Former Presidents Can't Get An Unbiased Jury

A former President of the United States cannot get a fair trial in America. The jury pool is also the electorate and lived under the former President’s power and policy. The electorate tends toward liking or hating former Presidents in relation to how the Man or woman’s policies affected them.

For every prospective juror the politic and policies of the former President form part of the life experience of the juror.  Jurors don’t usually have a pre-existing subjective relationships with those a trial's defendant. For jurors the politics of a former President comprise part of his or her character. If they hated the policies they hate the former President and vice versa.

Richard Nixon could never have found an unbiased juror in the nation if he had faced a criminal trial brought by democrats who largely hated him as much as they hate Donald Trump. If Joe Biden loses the 2024 election and runs again in 2028 some voters would prefer that hate his policies wouldn’t mind if he were convicted of a few hundred felony counts of and sentenced to hard labor and isolation at Devils Island though ts unlikely that Republican prosecutors would cook up charges as have Democrats for former President Trump. 

Barrack Obama brought to trial would not find an unbiased jury in America. Prospective Democrat jurors interviewed in the courtroom in the Presence of Barrack might feel a tingle run up their legs or answer voir dire questions with rising inflection at the end of a sentence to make any sort of statement sound like a question. Republicans against homosexual marriage, abortion and fomenting foreign wars that cause hundreds of thousands of casualties might be disgusted with Mr. Obama before they even heard a word from the jury box about the criminal issues of the trial.

Those jurors that claim to be unbiased perhaps are liars or self-deceiving. Judges and prosecutors too may have implicit bias shared with jurors of the electorate in addition to that of being appointed to their job by Democrat or Republicans working within the policy guidelines of the former President. A former President is the one American who cannot get an unbiased jury within the borders of the United States- not even illegal aliens that hate Donald Trump for building a border security wall or love Joe Biden for sending the money for a border wall to stimulate war in Europe and gamble that Armageddon won’t be a fallout derivative of the chaos and economic disaster instead would be unbiased f they had the chance to be on the jury of a former President.

Before Spending 60 Billion Dollars in Ukraine for Homicide

Before the House and Senate vote to spend 60 billion dollars to finance war against Russia in Ukraine it would be a good idea to consider history and other factors that weigh against it. Voting for homicide instead of peace may be a mark against one standing at the day of judgment. 

When President Johnson awarded contracts to Brown and Root to build military bases in South Vietnam during the Vietnam conflict it kicked off a financial insider relationship for war profiteering that continued in various forms even to the Iraq war in which Halliburton that had bought Kellogg Brown and Root was given no-bid contracts for similar support work in Iraq. There are numerous corporations and politicians that have made war a necessary economic activity for the United States. Instead of bringing about a negotiating peace settlement with Russia in Ukraine that Russians can live with as well as Ukrainians the administration prefers peace through homicide. They share the narrow viewpoint of Ukraine's President Zelinsky that will accept only the entirety of former Russian Ukraine for itself. U.S. leadership should have a global rather than a west Ukrainian viewpoint. The United States loses security and economic advantages if peace does not arrive through a negotiated settlement with Russia in Ukraine. The belligerence between the U.S.A. and Russia need directly end, including sanctions, and full normal diplomatic relations restored.

The United States has a recent history about starting wars with lies as the casus belli and the lie that Russia has no rightful claim to Ukraine is such a thing. Like the lie about about Vietnamese naval vessels attacking U.S. ships that prompted the Senate to vote for L.B.J.’s Gulf of Tonkin Resolution and the lie about Iraq having weapons of mass destruction that got the ball rolling on the ‘Coalition of the Willing's' U. S. led war to remove the evil dictator Saddam Hussein despite the protests of the U.N. and France in particular, the pretext for financing war upon Russia trying to recover the lands of Ukraine lost in the carpet-bagging Clinton era is bunk. There would be nothing easier than restoring peace and world order based on truth and integrity, yet of course the plagiarizing forever candidate for office Joe Biden could not see anything of peace in his world view at all.

Early in the 20th century-during the first world war, European Communists sought to revolt against Tsar Nicholas Romanov in Russia. Russian communists were of course successful in revolting from above...that is elite communists dedicated to revolution conquered a Russian government weakened by war with Germany and other powers as well as the Tsar’s own incompetence. V.I. Lenin cut a deal with the German government to return to Moscow in a sealed train to lead the revolution that swiftly won. Lenin ceded Ukraine to Germany in return for peace with Germany as he took Russia out of the war. That giveaway of what he had no right to give probably stimulated Hitler later on to conquer all of Russia.

Yet Russia had experimented with democracy as early as 1905. A constitutional government and congress appeared. Before the communist revolution a government that was free and constitutionally founded; the Kerensky government, came briefly into power in Russia. Soviet Communists destroyed the nascent democracy of Russia and took control. When the last president of the Soviet Union; Boris Yeltsin, end its formal existence and decided for himself, with President Bill Clinton’s supervision, to part out the Soviet Union and cut off the Ukraine from Russia the stage was set for the present war since Democrats after 1992 would never renegotiate the severance or provide Russia with any compensation other than some used dental equipment President Clinton sent to Russia.

The communist takeover of a free democracy later deciding to return the subjugated nation to a free status with democracy again, yet reapportions the break up as it prefers instead of restoring the national boundaries as they were before the communist takeover is a good model for how modern nations can be redistributed to X parties non-violently.  The Clinton-Biden technique is now a politically validated historical precedent for expropriating and redistributing a targeted nation’s properties using internal and external forces to rack up a nation with communism and then break it up using a designed evolutionary strike of the billiard cue ball of democratic party perfidy.

