American Elephants


Do You Feel Properly Guilty? by The Elephant's Child

What is it about Liberals? Why do they want us all to feel guilty? We are not supposed to be thankful on Thanksgiving, because we should feel guilty about the Native Americans. We should feel guilty if we call them Indians rather than “Native Americans”.

Some, “Antifa” or something else, have been out rioting and tearing down statues again this weekend, The statues are torn down because we should feel guilty about putting up a statue to someone currently considered unworthy. like George Washington because he once owned a few slaves. Though historically he did not like slavery and had no wish to create a plantation out of Mount Vernon. But that was 244 years ago, and statues of George Washington must be destroyed today to assuage our guilt? Makes no sense whatsoever.

George Washington, father of our country, had a few things more going for him than just the possibility that he owned a very few slaves. Many plantation owners did own slaves at the time, Society, worldwide had not yet decided that owning slaves was wrong. The young people out to riot and break windows and loot and break things seem far more interested in doing that and getting away with it because they were part of a big bunch of people all having fun doing it. Had they been promptly arrested and stuck in cells until someone bailed them out, the whole rationale for rioting might be somewhat different.

Those who choose to feel guilty about celebrating Thanksgiving because we displaced the Indians, might remember that the Native Americans did a lot of massacres as well, of the intruding Englishmen. The history of civilization is full of people being displaced by other warlike tribes, and civilizations have arisen and vanished all over the earth. Supposedly that is why we study history to understand how the world has changed in the past and will undoubtedly change more in the future. But we really don’t need to feel guilty about a past that we had nothing to do with.

If you recall, when Joe Biden decided to run for the office of the presidency, he said that he wanted a black woman as his vice president, and so chose Kamala Harris. So he wanted the credit for choosing a black woman who might become the first black and the first woman to become president rather than choosing someone for their outstanding qualifications and skills.

If you appear in public without wearing a mask, you are supposed to feel guilty. Governors have ordered people to refrain from having Thanksgiving dinners because of Covid. Wags have tacked lifesize representations of those governors to windows where people might be having a Thanksgiving dinner against governors orders. Those governors who issued orders and then had their own celebration were quickly discovered and mocked in the press, and theoretically made to feel properly guilty. Anyone departing from the conventional wisdom of the moment must be guilty, and exposed.

It was hard to choose an image, because there are so many. All the members of the House abjectly kneeling on the floor of Congress. AOC weeping as she clings to a chain-link fence staring out at what turned out to be an empty parking lot that supposedly represented imprisoned illegals at the border, Elizabeth Warren emphasizing her “Indian heritage”, once even with a Native American. All the previous presidents conferring happily with Vladimir Putin, but only Trump being accused of some kind of wrongdoing across a table from him.



Ongoing Efforts to Find out What Happened in the Election. by The Elephant's Child

I have no idea if any of President Trump’s efforts to expose the vast amounts of fraud in the election will bear fruit. A little common sense suggests that it was undoubtedly massive, but scattered. Democrats have spent the last four years trying to demonize, dislodge, destroy, discredit in one way or another, anything that Donald Trump did. There is always partisanship in elections, that’s why there is more than one party. But after the onslaught of attacks over the four years, to assume that the election was clean, fair, and honest defies common sense.

The Obama Administration went to work even before Donald Trump took office, and a summary of their efforts over the four years is startling. It began with claims of Russian association, and grew from that. Hollywood “celebrities” chimed in daily, which gets them brownie points in Lefty Hollywood. There has always been plenty of partisanship, but the effort to destroy Trump and the seething hatred for him has been quite remarkable. In four years, he’s managed to do quite a good job in spite of them. I’ve lived through quite a number of presidential administrations, and this one has been something new and different. He got the economy going again, raised possibilities for Blacks significantly with opportunity zones.

A Chinese virus arrived in the Seattle area was soon identified, and traffic from China was ended promptly. No, Trump was not responsible for the deaths from the virus, but he put in place an effort to understand the disease and find temporary remedies and develop what promise to be successful vaccines in just four years. That is really quite remarkable. Democrats have tried to blame him for each fatality, and encouraged a world of riots, protests and damage to citizens and shop holders. Stores, all kinds of businesses, vehicles, civic buildings, statues mindlessly torn down, race wars, a nationwide temper tantrum, and we are suppose to assume that the recent election was peaceful, fair, and honest? Uh-huh.

