Esoteric Meandering Shouting Into the Void

Dwain Northey (Gen X)

I am so tired of the trolls from my generation and before crying in their beer about a small measure of student loan debt relief. The winy baby’s cry, “I paid off my student loans” or “you should take out loans if you can’t pay it back”. This is the biggest line of BS I have ever heard because I am willing to bet many of them have filed bankruptcy or never went to college and even if they did in the 80s and 90s a student that didn’t have wealthy parents could work and make enough to pay rent and still go to school. I have a college bound kid right now and I am here to tell you that ship has sailed.

In the 1989-90 academic year, tuition at the average public 4-year institution was $1,780 a year. The national average rent was under $500 a month for a 2-bedroom apartment. The tuition currently average cost of attendance for a student living on campus at a public 4-year in-state institution is $25,707 per year or $102,828 over 4 years. Out-of-state students pay $44,014 per year or $176,056 over 4 years. Private, nonprofit university students pay $54,501 per year or $218,004 over 4 years. The cost of rent for a 700sqft apartment ranges from $1300 to $2500 a month. These are unsustainable at the wage of the normal college age person being for $7.35hr to $13.00hr.

So, if we continue to tell our kids to go to college you can get so, you can have a career that will pay enough to survive and potentially raise a family, but they are saddled with $100,000 in student loan debt that seems insurmountable for many. The other option for many is to take a fast-food job or retail that only pays poverty wages and not be burdened with college debt. Oh yeah then when they complain about not getting paid enough the righteous will tell them that they have entry level jobs, and they should get their degree if they want to get a better job. Seem like a no-win scenario.

Let’s talk about the predatory leading practices of banks lending money for student loans. The rate for student loans is from 5% to 15% and I am sure you can guess the rate for a student that comes from lower income earning families. I can buy a car for under 5% and also take out a mortgage for the same rate but my son is looking at student loans at 13%. Currently if I took out a car loan or a mortgage and the world took a shit on me, I could file bankruptcy and walk away… yes, my credit would be screwed for a few years but no harm no foul. The current law will not let you include student loans into a bankruptcy. I said that to someone, and their rebuttal was if you file the bank can take the car or the house, but they can’t strip the knowledge from your brain. I was horrified by that, and they said I suppose if the bank can rescind the person’s degree and ban them from ever using the knowledge, they learned in college then maybe the law could change. WTF, that is the most loathsome shit I have ever heard.

Bidens student loan relief is $10,000. My son is looking at school that is $20k a year that’s $80k for a 4-year degree which semi-reasonable in today’s market, that degree at an annual interest rate of 13% is $9,500 a year in interest alone. The $10,000 student debt relief is one year of interest, the bank isn’t losing a penny in fact they are still making money because that $80,000 loan will in all likelihood take 15-20 years to pay off.  

In 1990 you could have graduated with less than $8000 in student loan debt, that isn’t even possible for a 2-year community college degree today.

This is a prime example of the ridiculousness of education cost. The average cost of going to school to become a Medical Assistant is between $15-$20K and it is an 18-to-24-month program and the average income for an MA after $20,000 and 2 years of education is $19.00 an hour. So that person now making $19hr has $20k in student loan debt at probably greater than 12% and almost certainly has a car payment and insurance and rent. This lucky person is bringing home around $650 a week that equates to $2600 a month… WOW that’s great but let’s not forget that rent could be upwards of $2000 a month not including utilities and food, car payment, insurance. Cell phone and god forbid they are a single parent.

So, stop telling Millennials and Gen Z to suck it up because you paid off your student loan debt for 30 years ago. We have made the system that is nearly impossible for many to attain the meager existence that we were able to pull off, I don’t know about you, but my hope was always for my son to do better than I have.

Thanks again for reading my rant, feel free to comment.

Lyle Northey (Silent/Boomer)

The question of the moment is where is the AGAIN in the MAGA logo? So let us consider who is defining greatness.

In the current world we have Russia that is attempting to subvert a neighbor into being a satellite state as it once was in the past. This will show the world that Russia is once again on the rise and becoming the great empire it used to be. The Taliban are running around in their corner of the world and forcing their religious beliefs down everyone’s throat to assert that their way of life is the greatest, at least for those that rule.