Political opportunists may launder the public debt away and seize control of a new nation without violence if the media are cooperative with the ploy. It is possible that in the future, if the United State’s economy collapses completely and divided political sentiments and other disasters occur that a communist government may rise to power and end the United States and yet later quit communist governance. At that time the United States could be broken up into several nations that vaguely resemble lines of the terminal Soviet States political districts. The 33 trillion or 100 trillion dollar public debt would of course be repudiated by Communist rulers and several new nations following it would be offensive to those rulers of whatever rump United States of America that existed following the end of Soviet America.

 When Ronald Reagan brought about the end of the Soviet Union through peaceful means working with President Gorbachev there was a semi-plain reflection of the events during the first world war that ended the existence of a free though aristocratic Russia and brought in communist dictatorship. President Boris Yeltsin took power and brought into existence the end of the Soviet state and Communist Government through elite means from the top that probably with de facto popular support. The people want to be part of western culture and free enterprise that had brought a better life to the west and promised to do so for Russia too. The Community of Independent States-  the C.I.S. (pronounced Sis) was the successor to the Soviet Union. Before his death Yeltsin taking charge in Russia wrote the Russian constitution that resembles generally that of the U.S.A.  He also gave the President Super-powers when needed to defend the state against internal and external  challenges. Unfortunately Boris Yeltsin did not seek nor receive financial compensation for Russia as it relenquished Ukraine. What was it worth in 1992- a trillion dollars or two? 

The Ukraine was part of Russia before the communist takeover and Lenin’s submission of it to Germany in return for being placed in office and securing peace for his new state. Boris Yeltsin reflected that coerced submission of Ukraine to a dominant foreign military power of the United States led by William Jefferson Clinton and N.A.T.O.. The Soviets communists recovered the lost Ukraine while defeating German Nazis on the Eastern front during the Second World War. President Putin and Russia are attempting to recover Ukraine for Russia following its effect theft by President Clinton, te Democrat party and N.A.T.O. presently. From a global economic standpoint it probably doesn’t matter who owns Ukraine if they are selling its agricultural products on the free market.

Renegotiating the manifestly unfair Russian loss of the Ukraine to the west when Boris Yeltsin gave it up and Russia was yet too weak to dispute that should have been an obvious duty for Western leaders to take on. The Second World War was precipitated in part by the west’s seizure of select German industrial land and vast reparations forced on it. F’ing over Russia at th end end of the Cold War was not a way build long term international political stability. Chasing after that policy of political self-destruction is like throwing good money after bad, making investments in long-term nuclear brinksmanship and hate without any need to do so beside the tunnel vision of the Democrat party in coveting a shiny object. The diplomacy of the U.S. Sect. Of State with Americans is underwhelming. The poor don’t need another stimulus check or it is at least beneath consideration because it might cause inflation they may believe. If the State Departments preference to escalate the war instead of negotiating a peace settlement works and N.A.T.O. become a hungry tiger on Ukraine’s swollen far eastern border with Russia eyeballing Moscow with Napoleon and Hitler’s eyes (one each) the U.S.A. in effect loses. Winning is losing if Russia does not keep Crimea and Eastern Ukraine through a negotiated peace because a lasting hostility between Russia and the west will become the new normal. The brink of nuclear war will be a hot possibility along with all of the tension going with it. The Sect of State hasn’t explained how that would be good for the United States or the Democrat Party’s Ukrainian homeland security.

Russia probably would have been glad to settle with the Crimea and its present Eastern Ukraine real estate, and probably still would if the west had leaders bright enough to seek that instead of pretending that Mr. Putin is some kind of Hitler invading Poland during the Second World War. That pretense is a big lie; a political lie of propaganda of tremendous scale that shows how disinterested the Biden administration is in recognizing the truth. 

Democrats have sought to prevent Donald Trump from taking back the White House because of the fear that he would find peace on good terms with Russia and end the Ukraine war against Russia. Democrats spent four year unsuccessfully trying to prove the big lie that Russians made a large clandestine contribution to getting Donald  Trump elected in 2016. Incidentally the flurry of criminal trials against Donald Trump during the 2024 Presidential race is the best bit of election interference ever made against a Presidential candidate. There isn’t such a thing as a former President that won’t suffer from pre-trial publicity or a Presidential candidate that won’t suffer from judicial gag orders. Virtually all of the charges against the former President occur in blue states or with democrat prosecutors and judges. It would be better if the trials waited until after the election, and if necessary until after Mr. Trump serves another four years as President of the United States.

  A fellow set himself on fire in front of the building in New York City where Donald Trump is on trial for allegedly listing payments to a porn star as business or campaign expenses. Plainly the payments if made were both business and campaign expenses since each it would have been better for Mr. Trump to suppress publication of the relationship if it happened for business and campaign purposes. Making payments to avoid negative publicity is as legitimate as making payments for positive publicity. If the payments had been made to conceal actual criminal activity by the candidate- such as a burglary into the Democrat national Committee that would have been a different matter. So far as I know it is not illegal to practice sex with a porn star even if delicious, sad, duplicitous or unfaithful. Probably it is less harmful than having a student intern provide oral service in the Oval office of the White House. President’s cannot be tried for crimes committed in office to a certain extent with conditional immunity, and lying about the affair to Congress was the crime or misdemeanor rather than the scandalous act itself that Sweden seemed to support and award a Nobel Prize to someone named Bloble for. Sweden recently joined N.A.T.O. and supports the Democrat war on Russia via Ukraine.

The flaming protester had pamphlets about a Ponzi scheme and conspiracies. I don’t know if Jeffrey Epstein was mentioned, yet Democrat finance for the U.S. budget does have elements of a Ponzi scheme about it. Wealth is concentrated at the top and yet the deficit spending annually for a government not adequately funded by taxing the rich is unsustainable. Meanwhile the Mexican border goes without adequate defense against millions of illegal migrants to the U.S. that provide cheaper labor and keep wages down. Democrats seem to want to enrich the rich and give good union jobs to Democrats while letting public debt grow to 40 trillion dollars or more if President Biden finishes another term.  The unsustainable economy is a like a Ponzi scheme that could crash from terrorism, a third world war, the crash of the dollar and so forth.

