Assessing the Damage to the Tea Party

Lennard Voehl is like a drowning man clutching a razor blade.  How do I tell him the real reason why his wife isn't coming to visit him in prison??

-Charles Laughlin

Let's take a look at a few more post mortum election statistics.  Between 1968 and 1988 the Republican running for President garnered a majority of votes most of the time.  Since 1988 the Republicans have garnered only fifty percent but once, in 2004, and by the slimmest margins under dubious voting conditions in Ohio.   We know Miami-Date county went heavily for Obama but even the Miami Cubans voted for Obama this time, which surprises me.  Romney made many mistakes during this campaign.  His biggest one was perhaps appearing aloof.  Saying things like "I Love Firing people" and "Corporations are people, my friend' and pledges to de-fund planned parenthood, were damaging to him.  But even more deadly was his ignoring of the vetterans entirely in the Republican convention.  That was inexplicable.  Also Mitt Romney could have done himself a favor if he'd done the decent thing and visited the flood damage after Hurricane Sandy.  Romney also should have picked either Rob Portman in Ohio to help him in that state, or else Governor Christy of NJ, which would have prevented his being publicly snubbed by Christy two weeks before the election.  That was "good optics" for the President and bad optics for Romney.  In demographics we have more stats for you.  Women went 55 percent for the President as opposed to 43 percent for Mitt Romney.  And women are 53 percent of those who voted.  Among students and those under thirty and also among Latinos the percentages broke down about the same among both groups being about 69 percent for the president and 29 percent for Romney.  Seniors broke about 55 percent for Romney to 45 percent for the President, based largely on social issues, I believe.  Nothing about these numbers is good for the Republicans, as Pat Buchannon points out.  Besides the pot and gay revolutions - - Maryland and Rhode Island approved gambling cassinos, but a similar measure failed in Oregon.

We now move to our "What will they do now?" segment.  John Boehner says he will compromise with the President in closing tax loopholes and giveaways to "raise revenue" for the government.  However the President had been more strident saying "Students and Seniors should not have to suffer economically to pay for a few more yachts for millionaires" or some such thing.  Knowing this President however, he'll give the republicans everything they ask for, and most likely he'll do it ahead of time.  And then he'll call it a victory just like two years ago.  What they are saying is that your average household taxes will go up two to three thousand dollars if the tax laws revert to what they were under Clinton.  They call this a "fiscal cliff' but in reality it's fiscal salvation.  Besides why is going back to the good old days of Bill Clinton such a bad thing?  We were doing just fine, then.  Mitt Romney keeps incorrectly saying there are 23 million unemployed people in America but Stephanie Miller and others point out that the actual number is twelve million, or about half the figure Romney quotes.  The latest buzz is that the Republicans will go on and pass the Dream Act over Rush Limbaugh's howls of protest because even Sean Hannity admits it's inevitable that the republicans get their act together concerning immigration.  As to the stock market drop - - my solution is- - why not turn lemons into lemonade and use this opportunity to buy up as many good stocks as you can?  People would rather complain than act.  Positive economic statistics will continue to roll in for the next several months.

Of the seven deadly sins a number are not on my list.  Sensual Lust is not on my list.  Gluttany is not on my list.  Pride is not on my list.  Anger is not even on my list.  Some are, however.  I don't like Sloth or laziness, and I don't like Averice, either.  This is greed and wanting more power and walking over other people to get it.  Also Envy is one of the seven deadly sins, and is on my list, but as a sub group as Averice and not in its own category.  So what sins to I count as Deadly that the Church does not?  Well - - Treachery for one - - stabbing a friend in the back.  Also I'm against Cowardess.  And then we have Intemperance or being "out of control" or just Foolishness or a lack of prudent or intelligent behavior.  When Anger is broken down it breaks down as either justified- - or else as Huberous or Averice- - - or it is just plain throwing a tantrum or this Intemperance.  We have one more on my list one could call Perversion or Corruption or even Apathy.  Yes, a "failure to get involved" due to just not giving a damn, is a sin.  This is a new one I don't believe we've made room for before.  It's possible to pervert other things besides sex- - - for instance Justice- - or one's good name.  I am reminded we have one remaining - - - Delusion or Self Deceit.  The "right wing echo chamber' and Religion itself falls under this umbrella.  In that spirit we have the logical condemnation of the vastest system of systematic distortion of Reality and lies, the world has ever known, Religion. Below are remarks that were originally in four separate paragraphs.  I combined them here because there is a common thread to all four.

