Why Alabamians Get into Dear Abby or Dear Ann Landers

 Most Alabamians, after getting through the front-page, and local murders....usually go straight to the Dear Abby or Dear Ann Landers section.  It could be a seven-page description of some problem with a guy and his ex-girlfriend....the in-law troubles...the loser cousin who has confessed to 300-odd sins since age sixteen....the torrid love affair with Thai lady down at the garden shop, or the break-up of a forty-year marriage.  

It's just that we look for juicy gossip that go beyond our house, or family.

If you were to wander into a barbershop around 8 AM....there's odds that the barber will bring up the latest story, and want to chat for three hours about some guy who got into a sizzling affair with the local Baptist minister's wife.  

Part of this issue is that we live pretty routine and boring lives.  Occasionally, the transmission fails....sometimes, the neighbor comes over to chat over their cousin in state-prison...now and then, the mail-man comes by and you chat with him over food poisoning affair at the local grill....off and on, the UPS guy stops and gives you a two-minute update on his ex-wife who ran off to Orlando to hook up with a Micky Mouse-actor.  

So the Dar Abby thing gives us hope that wild things are just around the corner....it could happen to us.  Any day now....some new gal might show up at the gas station and give us the double-wink then walk over to introduce herself to you....telling you her name is Alessandra or Chantel.  Or maybe some Italian guy moves two houses down, and mows his yard in skimpy shorts....attracting a dozen local gals to come over and offer up some ice tea.  

Observations

 1.  This idea that Psaki speaking at the White House Press Conference is clueless over the border chaos?

Well...it's simply an indicator that everyone around the President is also clueless, and instead of sixteen cooks in the kitchen.....you have no cooks in the kitchen, and mostly sixteen people standing at the door....swearing they can smell some baking or burning going on.

2.  This comment by Psaki speaking at the White House Press Conference that she cannot admit or deny Biden saw a doctor after his fall on the plane steps?

Well...if you admit he saw a doctor, and there's some serious bruises or cuts involved.....then folks will ask more questions.  So it's best to act foolish and say you don't know much of anything.

3.  Why is Biden carrying the Trump-position on the German-Russian Nord Stream pipeline deal?

There are two pipelines....one exists completely...having been put up in the 1970s and runs via Ukraine (which they get to siphon off a bit of this).  The other is the new one being constructed via the Baltic Sea (missing the Ukraine entirely).

Biden doesn't want the second pipeline done.....because if that happens....the Ukraine connection drops entirely.  Remember.....who did Hunter work for....oh yeah, the Ukraine crowd.  

4.  Joe Biden saying yesterday that he intends to visit the southern border 'sometime'?

I wouldn't get excited.  It'll probably be some point in California, and 12 minutes on the ground.  A couple of migrant kids will hug Joe and ask him for his autograph, and then Joe will make a 3-minute speech....leaving shortly after that.

5.  Prince Harry and wife Meghan....now admit that 'secret' wedding they discussed with Oprah.....never really occurred.

What's the deal?  There was a wedding rehearsal and Meghan was in some mindset that this was a 'secret' ceremony and they were married at this event, and not three days later at the real event.  

Yeah, it's pretty crazy, and it just makes you wonder if she was on some medication and 'out-of-it'.  

Talking Taxes

 Somewhere around 2.5 years into the FDR era....the President came came up and got the Revenue Act of 1935 passed via the House and Senate (30 Aug 1935).

The basic background of the act?  It raised the federal income tax on high income wage earners....taking up to 75-percent of the highest income earners. 

Unofficially?  It was always worded as the wealth tax.

A year later, the Revenue Act of 1936 occurred....aimed at corporations, instead of people.

The CATO Institute does a good job of telling the effects of the two acts, and I strongly recommend a read (it's a good 30 to 40 minute read).

Generally, because of the increased taxes....you come to three obvious occurrences:

1.  Risky ventures are cut to the bone, and you see this effect for several years.

2.  There is some suggestion that two separate depressions occurred....one owing itself to Wall Street crisis, and the other coming later with the tax acts being passed.