Maybe younger representatives may not be familiar with how much effort went in to ending the Cold War and bringing about world peace. Not only does the world ecosphere need to be fixed, global poverty need in some way to be eliminated when for the past seventy years environmentalists have warned about the limit to population growth because of the inability of the natural resources of the Earth to sustain even the present population without a complete revision of global economic methods. It need convert into one with environmental economics of sustainability. President Biden is a nominal candidate that selects political works that will assure his re-election. Not only did he not accomplish a three trillion dollar end global warming program that he low-bid on in 2020, he has not even mentioned any effort of comparable, minimal scale in the 2024 campaign.

It is necessary to have peace with Russia to work on shared interests such as preventing nuclear war, restoring environmental health, ending global terrorism, demilitarizing the high Arctic and prevent future disasters from emerging technologies like artificial intelligence etc. In order to reduce escalating military expenditures and try to balance the federal budget faster a President need seek peace with Russia directly acknowledging the failure of the parting of the Soviet Union to restore the Ukraine to Russia. Instead of ignoring the Russian claim as if it had no validity or credibility at all a president of the U.S. should recognize it and yet settle the dispute in such a way as to satisfy the Ukraine and Russia with a fair apportionment of the land. King Solomon said he would cut in half the baby the two women claimed to be mothers of. Politicians are not like those mothers, well not like one of them at least, and so it would rational to actualize Solomon’s order and cut the Ukraine in half.

The world economy is being divided into two camps. Those that support the big lie and theft by politicians to benefit the rich support the west, while those that oppose a corrupt first world order support Russia or are at least neutral on the issue. India need support Russia for pragmatic reasons. Because of the war and dire threats by N.A.T.O. upon Russia, Russia has been forced to become a partner with China economically and militarily instead of being a good middle partner for east and west. India, already concerned with China and Pakistan, need to be on good terms with Russia in order to get a little help in keeping Chinese tensions over some land disputes in check. Russia can appeal to China to keep things cool and let India be a junior partner of each. The India, China, Russia economic and informal military alliance has tremendous population and potential power and is being reinforced by the 19th century policy of trying to expand western nations with hostile military policy toward Russia or other nations such as are in Africa.

Europe will eventual renormalize relations with Russia because they are contiguous neighbors with vast natural mineral resources. As in sanction breakers during the era of Saddam Hussein Europeans too will seek financial advantages by trading under the table with Russia over the sanctions era. When the hostilities and sanctions eventually end the consequences for the United States that were economically deleterious probably will continue for some time while Europe will integrate with the new Russian-Chines and Indian powerhouse. President Biden can put high tariffs on Chinese Steel imports in order to protect U.S. Steel and the Japanese corporation that bought it a couple of weeks ago from unfair competition, yet the entire Biden approach to intentional relations is so astoundingly stupid that it is breathtaking and shocking simultaneously. If President Biden and a daft Congress don’t incite World War Three eventually because of their entirely unnecessary policy game of chicken head-on crash tensor expecting Russia eventually to quit and be less willing to resist the west than Afghanistan, Vietnam et al would be something of a miracle.

N.A.T.O. as a Hybrid, Monster Across the Pond

 In the day when the Soviet Union posed a threat to Europe, following the collapse of Nazi Germany, the paradigm for bringing the separate devastated European countries into a pact with each other and the United States to defend against the Evil Empire was sound policy. N.A.T.O. was like a Breton Woods economic metaphysics for the west. That time has changed with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the rise of the European Union. With most of Europe being in the European Union and with the expansion of N.A.T.O. the United States is locked into a relationship where it is a trans-oceanic minority of one. European power would expect America to follow its wish in regard to foreign policy.

George Washington warned of making permanent foreign alliances in his farewell speech and N.A.T.O. membership is a prime example. It is a defense relationship that fundamentally requires the United States not to differ with the policy of the majority of the members. There is no North or South Atlantic military threat- except perhaps from N.A.T.O. members itself, that the United States can not de frappe itself. Yes there are submarines from various nations outside N.A.T.O. that cruise the pond below the waves; does the United States need help from Turkey to defend against that risk?

Some day in the future the vast unification of Europe and coordination of its military may be a monster attacking from the fog, or with the sun at its back. If Europe experiences a leftist takeover then the United States would be between a socialist China and a socialist N.A.T.O. That would be a hard place to be in case of war. N.A.T.O. is a potential and even likely hybrid monster across the pond.

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/04/02/allies-consider-moving-ukraine-arms-group-into-nato-to-shield-it-from-trump-00150151

Recently N.A.T.O. leaders proposed raising 100 billion Euros to battler against Russia in Ukraine for five years. That sort of policy may work for lunatics that simply seek to continue the Clinton push eastward against a weakened Russia that had part of its homeland stolen at the end of the Cold War on paper. Europeans have forever sought to expand eastward by pushing into Russian lands. Plainly the expand the EU crowd want to build up N.A.T.O. forces on the Russian border and force Russia to capitulate politically as if they were the Soviet Union. It is not possible to over-state the imbecility of the return to a Cold War paradigm with a new Berlin Wall built effectively by the west on the far eastern boundary of an expanded Ukraine. Expanding the EU through conquest is a paradigm comparable to that of the third Reich with Adolph Hitler as he looked to the east with Operation Barbarossa.

https://apnews.com/article/nato-russia-ukraine-war-weapons-1b994305f7e66d8583124fb6c0e22d51

U.S. interests lie in a peaceful and profitable relationship with Russia. Russia as an ally of the U.S.A. may lower threats from China and Europe and create a solid economic foundation for the world ahead with challenges from A.I. and the loss of ecospheric health. Even the security of the E.U. would be upgraded through peaceful relations with Russia. In that scenario everyone is a winner except war mongers and would be world rulers.