As opposed to twenty years ago, I no longer believe science and religion are compatable.  People become Educated and they learn from false thinking of the past. Many of my beliefs I have altered over the years is not a change in basic character, but merely learning of the true facts.  Unfortunately many have as part of their character an inability or disinclination to learn new truths once they manifest themselves.  (Selah)  Let's look at what religion is for a moment.  I would differentiate religion from metaphysics.  Metaphysics is the study of things that can't be proven.  Perhaps they are vaguely inferred.  For instance we might infer that this world and universe was Created by an outside force.  Now astronomers in times gone by saw the orbet of Uranus and there were certain irregularities about it.  So they inferred the existance of yet another planet.  But nobody then would have gone on to wrrite a paper on the climate of Nepture or its atnosphere, or whether or not it has magnetic poles or which direction it spun on its axis.  And yet religious people assume if you postulate the existance of a hypothetical god or force, this entitles you to write all about him.  Or another example would be a blind baseball pitcher.  Even if he's good as guessing about where to throw the ball, what if the batter changes position?  He decides to bad left handed, or else he squats down thus changing the strike zone.  The blind man would have no way of knowing this.  Here is where metaphysics leaves off and religion takes over.  Peole who believe in metaphysics generally believe the known Trumps the unknown, as superstition takes a back seat to knowledge.  But what if our baseball player persisted in saying he was right in throwing to one side of the plate when the batter had clearly moved to the other.  At that point we would call it "religion".  That's why I say religion has a high potential to be unhealthy.  Chuck Smith criticizes Kirkigard for talking about "an irrational leap of faith" and yet he is actually the only theologian who is honest.  The rest are deluding themselves.  Let's ask ourselves some logical questions.  First of all we have to ask "Is it good to ask questions?"  In the Dr. Phil we have to think of the logical consequences of a question answered Yes or else No.  For instance- - does God have any material manifestation that is quantifiable by scientists?  There are logical consequences to either a yes or a no.  Some may even ask "Is it OK to argue Logic with religion".  Another question is "Do the consequences of our actions or other people's unintended consequences matter?"  Does learned experiance count for anything?  Does religion raise more problems than it solves?  or "Sshould a religion even WORK - - for you in your life".  What are the consequences of Yes and the consequences of No?  Should a religion answer every question you have.  Can this god be "petitioned"?  Why does religion claim to have answers to questions nobody else has?  Could it be that certain questions we DIDN'T have untill such questions were "sold to us" as "needing an answer" such as "Where did the Universe come from?  Is it or is it not true that "God is the source of all Morality".  There are consequences for a Yes and consequences for a No.  Are human beings basically good or basicly evil?  This will impact the philosophy you carry into your religion.    People get hung up on the world "Believe".  I differentiate "Faith" in terms of whether it's Belief - - in some idea as to "how things really are" and Faith in terms of faithfulness or Trust in another person - - or force.  Creo - - is "I believe" in Spanish in terms of "I think - - - ".  Well, people think a lot of things.  It just struck me this morning that one thing you could say about a leader is that he has made a God out of his own thoughts - - his own beliefs, and built an ediface of Dogma around them.  However there are deep thinkers even among the ranks of the religious.  I'l like to talk about Paul Tillich.  He believed God could be weak as well as strong, and malliable and perswadable as well as steadfast and unchanging.  As to the "Eternal Now" we had a preacher at our churh in the sixties who used to say "Now is all you have".  And also in philosophy we were told a definition of religion was "The study of ultimate things".  These are lofty concepts and I wouldn't discard them.  It may have been this "eternal now" that Jesus spoke of when he spoke of "eternal life".  That is- to use Eric Fromme's illustration about "The Journey" rather than the Destination being the thing- - if all we have is Now- - then if we are robbed of "Now" we are in a sense robbed of everything we have.  (Selah)

