ASTOUNDED

Two experiences happened today that absolutely astounded me:

1.         Saw the movie “Dream/Killer” that details the 10-year saga of a 19-year old in Columbia, Missouri who is wrongly convicted of murder. The corruption of the police and the prosecutor were just infuriating. His conviction was overturned after 10 years, but his life was truly ruined.

2.         Was investigating the primary in my precinct in Texas and discovered that one of the Democratic candidates for Congress is not a resident of our area, is in fact a resident of California, and he is running for Congress in California at the same time as here. His father is also running in California, as a Republican. How can this happen?

      UPDATE: Post primary election: "Ricky" the guy from California, won the Democratic party nod to represent the Party against the Republican in November. Wow, a carpet-bagger for sure.

     
 I

PARDONS

Big current news involves President Trump’s pardons. One, Michael Milken, has evidently rehabilitated and the story is inspiring. But he is still banned for life from the financial marketplace.

Some are going to be controversial, like the former police chief of New York who was convicted of taking bribes. Former Governor of Illinois, Rod Blagojevich had his sentence commuted, and when you look at his crime, trying to sell the Senate seat vacated by Obama, you wonder if that deserves the sentence of 14 years. He has served 8 years.

In the articles I read, no one mentions pardons by former Presidents. I stood in my front yard in Virginia Beach visiting with a neighbor about various subjects when the subject came up about Obama’s pardons. He pardoned One Thousand Nine Hundred Twenty-Seven (1,927) criminals and my neighbor saw the list. His comment to me: “Boy, there are some really bad guys on that list.”

My neighbor is an FBI agent and he noted that it is common practice to “plead down” to save money, time and effort when the prosecution doesn’t have enough hard evidence to convict on a more serious crime. You see this on TV all the time. The names on Obama’s list had been convicted on drug charges, typically, and were serving long sentences. That was, according to my FBI neighbor, because the murder, rape or similar charges just didn’t have enough hard evidence.

Did anybody see this in the news? Back then? Now?

TESLA, AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN

I know, you are tired of me talking about the company that makes what I think are fancy golf carts. But it is an interesting story.

Back story: I last wrote about TSLA April 2, 2018, and before that in 2014. The theme has been the same, it is grossly overpriced and just because Elon Musk is an expert at getting government subsidies, it is still not a good value.

WRONG! I may be right about the over value thing, but completely wrong about the way the stock would move. Today, 1:00 EST, February 4, 2020, the stock is up 16.6% to $909. Yesterday, it was up 19.9%. Since October it is up 200%+.

Market cap today is about $140 Billion. Compare that to General Motors, a measly $48 Billion.

As I’ve said before, the markets are not necessarily rational, especially when governed by emotion. I have brought up tulip bulbs before. Here’s another one: Amazon increased in value in after-market trading the other day by $100 Billion (yes, that much in after-hours trading) to top $1 Trillion in market cap. For perspective, United Parcel Service has a total market cap of $87 Billion.

There ya go. That’s what makes a horse race, I guess.

CHIEFS

Well, aren't we all glad that the Chiefs won? Honestly, the way San Francisco is going, it would have been too dangerous (or dirty) to hold a victory parade.

Someone will be complaining about the name, "Chiefs." It isn't as simple as they think.

From CNN (of all places to find a fact!): "It all started with, of all things, the Boy Scouts. The Tribe of Mic-O-Say is part of the Boy Scouts of America program in Missouri and was created by Harold Roe Bartle in 1925. ...Bartle went by the name of "Chief Lone Bear" in his Mic-O-Say organization..." although he was not Native American.

"Almost 40 years after the founding of Mic-O-Say, Bartle became the mayor of Kansas City...colloquially known as "Chief." Bartle helped convince Lamar Hunt... to bring the Dallas Texans to Kansas City."

There was a name competition and "Chiefs" won, apparently in connection with Bartle. I was unaware of this history, but one of the identifiable components of the Kansas City skyline is the building with the "hair curlers," Bartle Hall Convention Center.

Now you have it.

ANDREW JACKSON

After the Battle of New Orleans, upon return to his home at The Hermitage:

The sons of America have given a new proof how impossible it is to conquer freemen fighting in defense of all that is dear to them. Henceforward, we shall be respected by nations who, mistaking our character, had treated us with outrage. Years will continue to develop our inherent qualities, until, from being the youngest and the weakest, we shall become the most powerful nation in the universe.

