Fake Logic

    Statement 1: I could shoot somebody in the middle of the street and not lose any votes.

   Conclusion: Probably true, since one part of the sentence has little to do with the other.

   Statement 2: I could shoot somebody in the middle of the street and not be prosecuted.

   Conclusion: Not true, because shooting someone is against the law, whether privately or in the middle of the street. 

   Statement 3: I'm the boss, so everything in the building belongs to me.

   Conclusion: Not true, unless you have personally paid for, manufactured or produced everything in the building, as well as owning the building itself. Otherwise, you are just a tenant, and your lease has run out so you have to leave and not take anything with you.

  Otherwise, it's tantamount to theft, and for that you can be prosecuted, because theft is against the law.

   Like the man said, "No one is above the law."

Book Report

    Sales of my book, "Pelagius Was Right" are leading the pack, with more copies sold worldwide than any of my other works.

   That's especially satisfying, since so few people know who Pelagius was.

   As background, he was a theologian in the Fourth Century who taught that people have a free will, and do bad things because they choose to do so. That's in contrast to his contemporary Augustine, bishop of Hippo, who maintained that people are sinners at root, and do bad things because they are heavily influenced by the spirit of evil.

   Augustine was supported by his friends at the Vatican, who threatened to label Pelagius a heretic. Even today, the church endorses Augustine, and few practitioners even know who Pelagius was. Nonetheless, his teaching of free will gained support by the people, and remains popular today.

   By definition, a heretic is someone who disagrees with established wisdom. But sometimes, the alleged heretic is right.

   Another example: Galileo taught that the sun was the center of the universe and the earth revolved around the sun. This brought allegations of heresy from Vatican leaders, who pointed to the proof that the sun could be seen rising and setting as it crossed the skies. In addition, the earth was God's greatest creation. Therefore, the earth was the center.

   Galileo was threatened with heresy for teaching otherwise, and since he did not have absolute proof, he recanted under pressure.

   Nevertheless, he was right. Copies of my work are available through Amazon, or they can be ordered through your local bookstore.

Legal Tangle

   There are increasing signs that total Trumpian loyalty to whatever the man has ever said or done is being questioned and even doubted by his loyalist supporters.
   This is brought on by events before, during and after the raid on the ex-president's Mar-a-Lago residence to retrieve top secret documents that he should not have kept and brought with him when he left the White House and refused to hand them over despite repeated requests by government officials. These requests were either denied, ignored or only partially answered over a period of more than a year, according to published reports and court appearances.
   Many of his more devoted followers attack the critics (verbally, for now) alleging that he is in fact entitled to keep anything and everything that was brought to him when he was president.
   This despite a federal law specifying that documents, especially those marked secret, remain government property. But the ex-president seems to believe that whatever was presented to him while he was in office became his personal stuff.
   Numerous court rulings have denied that, and told him to give it back. But after several requests, followed by court orders telling him to return the documents, it became clear that he had not handed over everything.
   Therefore, after a year of requesting, demanding, and court decisions endorsing that position, government officials, including the FBI and the CIA as well as library officials, sought a search warrant. This was duly executed, after the officials notified the Secret Service that they were coming to the Mar-a-Lago estate to collect the stuff that did not belong there.
   However, the ex-president is still challenging the efforts to retrieve the stuff. His continued and rising opposition to these efforts is eroding his support from many of his supporters, even those within Congress and the Republican Party.
   Separately, there is increasing discussion as to whether the ex-president can be prosecuted for any of his actions that would prove to be illegal. Or as some senior government and legal officials have said, "No one is above the law."

