The Dems like to trot out the official figures for the 2016 elections for President and note the Hillary actually beat Donald in the popular vote even though she was soundly defeated in the Electoral College. Does this mean that more Americans preferred Clinton over Trump? The answer is --ABSOLUTELY NOT.
Why is that? Let us examine how Presidential elections are handled. All candidates for the Presidency know that it is the Electoral College that needs to be won in order to win the office. So what do they do? They concentrate all their resources and time toward that end. They all employ huge staffs working toward that end and hire high priced consultants to map the road to victory headed by a Campaign Manager. They spend untold hours developing strategies based on expensive polls that they commission, in addition to the national polls that are a daily item in the media. So the entire strategy is aimed toward winning the Electoral College.
Using that strategy they concentrate their resources on so called purple states. That is, states that the campaign strategists consider up for grabs. The only reason they visit states they know they can't win or they consider in their pocket is for fund raising.
For instance, and the perfect example, Clinton nor Trump bothered to actually campaign in California, a state that is so Democratic in bleeds blue. The only reason Hillary showed up at all is to wring money from the rich folks in the bay area, Silicon Valley and the entertainment industry, all strong liberal centers and big supporters of the Dems.
California may be unique in that the people running for all state and federal offices, except President, are the two top vote getters from the primary election. I didn't look it up, so I don't know if other states hold their election the same way or not. I wouldn't be surprised if California stood alone in this type of ballot stuffing, but California isn't known as the land of fruits and nuts for no reason.
So, the ballot for the general election had a lot of offices except the President up for election with nothing but Democrats listed. As a side note, almost all state offices in California, such as Secretary of State, Attorney General, are elected. That was almost universal for those big population centers along the coast, stretching from the bay area south to the border. Republicans, in large numbers see no reason to go to the polls. It was a forgone conclusion that Clinton was going to win the Presidential vote in the state and the candidates for the Senate, House, state and local offices along the coasts were all Dems. Only when you get away from the big coastal centers into the interior of the state do you find a Republican presence. But, inland California does not have the population numbers as does the coastal cities.
So the largest state in the union with over 30 million people has pretty much made the Republicans outsiders to the political process for the moment. So in a system where the Electoral College elects the President, their vote has no weight at all. So they don't bother to vote. Most of them live in districts that are heavily Democratic so the their vote don't mean much for the state offices as well as federal.
That type of scenario is played out in other states, probably to lesser extent because they don't have Californians rigged system, where one party of the other has a commanding majority. The candidates spend no time in those states and the minority party is actually discouraged from even showing up at the polls because their vote is meaningless.
So the conclusion one has to reach is that the popular vote means virtually nothing and is not indicative of what most of people think or how they would have voted if they had a reason to vote. So even counting the popular vote on a nation wide basis has no meaning at all.
But what would happen if the Constitution where amended to change the Presidential election to the popular vote? The entire strategy for conducting a campaign would change. In the last election Trump would have campaigned in California and Clinton would have campaigned in Texas. But, they would not have spent any resources at all, of very little, in the smaller states. The partition of the states into red, blue and purple would have no meaning. The candidates would have to campaign where the votes are, i. e. the big population centers. And, the popular vote would have been quite a bit different for the 2016 election. This is not even a possibility now or in the foreseeable future. The small states wouldn't put up with it.
Under those rules the Republicans in California and New York would have a reason to vote. The Democrats in the so called Red states would have a reason to go to the polls.
Whether that's a good thing or not, the founding fathers considered that the election of the President by state rather than by popular vote to be the best choice. After all we are a nation of united states. It is intended that the states would retain all the power except that detailed in the Constitution. They were very much afraid, and rightly so, that if left to the popular vote, the large states would dominate the political process and sweep the small states aside. In the present environment the nation would be ruled by the coastal states with the great heartland of American largely ignored. That was what they wrote into the constitution and that is what the candidates have to live with.
The message is clear. The popular vote is not a meaningful measure of the population as a whole toward the election of the President.
QED
Tuesday, September 19, 2017
Friday, September 8, 2017
North Korea and Kim Jong-un
There seems to be a consensus among the talking heads at the Fox News Network and CNN that North Korea, in the person of Kim Jung-un is crazy, or at least unstable. I think the characterization of the little guy with the funny haircut is far from true. If Kim is crazy he's crazy like a fox.
What he and his father Kim Jong-il and his grandfather Kim Il-Sung have done is played the western world, and the United States in particular, like a well tuned harp.
Perhaps a little review of the history will help. After WWII Korea, after being liberated from Japan, was occupied by two powers. By agreement the United States would occupy territory south of the 38th parallel and the Soviet Union would occupy north of that line. There was some talk about a general election to solidify the country which had the same outcome as the same promises by the Soviets concerning eastern Europe. The Soviets then established a puppet state in the north and named Kim il-Sung as the head. They thought they had a puppet they could control. Later, when they tried to replace him, they found that they had lost control of their puppet.
However, with the Soviets help the North was supported and armed with Soviet military equipment and advisors. The Chinese, glad to have a buffer between a western power and themselves were very supportive of North Korea.
That became really evident when the United Nations forces reached the Yalu River during the Korean War and the Chinese reacted with a huge force. They did not want a western leaning country bordering China. During the Korean War the Chinese warned the Americans not to cross the 38th parallel and move to the borders of China, but MacArthur chose to ignore the warnings. When you look at the present situation, it is evident that feeling is still the overriding consideration of the Chinese today. It drives their foreign policy concerning Korea and the United States/ They will not continence a western power at their borders. It overrides every other consideration. When we think that economics or sanctions will deter the Chinese from that stance, then we're just blowing smoke.
Early on the Kims, articulated by Kim Jong-il, developed the policy of Songun (military first). That policy has been picked up and carried forward by his son Kim Jong-un. As a result the North Koreans have the 4th largest military force in the world. Some 1,106,000 on active duty with 8,389,000 in reserve. They also have huge tank, artillery and mechanized forces. As we all know they now have developed nuclear weapons and the missile force to deliver them.
Why do they spend so much of their countries resources on the military and the hugely expensive program to develop nuclear weapons and ICBMs? The answer is simple. They want to insure that they will not be another Iraq. They watched what happened there and Kim doesn't want to be another Saddam. His position is quite clear. If Iraq had a nuclear arsenal, the Americans would have never have invaded the country. So he sees a nuclear capability and a means to deliver a bomb on the United States itself is the greatest deterrent for aggressive action against his country.
Kim Jong-il managed an agreement with Bill Clinton in 1994 to curtail his nuclear bomb program for aid. It isn't clear he ever did really comply as there was no means to monitor the program. But, when his father died, the push to develop an atomic bomb was accelerated under Kim Jong-un. The United States and most of the western world was decrying their pursuit of atomic weapons, threatening them with sanctions. But, all the wringing of hands by the western powers hasn't made a dent in their efforts. The pundits think that China should step in and put a stop to the effort, but China has it's own agenda. And. China isn't likely to stand by and allow western powers to move against North Korea militarily.
Now they have the bomb, even a thermonuclear version, and a long way toward perfecting the missiles to deliver that bomb directly to the American mainland. They have demonstrated that they can reach Japan already.
So the little guy with the funny haircut is sitting in pretty good position at the moment. He got there because of a lot of missteps by the United States since the end of WWII. I'm afraid we're in a pickle now. Damned if we do and Damned if we don't do something about North Korea. I don't think Kim is suicidal, so I don't think he would unilaterally launch an attack against the United States. But, the North Koreans could sell their technology to rogue nations that have a different view of the world.
What he and his father Kim Jong-il and his grandfather Kim Il-Sung have done is played the western world, and the United States in particular, like a well tuned harp.
Perhaps a little review of the history will help. After WWII Korea, after being liberated from Japan, was occupied by two powers. By agreement the United States would occupy territory south of the 38th parallel and the Soviet Union would occupy north of that line. There was some talk about a general election to solidify the country which had the same outcome as the same promises by the Soviets concerning eastern Europe. The Soviets then established a puppet state in the north and named Kim il-Sung as the head. They thought they had a puppet they could control. Later, when they tried to replace him, they found that they had lost control of their puppet.
However, with the Soviets help the North was supported and armed with Soviet military equipment and advisors. The Chinese, glad to have a buffer between a western power and themselves were very supportive of North Korea.
That became really evident when the United Nations forces reached the Yalu River during the Korean War and the Chinese reacted with a huge force. They did not want a western leaning country bordering China. During the Korean War the Chinese warned the Americans not to cross the 38th parallel and move to the borders of China, but MacArthur chose to ignore the warnings. When you look at the present situation, it is evident that feeling is still the overriding consideration of the Chinese today. It drives their foreign policy concerning Korea and the United States/ They will not continence a western power at their borders. It overrides every other consideration. When we think that economics or sanctions will deter the Chinese from that stance, then we're just blowing smoke.
Early on the Kims, articulated by Kim Jong-il, developed the policy of Songun (military first). That policy has been picked up and carried forward by his son Kim Jong-un. As a result the North Koreans have the 4th largest military force in the world. Some 1,106,000 on active duty with 8,389,000 in reserve. They also have huge tank, artillery and mechanized forces. As we all know they now have developed nuclear weapons and the missile force to deliver them.
Why do they spend so much of their countries resources on the military and the hugely expensive program to develop nuclear weapons and ICBMs? The answer is simple. They want to insure that they will not be another Iraq. They watched what happened there and Kim doesn't want to be another Saddam. His position is quite clear. If Iraq had a nuclear arsenal, the Americans would have never have invaded the country. So he sees a nuclear capability and a means to deliver a bomb on the United States itself is the greatest deterrent for aggressive action against his country.
Kim Jong-il managed an agreement with Bill Clinton in 1994 to curtail his nuclear bomb program for aid. It isn't clear he ever did really comply as there was no means to monitor the program. But, when his father died, the push to develop an atomic bomb was accelerated under Kim Jong-un. The United States and most of the western world was decrying their pursuit of atomic weapons, threatening them with sanctions. But, all the wringing of hands by the western powers hasn't made a dent in their efforts. The pundits think that China should step in and put a stop to the effort, but China has it's own agenda. And. China isn't likely to stand by and allow western powers to move against North Korea militarily.
Now they have the bomb, even a thermonuclear version, and a long way toward perfecting the missiles to deliver that bomb directly to the American mainland. They have demonstrated that they can reach Japan already.
So the little guy with the funny haircut is sitting in pretty good position at the moment. He got there because of a lot of missteps by the United States since the end of WWII. I'm afraid we're in a pickle now. Damned if we do and Damned if we don't do something about North Korea. I don't think Kim is suicidal, so I don't think he would unilaterally launch an attack against the United States. But, the North Koreans could sell their technology to rogue nations that have a different view of the world.
Saturday, August 19, 2017
Religion among the Sons of Abraham. .
Three
great religions today, Christianity, Islam and Judaism all have their
roots in a common source. They all trace back to Biblical Abraham. But,
they have diverted significantly over the years to become distinct in
their own ways due to various factors. But, they all have a couple of
things in common. They all believe in one God and not a multiplicity of
Gods as practiced by other religions. They all depend on a book to tell
them what to do. In every case this book is deemed to be holy, the word
of God. Why? Because somebody, or group of somebodies, said so. They
also have another common thread, throughout their history these three
religions have been highly patriarchal, although in more modern times a
lot of restrictions have been lifted in certain religions. Men were the
bosses and women were bound to obey them. Women were inferior and
segregated in social standing in every way one can think of. In a real
sense women were the property of men, to be bought and sold by their
fathers and their main function seemed to be that of a maid and brood
mare. The thing is that the "holy" books support this condition. The
Muslims, to a some extent, depending on which country you pick, haven't
eased very much on those conditions even in modern times. But, then they
are really a young religion, some 600 hundred years younger than the
Christians. Think back 600 years and the Christians had many of the same
beliefs.