Paradigms of Generative A.I. in Creative Design

 Generative A.I, - A.I. systems intended to generate things on the basis of large learning models, are said to be a disruptive technology. I am not sure that people realize how much so. I took a look at a street in a small town; the cars parked the electrical fixtures, the homes and commercial buildings etc. and in a way it was like viewing a scene from an old movie. I had the feeling that everything would change in not such a great amount of time.

Of course being an optimist over time I was disappointed at the rate of change of the nation. There were a lot of changes since the 1970s yet they were generally logical anticipated rather than things that were improved through public design of public lands and resources or federal programs. Generative A.I. may become a large factor in finding optimal or most efficient designs of things in physics, transportation etc. Given sufficient learning should generative A.I. be able to invent the most efficient electric car design with awareness of the costs of available natural resources? Shouldn't it be able to design materials for repaving streets so they can absorb and convert solar photons to electrons and provide free public electricity for electric automobiles.

Black generative AI- those covert systems with governors or censors built in, may be able to design biological and chemical weapons for everyone or even improved explosive designs. Apparently generative A.I. is a two-edged razor that society must use carefully lest it cut itself.

Göbekli Tepe was in a way the first permanent settlement of humanity that remains in existence. Built around the year 11,000 B.C... It was a religious center and development of grain for agriculture advanced in the area. Religion drew humanity together and they built fine structures to support that. A city that was more secular started in Jericho just a little later, although it too dates to nearly 11,000 B.C. Technology advanced slowly.

Compared to the great length of time before the creation of permanent human cities when hunting tools were the main tech for hunter-gatherers the time of the Neolithic and its development of modest building methods (such as one of the first towers at Jericho) was fast. When the age of Neolithic B ended around 6000 B.C. there followed a period of nearly 2500 years of decline and waste at Jericho. It is not impossible in human history for civilization or settlements to experience decline or destruction.

Many citizens don't believe that caution or good judgment is necessary for political choices to be made. Many today are fatalists, reflect on joss or various eschatological scenarios in places of pessimism, or worship centers and in reading fiction. It is possible to wonder who is minding the store. Even more people are global warming deniers or would take up the cross again as soon as they are done fighting for water rights. Atheists believing in nothing would have visions of a utopia for homosexuals and democrats of all varieties under kosher scientific supervision, loosely defined, as an application of Magna Carta with political power given unto parliament without need for a written constitution binding leaders to the past as if they were Gullivers ensnared.

Generative AI may change that criterion. Hayek believed that public lands and investment was a socialist-communist kind of things in support of totalitarianism. He wanted to let private enterprise own and run about everything with the belief that it would find the optimal configuration of business and perhaps even political configurations. During the Cold War version 1 people tended to go overboard and fail to understand that the empirical world; the environment, is the common heritage of mankind and it cannot readily be privatized without peril to the future of human life on this planet so far from anywhere else livable. 

Perhaps generative A.I. applied to inventing, physics, chemistry and biological technology will be insinuated into the midst of a recovering ecosphere. A.I. might even help find environmental solutions,  sustainable development paradigms or optimal scenarios for desalinating seawater with evaporation canals covered for condensation collection A next-gen political economy should provide the basic physical sustenance needs of every soul alive while yet creating a renaissance of spiritual and intellectual values and creativity on this world and beyond.

AI at War- The Ukraine Experiment?

 Large language models are programing paradigms to train AI systems to resemble human speech and discourse. Joined with search algorithms it is a formidable tool permeating the contemporary Internet and society. I was interested in the development and use of large learning systems to find optimal use of military assets in war. I would guess that the Ukraine war presently being fought has heavy use of AI algorithms in all phases of allocating optimal placement of combat assets.

Of possibly more interest is the use of A.I. expert system in determining the optimal moment to attack an enemy from basic ground, land and sea assaults to chemical, nuclear and biological attacks. An AI system could best determine when the optimal moment is including millions of factors such as weather, state of readiness of combatants, possibility of retaliation and so on far exceeding a President's knowledge, or even that of military leaders. It is interesting to consider the delicate balance of mutually assured destruction and dueling in effect by AI systems in the near future.

Everyone loves AI- it will add trillions and trillions to deep pockets. In fact there is a profusion of course available even for free in learning A.I. After completing or nearly so a course on the 800 year old Magna Carta I started a brief course on Generative A.I.- Hence this post.

Magna Carta- An Influence on Writing of U.S. Constitution?

 The Declaration of Independence of the United States and U.S. Constitution were inspired by God and the Christian belief in equality under the saving grace of God/Jesus Christ. The founders felt freedom was the natural condition of man. On a frontier it is challenging to find a reason why a royal wig-wearing, perfumed, silk-stockinged politician across an ocean had any relevance except as an obnoxious prick. San Morino- founded in 301 a.d. has had a written constitution since 1600. The DeWitt brothers in Holland were active them in briefly founding a Republic. Tacitus described German laws and ancient laws of Greece and Rome were well known by the founders of the American Republic; The United States of America. Codifying freedom in the abstract written form to make more permanent public awareness of political rights and duties is indeed very old. The founders were also aware of Magna Carta and perhaps less so the many subsequent commentaries inspired by it. They were aware of political philosophy from England, and drew on many sources to write a document expressing their practical rather than abstract desire to be free of imperial rule along the lines of 'all men are created equal'. That is; all mankind are on a level field without superior political right.