3.  People often miss the point that Hoover himself.....had a tax increase deal done in 1932, and probably did more to harm goods and services....rather than individual income itself.  

The general problem with major tax increases...is that you end up funding governmental programs which tend to show little to no success in helping the common 'little-guy' on the street.  A bunch of middle people carve off their chunk of the loot, and you just sit there....mostly amazed....that so much loot was grabbed, and your take was next to nothing. 

Three General Rules of an Insurrection

 Rule 1:  There are two elements of the dividing line.  One element is generally a governmental authority.  The other element is the anti-governmental authority.  If you have a situation where neither 'authority' represents a government, then it's not really an insurrection. 

Rule 2: Both 'authorities' have to have guns or weapons.  If you have an insurrection going on, and ONLY one side has guns/weapons....it's clearly not an insurrection.

Rule 3: Typically, in 99-percent of all past rebellions or insurrections held in the US....the news media has generally talked at length about the antigovernmental authority and given them a lot of positive coverage.  If you have a case where more than half of the news media is talking really positive over the governmental side....then it's a pretty high chance that this is not an insurrection.  

This Arizona Hand-Recount of the 2.1-Million Absentee Ballots

 The state senate of Arizona ordered the hand-recount.  I will make four observations over this effort.

1.  I expect some state judge to attempt to halt the recount, but the state senate is within it's authority to do this.

2.  Even it you had 25 individuals doing this....I see this taking a minimum of three weeks.

3.  The odds that there will be 100-vote difference between the hand-recount and the machine-count?  Under normal conditions....I would take a guess that it'd be fewer than 100 votes of difference.

4.  If there is a 10,000 vote difference?  Well....it shifts into a fairly serious situation, and would invite a lot of people to look  over the other four states (Georgia, Michigan, Penn, and Wisconsin).

So I'll just offer this assessment....once done and if serious differences exist....the whole computer voting business will slip into a deep pit of distrust.  If there is only a 100-odd votes of difference....things can continue on with no real problems.  

There is this other odd situation....if there is 10,000 or so votes of difference....what about the Senate race?  The Democratic guy running for Senator won only by 2-percent.  A  recount changing this outcome?  Just makes you wonder. 

Can Artificial Intelligence Be Programmed to Grasp Sarcasm or Cynicism?

 Over the past week, I read a couple of pieces over AI and the problem of getting it 'trained' to recognize cynicism or sarcasm.  A fair number of code-people or programmers.....will admit it's going to be nearly impossible to teach some system to recognize these human features.  One individual even admitted that getting humans to readily recognize sarcasm is pretty difficult.  

You can go back 2,000 years and find that the Greeks were fairly into sarcasm.  They recognized it's values, and potential.

The same story can be said over the Romans, and their use of cynicism.

In recent years, I'd say our general weekly use of both traits have doubled-up.  We use these almost routinely now.

So I drift back to AI and ask the question....if you can't train AI to recognize these situations, how can AI take over our lives?  

Biden and the Two-Foot Wall

 Right now....President Biden needs two to three months of absolute silence on people crossing the border.  He needs the networks to shutdown on the topic.  He needs zero questions posed at the White House press conference.  He needs the radio people to just shut up on the situation.

For better or worse, the US has a two-foot wall, and even a horse could jump it and head off into Texas if he felt like it. 

The fact that we are only in mid-March, with warmer weather coming?  It wouldn't surprise me by mid-May if you had forty-thousand every two days crossing the border...with a quarter of them juveniles.

How the border patrol would handle this, or the juveniles?  Unknown.

The idea that ABC news or the Washington Post would just fail to cover the story?  The idea that the AP would just skip telling the story?  

So that's the whole bulk of this 'opera'....it needs silence, to the maximum degree.  There ought to be Greyhound buses waiting there at the border and quickly disperse the migrants within minutes after they cross....to keep this all silent.