists that I had expected. It’s a Christmas miracle. That wasn’t the shocking part, though. By now, I could tell that this chart was probably compiled by an Atheistic organization, or, at least, one determined Atheist. So, I was taking all the numbers with a large grain of salt, but I was concentrating on the rankings, especially when I saw that Russia was ranked #33, with religious people outnumbering Atheists 61-39. The United States had a higher percentage of people who were considered to be Atheists than Russia. The shock I got from that was mild, but the laugh I got from that was bigger. Remember when we used to claim to have God on our side?
To counter Soviet propaganda during the Cold War, the United States adopted the motto “In God We Trust” in 1954. We wanted to let them Ruskies know that God favored us over the Atheistic Russians. Now, it seems, we have a higher percentage of Atheists than they do. God knows how that happened, and whose side He is on now.
The next thing I noticed was how religious they were in the Southern Hemisphere, except for Australia. Africa and South America are easily the two most religious continents, but their Southern Hemisphere Atheistic Mates in Australia outnumber the religious blokes there by a whopping 70% to 31%. (I know that comes out to a total of 101%, but if athletes can give 110%, why can’t we Atheists give 101%.)
The last thing I noticed was that the 10 most godless countries turned out to be places I would like to visit. The 10 most godless countries according to the poll are China, Japan, Sweden, Czech Republic, United Kingdom, Belgium, Estonia, Australia, Norway, and Denmark. (I would need directions to Estonia, though. I have no idea where it is.)
The 10 most religious countries, on the other hand, were places I would not want to visit. As mentioned earlier, the most religious country on the survey was Thailand. The only thing I know about Thailand is that the capitol is Bangkok. I learned that the hard way as a child. So, I don’t want to go there. The next most religious country is Nigeria. I am curious to see if the Prince has my million dollars ready for pickup yet, but I’ll pass on visiting. The next most religious country is Papua New Guinea, followed by The Ivory Coast, Ghana, India, Armenia, Pakistan, Fiji, and the Philippines. Fiji might be fun, but I give a hard pass on visiting the rest of the religious countries.
Scientists have an expression they call “The God of the Gaps.” Whatever religious people can’t explain or understand is automatically just credited to God. Back when the Vikings believed in a host of gods, it did not make them holy. They raped, pillaged, and slaughtered much of Europe and beyond. Nowadays, the Scandinavians don’t need Thor to be the explanation for thunder, or some other god to be responsible for lightning, or the sun, or the moon, or whatever else they didn’t understand back then. Today, they understand a whole lot more. Today, they are a prosperous, happy, peaceful population. As science unraveled the mysteries, the gaps in their knowledge shrunk, and their gods shrank right along with the gaps, leading to progress.
The most religious countries are often the ones who have the poorest populations and the biggest gaps. Struggling populations want to believe that there is a God, that He is on their side, and that He hears and answers their prayers. This chart, however, seems to show that God has abandoned religious countries, and that, contrary to the right-wing bumper stickers, the countries that are moving forward in today’s world are, in fact, the countries who are quickly shedding their belief in an almighty God and taking responsibility for their own lives, and pursuing Science over Superstition. God bless them.
earlthepearl137 