So back to our situation and the definition should become clearer as we look at the who is behind the effort. It is focused on one person, but it is the desire of a great many individuals. 

The claim that I am so great that I could kill someone in Times Square and get away with it, or when you are rich and famous if you want to kiss a woman or touch her where you please that is okay, they actually look forward to it, are the kind of remarks that lead to the path of rule some seek. 

Let us turn back the hands of time. We are a part of the new nation of the USA and our common attributes are that we are, 1 male, 2 white, 3 rich, and 4 have control over everything. So, to make things great again we must by whatever means regain as many or all of these attributes. So, we pack the Supreme Court with likeminded people that have no problem making decisions based on the wishes of our likeminded supporters rather than on the wishes of the majority. We put in place individuals that will destroy our postal systems so that voting by mail is no longer possible. We have taken one religion and put it ahead of all others and will no doubt declare it to be the faith of the nation and disregard the Constitution on that issue as well. At some point if we can get enough power in the Congress, both houses, and have the Supreme Court on our side we may take away the voting rights of all listed as minorities. Going a step further back in time, if we can create an economic situation dire enough, we may be able to literally put people back in bondage to pay off their debt.

So, when was America great? By MAGA standards when rich white men ran the country and no one else had any rights. Women were property just like all other people that had different colored skin. When Manifest Destiny was the order of the day. Rip the riches from the earth, destroy whatever got in your way of finding the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, slaughter the animals that might hinder your building of empire and enslave or kill all that opposed you along the way. 

Is this a possible future? When you have state governments that are trying to rewrite history by destroying or banning books and suppressing ideas they personally do not approve of, then yes, we are headed down the road to a utopia for some and a living hell for others.

All of this comes down to a few controlling everything and no one else being able to do anything about it. Poor and ineffective governments have been taken out, the killing of the Czar of Russia, for instance, and his family. 

Our nation is divided into states and many states are managed very well, others not so much. We have organizations and companies that have been given status as people and are allowed to force that corporate ideal onto the masses. Would our children be put through Live Shooter Drills in school if we did not have an organization such as the NRA with its political agenda and power? 

We are reminded that ownership of anything comes with responsibility and yet it does not seem to apply to guns. Cars, homes, pets and all manner of things come with a yearly renewal of license and the paying of taxes, yet this does not apply to guns. Driving requires that you retest every so often to prove you are still capable of driving, that requirement does not apply to guns and yet the basic reason for the retest is, so you do not use the vehicle in an unsafe manner and kill someone. 

So many other things that we have a minority of people trying to run the world are things that are individual choices. Let’s put the individual back in the driving seat when it comes to personal things and limit the number of mass requirements when possible. If getting a shot is all it takes to protect you and everyone around you there should be no question, but having an operation of any kind should be between you and your doctor. The state’s involvement or control of things should be kept to those things that are for the benefit of all. Your choice of faith is like your choice of breakfast food, it should be up to you without having some entity that feels they know best telling you what to do.

Dwain Northey (Gen X)

I have been struggling with the phrase Make America Great Again. Trump, although he would like you to believe it, was not the first to start this nationalistic movement it was Ronald R Reagan in his campaign for the White House against Jimmy Carter. Even then when I was 12-13 years old, I didn’t understand the Again part of the phrase. Being born in the late 60’s I had always been told that America was the Greatest country so the cry for making it great again was perplexing.

Now as an adult and having a firmer grasp on the real history of our country I frequently ask the question of the MAGA faithful, Ok When? That very simple question is regularly met with blank looks and disdain for me being presumptuous to even ask such a preposterous question.

Trump has banged his drum and heralded from cost to cost that only he can make America great again, but still no one has indicated the specific point in which America was great.

I know it is a very simple inquiry…When was the moment that everything in our nearly 250-year history has been great and great for all?

The founder had a lofty vision of a country that was for the people and by the people. The second paragraph of the United States Declaration of Independence signed in 1776 starts: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. The Constitution enacted in 1789 starts “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.” It isn’t until the 1886 when the 14^th Amendment was ratified that all U.S. citizens when, under the law considered equal. Up until that point slavery an everyday occurrence owning another person was just the way it was.