Let us start out by announcing that I am not a biblical scholar, or even close to one, nor have any desire to go that route. What I am is a person curious about history and why things are as they are, although I don't pretend to be a scholar in that area either. The contents of this little treatise may offend some people, maybe a lot of people, who read it. But, I find it interesting.
I don't want to talk about God, or a divine being by any name. I don't know, if fact nobody knows, whether there is a God or not. On the other hand it is impossible to show that God doesn't exist.
Certainly many, maybe most, people fervently believe that there is some divine being that created and controls our world. That this divine being is a personal God that looks after us and can answer our prayers, heal the sick and do other wonderful things for us.
Belief in their God buoys people at a time when they could have collapsed from sorrow or fear. People send their loved ones off this mortal life in the promise of a life after death with the sure knowledge, or at least the hope, that they will be reunited again. That belief sustains them and lets them go on with our lives. It has been said that there are no atheists on the battlefield. And, there are lot of conversions to religion from people facing death from serious illnesses or danger.
Stephen Hawkins said that God wasn't necessary for the creation of the universe. That's true, but when you look at the size and scope of the universe, in which we are such a tiny and insignificant part, it is hard to believe that there wasn't some great plan to this whole thing.
If there was a planner for this vast universe, with all it's natural and physical forces at play, then, I believe, that the planner is so superior and different from us, in every way, that we have absolutely no hope of understanding the planners nature or motivation in creating such a enormous and mysterious world or what we're doing in it. We would have about as much chance knowing the motives and desires of that entity as an gnat would know about us. I have heard the argument that we were created in God's image to worship Him. Now isn't that a whizzer. God needs somebody to worship Him? A being so powerful that he created this vast universe?
It has been said that if God didn't exist, we would create him. We needed God(s) because they explained the unexplainable. Zuess, Thor, Odin, Apollo, Venus, Neptune and a whole host of Gods were imagined to be the cause for the sun to traverse the sky every day, lightning to strike, storms that wrecked ships and terrified people, volcanoes that erupted causing great damage, plaques that wiped out huge populations and almost everything, good and bad, for which mankind did not know the reason.
We had to placate the Gods or they would be mad at us and so we decided that prayers, offerings and sacrifices were necessary to show the Gods that we worshiped them and feared them. That way, we hoped, the Gods would smile down on us and the Sun would rise in the morning, that spring would happen after a cold winter, that the volcano that is near wouldn't erupt, that the battle would be won for our side, the illness afflicting himself or somebody close would be cured and for all kinds of other reasons. That practice of sacrifice reached epoch proportions in some societies with the Aztecs sacrificing thousands of people to their God to curry His favor.
The need for God(s) gave rise to religions because mankind must somehow formalize their beliefs. With religion however, came the need to communicate with God(s) and know what was wanted of them. Ergo, the rise of Prophets, Elders and the Priesthood, or something like them, that purports to have direct pipe line to God and knows His will. Alexander never made a move without consulting the Oracle. Caesar made sacrifices to the Gods before every battle. The Pope is said to be infallible in matters of faith. Catholic Priests can forgive sin. Mohammad was visited by Gabriel an Angel direct from Allah. The position of the church leaders in religion gave this group great wealth and powers in the affairs of men. What followed, of course, by the established church powers, was that they would go to any means to maintain and even increase that power. Rebellion against that idea when it grew to excess is what spawned the Jesus movement among the Jews, after all Jesus was really rebelling against the established church, and the Protestant movement in the Christian church. The Jewish Priests wanted Jesus killed and you've heard of the Inquisition, the church powers struck back with a vengeance at the threat to their position, all in name of God of course.
The rise of religions have also resulted in killings on a massive scale and sometimes genocide. The Jews did not just win battles in their conquest of the Holy Land, the killed every man, woman and child in the conquered cities, or so the Bible says. The Crusaders slaughtered the Muslims when they captured cities. The Turks tried their best to eliminate the Armenians. The Germans, with help of the Poles, French and conquered Ukraine did their best to solve the "Jewish" problem with mass executions of Jews. The Czar of Russia drove the Jews from their homes of many years. Muslims have strapped explosives to their bodies or flew planes into tall buildings in order to kill those that don't believe as they do. The Muslims and the Hindus did their best to kill each other upon the exit of the British from India and the establishment of the independent India and Pakistan. All in Gods name of course, or so they were instructed.
Christian slave owners and the whole southern population avowed that it was God's will that Blacks were made inferior and should be kept in slavery, after all they were the children of Ham. Even after emancipation, that line of reasoning was being preached from the pulpit in southern churches for many generations to support the idea that blacks were inferior and should be segregated.
The French Catholics tried to slaughter the Protestant Huguenots while the English Protestants were making war on the Catholics.
At the root of all these events was the teaching of their various religions.
So, religion. while on one hand granted great comfort to individuals, it has caused untold misery to millions.
Have you ever noticed that the God(s) are just like us, filled with easily recognized human emotions. Not surprising because we created them in our image. They get jealous, they get mad, they demand that they be worshiped. The stories of Odin and Thor and the Greek Gods adopted by the Romans, is a story of strife, jealousy, love, wars and all the other conditions that we are familiar with.
Look at the old testament and the story of Job and Abraham and his son. Both of those stories are about a God that is subject to vanity. The Abraham and Job stories are about God wanting to prove to Lucifer that they would be faithful to him no matter what he inflicted upon them. Strange that an all powerful being would feel the need to do that. Sounds very human doesn't it? If a human King had inflicted those trials on one of their subjects we would call him a monster.
The Tower of Babble story is the story of a God who got angry at the people and scattered them to the winds, resulting in the development of all the different languages that we speak. Of course that was really just a story to explain why every one didn't speak the same language.
In fact, the Hebrew Bible and Old Testament in the Christian Bible is a story of a wrathful God who punished the people when they didn't act according to his wishes. That's the story of Noah, the punishment of Adam and Eve being banished from Eden, of Sodom and Gomorrah and Lots wife and even the story of Moses who was not allowed to enter the promised land.
Strangely the God of the New Testament is a kind and merciful God who sent his son among us to atone for our sins. Not sure how being crucified on a cross atones for the sins of persons who rob, kill and generally wrecks havoc on his fellow man. It's almost like the God of the New Testament was a new God.
Look at Genesis in the Hebrew and Old Testament of the Christian Bible. That book is full of interesting stories. In the very beginning God created a man, Adam, and then removed a rib from Adam and created Eve. All was peachy keen, living carefree in the Garden of Eden where there was no want, pain or any other bad thing. They had one mandate. Don't eat the fruit from the tree of knowledge. But, Eve tempted Adam to eat the fruit because it was so delicious. You know the story from there. The mystery is: What was so special about the tree of knowledge. It is often considered that what the story was really about was SEX. Eve tempted Adam into having sex with her. So Eve, and by inference all women, were temptresses who will tempt men into sin and damning their souls. That gave rise to all kinds of restrictions on women in the religions of the sons of Abraham.
The other neat story is the Cain and Abel tale. Cain and Abel made a sacrifice to God from the area of their labor. But, God didn't favor Cain because he only sacrificed the produce he grew in the fields, while Abel was favored because he scarified a lamb. That really doesn't make any sense does it? Cain was giving him the product of his hard labor while Abel, with much easier job as a shepherd gave him something that required little effort on his part. But, the idea of blood sacrifice was required by the pagan religions in those days so the ancient peoples understood that story. Cain then slew Abel in a jealous rage and was driven to wander and to take a wife and live in the land of Nod which was east of Eden. He was given the Mark of Cain to insure the people wouldn't kill him because he was hated. Wait a minute. Adam and Eve, according the Hebrew and Christian Bible, were supposed to be the first people on earth with only their children alive. Where did the woman that became Cain's wife come from? Did he marry his sister? And where did the land of Nod come from? Who were the people who were a threat to Cain? Apparently there was a whole civilization to the east of Eden that gets only honorable mention. Interesting. Some early writings had an answer for that, but the those stories were not included in the current Bible. They required that Eve actually be the second wife to Adam. But, that's another story.
And then, there is the creation story, which is not plausible to say the least. At least if taken literally. Bible purest have dated the age of the universe to be something like six thousand years. If one took the Bible literally that might hold up. But, there is so much scientific evidence that puts that premise to be false. In fact, only a few of the stories in the old testament are supported by archeological findings, mostly the newer events.
Take the story of Moses. A fun story. But, there is no archeological evidence that there was significant presence of Jews in Egypt at the time that is attributed to Moses (The New Kingdom). Remember the number of Jews that left Egypt was supposed to be in the order Six Hundred Thousand men (Exodus 12:37-38). That meant the number of Jews in the exodus would number something in the order of one and half to two million people when you include the women, children and non Israelite's exiting from Egypt and roaming the Sinai for 40 years. No archeological evidence exists to support the presence of Jews traveling in the Sinai, and with that many people traveling through out a locale for so long, it is certain they would have left evidence of their presence behind. But, at the same time there is significant evidence of Jews in Canon and in Sumeria . In addition, imagine the significant impact on the economy of any nation if that large a labor force left at one time. After all the population of Egypt at the time was somewhere around 3 to 4 million Egyptians.
And, there is no record of any economic impact on Egypt in the time frame. Most historians believe that the Moses story is largely fiction, but there likely is a grain of truth in the story somewhere.
Then there is Noah. Another fun story to entertain kids in Sunday School. It doesn't take much of a search into the history of the earth to know that there was no flood that covered the earth at any time that humanoids walked here. The story probably grew out of stories of big floods, which at times did happen, and the discovery of fossils of sea creatures high on mountains. Having no knowledge of plate tectonics, the only conclusion they reached was that, sometime in the past, great oceans covered the earth for a time. At least that's one theory as to how the Noah story evolved.
Even these stories don't compare to the Jonah and the Whale story. The idea that some body could be swallowed by a whale and survive in it's belly really stretches the imagination.
Of the three religions with common roots, only two have a mandate to go out and convert everybody they come in contact with, by force or any other way. Islam and Christianity was spread at the point of a sword. The Jews, however, are a clannish bunch and closely guard the walls of their religion. After all, they are the Chosen People, although, based on their history I'm not sure what they were chosen for. Perhaps they were chosen to be persecuted, slaughtered and driven from one land to another after the Christians became dominate in western and eastern Europe. And, today they have whole nations of Muslims on their backs calling for their annihilation. It must be nice to be chosen.
Of the three, the Jews are the oldest of the religions. Their holy book is a collection of stories handed down for generations by word of mouth, and finally, some, no way of knowing how many, where collected into a single scroll or book, the Tanakh. I couldn't figure out when that happened, perhaps as early as the 5th century BCE. A Bible scholar may know the answer to that but, I don't think it's all that important.
There were certainly stories that were not included in that book, but were left out because they didn't support the ideas that the people who started bringing the stories together liked. There is no way to ever know, but knowing just a little bit about human nature argues that many tales that were part of the oral tradition would be left out of the "Official" book. Multiple stories about the creation are common everywhere. All the religions of the world, including those in the New World, have different creation stories.We need them to explain the how and why we are here.
The tales that made into the Hebrew Bible are in many ways just tales to teach that it is good to be faithful to God. But, the main thrust of the book is to relate the history of the Jewish people and their relationship with their God, even though many of the tales are suspect, to say the least. Note, I said Their God. The First Commandment delivered by Moses for the Jewish people was that He was their Lord and that they should have no other Gods before Him. It is interesting that the Commandment doesn't say that He was the only God, only that He was their God. Not surprising when you consider at the time of creation of the Commandments, many God's proliferated the known world.
