“Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely”—Religious Organizations not Excepted.

“Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely”—Religious Organizations not Excepted.

I suppose the genesis for my suspicion involving the role of Religion in society began early in my career when students might come to me outside of class with a very personal problem in their lives that had nothing to do with their course in Physiology with me. “Maybe you should take this problem to your minister, priest, rabbi, or whoever in your place of worship”, I would suggest. I had stopped going to church myself as it seemed perfunctory, ritualistic, and shallow. It had no real significance in my life or to the lives of those who need help the most. But that was just me, I reasoned, and let such thoughts recede. To each his own. But what startled me was the almost universal response from such students which was some such variation of “What to they know about real life? I think I need something more than to sit around, hold hands, and pray?” 

Some of my university students lived in some pretty rough city neighborhoods and I quickly realized my job would be far more demanding than teaching the fundamentals of physiology.  Privately, I seethed at the reality that these students were reduced to coming to someone like me with such personal problems which ranged far afield in nature. I don’t recall ever going to any teacher with personal problems. I mean, maybe I did, but I can’t recall any at this late stage of my life. Now really, if religious leaders are not there primarily for this sort of thing, what the hell are they there for? It appeared to me that there are a few religious leaders who spend endless hours helping those most in need (financially and otherwise) but far more clergy whose life is simply a paid social life. Most church leaders I have known were nice, pleasant, friendly, and almost totally useless to those most in need. There is nothing inherently wrong with singing hymns, group praying, bible lessons, preparing sermons—so shallow and innocuous that no member of the congregation will get upset and leave the flock, or having potluck suppers, or presiding over weddings, baptisms, funerals, summer camps, and so on, but it is hard to put any of that up there with serious societal matters. Then again, I am not the best to judge here since I personally have always been negative about endless meaningless chit chat for most any reason. I tend to respond to conversations of substance (plus nonsense) but a little meaningless chit chat goes a long way. 

On the other hand, I can’t be alone here since every major religion I know of (not sure about the Muslim religion) is losing church members en masse. While religion no longer has the power it once had in our society, the fundamentalists of any of the major religions can still effectively manage to make it difficult for diverse groups of humanity to get along. If faith is good, no matter what is behind the faith, then religious fundamentalists are saints. But it does seem that if we could put all these ‘saints’ in the same huge country somewhere, and let them massacre each other in the sordid specific ways they often do (no death is too cruel when the motive is doing God’s will)—then the rest of us could probably live in more peaceful and prosperous communities. The history of the varied religious groups is never very pretty, uplifting, or lasting. 

What is interesting is this: While church membership and attendance is down in religions today, belief in God is not down at all. So it is not exactly correct to state that people are not as religious as once they were, but rather that organized religions have failed the people they serve. 

Every so often the issue rises as to whether churches should pay taxes on church buildings just as people who own homes pay taxes. I suppose, if huge corporations can escape taxes, if they will move to another state, why can’t churches be tax free? At least they are not huge corporations, albeit some of them really are. This is not an easy question with which to deal for me. I don’t pay taxes on money I put in my FANAFI Fund each year, all of which goes to 501 designated charitable organizations. Of course I am delighted to have my tax obligations reduced. Of course it doesn’t stop there, any capital gain I get from my investments is always taxed at the reduced rate of 15%. That seems a tad weird. So some guy whose income is from pushing a wheel barrow around all day pays roughly double the tax rate compared to my shuffling papers around in a smart way. Of course if I were to lose all these tax breaks I would naturally squeal like a pig. But the general point here is why are we constantly inventing tax breaks for the affluent which means those with the most income are paying the least to support government expenses like schools, roads, infrastructures, and so on.  Like Bernie Sanders points out, the system is rigged. And it certainly is. 

I reckon if I don’t pay taxes on my charitable expenditures why should churches? After all aren’t they there primarily to help the less fortunate?  I mean, the prophets who started these religions surely were focused on the less fortunate. I can’t think of a prophet, off hand, who did not live a simple life out amongst those with the greatest needs.  Maybe churches should be exempt if they can prove their income goes primarily to help the least fortunate here at home or abroad. Those who give to charity often check to make sure most of the money is really going to something they think it is, and is not being spent on administrative costs and employee salaries.  So I decided to Google the answer and find out just what percentage of money churches collect goes to the least fortunate directly or via programs specifically for them. Google rarely doesn’t have the stats I am looking for. But amazingly here, the search failed. Here is the closest I could come”  

“How do churches compare? (to charities)  The short answer is, we don’t know.  With very few exceptions, the financial statements of churches and religious ministries are not available to the public.

But there are estimates.  For example:

Every year churches collect some $100 billion in donations. But most donors do not know that the average congregation in the U.S. gives only two percent of donated money to humanitarian projects. Some 98% goes to pay staff, upkeep of buildings, the priest’s car, robes, salary and housing.