That does not mean that the presumed election of Joe Biden can be overturned. We’ll see what happens when the Electoral College meets on December 14, and if Biden is then declared president-elect.

Like many who have never felt it necessary to investigate anything, Biden seems to have swallowed whole the idea that if we don’t do something right now about the climate, we have little time left. The autistic child from Sweden whose job is to enrich her parents, is still a world celebrity. “Environmentalists” are often not the people who know something about the environment, but people who “feel” about the environment. Somewhere I think I still have an entertaining video of some tree-lovers out loving trees. Did you see the news that the Christmas tree arrived at the White House with an owl still tucked in among the branches.? Cute little fellow.



There are Increasing Covid-19 Cases by The Elephant's Child
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Joe Biden is coming up with new regulations, new advisors, new treatments. He may insist that everyone wear masks, but the role of masks is much misunderstood. A mask protects other people from your exhalations, spittle, coughs or sneezes. It does not protect you from other people. The mask is meant keep your spittle in. Your protection from other people’s coughs or spittle is dependent on your washing your hands obsessively and frequently, social-distancing, and not touching your face. Almost counter-intuitive. Stay home. You may soon be ordered to do so. Governors are all over the map with their orders and directions, and may or may not know what they are talking about. Apparently Thanksgiving dinner is out. Governors may order you to forget it.

I am remaining confined at home, ordering groceries delivered. Difficult. The folks that pack the groceries don’t know that bananas must be a little greenish at the ends, and no brown spots. They don’t know that you sniff at the stem end of a cantaloupe to see if it smells like cantaloupe. If it doesn’t it’s no good. Those are the little complications of shopping at the grocery store. Who knew that the bagels you ordered might turn out to be whole wheat bagels? Whoever heard of whole wheat bagels? Don’t open the door to anyone.

Joe Biden’s Coronavirus Adviser urges a lockdown for “4 to 6 weeks.” He suggests that “we could pay for a package right now to cover all of the wages, lost wages for individual workers, for losses to small companies, to medium-sized companies or city, state, county governments. We could do all of that. (The doctor is a little light on his understanding of economics) He wrote that the problem with the March to May lockdown was that it was not uniformly stringent across the country.

Biden’s four leading priorities: Covid-19, economic recovery, racial equity and climate change. No delusions that a Biden administration will be good for liberty or limited government.

Breitbart headline” “Biden to Make Combatting Climate Change an “All-of-Government Agenda.” Well, there we go. There is nothing anyone can do to “combat climate change.” The climate has been changing for millions of years. The climate today is very much like it was 1,000 years ago. Carbon dioxide is a natural fertilizer for plants, and crops around the world are bountiful. Hungry people are being fed. Joe Biden will formulate a governing strategy to curb carbon emissions by maximizing executive authority. He will rejoin the Paris Climate Accord on his first day at the White House and create a new division within the Department of Justice to combat pollution.There’s a proposal to spen $2 trillion over four years to combat climate change.

One million jew jobs in the auto industry to boost the production of energy-efficient vehicles. Legislation to incentivize individuals to trade in their gas=powered vehicles for ones running on either electricity or hydrogen. He apparently wants to adopt a 100 percent clean-electricity standard by 2035.

This might have a rather large impact on the coal and natural gas industries that produce about 63 percent of all electricity in the country. You cannot trust your government. You have to be informed, and know what these nutcases are up to.



Joe Biden Made a Speech by The Elephant's Child

He said he had a “mandate” He just seemed a little unsure about what the mandate was about. It seems to be about the climate, but polls show that people aren’t particularly worried about the climate. The Earth has warmed slightly, and there is a little increased CO2, which is plant food. Carbon dioxide is a natural fertilizer for plants, and crops around the world are growing a little more bountiful, and there are far fewer hungry people.

Joe Biden wants to ban “fracking” which is simply an easier, cleaner way of extracting natural gas. He waffles a lot, I guess because he doesn’t know what fracking is, only that it is clearly bad. Raising the price of gasoline drastically would be crippling for the economy- a jump from around $2 to over $4 would make people sit up and notice.

Since somewhere around 1988 politicians and activists have tried to sell the American people on the idea that fossil fuels are bad, and that we have access to remedies. We don’t. Wind and solar don’t work. We have pretty conclusively proved that. They simply do not and cannot produce enough energy to run a modern society. What gets transitioned is your standard of living.