Happening Here

   The events of Jan. 6, 2021  did not show the first attempt to overthrow a president of the United States, but the second.
   The first was in 1933, led by Wall Street executives. It was foiled, however, by Smedley D. Butler of Pennsylvania, a retired Marine Corps major general.
   The story was documented in a book by Jules Archer, titled "The Plot to Seize the White House," published in 1973.  It explained in detail the efforts by Republican executives to block Franklin Roosevelt from performing his duties as president.
   Butler was a native of Chester County, and returned there between assignments in many parts of the world. He achieved the rank of major general, and rose to become commandant of the Marine Corps.
   However, his outspoken honesty often led to disputes with civilian political leaders. But his high position as a government advisor led other  potentials leaders, some of them in league with business executives, to try to induce him to change government policy so it would benefit the wealthy.
   Butler himself was member of a wealthy family. His father was an elected Republican member of the House of Representatives for some 30 years. Butler's sympathies, however, lay with ordinary folk, a product of his upbringing in a Quaker region of Pennsylvania. He grew up in his family home near West Chester, and he retired to Newtown Square.
   Butler's long career in the military and as a high-level government advisor made him a target for those who wanted favorable official action to benefit their business agenda. However, he resisted them all.
   Nevertheless, he routinely listened to all the appeals, and when it came to an attempt to recruit him to help oust Franklin D. Roosevelt as president, he let the plotters talk, and he quietly passed the information on to other government officials.
   Eventually, when others were found to corroborate his testimony, Rep. John McCormack (D-Mass) and Rep. Samuel Dickstein (D-NY), co-chairmen of the committee investigating the issue, heard Butler's comments in detail. The story was soon broken by journalists Paul French and Phil Record.
   However, it was General Butler's tip and his testimony to the congressional committee that revealed the plot and resulted in its failure. At the time, the story did not get big play in newspapers, largely because most major publications were owned by wealthy conservative Republicans intent on spoiling FDR's reputation. It was only with the advent of television that news media became more neutral and independent. Government licensing of broadcast operations required them to provide all sides of any news story.
   The advent of television, with its ability to show in real time events as they happen, without being filtered or slanted to the right or left of the political spectrum by print media, has made a clear change in journalistic coverage.
   Now, print media are more neutral than they were in those years, while television journalism programs range from neutral to conservative and liberal. Cable television operations are more likely to focus on more radical viewpoints, both liberal and conservative.
   Even so, there are still attempts to control government regardless of voter desires.
   Just as American voters preferred FDR in the election of 1932, they also preferred Joe Biden in the election of 2020. However, in each case, wealthy business leaders tried to overturn the public's choice.
   The first challenge was blocked largely by the efforts of Maj. Gen. Smedley Darlington Butler of Chester County, Pennsylvania, and the second by mass exposure on national television of the attempt.

Law School Tenet

   When you have the facts on your side, argue the facts.
   When you have the law on your side, argue the law.
   When you have neither, pound the table.
   
   Donald Trump apparently believed all government documents provided to him as President became his personal property, and therefore he could take them home and keep them even after he left office.
   But courts have ruled that, according to law, government documents are not a president's personal property. Therefore he must return them, because he has neither the facts nor the law on his side.
   As a result, he is now pounding the table.

Extremism

    Some people are so averse to disagreement that they will suppress others -- sometimes violently.
   That may seem extreme, but severe extremists are those who will not tolerate questions or disagreement.
   America was founded by extremists. That is, by people who disagreed with British government policy. However, they soon established similar policies here, and sought to banish those who disagreed. In fact, many in the colonies who favored staying with Britain fled to Canada.
   "Go back to where you came from," became the cry against those who disagree.
   "If you don't like it here, go away," is echoed now.
   "We were here first, so you have to follow our rules," is another chant.
   These echo the identical opposition early Americans encountered, and equaled the reasons they came to the new world in the first place. That, and the need to live their lives as they choose.
   It could be said that America was founded by extremists; those who wanted to live their own lives regardless of government policies that insisted on a single, specified way. Example: A state religion.
   These same founders acknowledged that others had the same right, and that's why they formalized it in the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.
   "We hold these truths to be self evident," the document says, that everyone has the inalienable right to pursue happiness their own way. In addition, the founders prohibited Congress from making any law infringing on these rights, and this was written in the First Amendment to the Constitution.
   Yet today, and at other times since these rights were declared, government has cut off these same rights from minority groups -- people who did not look like others in America. To these bigots, a being that did not look like them was not a person, and therefore could be treated like any other "lesser animal."
   These days, however, many people maintain that there are no "lesser animals." They may be different, but they remain valued creatures in the view of their Creator, as the founders phrased it, with certain inalienable rights.
   Time catches up to the most careful villain. Sometimes a careless villain gains time when villagers delay enforcing the rules that society agreed all must follow.
   We now face a time when extremists want to impose their rules on all others, insisting that anyone who disagrees is un-American.

Fake Logic

    Premise A: Right Wingers say elections are fake.
   Premise B: Right Wingers win elections
   Therefore: Right Wingers are fake

   Premise A: The real estate salesman with no experience in government warned that the election will be fake.
   Premise B: The real estate salesman became president.
   Therefore: He did the faking.

   Elections are fake, say those on the right.
   Therefore, when they win, that proves them wrong.