Hayek Was Not an Environmentalist

 Hayek wasn't an environmentalist. Perhaps for him a healthy ecosphere is an externality to private enterprise. A paucity of public land seems common enough in corrupt nations. Economics works best with regulated free enterprise that meets environmental rationality standards, yet basic human rights to physical security regarding necessaries is a responsibility of free people that may fail when wealth becomes concentrated too much for actual democracy to exist.

Influence of Magna Carta on the Founders

The Declaration of Independence of the United States and U.S. Constitution were inspired by God and the Christian belief in equality under the saving grace of God/Jesus Christ. The founders felt freedom was the natural condition of man. On a frontier it is challenging to find a reason why a royal wig-wearing, perfumed, silk-stockinged politician across an ocean had any relevance except as an obnoxious prick. San Morino- founded in 301 a.d. has had a written constitution since 1600. The DeWitt brothers in Holland were active them in briefly founding a Republic. Tacitus described German laws and ancient laws of Greece and Rome were well known by the founders of the American Republic; The United States of America. Codifying freedom in the abstract written form to make more permanent public awareness of political rights and duties is indeed very old. The founders were also aware of Magna Carta and perhaps less so the many subsequent commentaries inspired by it. They were aware of political philosophy from England, and drew on many sources to write a document expressing their practical rather than abstract desire to be free of imperial rule along the lines of 'all men are created equal'. That is; all mankind are on a level field without superior political right.

The Moral Chaos of Fallout from Magna Carta and British Education of Bill Clinton

 Since Bill Clinton brought Britain and the knighthood states to the country in 1992 the Democrat Party has evolved a hard turn to the left; the moral left with decadence, homosexuality, legal dope, and flooding the nation with illegal migrants in order to render it fit for empire. Bill Clinton attended Oxford University as a Rhodes scholar and was captured for the Queen to Use. England is a country without a written constitution, and the law of the nation is in the living hands of rulers in parliament. That makes the law more variable, informal and susceptible to change to accord with currents sentiments. It is not some kind of a rights of man paradigm. Neither is it a sort of 'we hold these truths to be self evident' situation. With British influence the laws of the United States as written in the constitution are becoming obsolete, as one historian commented, and evolving a replacement to something more malleable and subject to the direct will of the Democratic party and various global interests.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfgPEh2J9aI

It is interesting moving through a course on Magna Carta. The United States constituted a government with something like a founding charter that had 500 years to improve over English ideas concerning political writes that could be written down. Magna Carta captured an agreement between king John and a group of Barons that were threatening to revolt. Because the King had weakened the nation with land battle losses in Europe and piled up much debt he was compelled to agree to certain rights for the Barons. It was not a document concerning ordinary people as if they were peers...they were not.

One of the main points is that the original Magna Carta became rather more symbolic than functional over time though it did inspire lots of books for political movements of liberalism (power to the people rather than royalty) and the Nobles' Parliament with a House of Lords and House of Commons descended from the original Magna Carta with the King losing most power over the centuries. It is the dynamic change of English ruling power that flows downward or outward from Parliament that is such a corrosive influence upon American democracy with quaint notions of constitutional law. Since Bill Clinton became President the Democrat Party has done everything to take absolute power as if they were in a Parliamentary circumstance rather than a constitutional democracy. They bend every law, every congressional restraint so far as possible because the written word is not nearly as important as the verbal and social ability to bend, break or disregard the written word if it's inconvenient to furthering their party's agenda.

In the meanwhile Republicans were mostly interested in just making money.

About Predestination

 It is difficult to imagine an omniscient God who foreknows all things (a priori) and is omnipotent, whom yet is partially in-the-blind about human affairs. How things might not be predetermined is a real mystery. Even with physical science I find it challenging to imagine a singularity that unfolded without the content being predetermined from conception.

Kamala Harris and Nikki Haley in 2024 etc

 This is a strange election year. Kamala Harris and Nikki Haley running together might well defeat either Donald Trump or Joe Biden drawing Democrats and Republican females to the ballot box along with conscionable independents that just can't bring themselves to happily vote for Big Joe. It might be a year where spray on magnets hit the shelves.

Chinese leadership has called the Trump-Biden race a choice "between two bowls of poison". I was thinking the same thing, although I used the Charybdis and Scylla analogy myself.

Joe Biden's magic platform that is designed simply to get himself elected is in play again. It is certain that the environment will get worse along with national security if he is re-elected, while apparently Mr. Trump may be weak on defense of Taiwan because he believes the Taiwanese usurped American chip production. I am not certain that chip manufacturers could find a workforce willing to work for Taiwan's wage scale that is a little challenging to interpret.

A google search reveals the minimum wage in Taiwan to be $22,000 a year with a comparatively lower cost of living. If Mr. Trump supports capitalism, as has been alleged, one wonders if it isn't nearly possible for chip manufacturing to return to the U.S.A with competitive wages. $22,000 a year is $10.58 hourly. Not a lot of sober Americans want to work for that since Wal-mart prices and inflation have increased cost of living substantially during the Joe administration. Probably $15 an hour would be a living wage in some locations in the U.S.A. with lower cost housing. That would be 31,000 dollars annually- an obviously higher cost for labor than in Taiwan.

Europe's economy has fallen off for the second year as a result of the Biden administration of war for Ukraine with Russia dividing the world economy, calcifying the neural links in the east-west brain to the point of rupture with sanctions ossifying the flow of commerce. D.O.D. has started delivery of 100 mile HIMARS shells to Ukraine so a better prospects of attacking farther in to Russia with the chance of prompting tactical nuclear response increasing to brighten the year ahead.

Basically low taxes and concentration of wealth has made Presidential politics moribund with the likely necessary winner- Donald Trump being just slightly worse at Taiwan defense and a lot worse at environmental protection than president Biden who has a record of outsourcing U.S. political independence in order to make it more ineffective and non self-determining amid increasing ecospheric chaos and economic anomie.