So, was the period between 1776 and 1886 when America was great? But remember from 1860 to 1865 we had a Civil War so that couldn’t have been when we were Great. Then Reconstruction after the Civil War 1865 to 1877 was kind of a Shit Show.

Well, that blows a century that I assume we can agree that America wasn’t Great.

After the end of Reconstruction, racial segregation laws were enacted. These laws became popularly known as Jim Crow laws. They remained in force from the end of Reconstruction in 1877 until 1965. The laws mandated racial segregation as policy in all public facilities in the southern states. So even though we enacted a law that said all were equal we really didn’t mean it.

In the same period industry started and vast fortunes were made by a few while the multitude suffered. This was also when some tire to stand up and start unions that would fight for the rights of workers. Hard times but better, there was still little equality. Black where recognized as citizens but hardly had any power to exercise that right and women, women were still considered property of their fathers or husband.

So was it this period when America was great before suffrage before the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution granted American women the right to vote, a right known as women’s suffrage, and was ratified on August 18, 1920, ending almost a century of protest. Was that the historical time we were Great?

We came together as a Nation During WWI and the roaring 20’s seemed like a pretty good time that was until the fun dried up that the country went into the Great Depression after the 1929 stock market crash. That sucked for us as a country. FDR was elected in 1932 and inaugurated in 1933 and his leadership pulled us back from the brink. A lot of good things happened to help the common citizen, there was still segregation, but thing looked better.

Just when things looked better here the world was still dealing with the economic collapse and the rise of Hitler and Mussolini… but we had an isolationist policy, and we were not going to get suckered into another world war. We all know how that turned out, we helped for years without getting involved but then on Dec. 7^th, 1941, we were attacked by Japan at Pearl Harbor, Japan declared war on the United States and 2 days later Germany did the same. No more isolation, we were in the thick of it. Well, the United Nations won that war, at great cost, but we won. Let not forget that Asian American citizens were rounded up and put in internment camps during WWII.

So, was that when we were Great?

Soldiers came back and everything was supposed to be smooth sailing. It was for some but not for other the same ugly monster of segregation was still alive and well. Black & Brown solders that had fought in WWII were summarily disenfranchised by the country they fought to defend, when white soldiers could get loans and by houses with mortgages backed by the U.S. government when Black and Brown soldiers that had made the same sacrifices were excluded for the same programs.

That shit continued until Civil Rights Act, signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson on July 2, 1964, prohibited discrimination in public places, provided for the integration of schools and other public facilities, and made employment discrimination illegal. It was the most sweeping civil rights legislation since Reconstruction. There was still Red Lining so not everything was fixed.

Looks like we are running out of space on the timeline to define was America was great…

There was Nixon, that was a shit show although he did start the EPA. Carter tried to do some good but was stymied along the way. Reagan who started the whole Make America Great campaign really had no reference to point to as far as a great period to harken back to. Then he fucked it up with the whole Iran Contra debacle. Bush Sr. was no prize just continued to dig a financial pit for the country. Clinton had the 90’s which brought a lot of prosperity, and he actually balanced the budget. Then along came Baby Bush and 9-11 and the beginning of a 20-year war in the middle east. More than the war in Iraq and Afghanistan I was to blame Bush Jr for letting the assault weapons ban expire the President Clinton had signed in 1994. Obama tried and did a pretty good job of getting us back on track, we still had a war in the middle east we didn’t need to be in, but he did get the country the ACA, Affordable Care Act. Unfortunately, because of the NRA and the expiration of the Assault Weapons ban mass shooting became a thing in the United States and school shootings became a nightmarish reality.

So now we are caught up to Donald’s reign… someone need to tell me what period in our tumultuous 250 years we were great.

Our goal has to be better than we were yesterday and definitely better than we were when we started.

The Declaration of Independence started by declaring that all men were created equal… lets live up to that!

Thanks again for suffering through my rant.

