Unconditional Surrender: the only cease fire for Palestinian terrorists (Hamas).

Unconditional Surrender was the World War II objective of the Allies, primarily the United States and Great Britain to defeat Nazi Germany and Imperialist Japan.

People in the U.S. supporting Palestinian terrorists (Hamas) is appalling enough but the lack of rational thought perpetuates the war.

Israel has been clear about its objective after the unprovoked horrific violent attacks of October 7, 2023: elimination of Hamas (Palestinian terrorists) who continue to hold hostages taken that day.

The Palestinian terrorists hide in their network of underground cave passages and in or near obvious places that are off limits to military action: hospitals, schools, etc. Why would they do that? Because they are cowards who have no concern for the "civilian" Palestinians.

If the Palestinian terrorists are so few among the 2.2 million Palestinians in the Gaza region, why don't the vast majority seize them and turn them over to the Israelis? Could it be that most Palestinians support terrorism against Israelis?

Cease fire is a nonsense phrase like two state solution for those who do not want to face the reality that the only solution is the Unconditional Surrender of the terrorists. Don't negotiate with terrorists, real or imitation in provocative mob actions.

Electoral College: can't any citizen become a member and vote for anybody?

The Electoral College should have been replaced by direct popular election of the president long ago. But in the interim, why not try to free it from the two major political parties and use it as it had been envisioned in the beginning?

Robert Francis Kennedy, Jr. is 70 years old and running for elected office for the first time. He's running for president. But his party has denied him fair access to the primary system, so he is trying to get on the ballot in all 50 states unaffiliated with either of the two major parties, which he calls the uni party.

His website and emails are all about donations to this effort and events intended to raise money. The money is to be used to collect signatures to satisfy arcane rules to get non uni party electors for the Electoral College. 

1. Forget the ballot. Voters should be able to write in anyone for any office.

2. Voters should be able to vote for presidential electors who are either committed to a candidate or uncommitted and want to meet and deliberate.

There is something that's been around for multiple presidential cycles called the national popular vote. It's purpose is to circumvent the current Electoral College system of winner of the popular vote in a state getting all the electoral votes in that state. Almost all states do it that way. The replacement is the winner of national popular vote gets sufficient Electoral College votes to be elected president.

In most presidential elections the winner of the national popular vote has also won in the Electoral College which is all that counts. But not always. Two recent examples of that not happening are:

2000 Bush beat Gore

2016 Trump beat Hillary Clinton.

The media does not address this because it prefers to handicap the nonsensical Electoral College race, especially concerning the few swing states where the outcome is likely to be decided. New York and California are ignored by the candidates because the outcome is very likely not in question.

The "insurrection" on January 6, 2021 was really an interruption of a ceremony at which 50 envelopes are opened and known results recorded. The vice president presides in this ceremony but has no discretion or power. The ceremony could have resumed the next day or week.

The current sloppy manual unverifiable voting system is an embarrassment. We have no way of checking on cheating or mistakes. For president, this is in addition to the ridiculous Electoral College.

We should vote online in all elections, including for president, and we should be able to vote for anyone. There should be no ballot.

Maximum age for president amendment: 70 when term starts.

There is already a minimum age for president: 35.

Article II, Section 1, Clause 5:

No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.

Why not a maximum age also?

70 when the elected term starts on January 20.

As a practical matter, voters want to consider their candidate serving two terms. So to be eligible for a second term, the candidate would need to be younger than 66 when the first term starts.

That leaves plenty of practical room. Who really wants to elect a president older than 66? What organization would select a chief executive 66 or older?

People can start collecting Social Security payments at age 62. Why elect a president who should be retired?

Is Tucker Carlson biased against Catholics and/or Italians?

A year or two ago on his TV show I saw Tucker Carlson mock Dr. Anthony Fauci with a drawing of Fauci dressed in a religious outfit that might be worn by a Catholic cardinal.