Regarding Extremism

 Extreme views are nothing more than those that are not mainstream. For quite a while and even continuing today the green economic movement was regarded as extreme by the fossil fuel and coal mainstream votaries. The result is global warming. Mainstream opinions are driven by social inertia and are not necessarily the best. Instead they simply dominate for sundry reason including the concentration of wealth and power invested in the established order.

The historian Arnold Toynbee pointed out that one of the basic reasons for the failure of a civilization is that once its economy becomes established it is very difficult to get it to change. Not just economics; politics too. He used ancient Greece as an example of a failed civilization with a cause of being unable to upgrade to a Republic like Rome with a unification of all of the city-states into one nation. Without unification they were easy prey for the Roman legions.

Common mainstream views need be upgraded for a society to continue to advance after it has already reached maturity. Usually societies do not. If they are successful the wealthy become globalists so far as possible and neglect upgrades to their own country. I suppose the United States is a contemporary example. Fundamentally anything that would actual change the established social structure is considered extreme. It is the media that presently defines what is or isn’t extreme anyway.
Leading, new ideas are often perceived as extreme in comparison to established mainstream ideas. I believe that some ideas are good and others bad. Mainstream views are safe because they have been around a while. new ideas may be good or bad because they are untested and haven't been implemented. Remember that in the ante bellum south abolitionists were regarded as extremists.

Sartre, Epictetus and Epicurus version 2.0

 I wanted to write something about the late first and early second century philosopher Epictetus's idea concerning death. The Roman was a well read individual who actual spent time as a slave during the reign of Nero. The Emperor Domitian banished philosophers from Italy so the freed slave move to Greece where he established a school. Because he wrote a lot; primarily his 'Discourses' history informs us of his way of thinking about many concerns. What is remarkable about his view of life is that it is similar in outlook to the 20th century French philosopher of Existentialism/aka French rationalism, Jean Paul Sartre.

Epicurus' thought about death is 'that it isn't anything to fear because one fears existing bad things rather than non-sense' (to paraphrase). Life is sense experience and death is the cessation of sensory input (Epictetus believes), hence there is nothing to fear because there is no sensation. Sensation is required to have anything to fear in Epicurus' experience.

The premise that one does not exist after death cannot be confirmed while alive. Non-existence after physical death is an assumption. One knows that information cannot be destroyed (Shannon Entropy) and that an omnipotent God could map or store all of the information comprising a human life (maybe even quantum computing will achieve that capability some time), and so restoration of a human life after death could occur whenever anyone with the information wanted to do so. Thus one could arrive at the premise about existing after death with something new to experience. That is nearly as plausible as existing now.

Epicurus was a hedonist. Epictetus was a stoic who believed in God in nature at least yet his viewpoint isn't too different concerning death than that of Epicurus. The main differentiator is that Epictetus might not go so far as to say about death; something that he hasn't experienced, that it is the absence of sensation, for that is an assumption- a logical yet unsupported inference. Instead Epictetus might say that he hasn't knowledge of it personally; there is no thought within his experience that knows it first-hand.

Epictetus and Sartre each regarded the human mind and its content as existing within the control of the individual. Some things are within our control and somethings aren't. Those things within our control are easy to think about and those without one's control are not to be too concerned about since the thought one uses about such things and relationships exists within the individual mind. One shouldn't allow one's own thought to act like a dog chasing its own tail around in a circle. That is an individual shouldn't create or generate thoughts to be fearful of or deceive oneself about the reality of one's thinking or necessity for thinking particular things; that existential viewpoint covers even death.

Epictetus believe there is nothing to fear of death because if there is, the fear is created within one's own thought. Dividing things within one's control and things that aren't, death is finally one of the things that aren't and so one should not spend much thought being troubled about it. Epictetus and Stoics believed God rules nature and the natural order. God's will and nature has its course and the things it has given to an individual, such as life or real estate it can recover and return to other purposes-even the lives of others.

Though Sartre believed that death is "the complete triumph of the other" he does not well describe what the heterodox otherness is, or who it is-perhaps nature or God or God through nature that is not the content of one's own thought. In that regard neither Sartre or Epictetus are solipsists.

There is an implicit valid logic regarding the Stoic outlook on death and the unknown. One should not invent troubling thoughts concerning things one hasn't muck knowledge of nor control over. Epictetus apparently knew little of Jesus Christ and the way to eternal life in the gospel; he believed in God or Zeus as an omnipotent ruler of nature. He has read Plato and Aristotle apparently being in agreement with the heterodox nature of the phenomenality of life.

Castes and Concentrated Wealth

 The Indian caste system is about 3000 years old and is still strong. Despite some liberation following independence in 1947 with the untouchable class being outlawed or abolished, the majority- 85% of the population remain in lower castes. The caste system affects the economy pervasively; is the development of the concentration of wealth in the United States the equivalent of developing a national caste system?

"In the third quarter of 2023, 66.6 percent of the total wealth in the United States was owned by the top 10 percent of earners. In comparison, the lowest 50 percent of earners only owned 2.6 percent of the total wealth"-quote from https://www.statista.com/statistics/203961/wealth-distribution-for-the-us/#:~:text=In%20the%20third%20quarter%20of,percent%20of%20the%20total%20wealth.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/caste-social-differentiation

Real discrimination follows economic lines. Caste systems of priests and warriors developed long ago for practical reasons, yet the value of those for protecting or advancing social development stopped long ago and instead, economic classes resembling castes became oppressive and a factor of economic retardation.

Intellectual liberation occurs when intellectuals of any social background are free to develop their interests with equal opportunity. Social and intellectual repression occurs when castes, classes and those supported by political power without intellectual merit rise to dominant intellectual culture. In a purely material culture the primary value of  positions of prestige are regarded as economic advantages and are desired for that reason by materialists.