Dwain Northey (Gen X)

https://www.worldhistory.org/article/1774/ten-ancient-lgbtq-facts-you-need-to-know/

Its PRIDE month and although it has been recognized since 1999 seemingly the republican party just found out about it. At least the LGBTQ+ community is their latest target for what ever reason. I suppose that being outright racist, which most of them are, isn’t getting the traction it used and has more defenders, so they had to find a less protected minority. The ‘religious’ right can’t misinterpret scripture to codify racism, but they certainly can twist their holy book to persecute the LGBTQ+.

Did you know that until that Homosexuality was classified as a mental disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) beginning with the first edition, published in 1952 by the American Psychiatric Association (APA). This classification was challenged by gay rights activists in the years following the 1969 Stonewall riots, and in December 1973, the APA board of trustees voted to declassify homosexuality as a mental disorder. In 1974, the DSM was updated and homosexuality was replaced with a new diagnostic code for individuals distressed by their homosexuality. Distress over one’s sexual orientation remained in the manual, under different names, until the DSM-5 in 2013. It is absolutely ludicrous that a medical association classified a group of people mentally ill based on the choice of the person they love.

The Church that supposedly follows the doctrine of Christ has in whole cloth condemned homosexuality when their savior never mentioned it. In fact, the entire celibacy thing was never mentioned either, it was added later to satisfy some purity standard. If anyone knows anything about the Catholic Clergy and their purity, ‘celibacy’, vow we all know how denying and basic carnal function has turned out for them.

In the 1980’s with AIDS it was tagged as a gay male disease although many others were diagnosed with the, at the time, fatal disease. In April 24, 1980– The CDC receives a report on Ken Horne, a gay man living in San Francisco who is suffering from Kaposi’s Sarcoma, a rare and unusually aggressive cancer linked with weakened immunity. Horne dies on November 30, 1981. The same year, the CDC retroactively identifies Horne as the first American patient of the AIDS epidemic. There starts the re-persecution of homosexual men, hetero men could care less about lesbians… two chicks that’s fine. Yes, another double standard.

The AIDS and HIV crisis of the 70s and 80s has lost it terrifying impact so now that big scare is that the LGBTQ+ community are trying to groom children. Drag Queens are indoctrinating youth by reading them stories at public libraries, at least that is what the righteous want you to believe. These are the same people that love the movie Tootsie with Dustin Hoffman in the 70s and Mrs. Doubtfire with Robin Williams in the 80s. There is a long history of men dressing as women all the way back to Shakespeare because women where not allowed to act in plays. (Another Church purity thing.)

Let’s list all the male actors that played women.

•  10 – Eddie Murphy in ‘The Nutty Professor’
• 9 – John Travolta in ‘Hairspray’
• 8 – Martin Lawrence in ‘Big Momma’s House’
• 7 – Shawn and Marlon Wayans in ‘White Chicks’
• 6 – Eddie Redmayne in ‘The Danish Girl’
• 5 – Jared Leto in ‘Dallas Buyers Club’
• 4 – Dustin Hoffman in ‘Tootsie’
• 3 – Cillian Murphy in ‘Breakfast on Pluto’
• 2 – Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon in ‘Some Like It Hot’
• 1 – Tyler Perry as Madea in a number of popular movies

Are these actors all groomers? Remember Patrick Swayze, Wesley Snipes, John Leguizamo, and Sylvester Stallone all played women on screen. Wow that kind of kills the whole Drag argument.

That’s enough of me ranting… Happy Pride Month and Love whom ever you want to LOVE.   

Dwain Northey (Gen X)

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/house-republicans-debt-limit-hostage_n_646d468fe4b0bfd64485b4ec

Isn’t it nice when Republicans come right out and tell what they are doing? Rep. Matt Gaetz came right out and condemned the deal that President Biden and McCarthy reached on the debt ceiling, manufactured, crisis by saying that the Republicans should not negotiate with their hostage.

Nice so what he is coming right out and saying is that they should not allow the country to pay the bills that they have already incurred unless every step forward that Biden has made are thrown in the dust bin. They want the full faith and credit of the United States to be down graded and potentially spin the global economy into turmoil unless they get to metaphorically kill their HOSTAGE.

My big question is how can average Americans not see exactly what they are doing? Everything that this current House has proposed and tried to do is 180° from what will actually be beneficial to the country and the people who voted them into office.