Here is some other useful information.  You don't need a computer in your phone to carry in your pocket.  A calculatory can perform wonders, so here are things that the Windows Calculator will do - - -

 MEAN or average is computed here.  But flook high numbers, can often render distorted impressions of what you want to really know when you ask, "what is average".

Standard deviation.  This is the two thirds content rule.  In my version, you square ratio of the "levels" at the borders of SD to arrive at Kurtosis.

"Calculator" features Limited what you might call Array math or "selected sequence" addition

ADD or SUM in the STA area is self explanitory

MINUS is used in net income or net balance or even "balance of the day".  Also agrgate gain or loss of anything in absolute ammounts is figured by subtraction - not ratios.

MULTIPLICATION  You can also use multiplicatrion to compute compound probabilities.  For instance the odds of two events EACH with a 3 out of 5 chance of happening, drop to 9 oiut of 25 or only 35% for BOTH happening.  Also timsing can be used in what you could call either the Roulette Wheel formula or the "exploding time bomb" formula  for you old "Deal or No Deal" fans

AND, OR, and XOR  These are used heavily in binary computer calculations

Change the Base, to either two, eight, or sixteen

Degrees, Pi radians, or - -  a system based on 100 instead of 90

DIVISION  Division can also be used to change the base to anything you want in LOG calculations, and also instrumental predicting interest rates where TIME is the unknown variable

LOG and EXP - - - EXP "undoes the log" and is often based on - - -

BASE E, which is that magic number where exponents and root number can exchange position and have the results be unchanged

Fractional Exponents - - are useful in interest rate calculation - - and also in particular doing interest rate formulas where Interest rate is the unknown variable.  But this function is also used in programming musical notes for the computer

DMS - - - degrees, minutes, seconds - - used to change numbers on one side of a decimal point but not the other to either 35 or 5/3 

INVERSE  This is better called "reverse" and is most useful in calculating Arc trig functions.  That is - if you have the measuring components and you want to figure the degrees.

LHS - - this is a mystery function that uses two peramaters which raise two to a power and then times it by the number of your choice.  I'm puzzled why it's here.

N! Two uses for this N! function come immediately to mind.  One is the famous pizza topping selection formula - - the same formula used on computing all posible numbers of small groups for team party games - - it's also the formula for decripting ramdomly scrambled alphabet code in a single key - - and it's also an easy way to do the triangulation formula

HYP - - - Hyperbolic trig functions.  Tangents with HYP - - I believe compute probabilities of success in any scientific expoeriment the more times it is repeated.  I believe it could be used in socialogical statistical sampling to get detailed probabilities given the right base number for "1" which I think is around one percent of the whole.  It was also incorporated in the Morley-Lowitz addition of volicities of matter formula later used by Einstein.

1/x   - - - - This is your simple formula for Inverse numbers, which among other things are very useful in economics - - but a lot of people get screwed up by.  That's because they think fifty percent bigger is the same ratio as fifty percent smaller, and similar wrong assumptions.

X ^ Y   - - - - - This is your basic exponent computation number.  Exponents can be used to compute interest ammounts or inflation ammounts for an extended period of years.

( )  parentheses - - - calculators didn't used to have these - - obviously essential for any form of higher math.  Remember what the default precedents are!

MEM and DAT and related buttons - - used for either storing something in STA memory or else to retrive a number that's there.