The Biden administration has not done enough, if anything to outlaw the development of a caste system in the United States along economic lines. The increasing concentration of wealth in the United States has continued after the Obama administration strong armed congressional passage of a law to make the Bush II tax cuts permanent. Despite having control of the legislation branch of the federal government during the first two years of the Biden administration to tax increase on the most rich saw the light of day.

India is a great nation with a good future and a caste system that makes its international economic role a little suspect; that is the most rich may too easily emulate or otherwise soak up elements of a caste system that segregates society economically. In my opinion economic advantage is the primary reason for caste systems, slavery and oppression of various social classes. It is rare when individuals are economically segregated and not socially segregated too.

The U.S. Congress should pass a law or two banning caste systems or rescind most favored nation status to nations that have caste systems in order to encourage more egalitarian policies with equal economic opportunity and basic national income for all citizens as a more pragmatic application of the minimum wage ideals. Ad hoc caste systems assure that people will be poor or become poor through numerous means including forcing people out of work.

Record Global Warming on Von Biden's Watch

 Last year was one with record global warming. The administration's effort to slow or reverse atmospheric heating were plainly ineffective. The nation can look forward to another four years of ineffective or toxic leadership from Republicans and Democrats in the 2024 Presidential election if the Charybdis and Scylla pair of dinosaurs hold place as likely party nominees,

France just appointed a shiny new 34 year old queer Prime Minister. The west has such unusual political leadership that one may be confident that public affairs will be all f ' d up for the rest of the decade.

No one has good sense in politics...no not one.

https://climate.copernicus.eu/copernicus-2023-hottest-year-record#:~:text=2023%20is%20confirmed%20as%20the,highest%20annual%20value%20in%202016

Pantheism is Wrong

 God is not the Universe. He is not the moon or stars, a forcefield or particle and waves though responsible for making them.. Consider an arm. Is an individual his arm? If the arm is lost does the individual no longer exist? If someone manufactures an electric car, is she also the car? If the car is hijacked by rabid dogs is the manufacturer also the dogs because they are in the car? Everything in the Universe passes though God is none of that.

I would say that the universe is the sole individual being containing everything else. Within its monism there is pluralism.. The pluralism emerges as stars,, galaxies, hadrons, muons, people and everything else that sentient beings may distinguish as individuals. The Universe at the start was said to occur from one unified,, individual field.. In an instant probably just at the big bang or initial field instability caused perhaps by a word from God gravity separated, then the strong force followed by the electroweak force breaking down into electromagnetism, the weak force and the Higgs field that let massless particles acquire mass.. God was not subject to the fields he issued though His omniscience remained aware of what and where everything he planned was.. Universals and particulars in the Platonic sense are more applicable to the structures of particles, language categories and classes than to the set of all sets, Godel's idea of what might be compared to the Platonic realm of forms. It would be a logical categorical error to posit God as contained within something he created.

The Icon and Axe; A Billionaire and a Destroyer Concentrating Wealth

 Joe Biden is hard to classify. His platform is to enrich his family and promise anything to anyone that will get him elected. He is a globalist for open borders, dope, abortion, low tax on the rich, a concentrate wealth pragmatist delivering mediocrity on any plank including global warming. He continued the Democrat's start-lasting-wars tradition of the 20th century. His likely opponent is a a neo eco-Luddite billionaire for the concentration of wealth. The billionaire should have one the Nobel Peace prize during his term of office and would probably end the Ukraine conflict on terms Russians could live with and get the global economy back on track working together if Democrats let him- as doubtful as that is. Mr. Trump might let global warming increase by a full half percent in fours years while Mr. Biden's failure would be somewhat less.

NFL stars are in the 5 per cent of the 1 percent economic class serving as promoters of economics concentrating wealth while moving America toward being a second world country for the majority. The very rich need deflect public attention away from interest in anything that could move move policy toward economic egalitarianism with a moderate distribution of class wealth. The masses love bread and circuses now as in imperial Rome.

Ron DeSantis may be the last chance for the nation to conserve a little stability. People do prefer excitement, AI, illegal aliens labor and defenders known as MICE (or is it ice to illegals?) so long as deficit spending financing of government continues.

Israel's Effort to Remove Hamas /Nazis from the Gaza Continues

 A portion of the member states of the U.N. would like Israel to quit its war on Hamas leadership in the Gaza Strip. That in effect would be like a catch and release policy for terrorist that instead should be facing something like the Nuremberg Trials that followed the end of the Second World War. The murderous Hamas terror attack- a surprise attack on Israel 7 October 2023 was comparable to the 9-11 assault on New York and Washington D.C. Many Arab and other Muslim states support global jihad against the west through a variety of means and Israelis their first and foremost target.

When the Second World War concluded the allies sought to remove Nazis from Germany so far as possible. A dozen were hanged after being found guilty of various crimes against humanity. Some other higher ranking members were arrested and sentenced, yet the clear and present danger of Soviet Communism made the wholesale elimination of Nazis impractical although the society of Germany was ideologically cleansed. The state of Israel seeks to pacify the Gaza and Muslim militants vociferously oppose that; instead they regard the entire affair as simply a skirmish in the global war of expansion of Islam- something the Democrat party of the United States has indirectly and sometimes directly supported with its open borders policies and lax immigration enforcement.

 The Biden administration has tripled the number of immigration cases waiting to be heard in federal courts to reach a backlog of three million. It seems weak and unwilling to defend the United States’ sovereignty against the practical measure of slow invasion from illegal entry. U.S. culture is being erased and replaced by a new normal global culture increasingly influenced by those practicing the Muslim religion.