Out of the 11 bills Scalise committed to putting on the floor, the House passed six of them in the last three months:

• H.Res.11 – Establishing the Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party (which established a bipartisan Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party)
• H.Con.Res.3 – Expressing the sense of Congress condemning the recent attacks on pro-life facilities, groups, and churches (This resolution condemned the recent attacks on pro-life facilities, groups, and churches)
• H.R.26 – Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act (This bill ensures “infants born alive after an abortion receive the same protection of law and degree of care as any newborn”)
• H.R.22 – Protecting America’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve from China Act (the bill would prohibit the Secretary of Energy from sending petroleum products from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to China)
• H.R.21 – Strategic Production Response Act (which prohibited non-emergency drawdowns of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve without a plan to increase energy production on federal lands)
• H.R.23– Family and Small Business Taxpayer Protection Act (which would rescind tens of billions of dollars allocated to the IRS for 87,000 new IRS agents in the Inflation Reduction Act)

But there are still five bills that Republicans have either had to pull or have not been able to put on the floor schedule at all:

• H.R.27 – Prosecutors Need to Prosecute Act (This bill would “create transparency in our criminal justice system by letting the public know how many cases prosecutors are declining to prosecute, the number of offenses committed by career criminals, and the number of criminals released”)
• H.Con.Res.4 – Expressing support for the Nation’s law enforcement agencies and condemning any efforts to defund or dismantle law enforcement agencies (This resolution expresses the “sincere gratitude” to law enforcement officers who protect and serve our communities and reject “misguided and dangerous efforts to defund” law enforcement)
• Border Safety and Security Act (This bill would “empower the Department of Homeland Security to turn away” undocumented migrants at the border if the Secretary of DHS does not have operational control)
• Illegal Alien NICS Alert Act (This would require the National Instant Criminal Background Check system “to notify U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and relevant local law enforcement when a firearm transferee is illegally present in the United States”)
• No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion and Abortion Insurance Full Disclosure Act (This bill makes “permanent the long-standing Hyde Amendment as well as similar provisions to prohibit federal funding for abortion and funding for any insurance plan that includes abortion on demand”)

So basically, this House has protected corporations doing business with China, protected the unborn and the oil companies and tried to stop the IRS from being able to audit multimillionaires. These are all the things that the average citizen definitely needs.

In contrast the previous 116^th House in their first 100 days passed.

• A bill to ban discrimination against LGBTQ jurors in local D.C. courts
• A bill to make D.C. eligible for federal flood mitigation and prevention funds
• A bill to exempt D.C. courts, CSOSA, and PDS from federal government shutdowns
• A bill to protect women from wage discrimination
• A bill to prohibit employers from asking job applicants about their salary history
• A bill to sell RFK stadium site and unused federal land to the District of Columbia
• A bill to remove the federal government’s authority over District-owned land
• A bill to ban citizenship question on the 2020 census
• A bill to rehabilitate NPS parks in D.C.
• A bill to remove the Architect of the Capitol and Director of the National Park Service from the D.C. Zoning Commission
• A bill to place the D.C. seal in the Library of Congress alongside other state seals
• A bill to protect LGBTQ residents and reproductive rights in D.C. from federal attack
• A bill to give the D.C. Mayor local authority over the D.C. National Guard
• A bill to require federal buildings to provide lactation spaces to nursing mothers
• A bill to give D.C. a local prosecutor’s office, similar to other U.S. territories
• A bill to give D.C legislative autonomy, as part of her Free and Equal D.C.
• A bill to grant back pay to low-wage federal contract workers

Sad that the Republicans only seem to want cry about an inefficient government when democrats are in charge but when they hold power, they absolutely prove their theory.

Thanks again for suffering through another rant.

Dwain Northey (Gen X)

To Them We Owe

© Don Nielsen More By Don Nielsen

Published by Family Friend Poems June 2014 with permission of the author.

Happened today, and in the past;
Sacrifice made, for ours to last.

Wives to widows, families torn;
Gave their lives, for them we mourn.

Gone forever, souls are lost;
Freedom comes, with this cost.

Enjoy the life, they did preserve;
Fate they suffered, did not deserve.

On this day, lest we forget;
To them we owe, our life in debt.

