The other day, while on social media, I got to see this video. It is a video titled "Is Global Warming the Biggest Fraud in History?". Many memes have been created off this, the one that got my attention was something about "Mexican businessman shuts down liberal...". I got to watch it and noticed two things, 1) the power of having the loudest blow horn, and 2) the power we (everyone) give to the larger consensus. The former, I think has been made clear by other people and...

#welfare #subsidy This week, the Trump administration got into hot waters about a plan they have to deny citizenship to people that have relied on public welfare. Like all things, on the surface this seems like a good thing. After all, we are America, the land of the free and self-starters. Welfare, like socialism, is a dirty-word in the American lexicon. People on welfare are undesirable. Welfare is for those who didn't try hard enough. Certainly, welfare is not for immigrants. Again, on the surface, you'd be hard-pressed...

#mueller #election2020 #lnsc #acloserlook I enjoy watching the late-night show's satirical take on the day's news. They are mostly sharp and entertaining. Because most of the hosts are left-leaning, they tend to satirize the Republicans more than the Democrats. The jokes and lambasting are tough, but they've mostly been true. And while true, they are lacking the necessary criticism to make them an effective force for change. Thus, all of the work and effort spent on these monologues are turning into nothing but echo-chambers for the viewers. Take...

#muellerreport #election2020 Robert Mueller and his band of merry men (and women), spent nearly 2 years investigating Trump, his campaign and Russia. The output of that investigation was a 450-page report. The report was broken into two volumes, volume 1 focused on conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia and volume 2 focused on obstruction of justice. On the first subject, Mueller was clear in his conclusion, there was no conspiracy between the campaign and Russia and Russia's government interfered in our election. Sure, volume 1 included a...

#2020election #trumpmotives #trump After two and a half years of a Trump presidency that has brought tears, shame, discourse and discord, polarization and an avalanche of democratic candidates, I have come to realize Trump's motives are not inherently evil, nor irrational. No, they are fully rational and always anchored in popularity and money. You can take almost any issue that has come up since his presidency began and you can categorize it into one of those two buckets; popularity, money or both. Take the following examples: North Korea...

#era #politics #wartactics The Equal Rights Amendment, or ERA, was first introduced close to 100 years ago, in 1923. As the name states, its goal is to provide equal rights for everyone and therefore eliminate any "legal" distinction between a man and a woman. At present, there are such legal distinctions in issues such as divorce, property and marriage. In a recent episode of This Week Tonight, John Oliver discussed the Amendment and the struggle it has been to ratify it. I am all for equal rights, the...

#libra #stablecoin #potentialforcatastrophe #potentialforgood Yesterday, an association of 28 companies, most notably Facebook, Mastercard, Visa, Uber, Lyft, eBay, Vodafone, Coinbase, and Kiva, released a whitepaper for a new cryptocurrency called Libra (oddly enough, that translates to pound in Spanish). The goal of this cryptocurrency, according to the whitepaper, is to facilitate payments between the billions of people that are unbanked in the world. While banking is not a new concept for most people in developed countries, in the rest of the world, it can be either too expensive...

https://youtu.be/PzfS1n8ED10 The silliness and craziness hit a new high this week when Trump unveiled his proposal for a makeover of Air Force One. In an interview with ABC news where Trump discussed various topics, including whether or not he would accept help from a foreign country to win an election (he said he would), he revealed his plans to repaint the iconic plane, Air Force One. The cost of the repaint? Over $3 billion. That is simply insane. Like always, Trump did a poor job communicating much more...

#illusion #certainty #reality Certainty, order and control are something we strive for. We want to know what will happen next. We want to know there is some order or method to the madness that is our life. And if we can figure out this order/method, we may be able to control it. For us, certainty, order and control are very important. So important in fact, that they are only less important than water and food according to Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. The reality, however, is that we live...

#trafficsolution #trafficjam #commuting If you have always lived in the US, this observation may be alien to you. And if it seems alien at first, please think about it and then let me know your thoughts. Traffic in the US, in large metropolises, has only gotten worse. The promise of less traffic through either self-driving cars or car-sharing has yet to materialize. Instead, the latter, has actually created more traffic as it has become a means of income for some people. My observation and suggestion is for highway...