This week I went to Carlson's website to find a way to send him a message but there was none. His home page is ... judge for yourself:

https://tuckercarlson.com/

Featured at the top is a merchandise item that can be seen here:

https://tuckercarlson.com/product/lord-fauci-patron-saint-of-wuhan/

Lord Fauci Patron Saint of Wuhan

$25.00

The coffee mug has a photo of Fauci dressed in a Christian sort of  religious outfit ... again.

Why? If Carlson wants to mock Fauci, why make it religious? If Fauci were Muslim, would Carlson even consider doing something like this?

Or is it that Fauci is Italian? Or does Carlson see the two as one?

Carlson may protest his innocence with displays of his appreciation of Christopher Columbus or even Amerigo Vespucci. America gets its name from Amerigo.

I first became aware of Carlson when he was a regular young obnoxious panelist on the weekly TV show The McLaughlin Group on the original series: 1982-2016.

During the early days of the COVID pandemic I noticed Carlson again even though he had eliminated the bow tie. His essays were especially well written and he even made some sense. But he couldn't remain that way and increasingly regressed back into his obnoxious ways.

The Fauci mug isn't even funny. It's in really poor taste and juvenile. Carlson seems to be oblivious to his anti Catholic and anti Italian bias. I just learned that Carlson is a member of the Episcopal Church.

Speaker of the House options: elect Trump, Ryan, six Republicans vote for Jeffries, ...

There have been six votes in two days. 218 is the majority needed with all members of the House of Representatives voting. The Republican party has 222 members, the Democratic party has 212 members. Five dissident Republicans could, and have, denied the Speakership to their party's leader. Why? Who knows? Who cares? That number is currently 20 dissidents: 9.5% of Republicans.

Results of vote number six:

Republican Kevin McCarthy 201 (90.5% of Republicans)

Democrat Hakeem Jeffries 212 (100% of Democrats)

Republican Byron Donalds 20 (9.5% of Republicans).

Donalds is the most recent fill-in-the-blank NOT McCarthy.

The Speaker does not need to be a member of the House of Representatives. Strange but true.

In round one, one dissident Republican vote went to Lee Zeldin, 42 year old House member since 2015 who lost the November election for governor of New York State. Zeldin did not also run for his House seat, so he is not a member. His running for governor of a large state suggests that Zeldin would consider an executive position. Also:

https://pressgallery.house.gov/member-data/salaries

Salaries

Executive, Legislative, and Judicial

January 2015

Executive, Legislative, and Judicial Officers		114/1
President……………………………………...		$400,000
Vice President………………………………..		$230,700
Speaker of the House………………………...		$223,500
House Majority & Minority Leaders………...		$193,400
House/Senate Members & Delegates………..		$174,000
Chief Justice, Supreme Court………………..		$258,100
Associate Justices, Supreme Court…………..		$246,800

_____________________________

Zeldin might like the $223,500. But this got me thinking about other non members as compromise alternatives.

Paul Ryan is the most recent Republican Speaker: Oct. 29, 2015 - Jan. 3 2017. Ryan was vice presidential running mate for Mitt Romney in 2012. Ryan is 52 years old.

The Democrats have been having fun voting 100% for their recently appointed young leader Jeffries but it must be getting tedious and reality must be setting in: Democrats will only do a lot worse than Kevin McCarthy if the nut cases get their way. They have even rejected an appeal for them to knock it off from their favorite former president Donald Trump.

Hey, they could nominate Trump. What would Democrats do then other than become apoplectic? If the Republicans suddenly rally around Trump for Speaker, it would be too late for Democrats to take action.

Presumably options were discussed last night by Republicans and maybe even Democrats are considering a resolution.

Democrats could tank the election by not showing up. It's my understanding that the winner needs a majority of those members who vote. This would likely be in exchange for concessions that McCarthy made to Jeffries.

But consider this: six Republicans retaliate against the dissidents and threaten to vote for Jeffries. That's all Jeffries would need to reach 218. Another death wish group of Republicans who resent the original dissidents and blow up the Republican majority. Depending on their alphabetical order, imagine the tension as the roll is called. If one dissident does not vote for McCarthy, it triggers the doomsday six who start voting for Democrat Jeffries.