You can replace coal, for example, with natural gas, but you haven’t accomplished anything. The wind does not blow all the time, and may not blow for days, and some days it may blow too hard for the turbines. The sun does not shine every day. There are clouds. Some days it rains. Nuclear power works, but since Chernobyl and Fukushima in Japan, there’s not much interest in nuclear energy. Wind turbines and solar arrays cannot be manufactured or installed without massive quantities of fossil fuels. Nothing happens in our modern world without fossil fuels, from our manufacturers to a trip to the grocery store where most of the products are produced with the use of fossil fuels, to the fleets of trucks that transport goods around the country.

Democrats claim there is no election fraud, but seven Milwaukee Wards report more presidential votes than registered voters. State voter turnout is nearly 90 percent, which is virtually impossible. The Climate Crisis and the Covid Crisis are melding. The WHO Director-General said the pandemic has given new impetus to the need to accelerate efforts to respond to climate change, which they said in 2018 was the greatest health challenge of the 21st century. Walmart CEO Doug McMillon says it’s time to “Reinvent Capitalism Post-Coronavirus. But never fear, Reddit Co-Founder Alexis Ohanian has spoken with Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, about building a better Tech Industry.

Enter Solyndra in the blank space over Bob Hope’s head in the sidebar. That was a massive and costly solar experiment. And as for wind farms, it costs over $35,000 to dismantle a single worn-out turbine, if I remember correctly.

My favorite voter remains the elderly gentleman who voted, who was born in 1823. There are other surprising voters, but that one takes the cake.



Last Desperate Campaign Claims by The Elephant's Child

As I was saying, thank goodness that it’s only a few days till the election. Andrew Cuomo, Governor of New York State, has just announced that “I’m holding Trump Responsible for Every’ Coronavirus Death in this Country.” He actually said that on ABC’s “The View”

https://www.breitbart.com/clips/2020/10/29/gov-cuomo-im-holding-trump-responsible-for-every-coronavirus-death-in-this-country/

Governor Andrew Cuomo, undoubtedly thinking that he was doing the right thing, sent 6,300 Covid-19 elderly patients to nursing homes, assuming that the older folks would be better cared for by people accustomed to caring for the elderly. Dreadful mistake. One of the highest nursing home death tolls in the nation.

Cuomo has blamed everyone else, but not himself. Now he has settled on President Trump, because the Democrats are hoping that blaming Trump for all the coronavirus deaths will win the election for them.

On Tuesday, Cuomo was asked about a report from the Associated Press that his team had added more than 1,700 deaths to the count of those who died in nursing homes, bringing the total to at least 4,813. “I don’t know the details, frankly,” the governor answered, turning to an aide. Sgt. Schultz reporting for duty!

I guess there are examples in history of those who have denied something or other until their deathbeds.  Does it work? I have no idea, but it’s quite clear that the governor made a dreadful mistake. Is it better to admit it or just deny forever. Trying to blame President Trump, however, is really dirty, extremely dirty, politics.

As I pointed out earlier, back when we first learned about the virus and it’s potential pandemic, Dr. Deborah Birx, presidential advisor with Dr. Anthony Fauci early on, said that if we were very, very lucky and did everything right, we might get only around 200,000 deaths from the pandemic. We’re at 213,000 now.

Democrats are desperate to blame Trump for the deaths, will it work? Probably with the Hollywood crowd, who seem to find it useful to proclaim their hatred for the President. I am thoroughly sick of Hollywood ‘”celebrities” and it will probably be a long time before I ever see a Hollywood movie again. British movies are usually better anyway.

Donald Trump, whether you like him or not, has done a very good job with the virus. (Including trying out the disease for himself and his family). He sought out the most recommended advisers, did everything he could to fulfill the needs of the Governors, who expressed their gratitude for his help. Forced the Auto industry to make ventilators, the military set up temporary hospitals in tents and stadiums, he sent our hospital ships to New York and to the West Coast.  Has done what he can to help other countries as well, and is sharing what we have learned with the rest of the world. So all of the deaths from the coronavirus, are his fault?

As I was saying, politics gets pretty nasty in the final days of an election.



Environmental Mismanagement Is Only Where It Starts by The Elephant's Child

We have had some nice rain over the last two days, and the skies have cleared, the air has cleared, and we’re pretty much back to normal. California is not. The government is not sure at all just who they should listen to, and the result has been a catastrophe.