The Jews have evolved a long string of traditions through the years. I think that many of the those traditions transcend the several Jewish sects that have developed, but on the other hand different sects within Judaism have diverged. When you consider that history of the Hebrew Bible and it's evolution through the centuries, it is easy to see where stories told and handed down would get embellished and changed to fit whatever message the tale teller wished to convey as the traditions of their faith became solidified and traditions grew. Even after the stories were written down, to copy them would require a scribe to do so by hand, so they would be very rare. It would be typical that people who could read the written account would then retell the story to others. And, among the listeners would be be someone who would put the tale to papyrus, or whatever the medium that was used at time. Another chance for someone to put a spin on the story.
However, somewhere along the line they began to view the written versions as sacred and became very careful to accurately copy the text. That is known because the comparison of the newer versions to the oldest known texts are very faithful, it's just the oldest known texts are relatively new considering the time span of the Jewish religion.
The story of how the current Christian Bible evolved and finally set in stone is an interesting one. Anybody who thinks there was agreement among the various Christian branches in the early church hasn't read history. In fact Christians were killing each other over their differences. There was real disagreement on the nature of Jesus, Mary, the trinity, women's role in the church and many other issues. As everybody is aware now, there were many gospels, most of them having one of the Disciples names attached, that were floating around in the first 3 centuries of the Christian churches. None of them actually written by the Disciples, in fact no one knows who actually wrote the Gospels, but they were apparently created some 30 to 150 years after the death of Jesus. We know about a few of them because of the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls and other discoveries in the last century or so. There is no way of knowing how many others were destroyed as being heretical. After the Church took power, all Gospels not included in the approved canon were ordered destroyed and to possess them was a death sentence, let alone to read them in church.
The Emperor Constantine, a recent convert (probably, maybe) to Christianity, noted that there was no consistent and uniform consensus concerning many of the fundamental issues in the Christian church among it's many different followers. He wanted to use the growing Christian religion as a unifying force for his empire. So he called a council of leading church figures (the Bishops of the major church centers) to define what should be taught as official Christian theology.
The first attempt to officially define the nature of Jesus, the Trinity and Mary was tackled at the Council Nicea (c.325 CE) chaired by the Emperor Constantine. Up to then there was no recorded effort or serious attempt to reign in the various beliefs prevalent among the Christians. Either some of the major branches of Christianity were not invited or chose not to attend, as there is no record of the Gnostic's or any other branch attending. Only those branches that had embraced a Priesthood with a defined hierarchy got their say in the council. After all, Constantine wanted a church that he could control and without a strict hierarchy that would have been hard to do. Constantine set himself up as the head of the church.
Various synods were convened after that and after about a one hundred year evolution from the time of Constantine, as to which books would be included in the bible and considered holy, was most likely finalized under the the direction of Augustine of Hippo at the synods of Hippo (c.383) and two synods of Carthage (c 397 and 419). Of course, this was an all Catholic, all male get together, so it isn't surprising that the Gospel according to Mary Magdalene was excluded. It presented a position that could not be tolerated, by giving women a prominent place in the Christian Church. The Gospel according to Thomas was also left out because it may have cast doubt on some of the other stories that were in the final Bible. The Gospel according to Peter presented a resurrection story that the bishops didn't care for. The Gospel of Judas didn't make it because it told a different story of the events leading up to the crucifixion. Several others didn't make the cut, including the Gospel according to James.
They liked the story in Revelations, even though they really had no idea who wrote it, and we still don't. Somebody named John? It scared the population and gave power to the church. It should be noted that the concepts of Hell and a great battle was not a new one. It was an old tradition among many religions. In fact a lot of the story in Revelations could have been borrowed from Pagan tales that told a story along the same lines. By the way, Armageddon is a place not an event.
One can not talk about Christianity without talking about Paul, or Saul if you wish. He was the most influential writer and Apostle of Jesus in the early church. He was the one who brought the gentiles into the church where before him, it was common that only Jews were welcomed.
Almost half the books in the New Testament are attributed to Paul. In his writings he drew heavily on Stoic writings to express his view of the message of Jesus. Most people know that Paul never met Jesus, except the resurrected Jesus, according to him, that moved him to convert, so everything he knew was second hand.
There is no way of knowing how much of his theology was actually taken from any contact he had with 12 Disciples or was his own ideas about what the Christian Church should be, heavily influenced by Stoic writings.
Paul traveled widely over the middle east and into Spain to preach his message as well as writing the letters that appear in the New Testament. He, more than any of the 12 original Apostles, was responsible for the spread of Christianity over the Roman world.
However, women can thank Paul, or someone writing in his name, for many of the restrictions placed on them in the developing Christian Church.
From Wikipedia:
"The second chapter of the first letter to Timothy—one of the six disputed letters—is used by many churches to deny women a vote in church affairs, reject women from serving as teachers of adult Bible classes, prevent them from serving as missionaries, and generally disenfranchise women from the duties and privileges of church leadership.
Central the the Christian creed are a couple of things related to Jesus. First of all, did a man, we now call Jesus, actually exist? Some scholars believe that Jesus is really just a merger of the teachings of several Rabbis or philosophers that were brought together and attributed to a fictional person. That one is hard to swallow. Just too many people wrote about what he said and did in a relatively short time after his death. The Gospels were written in a period of 30 to maybe 150 years after the crucifixion. Also, Paul's letters probably started a bit earlier. There was time to spin and embellish the message the Rabbi was teaching, but not enough to invent him out of whole cloth.
One of the sticking points, if one tries to correlate the Bibles version of the birth of Jesus with known history, is that the story doesn't actually hold water. To start with, Mary and Joseph was said to have come to Bethlehem because the Romans demanded that everybody return to the place of their birth for a census. The problem is that there is no record of the Romans asking for a census at that time and, to add confusion to the story, that is not the way the Romans conducted their censuses. Remember, the Romans were very good at keeping records and census was always conducted in place. So, if they came to Bethlehem, they came for a far different reason than given in the Bible.
And why Bethlehem? It was necessary for the story that the Messiah to be born in the City of David. That was the prophecy. So whether Jesus was actually born in Bethlehem or not, the story required that he was when it was decided that he was the Messiah. Many scholars don't believe he ever saw Bethlehem as a young child, that the story was just an artifact to enhance the Messiah image.
It is probable that Mathew was the first Gospel actually written (although some scholars believe it was Mark) and whoever wrote the other Gospels merely copied it- sort of. What's interesting is that the two accounts of Jesus's birth in Mathew and Luke (the only two Gospels that address the subject) don't match. One has the shepherds visited by the Angels scene and the other has the Wise Men (Magi) scene.
We love our nativity plays which have the Wise Men, sometimes depicted as Kings, being drawn by a bright star to the baby Jesus as he lay in his manger. The problem is the Bible doesn't support that scenario. According to the Bible Jesus was about 2 years old when the Wise Men, actually Astrologers, visited Herod and asked about the new King of the Jews. Herod then supposedly had all the male children under 2 years old in the city of Bethlehem slain. From all historical records Herod was certainly capable of that atrocity. The fact that there is no record of it, if it happened, isn't too surprising. After all Bethlehem was just a small village which probably had no more than 10 or so boys that fit that category.
Mary and Joseph fled Bethlehem to escape Herod and went to Egypt. They returned to Israel after the death of Herod about two years later. We heard little of Jesus until He had an epiphany at around the age of 30 years. Considering the average age of mankind at the time, that would make Him very mature. He then started moving though Israel/Judea to preach his message.
His main points were probably best expressed in the passage set as the Sermon on the Mount. It is likely that never really happened, but was a artifact used by the writer of Mathew to bring together the things that Jesus said over a period of time to his Disciples in a concise manner. It doesn't lessen the message, just how it was delivered.
From about the fourth century, for a long while, there was only one Christian Church of any consequence, the Catholics. But, there was disagreement between the western church centered in Rome and the Eastern Catholics, sometimes called the Eastern Orthodox, centered in Constantinople. This disagreement resulted in the east-west schism in 1054 CE which officially separated the eastern from the western church. Then Martin Luther wrote the "ninety-five theses", got excommunicated from the church as a result and the Protestants were born.They in turn have splintered into a number of different denominations, all with a little different idea of what the Scriptures actually say and mean.
While there is clearly no idea who actually wrote the books of the Hebrew Bible or the Gospels of the Christian New Testament, there is no doubt who wrote the Quran.
Mohammad born in 560 CE often went a cave to pray and meditate. At about age 40 he had his first revelation from the Angel Gabriel informing him of God's laws and how the faithful should live. He proclaimed himself the last Prophet of God following in the tradition going back to Adam. He gathered a small army about him, overrun the city of his birth, Mecca, in 622 CE and from there spread the faith of Islam over the middle east. It's really in interesting story. It's too bad the Muslims are so hung up about the use of Mohammad's image in almost any form, that the story is not well known. A movie was made about his life, but due to threats it was never released.
As usual with visitations of Saints, Angels or God himself to some individual, there is no witnesses to the act. They are usually in a remote place to a single individual, sometimes a cave or grotto. Or on top of a mountain or in the desert. It's up to the individual to decide whether those events actually happened, were they the imagination of some person, a hallucination or even a fraud.
Let us start out by announcing that I am not a biblical scholar, or even close to one, nor have any desire to go that route. What I am is a person curious about history and why things are as they are, although I don't pretend to be a scholar in that area either. The contents of this little treatise may offend some people, maybe a lot of people, who read it. But, I find it interesting.
I don't want to talk about God, or a divine being by any name. I don't know, if fact nobody knows, whether there is a God or not. On the other hand it is impossible to show that God doesn't exist.
Certainly many, maybe most, people fervently believe that there is some divine being that created and controls our world. That this divine being is a personal God that looks after us and can answer our prayers, heal the sick and do other wonderful things for us.
Belief in their God buoys people at a time when they could have collapsed from sorrow or fear. People send their loved ones off this mortal life in the promise of a life after death with the sure knowledge, or at least the hope, that they will be reunited again. That belief sustains them and lets them go on with our lives. It has been said that there are no atheists on the battlefield. And, there are lot of conversions to religion from people facing death from serious illnesses or danger.
Stephen Hawkins said that God wasn't necessary for the creation of the universe. That's true, but when you look at the size and scope of the universe, in which we are such a tiny and insignificant part, it is hard to believe that there wasn't some great plan to this whole thing.
If there was a planner for this vast universe, with all it's natural and physical forces at play, then, I believe, that the planner is so superior and different from us, in every way, that we have absolutely no hope of understanding the planners nature or motivation in creating such a enormous and mysterious world or what we're doing in it. We would have about as much chance knowing the motives and desires of that entity as an gnat would know about us. I have heard the argument that we were created in God's image to worship Him. Now isn't that a whizzer. God needs somebody to worship Him? A being so powerful that he created this vast universe?
It has been said that if God didn't exist, we would create him. We needed God(s) because they explained the unexplainable. Zuess, Thor, Odin, Apollo, Venus, Neptune and a whole host of Gods were imagined to be the cause for the sun to traverse the sky every day, lightning to strike, storms that wrecked ships and terrified people, volcanoes that erupted causing great damage, plaques that wiped out huge populations and almost everything, good and bad, for which mankind did not know the reason.