Now that's entertainment.

You don't have a right to spread the plague.

Period.

Censorship via prior restraint: Pentagon Papers 1971 v. Hunter Biden 2020.

The word censorship is getting thrown around much too loosely. For me censorship is the government preventing someone from speaking or publishing. If the government is not doing the preventing, it's not censorship. For the record, here is the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution:

https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-1/

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

_______________________

Let's juxtapose two cases:

1. Pentagon Papers 1971:

The New York Times published three parts but then was served with a prior restraint court order, which prevented it from further publication. The Times escalated quickly and directly to the U.S. Supreme Court, which heard the case the next day and issued its opinion in 15 days. The justices voted 6-3 to allow the Times to resume publishing. The Court found that the government had not met a "heavy burden of showing justification".

Does anything recently involving Twitter or any other issue remind you of that? Has anyone been arrested?

2. Hunter Biden 2020:

Note: Hunter Biden is the son of the incumbent president since 1/20/2021 (elected November 2020): Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr.

I learned about the New York Post story at the time: October 2020. I definitely did NOT learn about it at Twitter nor by reading the New York Post. Like most U.S. citizens I do not get information directly from Twitter. I don't know how to find information on Twitter. I do not follow anyone on Twitter. My only use of Twitter is to write the current title and link for a post at my Radical Baseball blog. Here is the latest: Monday, December 12, 2022:

NBA pioneer Nat "Sweetwater" Clifton played minor league baseball. https://radicalbaseball.blogspot.com/2022/12/nba-pioneer-nat-sweetwater-clifton.html

The government did not even try to get a prior restraint court order to stop the New York Post from publishing. Some mid level government officials, including at the FBI, tried to influence people at Twitter and Facebook both before and after the New York Post published. Much of the internal activity at Twitter has come out recently. This was initiated by the new owner of Twitter: Elon Musk.

No one has been arrested over publishing the Hunter Biden story. The New York Post newspaper and website were not seized, closed or compromised in any way. Its Twitter account was suspended by Twitter.

Some 280 character Twitter wisecracks were suppressed by Twitter but not by the government. Twitter is not THE public square. Twitter is just one of many things based on the Internet.

If you don't like how Twitter is run, go do your own thing.

If you don't like how the government is run, go run for office.

Message to Biden on his raiding the home of Trump.

Sent at whitehouse.gov:

The FBI raid on the home of former president Donald Trump is inexcusable. If the issue was really initiated by the National Archive, that organization should have explored all avenues to communicate with Trump to get the documents it wanted.

Letting your administration raid the home of your predecessor on behalf of the National Archive is such a fundamental outrage. Like your refusal to stop the mob besieging the homes of the Supreme Court justices, you now invade Trump's home.

Violating someone's home is fundamentally an assault on that person and the person's immediate family.

The responsibility for this goes up the chain of command: FBI Director, Attorney General, President. The buck stops at your desk as President Harry Truman said.

You three must address the American people and explain yourselves. Otherwise, the U.S. will continue to descend into a banana republic.

You have done nothing to bring us together. Everything you have done has driven us further apart. This raid on the home of your predecessor is merely the most recent.

United States of Amerigo (Vespucci, Italian explorer circa 1500).

Most citizens of the United States of America do not know the derivation of the word America. They probably think it's from some vague "Native American" thingie, maybe Inca or Aztec. This ignorance makes using the word America as a weapon against people from Europe who are U.S. citizens all the more moronic.

https://www.biography.com/explorer/amerigo-vespucci

America was named after Amerigo Vespucci, a Florentine navigator and explorer who played a prominent role in exploring the New World.

Who Was Amerigo Vespucci?

On May 10, 1497, explorer Amerigo Vespucci embarked on his first voyage. On his third and most successful voyage, he discovered present-day Rio de Janeiro and Rio de la Plata. Believing he had discovered a new continent, he called South America the New World. In 1507, America was named after him. He died of malaria in Seville, Spain, on February 22, 1512...