If-Then Dillemma

   Life is a series of if-then questions.
   If Donald Trump showed no interest in top-secret briefings while he was president, then why did he take dozens of boxes filled with such documents with him when he left the White House?
   If he had no use for them at that time, then why did he stall when asked to return them?
   If he could declassify them as president at the time, then why didn't he?
   If he personally did not carry the boxes from the White House to his Mar-a-Lago residence, then who did?
   If the material is fake, as he now alleges, then why didn't he say so a long time ago, when the FBI asked for their return?
   If the stuff really is fake, then why did a federal judge approve a search warrant?
   If the stuff is fake, then why didn't he say so sooner, even as he fought repeated requests that the documents be returned?
   If he was cooperating fully with the FBI, as he now claims, then why the need for a search warrant?
   If he was asked months ago to return the stuff that he now says was fake, then why didn't he, especially if he knew the stuff was fake and planted?
   If he didn't know at that time what the stuff was, then that could be taken as evidence of his ignorance.
   If he didn't know what the stuff was, then why did he go to the trouble of taking it with him when he left the White House?
   If he didn't know at the time that top secret stuff was being taken from the White House to a private residence, then who did, and why are they not being prosecuted?
   All these and many other questions remain for investigators to search for answers.
   Meanwhile, rather than cooperate with investigating authorities, Trump acolytes are pointing fingers at others as they deny involvement in a major national security issue.

News Bias

 "That's not fair. She did it too!"

   Many readers and viewers call a news outlet neutral and objective only when a report echoes their own opinion. If not, they complain of bias.
   Oddly, that works both ways. Conservatives allege left-wing bias, and liberals complain of rightist prejudice, even when the report is neutral and factually accurate.
   As an editor once said, when both sides object, that's proof the report was accurate and true.
   The problem journalists face is that each side wants a favorable report to help propagate their pre-judged message.
   That's why it's called propaganda and prejudice.
   Meanwhile, current news reports about Donald Trump are met with protests that "she did it, too," referring to actions by Hillary Clinton.
   This is the kind of reaction parents get from children caught in their errors. The adult response: "That means you're both wrong, and it doesn't excuse either of you."
   If  another politician is potentially guilty of something, he or she should be formally accused and taken to court.

  Meanwhile, that does not excuse a competing politician from a separate accusation of criminal activity. Both can be taken to court, and the judicial system can sort out the charges. One does not negate or excuse the other. If each is found guilty, each can be penalized. Meanwhile, both can and should be charged.
   One does not cancel the other.

Blame Game and Loaded Words

   Biden's FBI secretly raids, ransacks Trump home, plants evidence.

  That's a summary of the Fox network coverage of the day's big story.
   Problems: It was not a secret. The FBI notified the ex-president's Secret Service guard in advance, so it was not a surprise.

   Secondly, the president's office denies it knew about the planned operation. The FBI routinely does its own investigating, without asking permission from a president. Trump himself fired the FBI director who refused to take his instructions at the time.
   As for "planting" any evidence, there is only a Trumpian claim about that. The odds of the nation's premier investigative agency planting evidence against a former president protected by another premier government agency are somewhere between slim and none.

   And the term "ransack" implies a shoddy, messy rough operation the opposite of neatness.
   The FBI apparently did its best to keep the operation quiet, and its agents wore no identifying jackets. But Trump himself announced it on his Twitter web site, and his supporters have been very outspoken in their opposition, even warning of the possibility of warfare.
   Separately, the ex-president declined to answer any questions put to him during a New York grand jury investigation of his business dealings in that city. In the past, Trump has been outspoken in his criticism of anyone who cites the Fifth Amendment in their refusal to answer questions.

Power of Twelve Returns

   American history runs in 12-year cycles. Here's the latest example, which compares two U.S. presidents.
   Richard Nixon was elected in 1968. Six years later, half way through the cycle, on April 8, 1974, he resigned as president. Four cycles went by and Donald Trump was elected president, in 2016.
   Yesterday, exactly four cycles after Nixon resigned, the home of former president Donald Trump was searched by FBI agents, looking for material he should not have taken with him when he left the White House.
   Half way through the Nixon cycle, which began with his inauguration, he resigned. Half way through the Trump cycle, the Federal Bureau of Investigation searched his home in Florida.
   What were they looking for? One guess is they went to find documents that he wrongly took with him when he left the White House. But it's possible they will also find evidence of criminal behavior. Even taking the documents was illegal.
   Either way, the federal investigators needed approval from a judge to exercise a search warrant, plus the cooperation of the Secret Service, which has armed guards at the home of every former president.

   The FBI did not announce the search. It was revealed by Trump himself in a computer network posting.
   Shortly after Nixon resigned, his successor issued a pardon for any wrong he may have committed. Currently, investigators are gathering evidence of possible criminal behavior by Trump under federal law, even as state prosecutors are moving forward with separate lawsuits.
   For those who say it's all coincidental, there are several books available, including my own, on how often the number twelve appears in human life worldwide.
   Beginning with a twelve month year and twelve items in a dozen, the list of "coincidences" takes up several pages, and includes a separate chapter on historical events in America that occurred in a twelve year cycle.