We had to placate the Gods or they would be mad at us and so we decided that prayers, offerings and sacrifices were necessary to show the Gods that we worshiped them and feared them. That way, we hoped, the Gods would smile down on us and the Sun would rise in the morning, that spring would happen after a cold winter, that the volcano that is near wouldn't erupt, that the battle would be won for our side, the illness afflicting himself or somebody close would be cured and for all kinds of other reasons. That practice of sacrifice reached epoch proportions in some societies with the Aztecs sacrificing thousands of people to their God to curry His favor.
The need for God(s) gave rise to religions because mankind must somehow formalize their beliefs. With religion however, came the need to communicate with God(s) and know what was wanted of them. Ergo, the rise of Prophets, Elders and the Priesthood, or something like them, that purports to have direct pipe line to God and knows His will. Alexander never made a move without consulting the Oracle. Caesar made sacrifices to the Gods before every battle. The Pope is said to be infallible in matters of faith. Catholic Priests can forgive sin. Mohammad was visited by Gabriel an Angel direct from Allah. The position of the church leaders in religion gave this group great wealth and powers in the affairs of men. What followed, of course, by the established church powers, was that they would go to any means to maintain and even increase that power. Rebellion against that idea when it grew to excess is what spawned the Jesus movement among the Jews, after all Jesus was really rebelling against the established church, and the Protestant movement in the Christian church. The Jewish Priests wanted Jesus killed and you've heard of the Inquisition, the church powers struck back with a vengeance at the threat to their position, all in name of God of course.
The rise of religions have also resulted in killings on a massive scale and sometimes genocide. The Jews did not just win battles in their conquest of the Holy Land, the killed every man, woman and child in the conquered cities, or so the Bible says. The Crusaders slaughtered the Muslims when they captured cities. The Turks tried their best to eliminate the Armenians. The Germans, with help of the Poles, French and conquered Ukraine did their best to solve the "Jewish" problem with mass executions of Jews. The Czar of Russia drove the Jews from their homes of many years. Muslims have strapped explosives to their bodies or flew planes into tall buildings in order to kill those that don't believe as they do. The Muslims and the Hindus did their best to kill each other upon the exit of the British from India and the establishment of the independent India and Pakistan. All in Gods name of course, or so they were instructed.
Christian slave owners and the whole southern population avowed that it was God's will that Blacks were made inferior and should be kept in slavery, after all they were the children of Ham. Even after emancipation, that line of reasoning was being preached from the pulpit in southern churches for many generations to support the idea that blacks were inferior and should be segregated.
The French Catholics tried to slaughter the Protestant Huguenots while the English Protestants were making war on the Catholics.
At the root of all these events was the teaching of their various religions.
So, religion. while on one hand granted great comfort to individuals, it has caused untold misery to millions.
Have you ever noticed that the God(s) are just like us, filled with easily recognized human emotions. Not surprising because we created them in our image. They get jealous, they get mad, they demand that they be worshiped. The stories of Odin and Thor and the Greek Gods adopted by the Romans, is a story of strife, jealousy, love, wars and all the other conditions that we are familiar with.
Look at the old testament and the story of Job and Abraham and his son. Both of those stories are about a God that is subject to vanity. The Abraham and Job stories are about God wanting to prove to Lucifer that they would be faithful to him no matter what he inflicted upon them. Strange that an all powerful being would feel the need to do that. Sounds very human doesn't it? If a human King had inflicted those trials on one of their subjects we would call him a monster.
The Tower of Babble story is the story of a God who got angry at the people and scattered them to the winds, resulting in the development of all the different languages that we speak. Of course that was really just a story to explain why every one didn't speak the same language.
In fact, the Hebrew Bible and Old Testament in the Christian Bible is a story of a wrathful God who punished the people when they didn't act according to his wishes. That's the story of Noah, the punishment of Adam and Eve being banished from Eden, of Sodom and Gomorrah and Lots wife and even the story of Moses who was not allowed to enter the promised land.
Strangely the God of the New Testament is a kind and merciful God who sent his son among us to atone for our sins. Not sure how being crucified on a cross atones for the sins of persons who rob, kill and generally wrecks havoc on his fellow man. It's almost like the God of the New Testament was a new God.
Look at Genesis in the Hebrew and Old Testament of the Christian Bible. That book is full of interesting stories. In the very beginning God created a man, Adam, and then removed a rib from Adam and created Eve. All was peachy keen, living carefree in the Garden of Eden where there was no want, pain or any other bad thing. They had one mandate. Don't eat the fruit from the tree of knowledge. But, Eve tempted Adam to eat the fruit because it was so delicious. You know the story from there. The mystery is: What was so special about the tree of knowledge. It is often considered that what the story was really about was SEX. Eve tempted Adam into having sex with her. So Eve, and by inference all women, were temptresses who will tempt men into sin and damning their souls. That gave rise to all kinds of restrictions on women in the religions of the sons of Abraham.
The other neat story is the Cain and Abel tale. Cain and Abel made a sacrifice to God from the area of their labor. But, God didn't favor Cain because he only sacrificed the produce he grew in the fields, while Abel was favored because he scarified a lamb. That really doesn't make any sense does it? Cain was giving him the product of his hard labor while Abel, with much easier job as a shepherd gave him something that required little effort on his part. But, the idea of blood sacrifice was required by the pagan religions in those days so the ancient peoples understood that story. Cain then slew Abel in a jealous rage and was driven to wander and to take a wife and live in the land of Nod which was east of Eden. He was given the Mark of Cain to insure the people wouldn't kill him because he was hated. Wait a minute. Adam and Eve, according the Hebrew and Christian Bible, were supposed to be the first people on earth with only their children alive. Where did the woman that became Cain's wife come from? Did he marry his sister? And where did the land of Nod come from? Who were the people who were a threat to Cain? Apparently there was a whole civilization to the east of Eden that gets only honorable mention. Interesting. Some early writings had an answer for that, but the those stories were not included in the current Bible. They required that Eve actually be the second wife to Adam. But, that's another story.
And then, there is the creation story, which is not plausible to say the least. At least if taken literally. Bible purest have dated the age of the universe to be something like six thousand years. If one took the Bible literally that might hold up. But, there is so much scientific evidence that puts that premise to be false. In fact, only a few of the stories in the old testament are supported by archeological findings, mostly the newer events.
Take the story of Moses. A fun story. But, there is no archeological evidence that there was significant presence of Jews in Egypt at the time that is attributed to Moses (The New Kingdom). Remember the number of Jews that left Egypt was supposed to be in the order Six Hundred Thousand men (Exodus 12:37-38). That meant the number of Jews in the exodus would number something in the order of one and half to two million people when you include the women, children and non Israelite's exiting from Egypt and roaming the Sinai for 40 years. No archeological evidence exists to support the presence of Jews traveling in the Sinai, and with that many people traveling through out a locale for so long, it is certain they would have left evidence of their presence behind. But, at the same time there is significant evidence of Jews in Canon and in Sumeria . In addition, imagine the significant impact on the economy of any nation if that large a labor force left at one time. After all the population of Egypt at the time was somewhere around 3 to 4 million Egyptians.
And, there is no record of any economic impact on Egypt in the time frame. Most historians believe that the Moses story is largely fiction, but there likely is a grain of truth in the story somewhere.
Then there is Noah. Another fun story to entertain kids in Sunday School. It doesn't take much of a search into the history of the earth to know that there was no flood that covered the earth at any time that humanoids walked here. The story probably grew out of stories of big floods, which at times did happen, and the discovery of fossils of sea creatures high on mountains. Having no knowledge of plate tectonics, the only conclusion they reached was that, sometime in the past, great oceans covered the earth for a time. At least that's one theory as to how the Noah story evolved.
Even these stories don't compare to the Jonah and the Whale story. The idea that some body could be swallowed by a whale and survive in it's belly really stretches the imagination.
Of the three religions with common roots, only two have a mandate to go out and convert everybody they come in contact with, by force or any other way. Islam and Christianity was spread at the point of a sword. The Jews, however, are a clannish bunch and closely guard the walls of their religion. After all, they are the Chosen People, although, based on their history I'm not sure what they were chosen for. Perhaps they were chosen to be persecuted, slaughtered and driven from one land to another after the Christians became dominate in western and eastern Europe. And, today they have whole nations of Muslims on their backs calling for their annihilation. It must be nice to be chosen.
Of the three, the Jews are the oldest of the religions. Their holy book is a collection of stories handed down for generations by word of mouth, and finally, some, no way of knowing how many, where collected into a single scroll or book, the Tanakh. I couldn't figure out when that happened, perhaps as early as the 5th century BCE. A Bible scholar may know the answer to that but, I don't think it's all that important.
There were certainly stories that were not included in that book, but were left out because they didn't support the ideas that the people who started bringing the stories together liked. There is no way to ever know, but knowing just a little bit about human nature argues that many tales that were part of the oral tradition would be left out of the "Official" book. Multiple stories about the creation are common everywhere. All the religions of the world, including those in the New World, have different creation stories.We need them to explain the how and why we are here.
The tales that made into the Hebrew Bible are in many ways just tales to teach that it is good to be faithful to God. But, the main thrust of the book is to relate the history of the Jewish people and their relationship with their God, even though many of the tales are suspect, to say the least. Note, I said Their God. The First Commandment delivered by Moses for the Jewish people was that He was their Lord and that they should have no other Gods before Him. It is interesting that the Commandment doesn't say that He was the only God, only that He was their God. Not surprising when you consider at the time of creation of the Commandments, many God's proliferated the known world.
The Jews have evolved a long string of traditions through the years. I think that many of the those traditions transcend the several Jewish sects that have developed, but on the other hand different sects within Judaism have diverged. When you consider that history of the Hebrew Bible and it's evolution through the centuries, it is easy to see where stories told and handed down would get embellished and changed to fit whatever message the tale teller wished to convey as the traditions of their faith became solidified and traditions grew. Even after the stories were written down, to copy them would require a scribe to do so by hand, so they would be very rare. It would be typical that people who could read the written account would then retell the story to others. And, among the listeners would be be someone who would put the tale to papyrus, or whatever the medium that was used at time. Another chance for someone to put a spin on the story.
However, somewhere along the line they began to view the written versions as sacred and became very careful to accurately copy the text. That is known because the comparison of the newer versions to the oldest known texts are very faithful, it's just the oldest known texts are relatively new considering the time span of the Jewish religion.
The story of how the current Christian Bible evolved and finally set in stone is an interesting one. Anybody who thinks there was agreement among the various Christian branches in the early church hasn't read history. In fact Christians were killing each other over their differences. There was real disagreement on the nature of Jesus, Mary, the trinity, women's role in the church and many other issues. As everybody is aware now, there were many gospels, most of them having one of the Disciples names attached, that were floating around in the first 3 centuries of the Christian churches. None of them actually written by the Disciples, in fact no one knows who actually wrote the Gospels, but they were apparently created some 30 to 150 years after the death of Jesus. We know about a few of them because of the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls and other discoveries in the last century or so. There is no way of knowing how many others were destroyed as being heretical. After the Church took power, all Gospels not included in the approved canon were ordered destroyed and to possess them was a death sentence, let alone to read them in church.
The Emperor Constantine, a recent convert (probably, maybe) to Christianity, noted that there was no consistent and uniform consensus concerning many of the fundamental issues in the Christian church among it's many different followers. He wanted to use the growing Christian religion as a unifying force for his empire. So he called a council of leading church figures (the Bishops of the major church centers) to define what should be taught as official Christian theology.
The first attempt to officially define the nature of Jesus, the Trinity and Mary was tackled at the Council Nicea (c.325 CE) chaired by the Emperor Constantine. Up to then there was no recorded effort or serious attempt to reign in the various beliefs prevalent among the Christians. Either some of the major branches of Christianity were not invited or chose not to attend, as there is no record of the Gnostic's or any other branch attending. Only those branches that had embraced a Priesthood with a defined hierarchy got their say in the council. After all, Constantine wanted a church that he could control and without a strict hierarchy that would have been hard to do. Constantine set himself up as the head of the church.