In the late 1490s, Vespucci became affiliated with merchants who supplied Christopher Columbus on his later voyages. In 1496, after Columbus returned from his voyage to America, Vespucci had the opportunity to meet him in Seville. The conversation piqued Vespucci's interest in seeing the world with his own eyes...

Believing he had discovered a new continent, in a letter to Florence, Vespucci called South America the New World. His claim was largely based on Columbus' earlier conclusion: In 1498, when passing the mouth of the Orinoco River, Columbus had determined that such a big outpouring of fresh water must come from land "of continental proportions." Vespucci decided to start recording his accomplishments, writing that accounts of his voyages would allow him to leave "some fame behind me after I die." ...

America's Namesake

In 1507, some scholars at Saint-Dié-des-Vosges in northern France were working on a geography book called Cosmographiæ Introductio, which contained large cut-out maps that the reader could use to create his or her own globes. German cartographer Martin Waldseemüler, one of the book's authors, proposed that the newly discovered Brazilian portion of the New World be labeled America, the feminine version of the name Amerigo, after Amerigo Vespucci. The gesture was his means of honoring the person who discovered it, and indeed granted Vespucci the legacy of being America's namesake.

Decades later, in 1538, the mapmaker Mercator, working off the maps created at St-Dié, chose to mark the name America on both the northern and the southern parts of the continent, instead of just the southern portion. While the definition of America expanded to include more territory, Vespucci seemed to gain credit for areas that most would agree were actually first discovered by Columbus.

In 1505, Vespucci, who was born and raised in Italy, became a naturalized citizen of Spain. Three years later, he was awarded the office of piloto mayor, or master navigator, of Spain.

__________________________

Maybe we should celebrate Amerigo Vespucci Day.

BOOKS
Coming to America: Who Was First? npr.org
October 8, 2007

Cruise down and read:

Excerpt: 'Who Was First?'

RUSSELL FREEDMAN

Read an excerpt from Who Was First? by Russell Freedman:

Derek Chauvin punishment: 25 years in prison or 10 minutes with a knee on the back of his neck?

Yesterday fired Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was convicted on all three counts against him for the death of George Floyd while Floyd was being arrested May 25, 2020 by Chauvin and three other police officers. Chauvin faces somewhere between 12.5 and 29 years in prison. He will be sentenced in June 2021.

But what if he could be sentenced to exactly his own action in Floyd's death, an Old Testament eye for an eye: 10 minutes with a knee on the back of his neck?

And what if Chauvin could pick his punishment?

What if you could pick?

If his action was so heinous, wouldn't you pick it? Wouldn't it result in Chauvin's death?

If his action was very unlikely to cause his death, why was Chauvin even charged, much less convicted?

What would Chauvin pick? What would you pick for his punishment?

U.S. Constitution: Impeachment ... Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.

The word Impeachment is mentioned six times.

https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/constitution-transcript 

Article I.

Section. 1.

All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.

Section. 2.

... The House of Representatives shall chuse their Speaker and other Officers; and shall have the sole Power of Impeachment.

Section. 3.

... The Senate shall have the sole Power to try all Impeachments. When sitting for that Purpose, they shall be on Oath or Affirmation. When the President of the United States is tried, the Chief Justice shall preside: And no Person shall be convicted without the Concurrence of two thirds of the Members present.

Judgment in Cases of Impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States: but the Party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment, according to Law.

Article II.

Section. 1.

The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America...

Section. 2.

... The President ... shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment...

Section. 4.

The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.

Article III.

Section. 1.

The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish. The Judges, both of the supreme and inferior Courts, shall hold their Offices during good Behaviour, and shall, at stated Times, receive for their Services, a Compensation, which shall not be diminished during their Continuance in Office.

Section. 2.

... The Trial of all Crimes, except in Cases of Impeachment, shall be by Jury ...

_____________________

"Knock on Any Door" to find a nutcase.