Message Control

Who controls the press, controls the nation.

Belief without thought endangers freedom.

   The motto of this newsletter has been displayed at the top of every issue for years. In recent months, however, the warning it conveys has become more urgent as political candidates increase their attacks on journalism outlets that expose their lies.
   Part of their strategy has been to block neutral reporters from attending their supposedly "public" rallies so they have more control over their message.
   But that means the event is not really open to the public -- only to those willing to accept and spread the political message.
   Often, a candidate will verbally attack TV camera operators, ignoring the fact that they are part of a pool of workers serving all networks. Moreover, some may even be supporters of the candidate, but their job is operate the camera.
   Historically, one of the first things a government intent on full control does has been to control the news media, and thus to control the message, even if the intended message is a lie.
   This was the reason why the founders of America emphasized freedom of the press and banned Congress from making any law restricting it.
   Warning: We are facing new efforts to control the news media and the facts it reports to the public.

Faith and Politics

 "That's a stupid question." -- Candidate to journalist.

"There are no stupid questions. Only stupid answers."

                                                -- Journalist's response.

"Never pick a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel."

                                                  -- PR motto.

   Faith and belief are sometimes two different things, especially with politicians.
   Spiritual faith and belief rely on concepts that may not be provable in the real world, but political faith relies on what a chosen official says and does, which can be easily verified.
   However, many politicians routinely expect belief and obedience from the public regardless of fact or reality. The current cry from some political candidates is that voting is "rigged" and the results will be "fake."
   But what happens if they win? Does that prove the election really was "rigged" and that they did the rigging?
   Conclusion: If they lose, that proves the election was rigged. But if they win, that proves the election was fair.
   Huh?

Whither, Whether, Weather

   The current worldwide question is to ask which way the economy will go -- up, down, or stall for a while.
   Politicians are fond of taking credit for prosperous years, even as they blame their predecessors for any downturn. This week, however, statistics offered mixed signals as to where we are and where we're going.
   Part of that is the mixing of different sets of data marking different aspects of the economy over different time periods and using different methods of data collection. Count 'em. That's four different sets of numbers, each collected differently.
   Unemployment  data comes from a telephone sample survey, while the numbers of people actually working is a solid collection of payroll data.
   Meanwhile, jobs data are measured monthly, but spending habits are counted quarterly. In between, many things can happen, and often do.
   It has been reported that the retail price of gasoline, as drivers go to their local pumping stations, nearly doubled after war broke out in Ukraine. Never mind that most of the gasoline sold in America comes from America and other parts of the world, or that it takes many months for the product to travel from the drilling site, through refineries and eventually to the local filling stations.
   No surprise, then, that petrol companies reported a huge jump in profits in the first few months after the war began.
   It's called greed.
   As for the demand that government step in to control this greed -- massive instant price hikes after a prediction of long-term shortages, limited ones at that -- either free enterprise rules the economy or government controls business activity.
   You can't have it both ways, so somewhere in the middle would be the better solution. This is what corporate America fought labor unions about -- fair treatment versus greed.

Freedom of Belief

   The founders of America, including those who wrote the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, were targets themselves of the demand that a single belief system be held by everyone, specifically the religion followed by the earlier settlers. 

  The problem, of course, was which set of founders, and therefore which system of belief. For many years, Catholicism was a particular target of those wanting everyone to believe as they did, and part of this was based on politics as well as ethnicity. Loyalty to the nation, as they saw it, prohibited loyalty to anyone else, especially the Pope in Rome.

   But it was time for change, the founders said.That's why many came to America, even as some of them tried to impose their own system on others who also came to America for a similar reason, the need for freedom of religion.

  This continued for centuries, from 1620 through the 19th Century bigotry against newcomers from Ireland and Italy, as well as 20th Century attempts to limit immigration from Eastern Europe and Asia.

   Even today, in the 21st Century, there is a continuing effort to stop immigration from Latin America and from Far East nations spoiled by war.

   When will it stop? I don't know. Such political bigotry is contrary to the teachings of brotherhood espoused by many spiritual traditions. Perhaps it will come to an end when people practice the preaching they make to each other.

   As for defending their talk by saying they answer to a Higher Power, this is true for all of us. The Higher Power they refer to does not discriminate among creations, so why should any of the creatures impose their own bias?

   Yet we see this every day, in all parts of the world. What better place to start to change this than here at home? If we are indeed created equal, as was written by America's founders, then we today must live up to that, and treat others as we wish our ancestors had been treated. Indeed, how we wish we ourselves are treated today.