Various synods were convened after that and after about a one hundred year evolution from the time of Constantine, as to which books would be included in the bible and considered holy, was most likely finalized under the the direction of Augustine of Hippo at the synods of Hippo (c.383) and two synods of Carthage (c 397 and 419). Of course, this was an all Catholic, all male get together, so it isn't surprising that the Gospel according to Mary Magdalene was excluded. It presented a position that could not be tolerated, by giving women a prominent place in the Christian Church. The Gospel according to Thomas was also left out because it may have cast doubt on some of the other stories that were in the final Bible. The Gospel according to Peter presented a resurrection story that the bishops didn't care for. The Gospel of Judas didn't make it because it told a different story of the events leading up to the crucifixion. Several others didn't make the cut, including the Gospel according to James.
They liked the story in Revelations, even though they really had no idea who wrote it, and we still don't. Somebody named John? It scared the population and gave power to the church. It should be noted that the concepts of Hell and a great battle was not a new one. It was an old tradition among many religions. In fact a lot of the story in Revelations could have been borrowed from Pagan tales that told a story along the same lines. By the way, Armageddon is a place not an event.
One can not talk about Christianity without talking about Paul, or Saul if you wish. He was the most influential writer and Apostle of Jesus in the early church. He was the one who brought the gentiles into the church where before him, it was common that only Jews were welcomed.
Almost half the books in the New Testament are attributed to Paul. In his writings he drew heavily on Stoic writings to express his view of the message of Jesus. Most people know that Paul never met Jesus, except the resurrected Jesus, according to him, that moved him to convert, so everything he knew was second hand.
There is no way of knowing how much of his theology was actually taken from any contact he had with 12 Disciples or was his own ideas about what the Christian Church should be, heavily influenced by Stoic writings.
Paul traveled widely over the middle east and into Spain to preach his message as well as writing the letters that appear in the New Testament. He, more than any of the 12 original Apostles, was responsible for the spread of Christianity over the Roman world.
However, women can thank Paul, or someone writing in his name, for many of the restrictions placed on them in the developing Christian Church.
From Wikipedia:
"The second chapter of the first letter to Timothy—one of the six disputed letters—is used by many churches to deny women a vote in church affairs, reject women from serving as teachers of adult Bible classes, prevent them from serving as missionaries, and generally disenfranchise women from the duties and privileges of church leadership.
9 In like manner also, that women adorn themselves in modest apparel,
with shame facedness and sobriety; not with broided hair, or gold, or
pearls, or costly array;
10 But (which becometh women professing godliness) with good works.
11 Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection.
12 But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.
13 For Adam was first formed, then Eve.
14 And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression.
15 Notwithstanding she shall be saved in childbearing, if they continue in faith and charity and holiness with sobriety."
It seems that Paul was a product of his day.
The Catholics, both the Roman and Eastern versions blamed the Jews for the crucifixion of Jesus. Luke said so. But, historically that can not be accurate. The story of the trial and crucifixion of Jesus, doesn't hold water. Pilate in washing his hands of the matter, would have made the crucifixion impossible. Only a Roman magistrate could convict a person to be crucified, and then only for violating Roman Law. And they were good at it. The Jew's Priests did not have that authority. In fact Pilate declared that Jesus was not guilty of violating Roman Law. Let's get real, why would Pilate, the Roman Governor be called on to judge such a minor case anyway. After all, he was the Governor of the province, only one step from the Emperor. It is thought by many modern bible scholars that the person, or persons who wrote the Gospel according to Luke did not dare blame the Romans. After all the Romans ruled Israel with an iron fist at the time. Jesus was likely to have been actually found guilty of sedition under Roman Law by some Roman magistrate, which would have merited the crucifixion. But, adding Pilate to the story added spice, and gave the story greater importance. It should be noted that crucifixions were very common under the Romans so the crucifixion of Jesus would not have been special to the population at large. And, of course, the Christian used this story to persecute the Jews through most of the last two thousand years.
When one looks at the way the Christian Bible was put together, one wonders just how much God had to do with the final version and how much was the direct influence of men with their own agenda. Probably with good intentions, but swayed by their own biases and prejudices. 10 But (which becometh women professing godliness) with good works.
11 Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection.
12 But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.
13 For Adam was first formed, then Eve.
14 And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression.
15 Notwithstanding she shall be saved in childbearing, if they continue in faith and charity and holiness with sobriety."
It seems that Paul was a product of his day.
The Catholics, both the Roman and Eastern versions blamed the Jews for the crucifixion of Jesus. Luke said so. But, historically that can not be accurate. The story of the trial and crucifixion of Jesus, doesn't hold water. Pilate in washing his hands of the matter, would have made the crucifixion impossible. Only a Roman magistrate could convict a person to be crucified, and then only for violating Roman Law. And they were good at it. The Jew's Priests did not have that authority. In fact Pilate declared that Jesus was not guilty of violating Roman Law. Let's get real, why would Pilate, the Roman Governor be called on to judge such a minor case anyway. After all, he was the Governor of the province, only one step from the Emperor. It is thought by many modern bible scholars that the person, or persons who wrote the Gospel according to Luke did not dare blame the Romans. After all the Romans ruled Israel with an iron fist at the time. Jesus was likely to have been actually found guilty of sedition under Roman Law by some Roman magistrate, which would have merited the crucifixion. But, adding Pilate to the story added spice, and gave the story greater importance. It should be noted that crucifixions were very common under the Romans so the crucifixion of Jesus would not have been special to the population at large. And, of course, the Christian used this story to persecute the Jews through most of the last two thousand years.
Central the the Christian creed are a couple of things related to Jesus. First of all, did a man, we now call Jesus, actually exist? Some scholars believe that Jesus is really just a merger of the teachings of several Rabbis or philosophers that were brought together and attributed to a fictional person. That one is hard to swallow. Just too many people wrote about what he said and did in a relatively short time after his death. The Gospels were written in a period of 30 to maybe 150 years after the crucifixion. Also, Paul's letters probably started a bit earlier. There was time to spin and embellish the message the Rabbi was teaching, but not enough to invent him out of whole cloth.
One of the sticking points, if one tries to correlate the Bibles version of the birth of Jesus with known history, is that the story doesn't actually hold water. To start with, Mary and Joseph was said to have come to Bethlehem because the Romans demanded that everybody return to the place of their birth for a census. The problem is that there is no record of the Romans asking for a census at that time and, to add confusion to the story, that is not the way the Romans conducted their censuses. Remember, the Romans were very good at keeping records and census was always conducted in place. So, if they came to Bethlehem, they came for a far different reason than given in the Bible.
And why Bethlehem? It was necessary for the story that the Messiah to be born in the City of David. That was the prophecy. So whether Jesus was actually born in Bethlehem or not, the story required that he was when it was decided that he was the Messiah. Many scholars don't believe he ever saw Bethlehem as a young child, that the story was just an artifact to enhance the Messiah image.
It is probable that Mathew was the first Gospel actually written (although some scholars believe it was Mark) and whoever wrote the other Gospels merely copied it- sort of. What's interesting is that the two accounts of Jesus's birth in Mathew and Luke (the only two Gospels that address the subject) don't match. One has the shepherds visited by the Angels scene and the other has the Wise Men (Magi) scene.
We love our nativity plays which have the Wise Men, sometimes depicted as Kings, being drawn by a bright star to the baby Jesus as he lay in his manger. The problem is the Bible doesn't support that scenario. According to the Bible Jesus was about 2 years old when the Wise Men, actually Astrologers, visited Herod and asked about the new King of the Jews. Herod then supposedly had all the male children under 2 years old in the city of Bethlehem slain. From all historical records Herod was certainly capable of that atrocity. The fact that there is no record of it, if it happened, isn't too surprising. After all Bethlehem was just a small village which probably had no more than 10 or so boys that fit that category.
Mary and Joseph fled Bethlehem to escape Herod and went to Egypt. They returned to Israel after the death of Herod about two years later. We heard little of Jesus until He had an epiphany at around the age of 30 years. Considering the average age of mankind at the time, that would make Him very mature. He then started moving though Israel/Judea to preach his message.
His main points were probably best expressed in the passage set as the Sermon on the Mount. It is likely that never really happened, but was a artifact used by the writer of Mathew to bring together the things that Jesus said over a period of time to his Disciples in a concise manner. It doesn't lessen the message, just how it was delivered.
From about the fourth century, for a long while, there was only one Christian Church of any consequence, the Catholics. But, there was disagreement between the western church centered in Rome and the Eastern Catholics, sometimes called the Eastern Orthodox, centered in Constantinople. This disagreement resulted in the east-west schism in 1054 CE which officially separated the eastern from the western church. Then Martin Luther wrote the "ninety-five theses", got excommunicated from the church as a result and the Protestants were born.They in turn have splintered into a number of different denominations, all with a little different idea of what the Scriptures actually say and mean.
While there is clearly no idea who actually wrote the books of the Hebrew Bible or the Gospels of the Christian New Testament, there is no doubt who wrote the Quran.
Mohammad born in 560 CE often went a cave to pray and meditate. At about age 40 he had his first revelation from the Angel Gabriel informing him of God's laws and how the faithful should live. He proclaimed himself the last Prophet of God following in the tradition going back to Adam. He gathered a small army about him, overrun the city of his birth, Mecca, in 622 CE and from there spread the faith of Islam over the middle east. It's really in interesting story. It's too bad the Muslims are so hung up about the use of Mohammad's image in almost any form, that the story is not well known. A movie was made about his life, but due to threats it was never released.
As usual with visitations of Saints, Angels or God himself to some individual, there is no witnesses to the act. They are usually in a remote place to a single individual, sometimes a cave or grotto. Or on top of a mountain or in the desert. It's up to the individual to decide whether those events actually happened, were they the imagination of some person, a hallucination or even a fraud.
Sunday, August 6, 2017
The Looming Catastrophe
I see a real problem facing mankind, especially those of us who live in the more advanced civilizations. In short it's the growth of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Robotics. And, it isn't the reason that science fiction writers love, where advanced machines try to take over the world. It's societies ever increasing use of advanced robotics to perform tasks that was once done by people.
Think about it. Do you really need a waitress at a restaurant? Not if AI advances much more than it is right now. You can certainly place your order using some kind of interface, such as a touch screen display. Your order could be prepared by an AI controlled robot and delivered to you table by an AI controlled cart. Even the clean up will be controlled by machines.
Self driving cars are already in the pipeline and will become common pretty soon. What will follow is self driving trucks and buses. How about self piloting planes? That certainly is a technical possibility.
Warehouses, already heavy in automation will become more so with the advance of AI and robotics. Pretty soon there will be no need for humans in that profession at all.
How about medicine? It is in the foreseeable future that machines controlled by advanced AI can do diagnostics and treatment better than any human doctor because of the ability to draw on vast medical data bases, and the ability to correlate all the information it can gather about your health. Machines will perform complex operations that no human can manage because of the precision of the AI controlled movement. In the not too distant future you may never actually need to see a live doctor at all to get the best medical care. Misdiagnosis will be a thing of the past. Something that happens all to often now. I know personally about that problem. You can get all your checkups and other examinations at home, along with necessary prescriptions filled and delivered to your door within one hour by machine. If you need more extensive examinations or procedures you visit a local clinic where you check in and then let a AI controlled robot perform those tasks. No waiting.