A QAnon ‘Digital Soldier’ Marches On, Undeterred by Theory’s Unraveling

Valerie Gilbert posts dozens of times a day in support of an unhinged conspiracy theory. The story of this “meme queen” hints at how hard it will be to bring people like her back to reality.
By Kevin Roose Jan. 17, 2021 nytimes.com

A friend wrote to me saying that a friend knew the subject of this article and asked my opinion. My reply:

I had to stop reading so that my head won't explode. This reeks of the junk that made me stop reading the Times. If it's all so obvious, why does the writer need to tell us that in every paragraph? He just keeps pounding that narrative. Hey, I'll draw my own conclusions. Just provide facts.

"Like any movement its size — which is almost certainly in the millions, though it is impossible to quantify" What?

This lady has too much time on her hands. I feel like I slipped into an alternate universe. It looks like the USA but isn't. Even the sports leagues are part of it. Who cares about her? Why even write this? There's an old movie:

"Knock on Any Door" 1949

Nuts abound, especially if they can get 15 minutes of fame, which is assured since we all have access to each other online. Who would have thunk it 25 years ago when the web started?

Ignore TV and "papers". Journalism is dead and it's not coming back from the grave. We all need to find alternate sources, made increasingly difficult by large communication and technology companies acting in concert to limit access to alternate ideas.

I should post this ...

______________________

Citizen President Trump: the government we deserve. Thursday, September 6, 2018

Abraham Lincoln: "With malice toward none with charity for all ... to bind up the nation's wounds ..."

In two days Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr. (Joe Biden) will take the oath of office as president. Rather than reciting words written for him by people half his age, he would do well to embrace the words of the second inaugural address by Abraham Lincoln in 1865 at the end of the Civil War. A war, not a riot.

https://www.nps.gov/linc/learn/historyculture/lincoln-second-inaugural.htm

"With malice toward none with charity for all with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right let us strive on to finish the work we are in to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan ~ to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."

New York absentee ballot application requires "a material false statement".

Yesterday I went to vote but was late, partly because of confusion about the hours for early voting:

I and others, however, were given the opportunity at this late stage to vote absentee right on the spot. We were handed a New York State absentee ballot application:

Note the six conditions to which we could swear were the true reason for voting in this manner. Obviously, since we were already in the voting place, the Westchester County Board of Elections office, we were not absent, ill, attending to primary care duties, at a Vet hospital or incarcerated.

So, what the heck? How would filling out and signing that form NOT be making "a material false statement ... as if ... duly sworn"?

This in person example simply highlights and illustrates the unethical nature of probably the vast majority of such voting, at least in New York State. Maybe it could be cleared up by simply not requiring a reason to vote my mail and the New York State people responsible for such things are too dumb and/or lazy to make the change. But it undermines confidence in the manner in which we vote. No other non-trivial act is treated so indifferently. None is not computerized. None.

If we can do pretty much everything else via computer, why not voting? Is it because voting is so much more important or because voting is so unimportant?

Creation date for food in supermarkets, not just expiration date.

I recently had this experience:

Shop Rite sells 15 month old Haagen-Dazs. Saturday, May 16, 2020

... ice cream with "best by" (euphemism for expiration date) November 2019. Yes, from LAST year.

So the November 2019 ice cream was probably produced in June 2018. If it had a creation date almost two years old, would you buy it? And what kind of company would put it on its shelves?

If these dates were properly regulated, they would have such a creation date, which would be much more instructive than a meaningless "best by" date.
________________________________

Federal legislation is needed for CREATION dates on foods sold. They can also have an expiration date but that would be as superfluous as it currently is.

With a creation date we consumers can make our own decisions.

Plague: COVID-19 infection percents v. population percents.

Only eight states have infection percents higher than their population percents. New York State is way out of line from all other states and New York City skews the state.