Don Nielsen. “To Them We Owe.” Family Friend Poems, Jun 2014. https://www.familyfriendpoems.com/poem/to-them-we-owe

The Fallen

© Randall W. West More By Randall W. West

Published by Family Friend Poems May 13, 2022 with permission of the author.

Fragile is a single life the brave so freely give.

Bound for immortality, their souls will surely live.

Death, don’t be proud for what you took, they freely gave away.

Their quest for freedom far outweighed the fear that you convey.

They joined the ranks of warriors, staying vigil day and night.

They often skipped a meal or two, but they never missed a fight.

God bless the men and women whose fighting days are done.

Say a special prayer at night for each and every one.

Rest assured that you will find throughout the coming years

These fallen warriors will return in the hearts of all their peers!

If we forget their sacrifice, their deaths will be in vain.

Let’s stand beside their loved ones as we sing their last refrain:

You’ve come upon our heaven’s gate

You surely won’t have long to wait.

The saints will take good care of you,

But there is still a lot to do.

You’ve joined the ranks of everyone

Who fought so freedom could be won.

Although your job on earth is done,

Your work in heaven’s just begun.

Randall W. West. “The Fallen.” Family Friend Poems, May 2022. https://www.familyfriendpoems.com/poem/the-fallen-6

On this Memorial Day I thought I would publish a couple Poems that others have written, and I feel adequately convey the solemn yet grateful day that we observe annually. We should never forget those that signed an open contract to serve, those that without hesitation wrote a check they knew may result in death or injury.

For all those the served All Gave Some, Some Gave All…

Dwain Northey (Gen X)

Conspiracies have been in the historical lexicon probably ever since man was able to tell a story but some of those conspiracies have lasted centuries. There is the Illuminati, the Templars, the Free Masons (which may be connected to the Templars), 100s of conspiracies around the Catholic Church, many around religion in general.

In the U.S. there are the tales of intrigue around Lincolns Assassination as well as JFK, there are legions of theorist that will tell you that the moon landing was staged or that the earth is actually flat. These conspiracies are fanciful and relatively harmless, as far a I know no one has injured or killed someone over their flat earth machinations.

The current round of ridiculous conspiracies are in fact dangerous and potentially life threatening. The belief that COVID19 isn’t real or that it was a manufactured bioweapon is ludicrous and deadly. The fact is that the virus Globally, as of 24 May 2023, there have been 766,895,075 confirmed cases of COVID-19, including 6,935,889 deaths, reported to WHO. As of 23 May 2023, a total of 13,355,264,024 vaccine doses have been administered. I am sorry but those numbers don’t sound like the common cold to me. The insanity is that some how we stopped believing in science and I know that isn’t a historical anomaly. In the early 20^th century, a microscopic killer circled the entire globe in four months, claiming the lives of more than 21 million people. The United States lost 675,000 people to the Spanish flu in 1918-more casualties than World War I, World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War combined. There were many that didn’t want to acknowledge that reality either.

The potentially most damaging and completely absurd is the right-wing QAnon conspiracy movement emerged on the internet in late 2017. While followers of the QAnon movement claim a variety of different beliefs, the main threads of QAnon’s core theory are that a network of Satan-worshipping pedophiles control the government and media, and that a coming “storm” will sweep them out of power. The QAnon movement centered former President Donald Trump as its key leader, and said he was secretly fighting to unmask the evildoers who controlled the political and economic systems of power.

This madness was a genesis of January 6^th and the nearly catastrophic overthrow of the U.S. government. As bazar and unhinged as this conspiracy is it is still alive and spreading. I would rather chase my tail and believe that there is an Illuminati, a cabal of wealthy individuals that are pulling all the strings, than the democrats are all pedophiles and drink terrified children’s blood, i.e. adrenochrome, to stay young. That shit its f’ing ludicrous.

Throughout time there have been those that tell the truth and those who refuse to believe it. The catholic church jailed Galileo for saying that the earth was not the center of the universe and I know there are some conspiracist that will say how do I know that they aren’t right. They are the same ones that run away when I ask for definitive proof. Yes, I am a skeptic but if there is a glimmer of actual facts involved, I am willing to hear you out.

Thanks again for indulging my rant.    