Hamas is a terror organization and like a gang its leadership is compelled to be aggressive. Some of the members of the U.N. would like Israel to quit its effort to remove HAMAS leadership that have the same attitude toward Jews as did Nazis, and let them rebuild their military power with copious donations by sympathetic Muslim states. In that regard the U.N. is comparable to those that sympathized with the Nazi Party following the Second World War, yet they are far worse than was Argentina in allowing safe haven for a few discreet Nazis. They are active propagandist and wicked perpetrators of an effort to obfuscate hatred and international conspiracy to eliminate the Jewish race in the black, unsaved, unrepentant hearts of many Dar al Harb supporting Muslims.

Raphael Lemkin invented the term “genocide” in reflecting on the Armenian Genocide of 1915. A Jewish-Polish attorney, he circulated a pamphlet to the forerunner of the U.N. named The League of nations in 1933. It was rejected. In 1944 he published a book named ‘Axis Rule in Occupied Europe’ . The term genocide was used at the Nuremberg trials and on 9 Dec. 1948 the U.N. made genocide officially a crime within international law. Jews in prosecuting removal of a terror organization spearhead supported by members of the U.N. presently charging Israel with attempted genocide are accomplishing a task the hypocritical, callous and disingenuous corrupt Muslim members of the U.N. supporting the action should be supporting rather than opposing.

Lemkin descried genocide as "a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves". That is the Arab and Palestinian policy toward Israel. The Jewish state on the contrary is simply trying to eliminate the militant leadership that is hiding behind it's own people as if they were human shields. Israelis have already shown a willingness to live with Palestinian culture as neighbors- just not aggressive war like neighbors that invade and slaughter thousands in sneak attacks.

The world will not be a safer place if Nazi like organizations are enfeofed with Muslim support on Israel’s porch fattened annually like war pigs with the fruits of Islamic weaponry and finance.

Heraclitus and the Ukraine-Russia War

 Wars in Europe indicated a failure of intelligence and adaptability in political leadership. That is not surprising in an era of marketing products and people as products. pre-Socratic philosophers were not so superficial. In an age that believes itself wise because of scientific knowledge and quite assertive about rights and litigation, arguments and eros as a matter of course it isn't a paradox that politicians have no interest in understanding an opponent's viewpoint on issues; a necessary step toward avoiding conflict.

"... men know not what they are doing when awake, even as they forget what they do in sleep."- Heraclitus

Heraclitus sought the nature of what exists as a philosophical inquiry. His ideas arrived at monism and apparently he regarded pluralism as contingent being. Russian, Ukrainians want the same things concerning land- to own it, yet for politicians owning land or territory is an absolute and exclusive concern that precludes reason from the social process of adjudication.

Heraclitus stresses the unity of opposites. One of his edifying fragments providing an example of the concept is "Changing; it rests". Politicians should invoke the intelligence of changing the criterion to unify opponents in peace- the new synthesis. Heraclitus also wrote (B12) "Upon those who step into the same rivers different and again different waters flow".

Plainly peace is preferable to war and prosperity to poverty. A healthy environment is better than a sick polluted one and everyone involved loses much time when somewhat equally balanced military conflicts occur in a protracted paradigm lasting years. If reason and problem solving can end conflicts in a way that belligerents can live with that would better serve the world economy and even wholistic, non-partisan ideas of justice.

Heraclitus had several tings to say about opposites merging into the One at some level. One could take that as God creating quarks, fields, mass and virtual energy in an apparent vacuum and allowing energy and mass to take form...though temporal configurations change it, or evolve it as some prefer to say, the process is God's and that which exist is comparatively like a dream.

Russia and Ukraine could have an armistice in place and a race for the political powers to create a plan and discover finance to rebuild all areas of the conflict with a fifty mile wide D.M.Z. and free trade zone roughly divided in half between Ukraine and Russia. Ingenuity and finding ways to expedite peace and prosperity should transpire rather than to allow the visage of Mordor and Doom cloud the land.

Heraclitus said; "The road up and the road down are the same." and "The beginning and the end are common on the circumference of a circle." Those without ossified brains should be able to learn something from Heraclitus.

Heraclitus saw unity through the pluralism evident in all things; "though at variance with itself, it agrees with itself. It is a backwards turning attunement like that of the bow and the lyre". In that he could have been speaking of day and night- different phases of the diurnal solar cycle.

There is a free MOOC course available from which the quotes of Heraclitus were sourced for this post. It's here... https://www.coursera.org/learn/plato?

Ancient Philosophy: Plato & His Predecessors

Heraclitus' Fragments B1

B1 (Sextus Empiricus, Against the mathematicians, VII, 132):

"Though this Word is true evermore, yet men are as unable to understand it when they hear it for the first time as before they have heard it at all. For, though, all things come to pass in accordance with this Word, men seem as if they had no experience of them, when they make trial of words and deeds such as I set forth, dividing each thing according to its nature and showing how it truly is. But other men know not what they are doing when awake, even as they forget what they do in sleep."

B54 (Hippolytus, Refutation of all heresies, IX, 9, 5):

The unseen harmony is better than the visible.

Note on Pragmatism

Pragmatism was invented by Charles Sanders Pierce. Actually he called it pragmaticism. James popularized it. It is more like dead reckoning. I am not confident one could have a doctrine of pragmatism. That would require formalizing good judgment. Consider realpolitik of the 1980s with the way the Biden administration has operated things internationally. I think its far from pragmatic and it doesn't seem to promote general global peace or prosperity. Its kind of a worst case side of things. Consider that what is good for some may be bad for others, The idea of the Democrat Party having a pragmatic doctrine is somewhat laughable- even if they like science selectively. Pierce (pronounced Purse) worked on a tri-electical paradigm for thought advancing ratiocination. I wonder if he was influenced by Marxist dialectics at all.