Environmentalists want everyone to believe that we can forego nasty petroleum fuels, and rely on clean, beautiful wind and solar energy which is free, well, except for the huge cost of wind turbines, their upkeep, the rare minerals required to construct them and the underlying simple fact that the wind does not blow all the time, nor does the sun shine on solar arrays all the time. There are cloudy days and rainy days when neither wind nor sun are noticeable. Wind and sun may be visible, but they are not necessarily available when needed.  We are so accustomed to having energy at the flick of a switch that we don’t really give it any thought at all.

At the dawn of the nuclear age, we thought we could power anything with nuclear energy, but then there was the Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine, still an abandoned city, I believe. And then the Fukushima accident in Japan in 2011 in  Okuma, Fukushima Prefecture, which was started by the Tòhoku earthquake and tsunami. A couple of disasters like that and interest in nuclear plants begins to fade. In the United States we have some great river systems and dams that produce lots of reliable energy, but the environmentalists squawk about the fish runs and damage the dams do. Probably everything that has an upside also has a downside. Some want to remove all dams, just because.

We are uncertain about costs and benefits, usefulness and dangers, needs, in other words we don’t know very much about the problems at all, and are apt to fall for anything that sounds good, particularly if it is fairly remote. When it’s your house that burned down, you pay a little closer attention.

Dr. Roy Spencer PhD,  who runs the satellites that measure the earths’ temperature for NASA, has several basis articles at his website on, for example, “Global Warming 101”, “Global Warming Background”, “Global Warming Natural or Manmade?” which you will find useful. There are others in the sidebar, and each of those will direct you to other scientific sites.

California Governor Gavin Newsom is getting a well-deserved batch of criticism for his handling of the wildfires. The Native Americans learned to minimize the damage by controlled small fires and cutting away dead trees and brush, but we moderns have had more trouble getting our minds around the problem. Did you know it costs something over $43,000 to dismantle a single wind turbine?



In a Contentious Time, a Search for Truth and Honesty by The Elephant's Child

Democrats are undoubtedly studying late into the night, to find a way to disrupt President Trump’s naming of a candidate for the Supreme Court to replace the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg. They are considering a new impeachment trial or two, whether this brings back the Russian horde is not known. One supposes that Russians rate higher on the really terrifying terrorists than those from other countries. After all the Russians are known for suddenly poisoning people right on the street.

They supposedly are considering just walking out, boycotting as it were, to delay the inevitable. Speaker Pelosi apparently has a couple of impeachments up her sleeves, she clearly feels that most everything Trump has done is grounds for impeachment, and considers it an excellent way to get the nomination of anyone over and done with. Almost anything will do because what they want is delay, so that it becomes too late to advance a candidate before the election.

They speak in generalities, and of course what the Supreme Court is all about is insisting that matters of law follow the Constitution. And of course at that point what is it that they really meant when they wrote the Constitution?  I assume that by this time you are as sick of all the nonsense as I am and want them to just get on with the business of the government. The Constitution is quite clear. When there is a vacancy, the President may nominate a successor, who is to be approved by the Senate. Simple and clear.

The difficult part is that Amy Comey Barrett, who seems to be the leading candidate, is a practicing Catholic. The great fear is that she might rule on Roe v. Wade, the abortion bill, passed and in effect, but could be brought before the Court again. This is an immeasurably contentious bill. Many women feel that nobody else has any right to tell them what they may or may not do with their bodies. Others see abortion as the murder of a real baby. When things are in such dramatic opposition, there is no comfortable middle ground. And of course religion has strong opinions.

In this day and age, when preventive measures are readily available, if one does not want to bear a child, it seems incumbent on them to use preventative measures. Responsibility is required. No one should have to bear a child conceived by rape, but just how you sort that out is difficult. There are a lot of couples who are unable to bear children and desperate to adopt.

There are many areas that are equally contentious matters. Look at the current furor about the police. At one end of the scale is Chicago, which seems to have some violent neighborhoods and a significant weekly death toll. Some seem to think that the police are so violent and corrupt that they must be eliminated, and others who know of too much drugs and street crime in their cities want more police protection.

Your best source for sorting things out is Heather MacDonald, a serious scholar who goes to the source and digs out the real statistics, as opposed to what is more sensational and reported on the news. You can find her at the Manhattan Institute, or City Journal, or her many valuable books : The War on Cops, The Burden of Bad Ideas, Are Cops Racist?, and The Immigration Solution: A Better Plan Than Today’s.  All invaluable.  Or just type her name into your search-bar.