Dental care will be performed completely by AI controlled machines. Examinations and necessary corrective procedures can and will be performed without the interaction with a dentist or dental technician.
The number of humans necessary to build a car or truck, or for that matter any product that we use, has already been reduced by the reliance on automation. With advanced AI the need for people to build anything in a factory may nearly disappear all together.
To make matters worse, with advanced AI the machines will become self repairing. So the need for humans to maintain the machines will be significantly reduced.
Farming, already highly mechanized will move further into that direction so the need for humans to grow, tend to and harvest our food will be significantly reduced.
And, the list goes on.
AI controlled automation will make all the things we use cheaper, far better made with higher reliability and more available. That's the good side.
The problem is--where are all the people, put out of work by the prolific use of automation that is sure to come, go? How do they live? It seems like the trend that is beginning to become evident even today will accelerate. There will be the highly educated, highly trained people who are very well paid and live a very good life. Then there will be all the large number others who's jobs disappear due to automation.
We have faced this type of problem many times in our history and each time the system has adjusted over a fairly short time and things have improved for everybody. Maybe that will happen in the future. That is because, in the past, the new products that displaced the old and obsoleted the old skills, demanded more people to produce the increased demand for the new product. But, in the past the new product, such as the automobile replacing the horse and buggy, was still fairly labor intensive. That will not be so in the future. New products will be produced by automation and will require little usage of manual labor.
Not every thing that could automated will be. Some tasks will be more cost effective to perform manually because of the cost of a robot to perform them.
The dilemma is, that with the increased production capability to turn out products at a prodigious rate, we need consumers. But, if automation replaces workers on a large scale, then where are the consumers? That's a good question. Frankly I have no answer. Just wondering.
Think about it. Do you really need a waitress at a restaurant? Not if AI advances much more than it is right now. You can certainly place your order using some kind of interface, such as a touch screen display. Your order could be prepared by an AI controlled robot and delivered to you table by an AI controlled cart. Even the clean up will be controlled by machines.
Self driving cars are already in the pipeline and will become common pretty soon. What will follow is self driving trucks and buses. How about self piloting planes? That certainly is a technical possibility.
Warehouses, already heavy in automation will become more so with the advance of AI and robotics. Pretty soon there will be no need for humans in that profession at all.
How about medicine? It is in the foreseeable future that machines controlled by advanced AI can do diagnostics and treatment better than any human doctor because of the ability to draw on vast medical data bases, and the ability to correlate all the information it can gather about your health. Machines will perform complex operations that no human can manage because of the precision of the AI controlled movement. In the not too distant future you may never actually need to see a live doctor at all to get the best medical care. Misdiagnosis will be a thing of the past. Something that happens all to often now. I know personally about that problem. You can get all your checkups and other examinations at home, along with necessary prescriptions filled and delivered to your door within one hour by machine. If you need more extensive examinations or procedures you visit a local clinic where you check in and then let a AI controlled robot perform those tasks. No waiting.
Dental care will be performed completely by AI controlled machines. Examinations and necessary corrective procedures can and will be performed without the interaction with a dentist or dental technician.
The number of humans necessary to build a car or truck, or for that matter any product that we use, has already been reduced by the reliance on automation. With advanced AI the need for people to build anything in a factory may nearly disappear all together.
To make matters worse, with advanced AI the machines will become self repairing. So the need for humans to maintain the machines will be significantly reduced.
Farming, already highly mechanized will move further into that direction so the need for humans to grow, tend to and harvest our food will be significantly reduced.
And, the list goes on.
AI controlled automation will make all the things we use cheaper, far better made with higher reliability and more available. That's the good side.
The problem is--where are all the people, put out of work by the prolific use of automation that is sure to come, go? How do they live? It seems like the trend that is beginning to become evident even today will accelerate. There will be the highly educated, highly trained people who are very well paid and live a very good life. Then there will be all the large number others who's jobs disappear due to automation.
We have faced this type of problem many times in our history and each time the system has adjusted over a fairly short time and things have improved for everybody. Maybe that will happen in the future. That is because, in the past, the new products that displaced the old and obsoleted the old skills, demanded more people to produce the increased demand for the new product. But, in the past the new product, such as the automobile replacing the horse and buggy, was still fairly labor intensive. That will not be so in the future. New products will be produced by automation and will require little usage of manual labor.
Not every thing that could automated will be. Some tasks will be more cost effective to perform manually because of the cost of a robot to perform them.
The dilemma is, that with the increased production capability to turn out products at a prodigious rate, we need consumers. But, if automation replaces workers on a large scale, then where are the consumers? That's a good question. Frankly I have no answer. Just wondering.
Thursday, June 29, 2017
English, a little fun
Look Dear, I said, "Is that a deer I see down by the sea? I wonder if it would wait while I guess it's weight. I know that here is no way I could weigh it. It looks like it is tough standing on that tuff with the ruff on it's neck, though it may be because it is looking through some bushes where there is a bee".
I threw a small stone through the air, but I missed. It brought up a tear as I watched it tear across the mountain tier after tier. Although, of course, it might be a hare with coarse red hair that I have read about and intend to read more. They're certain of the their footing over there. If a knight, who usually comes out a night, would show up it would help. Look at the man running bare chased by a bear that seems to bear down on him. I think he's the wright from the village on the right side of the river who was right when he did write about the bear market. I wonder if he can kick that can that is in his path. I think I knew him when he was new. I know that he should have said no before coming out. I think that I had seen him at another scene.
I threw a small stone through the air, but I missed. It brought up a tear as I watched it tear across the mountain tier after tier. Although, of course, it might be a hare with coarse red hair that I have read about and intend to read more. They're certain of the their footing over there. If a knight, who usually comes out a night, would show up it would help. Look at the man running bare chased by a bear that seems to bear down on him. I think he's the wright from the village on the right side of the river who was right when he did write about the bear market. I wonder if he can kick that can that is in his path. I think I knew him when he was new. I know that he should have said no before coming out. I think that I had seen him at another scene.
Thursday, June 22, 2017
Trump and Comey, an interesting tale
What is going on in Washington? The Democrats are going ape shit trying to tie Trump to either an obstruction of justice charge or colluding with the Russians to throw the 2016 election into Trumps lap. Or, anything else they can come up with.
All this actually started back during the primaries with Trump charging through the process like a bull in a china shop. He insulted everybody in sight and left a trail of blood behind him. A lot of that ill will was directed at members of congress and the Republican establishment. Groups that he would need later to govern effectively.
He was caught on a recording making some disparaging jokes about women. It actually wasn't anything that hasn't been said in a thousand locker rooms when the boys get together to brag about their real and fictional conquests. But, his remarks were not helpful to him or his image. He became a man who hates women and holds them in low regard. In spite of the fact that he has hired women to high positions in his company and his daughter is one of his closets advisers.
Central to his campaign was his position on illegal immigrants coming over our southern border. Of course he didn't just say that he was going to build a wall, but more than implied that the illegals coming into this country were mostly rapists and criminals. That didn't do him any favors with a majority of the Latinos living in this country who were the children and grandchildren of illegals themselves. The platform of securing our borders would probably have been enough for the vast American heartland and Rust Belt folks who sensed that we were loosing our heritage and jobs with the huge influx of foreigners into the country. As a result Trump was labeled a racist and bigot.
To add fuel to the fire he announced that he wanted to ban all Muslims from entering the country for a period of time until the vetting process could be strengthened due to the rash of terrorist acts that had happened around the world by radical Islamist in recent history. Of course the mainstream media and the liberals only heard the ban part and immediately labeled Trump as a religious bigot. He later modified that to just seven countries, but that isn't flying either. When Hillary trotted out the parents of a Muslim soldier killed in action, Trump couldn't just keep his mouth shut. He felt he needed to insult the parents. Not a good move.
He was very critical of the trade deals and agreements reached by the Obama administration with Iran, Cuba, Mexico, China and other countries. He contended that Obama had weakened America and cost American jobs in middle America while the cats on the coasts were getting rich on the backs of the middle class's sacrifices to the global economic and political philosophy. In that argument he had the position that appealed to the great swath of working people in the so called rust belt and the people of middle America. Of course the people living well of global trade and fraternization with China and other foreign nations didn't much like this approach. That of included the media which are almost universally liberals and Democrats.
So candidate Trump had little in the way of friends in the main stream media or even among the traditional Republican Party members.
As we all know he won the election against all odds and the polls which assured the Democrats of a victory. They still haven't got over that defeat and many of them still will not accept the results of the election. They are motivated to bring Trump and his administration down, no matter the harm to the constitution in doing so. They love to trot out the popular vote as proof that the American people favored Clinton. But, because of a number of reasons, including the Constitution, the popular vote isn't what elects a President. Why that particular statistic is mostly meaningless under the current conditions is something I might address in another posting on my blog.
Trump is not free of royal foo paws in all of this. In many ways he has only himself to blame. All one has to do is follow his pronouncements and tweets to understand that fact. He never saw or heard of a negative remark that he doesn't feel the need to fire off a quick reply, many of them ill thought out before sending. He also tends to say whatever comes into his head when asked a question, no matter how ill conceived the answer might be. He's even been known to contradict himself because on any given day he may feel different about something.
When Trump entered the White House (figuratively) he came in with huge ego and the same attitude he had as the head of Trump Enterprises. I believe that he thought he was now the CEO of the new Trump Enterprises, otherwise known as the US government. I don't think he quite understood, at first, that he was entering the snake pit of Washington politics, which is a far different animal from business. He came in with a promise to drain the swamp and is finding out that the swamp is full of very angry alligators that they love their swamp just the way it is.
Now let's get to Comey. It is clear to me that Trump considered the head of the FBI as part of his team and he expected a certain degree of loyalty from all his department heads. That's what he demanded from his business employees and he expected the same thing here. It's the only way to run a large business successfully. It did not seem to occur to him that the law enforcement branches of his government must be seen to remain independent of politics and influences from other government bodies. After all the head of the FBI worked for him and served at his pleasure.
The FBI had opened an investigation into two charges that involved Trump and his team. One was concerning the involvement of the Russians into our election and the other the situation of the National Security Advisor.
Members of his team, including his son in law, who he greatly admired, attempted to tell him that meeting with Comey in a private session, considering everything that was going on at the time, was a bad idea. But Trump, being Trump, thought he needed that meeting. This was only a few days after the President was sworn into office. It is reported that Trump stated to Comey that he hoped the he could see his way to close out the investigation into General Flynn. That the general was a good man who had served his country and he had been fired anyway due to lying about meeting with the Russian Ambassador to Vice President Pence and that he, Trump, would appreciate it. Comey apparently made no response in that conversation at time but took no further action because he didn't feel that Trump was bringing undo pressure on him to actually end the investigation. The Democrats, of course, have jumped all over the firing and Comey's statements as reason for a charge of obstruction. But, Trump had the right to fire the head of the FBI for any reason. Something the Dem's don't want to admit.
The Russian investigation was moving forward and Trump felt it was being directed at him. The Democrats were using this investigation to bolster their claim that the election had been stolen from them by nefarious actions and collusion by the Trump team with the Russians. This in spite of there being absolutely no evidence that there was any collusion between the Trump team and Russians about the 2016 election. But, that isn't stopping the Democrats and the left wing media from throwing charges around at random. If you turn in to CNN you would think that there isn't anything going on in the world except Trump's collusion with the Russians to steal the election from Clinton.
The investigation was not only an embarrassment to Trump but he felt that it was interfering with the ability to pass his agenda. He met with Comey and asked him about the Russian investigation and if he was a loyal member of the team, or words to that effect. Apparently Comey only answered that he would be honest. Apparently Trump never asked for Comey to squelch the Russian investigation. It's clear now that from that point Trump considered Comey as not loyal and not to be trusted. But, again Comey didn't feel, at the time, that Trump had crossed the line into obstruction. I think that in Trumps mind you are either with him or against him, and Comey wasn't with him.
