Dictatorship & corruption go hand-in-shoe. News coverage of Putin’s war are redolent of similar items from latter stages of U.S. involvement in Cambodia where Cambodia generals received pay for each person under that general’s command. Problems arose when the U.S. counted on...1/4

X-number of Cambodian soldiers for an assault when the actual force was 1/10 the size on paper. Putin depended on materiel, funds for which had been siphoned to buy yachts in Cyprus. Some of the MREs…

Inflation: an ambiguous concept that scares ppl who should fear inflation least. COVID hit World economies hard. Ppl died. Goods couldn’t B made/shipped. Wages rose & bouncing back were World economies. Now goods need 2 B made/shipped. Workers are offered > $. 1/6

That’s how free market works. Inflation results fr rise of costs in some sectors of economy. It’s not necessarily bad. If rise in costs pays > wages to > ppl 2 make > things/provide > services, we benefit.…

GIGO (Garbage in/garbage out) as applied 2 academic studies, means validity of result depends upon quality of the data. Ppl who wonder whether to buy handgun for self-defense have a right to know whether a handgun fulfills that function. Implied warranty of marketability... 1/6

means a thing you buy will do what you buy it for. the thing for which you buy it. Products get tested. Consumers have a right to results of those tests. We can reduce gun violence if fewer people own guns,…

“It’s not only a crime. It’s stupid.” Talleyrand often is cited for this appraisal of assassination, but a different official under Napoleon, Joseph Fouche, Minister of Police, is the real source & might have viewed Sen Lindsey Graham as both criminal & stupid. For suggesting... 1/5

that act be carried out against Putin. The advice from over 200 years ago is sound. 1: under the 4th Geneva Convention it is a crime by international standards. In the USA it’s homicide & thus…

“Gun rights” advocates know: statistical validity of any study depends on sample size & accurate info. CDC’s been blocked fr studies of gun violence as a health issue since mid-1990s Fed laws restrictions mid-1990s, but Indiana & gun ppl can help. Guns ppl like to say “Guns... 1/

stop crime,” i.e., have net deterrent effect on crime. W/o actual reported cases as they occur only anecdotal accounts (as in fish stories of “the one that got away was so big”) exist. It is the duty…

Evangelicals see a hero in Gov Abbott of Texas, who wants to investigate, 4 child abuse, parents of transgender children. It won’t take long before Evangelicals persecute/prosecute parents for a “greater crime,” in their view: eternity in hell for kids of atheist parents. 1/6

Evangelicals, e.g. Indiana preacher Micah Beckwith, believe there is no separation of church & State. Evangelicals, ultimately, see a person as one of “us” or one of “them.” Protestants, Roman Catholics,…

I found Gov DeSantis’s tweet yesterday saying he wouldn’t send Nat’l Guard, as was requested, to “Biden’s State of the Union,” offensive. DeSantis is one of two early front-runners in the GOP nomination race for POTUS, 2024. He meant to show no respect to Pres Biden. 1/4

The GOP went off the rails a few years ago. We can’t allow a distinct minority to control a not-for-profit corporation that is structures so as to not be accountable to voters. We have to take over that party &…

Political Action Committees (PACs) send mail to candidates for public office. ABC/PAC (its logo in red, white & blue), made of “400 businesses in the construction industry across Indiana” sent a questionnaire of five (5) compound questions that could be a bit confusing. 1/5

ABC/PAC opposes labor unions and calls non-union contractors “merit construction companies.” Labor unions is subject to the same imperfections as any human endeavor, but without unions we would not have…

On a different note: gov’t should not subsidize pro sports. Billionaires don’t need $. Our public school teachers, bridges & highways are better places to spend tax $. However, local gov’t has already thrown $ in and there is little we can do to stop the deluge. However... 1/3

If I am elected State Rep from Indiana’s 86th legisl district, I shall offer a bill to ban professional sports franchises from offering, and elected officials from accepting, free tickets, passes to suites,…

trump calls Putin invading Ukraine brilliant/something we should do to Mexico. So trump is callous to mass death, wants conquest for its own sake, ignores how Russia’s economy will be crippled & would have us reviled by rest of the World. 1/

Groups of Americans cheered 4 dictators B4. Example: 2/20/39 the German-American Bund (“GAB”) held rally in Madison Square Garden w/ > 20K present. Few months later Germany invaded Poland & WWII started. Support for GAB collapsed.…

Vladimir Putin came up through the KGB back in the U.S.S.R. After Boris Yeltsin gave Putin the keys & staggered off the stage, Putin cemented his hold on power by blaming apt bldg bombings on Chechens. Over 300 ppl were killed. This from the Heritage Foundation: 1/5

“Putin is a killer” because his rise to pwr was based on the siege of Grozny, the Chechen capital, where “between 50,000 and 80,000, most civilians, were killed. Russian tanks flattened the city.” Add to that:…

Sen Rick Scott built his career on defrauding Medicare, Medicaid & other Federal programs. He has issued an 11-point GOP manifesto (of sorts) with several policy suggestions to follow. The first point focuses on kids. They’ll say the pledge of allegiance & salute the Flag. 1/6

They’ll learn America’s gr8, choose a school that will inspire patriotism & stop teaching radical left’s revisionist history. Kids’ll learn re: wisdom of Constitution, Bill of Rights & founding…

Putin’s speech was startling & scary. Parts seem to have passed w/little notice, but that is to be understood in such a long speech. Rare is the speech of a U.S. President that cites specific events in distant history to justify current policy. Putin traced Russian/Soviet history. 1/6

An Austrian, who later led Germany, dictated an exhaustive, fictional history of der Fatherland to justify twisted plans. Skirmishes expanded his Reich & led up 2 false claims of Polish…

All 3 GOP candidates for Michigan Att’y Gen’l last evening chimed in on SCOTUS’s decision in Griswold v Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479 (1965). Good news? None recognized the case by name & 1 had to look it up on his phone. Bad news? All 3 want Griswold scrapped. 1/7

In Griswold, the Court held there is a right to privacy. If you say, “There’s no ‘right of privacy’ in The Constitution,” you do not understand The Constitution. This sentiment is why Alexander Hamilton, one of The Framers,…

People close to me, whom I respect, don’t understand why I am a Republican after a life spent as a person not GOP. Others, who cling to a GOP as bastion of conservativism, say I am not a “true Republican”, but the GOP’s articles of incorporation contain no ideology. 1/8

Lee Atwater set the groundwork for double-think. In the early ‘80s he said the GOP should swap out divisive terms (like racial expletives) with race-neutral terms like “busing,” i.e. the GOP should dissemble & deny…

“If you build it, he will come,” a voice told Kevin Costner’s character, Ray Kinsella, in “Field of Dreams.” Kinsella nearly goes bankrupt as he mows down corn to build a baseball field. We see a similar phenomenon here in Indianapolis. A lot of buildings are going up. 1/7

If someone has $, contractors will build. In Indy the $ is from Tax Increment Financing Districts or “TIFs.” TIFs were a funding mechanism created in California in the 1950s to build things in urban wastelands where…