Well Yes, You Could Call the Whole Thing a Train Wreck! by The Elephant's Child

Clearly the Democrat Party has gone stark raving bonkers. They firmly believe that they are supposed to be in control of the federal government and clearly Donald Trump is an aberration. Not supposed to be that way. They were destined to have the first woman President of the United States, and they still haven’t recovered and are still desperately trying to find a way to get rid of the evil Donald Trump. They keep dragging up the Russians, but the facts simply don’t support their efforts. I’m beginning to think that they were so fixated on electing the First Woman President, that they have simply gone a bit off the rails. Those “Firsts” on the record are very important to Democrats.

Their hatred for President Trump has surpassed all norms. Bob Woodward, longtime journalist, features himself as an investigative journalist, with many left-leaning books to his credit about any scandal he can hype. He, of course, doesn’t like Donald Trump. So this time, he blames President Trump for the Corona-19 virus and every death it caused. If you are going throw accusations around, might as well pick a biggie.

I live currently in a Seattle suburb. The first American exposure and death from Covid-19, came to the next suburb just north of my house. Apparently someone carrying the disease returned to relatives in a nursing home directly from Wuhan, China. Everyone contacted by that person contracted the disease and most died. President Trump slapped a freeze on flights from China immediately. Vast outcry from the Left. Bigot, Racist, etc, etc, etc. Trump gathered up the most informed advisers he could find, Dr.Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in January of 2020, and Dr. Rebecca Birx, and listened closely to their advice. State Governors demanded help, they needed ventilators, Trump pushed American auto makers to shift some production to making ventilators, Governors demanded more hospital beds, Trump sent two US Navy hospital ships, and military hospitals were set up in parks and stadiums where there was room. Masks were needed and produced. The record goes on with the President trying to meet every new need, and shut down that which was not safe. Impossible to control everything that was going on. New York Governor Cuomo directed ailing elders to be treated in senior care homes, and caused vast numbers of deaths of the elderly. Cruise ships that had someone infected on board became death traps. Lots of deadly mistakes were made as we learned about the disease. Mr. Woodward, a small former journalistic star, has betrayed his profession and whatever honored journalistic career he once had, with a partisan attack that is just a partisan lie. Shame on him.

Now we have the battle of the Supreme Court. Democrats are outraged that with Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s death, President Trump will, as the Constitution requires, name a new justice for the Senate to approve. Democrats are threatening to impeach Trump once again, for any reason they can think up, anything to keep him from naming a new candidate to replace the late Justice Ginsberg. He has no right to do this when there’s an election coming up in two months, and Biden might win, and then he would appoint a left-leaning candidate.

The Constitution is just fine, until it doesn’t support what you want to do. Naming a potentially conservative justice to the Supreme Court just means the Democrats will have to pack the court and expand the number of justices so they can be in control. They are Democrats and entitled not to be troubled by some hillbilly backwoods bunch of Conservatives, who just don’t understand the way it was meant to be.



There Are Always Consequences! by The Elephant's Child

What happens to a city that is consumed with riots and protests, damage to shops and businesses, looting, police attacked, cars and other vehicles damaged or destroyed? We have answers from many businesses, who say they are moving out. Some to other safer cities or safer states, some to different areas  of a city. Some just giving up. Do lots of new businesses move in to replace them? That will be a long time coming.

Portland is coming up on 100 days of riots and protests in the streets. The mayor impolitely said “no thanks” to the President’s offer of federal help to quell the violence. Portland has become nationally known as a home to Antifa.

When we have had big celebrations or parades in Seattle, it is not unusual for Portland Antifa to come up and try to start trouble. Curious about what Antifa is? Or other questionable groups? Visit www.discoverthenetworks.org to learn about the organizations attempting to tear America down.

So people will want to risk starting up a business in downtown Portland? Or Portland at all? People who were thinking about moving to a new city are going to move to Portland? If a city gets a bad reputation, how long does it take to get rid of it, and prove that the bad reputation was not justified. And how many people just decide to move elsewhere. There are always ramifications. And that goes for Minneapolis, and Kenosha as well.

How did we get here? Who decided that rioting and protesting were the way to go? Not really all that surprising.

We know the Democrats are desperate to be in control, but American elections should not descend to this level.

ADDENDUM: Here’s another take on The Economic Scars of Rioting  from National Review. Democrats need to be held accountable for what they have done with their Trump Derangement Syndrome. What makes it even more pathetic is that he is doing a remarkably good job. The unemployment rate has dropped to 8.4% as August has seen 1.4 million new jobs. The fourth straight month of added jobs in the economy. Back in April unemployment was 14.7%. Looks like we may have a Corona Virus vaccine later this fall. If you look hard there is lots of other good news, and big accomplishments.