Dwain Northey (Gen X)

The fear of AI is overblown—and here’s why

Is this beginning have we reached a SkyNet moment are we entering the Matrix or are we already in it?

The fears of AI may be completely over blow at the current time but who know what the future will bring. The 4 main types of artificial intelligence

• Reactive machines. Reactive machines are AI systems that have no memory and are task specific, meaning that an input always delivers the same output. …
• Limited memory. The next type of AI in its evolution is limited memory. …
• Theory of mind. …
• Self-awareness.

Will smart machines kill the labor market? One could argue that in many ways it already has. Automobile manufacturers have used welding robots for decades already and with the advances in robotic technology that has gotten far more efficient. Using reactive machines, robots, has made the manufacturing process safer and more consistent than its previous human method. The human component hasn’t been removed, it has only become more technical and specialized because those machines still need to be programed and invariably repaired.

The elephant in the room currently has to do with the ChatBot technology that can write stories in the tone or voice of author or genre. That obviously is a point of contention for the writes union because production companies are always trying to save money and even though the writers are the lowest paid in any production if those writers can be replaced with a program the money people will always take the cheapest option. I have read some of the things that these AI writers have written and currently the tone and tenor of the writing is almost obviously not written by a human. The again I am pretty sure that Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg are either AI or just aliens in human skins.

My feeling that AI must bring the subject that Andrew Yang ran his campaign on which for those of you that don’t remember was UBI, universal basic income, if robots perform many of the task that people currently do, and those people can’t earn an income the economy would collapse. It is a basic concept if a rich guy like Jeff Bezos, that has good and services he wishes to sell if there is no consumer base to buy his wears, he isn’t a rich guy anymore. I know all you Republicans are saying, this a big government handout, and you are right if the rich want to stay that way they are going to have to pay more in taxes to subsidize the masses otherwise that all they will be able to do is sit in their ivory towers and watch the world crumble outside their gates.

Dwain Northey (Gen X)

https://www.postandcourier.com/opinion/commentary/both-sides-ism-a-big-problem-in-journalism/article_9bab8232-b6bd-11e8-84ca-5784be02719c.html#newsletter-popup

This is a relatively new word in the English language lexicon and absolutely one of the most ridiculous and annoying. This absurd word refers to a tendency to treat all policy debates as if the opposing sides present equally strong arguments or are equally valid or equally. 

The common hypothesis of how this term, mindset or whatever you want to call it, puts the onus on Fox (so called) News and their slogan of fair and balanced. It has been obvious, to anyone who actually pays attention, that the catch phrase of ‘fair and balanced’ was and is completely tongue in cheek unfortunately many Americans didn’t get the memo.

This radical redefining of facts has gone to the extreme, even rewriting of history to fit both sides narrative. Teacher in primary schools in some states being to that they have to present both sides of the Civil War and of Hitlers Nazi conquest of Europe in WWII. There are not 2 sides to these historical events.

Bothsidesism of the Civil was fits the narrative that the North was the aggressor imposing itself of the sovereign rights of the South and their practice of slavery that was the economic engine of the Southern States. In some schools in the South the period from 1861 to 1865 is even taught as the War of Northern Aggression. This conflict had nothing to do with slavery, it was all about states’ rights and Lincoln had no right to outlaw the system of forced labor of an enslaved people. The fact that the system of slavery had been abolished across the free world before 1860 meant nothing to Southern Plantation owners that had built their fortunes off the backs of forced labor. Both sides advocates will tell you that the slaves were happy and that if they hadn’t been brought to America.

The same people would say the Hitler may have done some bad things, but his control of Germany made the train run on time and stated the construction of the Autobahn. The fact that he killed millions of Jews and stole their belongings is just an unfortunate consequence.

During Covid19 the White House led the country to believe in its infancy that it would be gone in a few weeks and that China had done a heroic job of containing the virus. That adoration if President Xi Jinping soon turned into ‘the China Virus’ and that this was biological weapon released intentionally.

The truth the both sides caucus neglected to report was that Trump pulled CDC scientist out of Wuhan prior to the virus being reported and if he had left them in place that the pandemic would mostly likely not have been as sever. Trump also praised China on their quick action on containing the virus. Soon after that adoration of President Xi Jinping the narrative was China Virus and that it was a biological weapon. Donald proclaimed that he immediately stopped all travel from China, real truth was it was not immediate or total.