3/26/20	Inf	Inf%	Pop	Pop%	Inf%-Pop%
Alabama	531	0.62%	4,908,621	1.48%	-0.86%
Alaska	69	0.08%	734,000	0.22%	-0.14%
Arizona	508	0.60%	7,378,494	2.23%	-1.63%
Arkansas	349	0.41%	3,039,000	0.92%	-0.51%
California	3,777	4.43%	39,737,489	12.00%	-7.57%
Colorado	1,430	1.68%	5,845,526	1.77%	-0.09%
Connecticut	1,012	1.19%	3,563,077	1.08%	0.11%
Delaware	143	0.17%	982,895	0.30%	-0.13%
Washington D.C.	267	0.31%	720,687	0.22%	0.10%
Florida	2,352	2.76%	21,992,985	6.64%	-3.88%
Georgia	1,714	2.01%	10,736,059	3.24%	-1.23%
Hawaii	86	0.10%	1,412,687	0.43%	-0.33%
Idaho	189	0.22%	1,826,156	0.55%	-0.33%
Illinois	2,538	2.98%	12,659,682	3.82%	-0.85%
Indiana	645	0.76%	6,745,354	2.04%	-1.28%
Iowa	179	0.21%	3,179,849	0.96%	-0.75%
Kansas	168	0.20%	2,910,357	0.88%	-0.68%
Kentucky	248	0.29%	4,499,692	1.36%	-1.07%
Louisiana	2,305	2.70%	4,645,184	1.40%	1.30%
Maine	155	0.18%	1,345,790	0.41%	-0.22%
Maryland	774	0.91%	6,083,116	1.84%	-0.93%
Massachusetts	2,417	2.84%	6,976,597	2.11%	0.73%
Michigan	2,856	3.35%	10,045,029	3.03%	0.32%
Minnesota	399	0.47%	5,700,671	1.72%	-1.25%
Mississippi	579	0.68%	2,989,260	0.90%	-0.22%
Missouri	502	0.59%	6,169,270	1.86%	-1.27%
Montana	90	0.11%	1,086,759	0.33%	-0.22%
Nebraska	73	0.09%	1,952,570	0.59%	-0.50%
Nevada	535	0.63%	3,139,658	0.95%	-0.32%
New Hampshire	158	0.19%	1,371,246	0.41%	-0.23%
New Jersey	6,876	8.07%	8,936,574	2.70%	5.37%
New Mexico	136	0.16%	2,096,640	0.63%	-0.47%
New York	38,977	45.73%	19,440,469	5.87%	39.86%
North Carolina	764	0.90%	10,611,862	3.20%	-2.31%
North Dakota	58	0.07%	761,723	0.23%	-0.16%
Ohio	867	1.02%	11,747,694	3.55%	-2.53%
Oklahoma	248	0.29%	3,954,821	1.19%	-0.90%
Oregon	316	0.37%	4,301,089	1.30%	-0.93%
Pennsylvania	1,688	1.98%	12,820,878	3.87%	-1.89%
Rhode Island	188	0.22%	1,056,161	0.32%	-0.10%
South Carolina	456	0.54%	5,210,095	1.57%	-1.04%
South Dakota	46	0.05%	903,027	0.27%	-0.22%
Tennessee	957	1.12%	6,897,576	2.08%	-0.96%
Texas	1,396	1.64%	29,472,295	8.90%	-7.26%
Utah	402	0.47%	3,282,115	0.99%	-0.52%
Vermont	156	0.18%	628,061	0.19%	-0.01%
Virginia	604	0.71%	8,626,207	2.61%	-1.90%
Washington	3,207	3.76%	7,797,095	2.35%	1.41%
West Virginia	76	0.09%	1,778,070	0.54%	-0.45%
Wisconsin	707	0.83%	5,851,754	1.77%	-0.94%
Wyoming	55	0.06%	567,025	0.17%	-0.11%
	85,228		331,118,991

	Place	Inf	Pop	Inf/Pop		Pop/Inf
3/27/20	NYS	45,934	19,440,469	0.002362803078	0.24%	423
3/27/20	NYC	26,600	8,623,000	0.003084773281	0.31%	324
3/27/20	not NYC	19,334	10,917,000	0.001770999359	0.18%	565