                Nashville 1815

Some now serving in Congress should contemplate these words.

536 CE

A group of interdisciplinary scientists and historians got together to look at the history of coinage and found something else—the year 536 CE was the worst time to be alive.

Fascinating findings:

• ·         A fog descended upon Europe and lasted for about 18 months
• ·         With darkness came widespread crop failure and famine
• ·         Plagues took hold after famine
• ·         Summer snow fell in China; 70% to 80% of the population perished
• ·         Scandinavians abandoned entire cities
• ·         These events sealed the fate of the already-weakened Roman Empire
• ·         The Peruvian Moche civilization never recovered
• ·         Coincides with the Mayan Hiatus when expansion and building stopped
• ·         Tree rings around the world show years of slow or no growth
• ·         Took about a century to recover
• ·         World temperatures between 536 and 545 were the lowest in 2,000 years
• ·         Now known as the Late Antique Little Ice Age

Causes: 

• ·         A volcanic eruption in Iceland in 536 was the cause, initially
• ·         Another one near San Salvador, the Ilopango volcano
• ·         Another one in North America
• ·         Two more in Iceland in 540 and 547

Results:

Much of the world’s population was eliminated. Historians think the Ice Age and its resulting famine reduced the ability to fend off disease and a plague erupted in the Byzantine Empire in 541. Not unlike the Black Plague of the mid-1300s that killed 25 million in Europe, also following famine.

Conclusions:

The eternal hand-wringing of the 24-hour news cycle has instilled a sense of dread and panic in people and tragically affected our young people huddled over their smart phones. Compare to 536?

While the warming of the earth is causing disruptions, the last part of this current Ice Age doesn’t seem to carry the death impact of a good old-fashioned world-wide series of volcanic eruptions followed by famine.

A friend from years ago was the first I knew to refer to the current state as a “CO2-enriched” atmosphere. Good for plants. Good for food. Volcanoes/Ice Age—bad for plants, bad for food.

BTW, whatever happened to “anno Domini” (AD) and “Before Christ” (BC)? Now it’s current or common era (CE) and before current era (BCE). As dictated by ISO 8601.

SEPTEMBER

Can’t believe the summer is over, another one in the dust. Little Big Man counted his age by the number of “summers,” and there’s another one gone.

The house in Virginia Beach closed on June 30, two full months ago, but the moving process started earlier than that, so some version of chaos for over four months. It has been the most difficult move of my life, partially because we seem to accumulate more “stuff” all the time and partially because the physical work is getting harder in my mid-70’s.

Actually, the realization that I just can’t do some of the physical work is part of the difficulty of this move.

And then there is the HEAT. Corpus Christi is a very hot place. What the hell did I expect, you might ask, but “heat indexes” constantly in excess of 100 degrees, sometimes reaching 114?!! Yeah, more than I expected.

Read a great book that Marcee loaned to me, “Winter Garden,” that has (ironically, given the weather here) as one of its central themes the fight against intense cold. Specifically, the record cold winters of the early 1940’s during the German siege of Leningrad that lasted nearly 900 days (1941-1944) with over 3.5 million casualties. The civilian deaths in the Leningrad siege exceeded the civilian deaths in Hamburg, Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. Not the typical book I read, but pretty powerful stuff.

This is a repeat, but I find it to be astounding that Russia suffered 20 million deaths as the result of Stalin and Hitler. Stalin and his Communist regime must qualify as one of the most-evil in history, and the effects were apparent during the Cold War and still today. Fact: Western Europe’s economy is ten times the size of Russia’s. The population is 140 million, one-tenth the size of China and one-third that of the US. Virtually all the men, regardless of age, were either killed in the war or starved (men don’t survive famine as well as women), and today there are 11 million more women than men in Russia. Alcohol is the biggest enemy right now.

I realize that Russia is corrupt and the government is basically an extension of the criminal element, but please, people, can we get our politicians to quit obsessively concentrating on Russia and figure out what to do about China? Fortunately, our military understands that China is THE threat for the future of our world.

Yep, another Russia/China rant. Sorry.