Then Trump fired Comey. It is clear to me that there were several reasons for the firing, among other things, the Russian investigation. But probably the main thing was his feeling that Comey was not his friend. The best thing that Trump could have done at the time was keep his mouth shut and let his team spin the firing as best they could. But no. Trump stated in an interview on television that Comey was fired because of the Russian investigation. Not smart at all. In other tweets and interviews he gave different reasons. But, he had fired Comey and in a way that wasn't very respectful. Now Comey felt free to release his notes and recollections on the meeting with the President. It was payback time.
Immediately congress, which was already involved in hearings concerning the Russian hacking of the election material and it's release through Wikileaks, opened up the investigation into possibility of the an obstruction of justice charge against Trump.
So now we have a special counsel who has opened up a can of worms for Trump. The rumors have been floated that he would like to fire the special counsel but, he really doesn't have authority to do that. Those rumors have been denied a number of times, but the media, especially CNN, love the story to much to let it pass. To make matters worse, he can't stay off the social network. He continues to tweet, insulting the new special counsel, along with everybody else he senses is against him. He just can't back off and let his legal team handle the issues. They must be tearing their hair out as Trump makes their job harder and harder. He is really digging his own grave deeper and deeper. In the mean time Mueller is stacking his investigation team with people that contributed to the Obama and Clinton campaigns and are Democrat supporters.
I'm afraid, unless the special counsel gives Trump a clean bill of health on all counts, and considering the makeup of the special counsel staff, that is seeming more and more unlikely, the Senate Democrats could very well try to open up impeachment proceedings. Maybe they will to that even before the investigation is even complete. The Democrats certainly want his scalp and I'm afraid he has gored enough Republican Senators that an impeachment might carry. I can think of a couple of Republican Senators that might be tempted to have Trumps scalp. I doubt that it would happen, but you never know.
It isn't clear that the President has actually done anything wrong, except acted rather foolishly at times. He got caught up in a system that he didn't fully comprehend and made some moves and statements that left him open to criticism. What has been said is all that happened was the Trump was being Trump. The things he is trying to do through Executive Orders and legislation are, for the most part, the things that needed to be done. He killed the pact with Iran, is retrenching in relationships with Cuba, is asking NATO members to pay up their agreed to portion of member defenses, cutting some of the most bloated bureaucracies in Washington, submitted a budget to congress that moves the nation toward a balanced budget, is moving battle field decisions back to the soldiers on the ground and making positive moves to keep jobs in America. He's asked for a complete review of the massive set of regulations that are job killers.
Of course he's going to have a fight on his hands with entrenched special interests that control so many of the bureaus. One of Trumps problems, and a big one, is that the bureaucracies are riddled with people that a not his friends by any stretch. In fact they would work tirelessly to bring him down, to the point of damaging the country if they have to.
The frantic move toward all the "green" initiatives and the environmental lobby has spawned a huge industry, with lot's of money. Of course the environmental lobby only exists with the help of huge investments of the taxpayers money. At this time and in the foreseeable future, it is not able to stand alone economically.
There are whole industries tied up in keeping globalization of the economy alive and well. But, trade agreements negotiated by the Obama administration with the Pacific rim, Mexico and China among others, do not work in favor of the working classes of America.
It isn't clear where all of this is going. Based on four special elections, it doesn't seem that the issues which are captivating Washington have any relevance outside of the beltway. Republicans just added to their majority in the congress. Not a single Democrat victory.
But, the future will be interesting, to say the least. And the band played on.
All this actually started back during the primaries with Trump charging through the process like a bull in a china shop. He insulted everybody in sight and left a trail of blood behind him. A lot of that ill will was directed at members of congress and the Republican establishment. Groups that he would need later to govern effectively.
He was caught on a recording making some disparaging jokes about women. It actually wasn't anything that hasn't been said in a thousand locker rooms when the boys get together to brag about their real and fictional conquests. But, his remarks were not helpful to him or his image. He became a man who hates women and holds them in low regard. In spite of the fact that he has hired women to high positions in his company and his daughter is one of his closets advisers.
Central to his campaign was his position on illegal immigrants coming over our southern border. Of course he didn't just say that he was going to build a wall, but more than implied that the illegals coming into this country were mostly rapists and criminals. That didn't do him any favors with a majority of the Latinos living in this country who were the children and grandchildren of illegals themselves. The platform of securing our borders would probably have been enough for the vast American heartland and Rust Belt folks who sensed that we were loosing our heritage and jobs with the huge influx of foreigners into the country. As a result Trump was labeled a racist and bigot.
To add fuel to the fire he announced that he wanted to ban all Muslims from entering the country for a period of time until the vetting process could be strengthened due to the rash of terrorist acts that had happened around the world by radical Islamist in recent history. Of course the mainstream media and the liberals only heard the ban part and immediately labeled Trump as a religious bigot. He later modified that to just seven countries, but that isn't flying either. When Hillary trotted out the parents of a Muslim soldier killed in action, Trump couldn't just keep his mouth shut. He felt he needed to insult the parents. Not a good move.
He was very critical of the trade deals and agreements reached by the Obama administration with Iran, Cuba, Mexico, China and other countries. He contended that Obama had weakened America and cost American jobs in middle America while the cats on the coasts were getting rich on the backs of the middle class's sacrifices to the global economic and political philosophy. In that argument he had the position that appealed to the great swath of working people in the so called rust belt and the people of middle America. Of course the people living well of global trade and fraternization with China and other foreign nations didn't much like this approach. That of included the media which are almost universally liberals and Democrats.
So candidate Trump had little in the way of friends in the main stream media or even among the traditional Republican Party members.
As we all know he won the election against all odds and the polls which assured the Democrats of a victory. They still haven't got over that defeat and many of them still will not accept the results of the election. They are motivated to bring Trump and his administration down, no matter the harm to the constitution in doing so. They love to trot out the popular vote as proof that the American people favored Clinton. But, because of a number of reasons, including the Constitution, the popular vote isn't what elects a President. Why that particular statistic is mostly meaningless under the current conditions is something I might address in another posting on my blog.
Trump is not free of royal foo paws in all of this. In many ways he has only himself to blame. All one has to do is follow his pronouncements and tweets to understand that fact. He never saw or heard of a negative remark that he doesn't feel the need to fire off a quick reply, many of them ill thought out before sending. He also tends to say whatever comes into his head when asked a question, no matter how ill conceived the answer might be. He's even been known to contradict himself because on any given day he may feel different about something.
When Trump entered the White House (figuratively) he came in with huge ego and the same attitude he had as the head of Trump Enterprises. I believe that he thought he was now the CEO of the new Trump Enterprises, otherwise known as the US government. I don't think he quite understood, at first, that he was entering the snake pit of Washington politics, which is a far different animal from business. He came in with a promise to drain the swamp and is finding out that the swamp is full of very angry alligators that they love their swamp just the way it is.
Now let's get to Comey. It is clear to me that Trump considered the head of the FBI as part of his team and he expected a certain degree of loyalty from all his department heads. That's what he demanded from his business employees and he expected the same thing here. It's the only way to run a large business successfully. It did not seem to occur to him that the law enforcement branches of his government must be seen to remain independent of politics and influences from other government bodies. After all the head of the FBI worked for him and served at his pleasure.
The FBI had opened an investigation into two charges that involved Trump and his team. One was concerning the involvement of the Russians into our election and the other the situation of the National Security Advisor.
Members of his team, including his son in law, who he greatly admired, attempted to tell him that meeting with Comey in a private session, considering everything that was going on at the time, was a bad idea. But Trump, being Trump, thought he needed that meeting. This was only a few days after the President was sworn into office. It is reported that Trump stated to Comey that he hoped the he could see his way to close out the investigation into General Flynn. That the general was a good man who had served his country and he had been fired anyway due to lying about meeting with the Russian Ambassador to Vice President Pence and that he, Trump, would appreciate it. Comey apparently made no response in that conversation at time but took no further action because he didn't feel that Trump was bringing undo pressure on him to actually end the investigation. The Democrats, of course, have jumped all over the firing and Comey's statements as reason for a charge of obstruction. But, Trump had the right to fire the head of the FBI for any reason. Something the Dem's don't want to admit.
The Russian investigation was moving forward and Trump felt it was being directed at him. The Democrats were using this investigation to bolster their claim that the election had been stolen from them by nefarious actions and collusion by the Trump team with the Russians. This in spite of there being absolutely no evidence that there was any collusion between the Trump team and Russians about the 2016 election. But, that isn't stopping the Democrats and the left wing media from throwing charges around at random. If you turn in to CNN you would think that there isn't anything going on in the world except Trump's collusion with the Russians to steal the election from Clinton.
The investigation was not only an embarrassment to Trump but he felt that it was interfering with the ability to pass his agenda. He met with Comey and asked him about the Russian investigation and if he was a loyal member of the team, or words to that effect. Apparently Comey only answered that he would be honest. Apparently Trump never asked for Comey to squelch the Russian investigation. It's clear now that from that point Trump considered Comey as not loyal and not to be trusted. But, again Comey didn't feel, at the time, that Trump had crossed the line into obstruction. I think that in Trumps mind you are either with him or against him, and Comey wasn't with him.
Then Trump fired Comey. It is clear to me that there were several reasons for the firing, among other things, the Russian investigation. But probably the main thing was his feeling that Comey was not his friend. The best thing that Trump could have done at the time was keep his mouth shut and let his team spin the firing as best they could. But no. Trump stated in an interview on television that Comey was fired because of the Russian investigation. Not smart at all. In other tweets and interviews he gave different reasons. But, he had fired Comey and in a way that wasn't very respectful. Now Comey felt free to release his notes and recollections on the meeting with the President. It was payback time.
Immediately congress, which was already involved in hearings concerning the Russian hacking of the election material and it's release through Wikileaks, opened up the investigation into possibility of the an obstruction of justice charge against Trump.
So now we have a special counsel who has opened up a can of worms for Trump. The rumors have been floated that he would like to fire the special counsel but, he really doesn't have authority to do that. Those rumors have been denied a number of times, but the media, especially CNN, love the story to much to let it pass. To make matters worse, he can't stay off the social network. He continues to tweet, insulting the new special counsel, along with everybody else he senses is against him. He just can't back off and let his legal team handle the issues. They must be tearing their hair out as Trump makes their job harder and harder. He is really digging his own grave deeper and deeper. In the mean time Mueller is stacking his investigation team with people that contributed to the Obama and Clinton campaigns and are Democrat supporters.
I'm afraid, unless the special counsel gives Trump a clean bill of health on all counts, and considering the makeup of the special counsel staff, that is seeming more and more unlikely, the Senate Democrats could very well try to open up impeachment proceedings. Maybe they will to that even before the investigation is even complete. The Democrats certainly want his scalp and I'm afraid he has gored enough Republican Senators that an impeachment might carry. I can think of a couple of Republican Senators that might be tempted to have Trumps scalp. I doubt that it would happen, but you never know.
It isn't clear that the President has actually done anything wrong, except acted rather foolishly at times. He got caught up in a system that he didn't fully comprehend and made some moves and statements that left him open to criticism. What has been said is all that happened was the Trump was being Trump. The things he is trying to do through Executive Orders and legislation are, for the most part, the things that needed to be done. He killed the pact with Iran, is retrenching in relationships with Cuba, is asking NATO members to pay up their agreed to portion of member defenses, cutting some of the most bloated bureaucracies in Washington, submitted a budget to congress that moves the nation toward a balanced budget, is moving battle field decisions back to the soldiers on the ground and making positive moves to keep jobs in America. He's asked for a complete review of the massive set of regulations that are job killers.