Democrats Are Trying to Blame Trump for COVID-19 by The Elephant's Child

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Democrats keep trying to rid us of President Donald Trump, they tried impeachment, several times. They loathe Trump, but they just can’t figure out how to get rid of him and his systematic repeal of Obama’s progressive project. The problem is that the Democrats just want to be in control. Just what it is that they expect to accomplish when they manage to get control isn’t really clear, and there’s the rub.

The current best idea seems to be blaming him for the Corona Virus. If they can just manage to establish that he didn’t respond quickly enough, professionally enough, carefully enough or something like that, then they can blame him for all of the Covid-19 deaths. That would take care of him!

The first COVID-19 deaths in the United States happened a few miles north of my house when a visitor to a nursing home who had just returned from Wuhan, China infected the residents. President Trump quickly banned any and all flights from China. He referred to it as the China virus or the Wuhan virus. (Outcry. Racial prejudice, etc.) Got automobile companies making ventilators, everybody making masks, hospital ships in New York harbor and in California, Cruise ships anchored, military setting up emergency hospitals in tents in public parks and in parking garages. Experts called in to advise.

Of course they don’t mention that, they talk about results. Here are the five COVID-19 Charts Democrats are anxious to hide. Click on the link. Copy and save the link. Share it with family and friends!

This is from http://www.issues&insights.com, a fairly new website founded by the writers from Investors Business Daily, and is excellent. It has become one of my favorites. They even feature Michael Ramirez’s wonderful political cartoons.



Mindless, Purposeless Riots Just For Fun. Disgraceful. by The Elephant's Child

The Left has certainly dragged out their old-time-religion. Race, white supremacy, fascism, and apparently not the slightest interest in what is actually going on in our world today. Riots, not “peaceful protests” and if you have watched the videos, they are not really about much of anything but the fun of roaming down the streets with big groups of people, breaking stuff, breaking windows, damaging property, attacking cars and people. Mindless. They are out there for the fun of it.

They need to be hauled off promptly to jail. Democrat Mayors are terrified of even the possibility of doing anything about it. In Seattle, the feckless Mayor Jenny Durkan pulled herself together a bit and vetoed the feckless Seattle City Council’s attempt to defund the police. And I think I read that the National Guard has been called out for Portland, that would have to be the governor I think, Mayors can’t. But the fun in the streets has spread to Denver,  Minneapolis of course,    Fort Wayne Indiana, Green Bay Wisconsin, Atlantic City, Philadelphia, Olympia WA and that is far from a complete list.

“Black Lives Matter” has nothing to do with this mess. There’s a lot of violence and drugs in poor black neighborhoods, and they want and depend on police protection.

Attacking statues has lost some of its fury. What becomes completely clear is that there is a very deep ignorance of American History. “Fascist” is a popular word: Here’s Wikipedia’s definition, but I’d be willing to bet that few if any of the street mobs could define it. Mindless.

Fascism is a form of far-right, authoritarian ultranationalism characterized by dictatorial power, forcible suppression of opposition, and strong regimentation of society and of the economy which came to prominence in early 20th-century Europe.

Look up Benito Mussolini in Italy, who “popularized” the idea. But the problem is authoritarianism. The urge to control. Well, Mussolini made a mess of it, but if you are interested in this “new” authoritarianism I recommend borrowing The Black Book of Communism from your friendly public library. Amazon has it, but it’s quite expensive, even used. Or buy Communism: a Brief History by Richard Pipes, one of our greatest historians. Or read about the Soviet forced labor system in The Gulag Archipelago by Alexsandr Solzhenitsyn. Lana Peters, Stalin’s daughter became an American citizen, and died at 85, not too long ago.



File Under Useful Hints: by The Elephant's Child

You may or may not have noticed my new favorite word: feckless. I probably saw someone else use it, and though I knew (sorta-kinda) the meaning, looked it up to be accurate.

Feckless: lacking initiative or strength of character, irresponsible. synonyms: useless, worthless, incompetent, ineffective, inept, good for nothing, ne’er do well, lazy, idle, slothful, indolent, shiftless, apathetic, aimless, unambitious, unenterprising, no good, no account, lazy.

With elections coming up, it may be a remarkably useful word, at least to tuck in the back of your brain when deciding whether to support a candidate or a city council or not.




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