Bothsidesism said that the virus wasn’t dangerous, that the lock down was in infringement on our rights, the vaccine, that Trump claims full credit for creating, was a globalist plot to track or poison the masses. The unfortunate truth is that the virus has killed over a million U.S. citizens and multiples of that worldwide. The facts are Trump did not create the vaccine, MRA does not change human DNA, the MRA platform has been around for at least a decade, but if you ask the both sides contingent all of these truths are lies because that’s not what they read on the internet or heard on Fox.

The last both sides argument I will hit is January 6^th, it was not a normal tourist visit and was a fucking attempted insurrection with the goal of overturning a free and fair election. There was no theft of the election from Trump, there weren’t thousands of dead voters in Georgia, 10s of thousands of undocumented people did not vote across the southwest. Get this through your thick heads your maniacal wannabe dictator lost, do what you told Hilary votes to do, “Get over it.”

Thank you for sticking though this rant has been something I need to get off my chest for awhile.

Dwain Northey (Gen X)

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/read-full-durham-report-here/

The long-awaited Durham report has been released. This was the multimillion dollars investigation the was going to definitively exonerate Donny and prove without a shadow of a doubt the Hilary Clinton colluded with Russia and it was covered up by the deep state FBI. Here is one line from the highly touted report, ‘That investigation identified several procedural errors, but overall concluded there was no “political bias” at the bureau.’

Holy Crap, you mean there wasn’t any implication to convict the Clintons or the FBI?

Well, if you listen to the Red Hat entertainment networks you will hear that this 300-page report 100% vindicates Trump and points the finger squarely at the Deep State. Which anyone with the time to actually read the report would realize that is another falsehood perpetrated and advanced by the Right Wing.

The report in reality proves nothing, even those ‘implicated’ in the investigation were cleared and eventually never charged. The genius of Merrick Garland is that he didn’t touch the report in any way and just released it unredacted and let it fall on its face all by itself. Very much unlike Bill Barr and his press conference prior to his heavily redacted comments of the Mueller Report. Barr, as attorney general, really perjured himself by falsely claiming that the Mueller report said nothing to implicate Trump of any wrongdoing. As the unredacted portions of the report where finally released we all, at least those of us who pay attention, learned that Barr’s representation of the report was another Trump era alternative set of facts.

Special counsel John Durham’s final report reveals that four years, a $6.5 million reveled absolutely nothing except a bill for American Taxpayers. I can here the Republicans screaming already, ‘The nearly two-year special counsel investigation of Russian election interference led by Robert Mueller cost nearly $32 million in total.’ To that finger pointing accusation the only real response is the investigation produced 37 indictments; seven guilty pleas or convictions; and compelling evidence that the president obstructed justice on multiple occasions. Mueller also uncovered and referred 14 criminal matters to other components of the Department of Justice. Paul Manafort, pleading guilty to conspiracy charges and agreeing to cooperate with the ongoing investigation. Mueller may have also paid for his own investigation. That’s because, as part of his plea deal with the special counsel, Manafort agreed to forfeit real estate and cash estimated to be worth between $42 million and $46 million.

Based on my math the Mueller investigation, although costing more than Durhams had a net gain of between 5 and 9 million dollars. Even though based on an obscure office of legal counsel rule that you can’t charge sitting President, and even if we could have AG Bill Barr wouldn’t have, Trump wasn’t charged for any crimes.

The facts of the Mueller Investigation will forever be ignored by the right because Barr gas lit the findings, and many Americans have the attention span of a toddler especially when it new they don’t want to hear will not change. The Durham Report will invariably be held up as a rebuke of any wrongdoing by Trump or any of his lackies by the Red Hat Media and the Orange Menace himself and that will be the narrative that those that can’t see beyond the bill of their MAGA hats will believe.

I hope that we move forward from the damage that 45 and his minions have done and that history paints would be king Donald the First as poorly as Benedict Arnold.

Thank all of you that read though my entire rant. Stay Strong (hopefully) this storm will pass.