Of course he's going to have a fight on his hands with entrenched special interests that control so many of the bureaus. One of Trumps problems, and a big one, is that the bureaucracies are riddled with people that a not his friends by any stretch. In fact they would work tirelessly to bring him down, to the point of damaging the country if they have to.
The frantic move toward all the "green" initiatives and the environmental lobby has spawned a huge industry, with lot's of money. Of course the environmental lobby only exists with the help of huge investments of the taxpayers money. At this time and in the foreseeable future, it is not able to stand alone economically.
There are whole industries tied up in keeping globalization of the economy alive and well. But, trade agreements negotiated by the Obama administration with the Pacific rim, Mexico and China among others, do not work in favor of the working classes of America.
It isn't clear where all of this is going. Based on four special elections, it doesn't seem that the issues which are captivating Washington have any relevance outside of the beltway. Republicans just added to their majority in the congress. Not a single Democrat victory.
But, the future will be interesting, to say the least. And the band played on.
Thursday, March 23, 2017
Medical care and the Pipe Dream
Donald and the other Republicans are all eager to strike Obamacare off the books and substitute some other plan which they say will be better and cheaper. But, Obama and Dems have saddled them with a real problem. In fact a couple. The Republicans say they will keep some of the things the ACA introduced, but that will make the avowed goal almost impossible to meet.
The promise, at least by The Donald, to (1) not let previous conditions be the cause of rejection of insurance, (2) that the 20 million or so people that got coverage as a result of the ACA will still be covered and (3) letting a young adult stay on their parents policy until the age of 26 will part of the new, cheaper and better plan that the Republicans will submit.
The biggest reason the ACA fell on it's face was simply that the young, healthy folks didn't sign up in droves. The only way to provide the lowest cost insurance for the masses is to spread the burden on paying for it to a large base of primarily healthy people that don't require much in the way of treatment. You need a large base of people who are paying in to the system much more than they're taking out of it.
The problem is, and will remain, that the Congress, especially the Republicans, want universal health care without instituting Universal Health care. They believe, by some fancy twist of their imagination, that they can achieve universal health care using the private sector. They spout a mantra of freedom of choice. They believe that if you presented the market place with a free market in the medical fields, the cost would go down due to competition and all would be right with the world.
To large extent that would be true. If the market were actually free and the consumer was free to choose any insurance plan from any locale and that the insurance companies could propose any plan from the bare minimum catastrophic only type with a large range of deductibles, to full comprehensive coverage and anything in between. But, if the government steps in and dictates conditions that private insurance companies have to meet, as the ACA did, then the savings would largely fly out the window. When you dictate that an insurance company can't turn down a applicant because of previous conditions or they have to carry a young adult on their parents policy, then they have no choice but to anti up their rates to cover the significant costs associated with those requirements. After all insurance companies are in the business to make money. They are not philanthropic organizations.
Consumers are not exactly dummies. The smart thing, under these conditions, is to buy limited coverage, or none at all, when you're young and healthy and then to buy or switch to more comprehensive policy if you come down with something bad. So the only way to spread the costs is make some level of insurance coverage mandatory for every body. That, by its nature will kill any free market idea associated with health care. Sound familiar? Obama tried to get around this problem by forcing a "tax" on those that didn't purchase the minimum insurance as dictated by the law. I'm not sure what the present bill before congress will end up imposing, but it has to somehow rope in the total population or it will fall on it's face just like the ACA did.
The Republicans love the idea of using tax credits to help lower income people buy private insurance. No matter how you look at it, this is another entitlement that would put into law if enacted. Of course if the tax credit is applied to taxes owed, there won't be much impact on the 40 percent of lower income people anyway; they don't pay taxes.
The other favorite among the conservative ranks is the Medical Savings Account. That really is a great idea if you are part of the middle class, which does cover a great swath of the American citizenry. But, if you happen to be in the lower third of income earners, then you don't have the resources to set money aside for medical purposes.
The idea seems to be that if they open the market, which by the way isn't happening with the present version of the plan, that will allow more people to buy private insurance and the lowest wage earners and unemployed will be directly subsidized by the government in such a way that they can purchase some form of insurance. Sound familiar. Think California Cares, which pays so little to the doctors that many of them will not participate in the plan.
The other mantra sung by the conservatives is that they don't want some government bureaucrat deciding about what medical treatment that will be allowed and where the coverage is applied. But, wait a minute. If you carry any kind of private insurance then you already have a bureaucrat deciding health care issues for you. They just work for the insurance company instead of for the government. And, those bureaucrats have a profit motive when considering whether to pay for some treatment that you might need.
Private insurance also limits the doctors you are allowed to see and sometimes the medical facilities that you can use, depending on the type of insurance. HMO's are a big factor in private insurance participation and they are generally very restrictive in where and by whom you can get medical treatment.
If you want to review the current health care in the USA I would refer you to my Blog of January 2016, "Health Care in the United States". It is clear that the current system we have isn't any thing to be held up as a model. We have the highest infant mortality rate, the shortest average life span and rank behind such countries as Singapore and Morocco by the World Health Organization. The ranking at the time is a paltry 37th in health care by that organization.
The argument is advanced that in those countries with Universal Health Care systems, that the wait to see a doctor is long, much longer than in the US. But, have you tried to get to see your doctor in a short time lately? In fact, the timeliness of care in America is about average when compared to the 11 wealthiest countries i.e. England, Germany, Canada, etc. All of them having some form of universal health care. Canada however, with a one payer system, was ranked last in that category. The following chart shows the breakdown of the various categories that were used to judge the rankings among the wealthier nations.
We spend more per capita and get less than any of the 11th wealthiest countries. So why are we trying to defend our present system so vigorously? Good question.
The Republicans face a real problem. As far as I can see, the plan put forth by the Republicans doesn't do much for the very people who were Trumps biggest supports in the last election. As bad as Obama Care was, this plan may actually be worse for the mid-west worker who is hurting because of a lot of reasons. The disgust with the ACA was one of the main things that swept the Republicans into office in the last two elections. If the establishment Republicans don't do something better than what they seem to be doing, they may, and probably will, find themselves on the street in two years.
Medical care has become a major issue to the citizens of this country. They are serious about wanting something done. If the politicians continue to evade a comprehensive plan that will assure medical care for all Americans, I think they may not be in office very long.
We'll see what happens over the next few months and what the fallout will be. I predict disaster myself. But, I've been wrong before.
The promise, at least by The Donald, to (1) not let previous conditions be the cause of rejection of insurance, (2) that the 20 million or so people that got coverage as a result of the ACA will still be covered and (3) letting a young adult stay on their parents policy until the age of 26 will part of the new, cheaper and better plan that the Republicans will submit.
The biggest reason the ACA fell on it's face was simply that the young, healthy folks didn't sign up in droves. The only way to provide the lowest cost insurance for the masses is to spread the burden on paying for it to a large base of primarily healthy people that don't require much in the way of treatment. You need a large base of people who are paying in to the system much more than they're taking out of it.
The problem is, and will remain, that the Congress, especially the Republicans, want universal health care without instituting Universal Health care. They believe, by some fancy twist of their imagination, that they can achieve universal health care using the private sector. They spout a mantra of freedom of choice. They believe that if you presented the market place with a free market in the medical fields, the cost would go down due to competition and all would be right with the world.
To large extent that would be true. If the market were actually free and the consumer was free to choose any insurance plan from any locale and that the insurance companies could propose any plan from the bare minimum catastrophic only type with a large range of deductibles, to full comprehensive coverage and anything in between. But, if the government steps in and dictates conditions that private insurance companies have to meet, as the ACA did, then the savings would largely fly out the window. When you dictate that an insurance company can't turn down a applicant because of previous conditions or they have to carry a young adult on their parents policy, then they have no choice but to anti up their rates to cover the significant costs associated with those requirements. After all insurance companies are in the business to make money. They are not philanthropic organizations.
Consumers are not exactly dummies. The smart thing, under these conditions, is to buy limited coverage, or none at all, when you're young and healthy and then to buy or switch to more comprehensive policy if you come down with something bad. So the only way to spread the costs is make some level of insurance coverage mandatory for every body. That, by its nature will kill any free market idea associated with health care. Sound familiar? Obama tried to get around this problem by forcing a "tax" on those that didn't purchase the minimum insurance as dictated by the law. I'm not sure what the present bill before congress will end up imposing, but it has to somehow rope in the total population or it will fall on it's face just like the ACA did.
The Republicans love the idea of using tax credits to help lower income people buy private insurance. No matter how you look at it, this is another entitlement that would put into law if enacted. Of course if the tax credit is applied to taxes owed, there won't be much impact on the 40 percent of lower income people anyway; they don't pay taxes.
The other favorite among the conservative ranks is the Medical Savings Account. That really is a great idea if you are part of the middle class, which does cover a great swath of the American citizenry. But, if you happen to be in the lower third of income earners, then you don't have the resources to set money aside for medical purposes.
The idea seems to be that if they open the market, which by the way isn't happening with the present version of the plan, that will allow more people to buy private insurance and the lowest wage earners and unemployed will be directly subsidized by the government in such a way that they can purchase some form of insurance. Sound familiar. Think California Cares, which pays so little to the doctors that many of them will not participate in the plan.
The other mantra sung by the conservatives is that they don't want some government bureaucrat deciding about what medical treatment that will be allowed and where the coverage is applied. But, wait a minute. If you carry any kind of private insurance then you already have a bureaucrat deciding health care issues for you. They just work for the insurance company instead of for the government. And, those bureaucrats have a profit motive when considering whether to pay for some treatment that you might need.
Private insurance also limits the doctors you are allowed to see and sometimes the medical facilities that you can use, depending on the type of insurance. HMO's are a big factor in private insurance participation and they are generally very restrictive in where and by whom you can get medical treatment.
If you want to review the current health care in the USA I would refer you to my Blog of January 2016, "Health Care in the United States". It is clear that the current system we have isn't any thing to be held up as a model. We have the highest infant mortality rate, the shortest average life span and rank behind such countries as Singapore and Morocco by the World Health Organization. The ranking at the time is a paltry 37th in health care by that organization.
The argument is advanced that in those countries with Universal Health Care systems, that the wait to see a doctor is long, much longer than in the US. But, have you tried to get to see your doctor in a short time lately? In fact, the timeliness of care in America is about average when compared to the 11 wealthiest countries i.e. England, Germany, Canada, etc. All of them having some form of universal health care. Canada however, with a one payer system, was ranked last in that category. The following chart shows the breakdown of the various categories that were used to judge the rankings among the wealthier nations.
We spend more per capita and get less than any of the 11th wealthiest countries. So why are we trying to defend our present system so vigorously? Good question.
The Republicans face a real problem. As far as I can see, the plan put forth by the Republicans doesn't do much for the very people who were Trumps biggest supports in the last election. As bad as Obama Care was, this plan may actually be worse for the mid-west worker who is hurting because of a lot of reasons. The disgust with the ACA was one of the main things that swept the Republicans into office in the last two elections. If the establishment Republicans don't do something better than what they seem to be doing, they may, and probably will, find themselves on the street in two years.
Medical care has become a major issue to the citizens of this country. They are serious about wanting something done. If the politicians continue to evade a comprehensive plan that will assure medical care for all Americans, I think they may not be in office very long.
We'll see what happens over the next few months and what the fallout will be. I predict disaster myself. But, I've been wrong before.
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