This came from Roy Sablosky.  But he’s on the board of the American Humanist Association of Greater Sacramento.  Might he be biased?

Christianity Today is another source.  A survey gave this breakdown of the average church budget: 43% for salaries, 20% for facilities (mortgage, etc.), 16% missions, 9% programs, 6% administration and supplies, 3% denominational fees, 3% other.

So where is the money to good works?  Presumably “missions” includes this, but this is a nebulous category.  A dollar spent on the First Baptist Church soup kitchen certainly counts as a charitable expense, but the dollar spent supporting a missionary doesn’t.

That estimate of 2% to humanitarian projects may not be too far off.”

 To the extent this is mostly true, then churches are not really like charities but more like businesses—not a business which makes a product but a business which provides some sort of social service. A cell phone bill is a charge for you to maintain the social life it carries with it. Contributions to the church are along the same line, it provides for the personnel and equipment, building, and social activities for the members. I remember as  kid hearing the minister preach about the poor and less fortunate but I never came in contact via church participation with this part of our community. I am aware that sometimes church members volunteer certain days, especially holidays, at a soup kitchen or give clothes to people who have lost everything in floods, stuff like that. But then so do many non church members. I would like to know which group gives the most? When it comes to the saying, “Give me a fish and I eat for a day; teach me to fish and I eat for life time” it just seems churches, if they do much at all, just give the needy a fish here and there.

It seems fair, at least to me, that if a church can prove it spends most of its income on activities which directly help the least fortunate here or abroad, then they deserve a tax break. Otherwise, it is a social club, in existence to provide a social atmosphere for the members. Can anyone imagine Jesus living in a 10.5 million dollar mansion and raising money to build a 16,800 seat church like Minister Joel Osteen of Hurricane Harvey fame when he baulked at opening up the church to the homeless? Joel has a point, that was built as a luxury temple for the members to serve the Lord surrounded by impressive gilded designs of an imagined heavenly atmosphere in nice luxurious seats. I might go there just to get real comfortable and feel awed by my surroundings. God only knows what that place would look like after the homeless got through living there. That building was not built for the homeless, why would they suddenly be welcome?  I wonder what percentage of the congregation who come for his precious sermons fit in the category of least fortunate in that area. Nah, if they go to church at all, they down at the rickety ole rustic fire trap singing hallelujahs and hopping around in high spirits to get the Lord’s attention to their plight in life. 

All the sarcasm aside, churches are nothing like their founders envisioned. Maybe I am just bitter, but I suspect I spent more time working with those less fortunate, on their personal problems in life, per week, than most clergy type ever do, unless they are preaching in a ghetto church, in which case I might be way off base. And in my case, it wasn’t technically part of my job. It makes one feel trapped—there is nothing sadder than to be face to face and see the desperation in a young person’s eyes as they try hard to escape to a better life. These pictures from life’s other side are simply the saddest experiences in my life. Whatever the totality of life, fairness does not abound.  I know that God’s evolutionary process will eventually improve matters, but that doesn’t help the present reality for so many good, but less fortunate of our citizens.  All we can ever do is keep trying, as best we can, to help the less fortunate—in ways we have the talent for, so that at least we gain the increased contentment in our lives for the effort. Those who give, really do get back, in contentment, as much  contentment for their actions, as those who receive the help. A little birdie explains all this to me. Then Sheebiejiebie the cat lets me know that she was once a feral cat, survived that, but she is starving to death, and if I will not feed her right now and then, on her demand, she will certainly be dead any minute. She is very convincing, but the vet says she is a tad overweight so I restrain myself, and tell her eating time is only two hours away.  

Going, Going, Gone. The Little Things That Counted

Going, Going, Gone. The Little Things That Counted

I remember well reading this book about the “Lost Boys of the Sudan’. When these rural villages were bombed and men on horseback murdered all the villagers, some children escaped, and now orphaned, began the long trek to find a new ‘home’. This trek took these children over a thousand miles and half of them died en route. Scattered throughout the vast wilderness of northern Africa, these wandering children coalesced into what eventually became an army of 20 thousand, all youngsters, some 5 or 6 years old. The trek eventually took them to a refugee camp in Kenya and three of these ’lost boys’ ended up eventually coming to America—before the number of refugees grew to today’s population of 75 million and now, naturally, no one wants any more refugees.  All this aside, what applies here is that one of the boys, now an adult, recalls the worst part of his journey: it was not any of the physical and health problems endured en route (few children survived this trek), but the deep depression he went in when he lost the only thing he had left from his simple family life before the attack—a small blanket his mother had made for him which he lost fleeing from soldiers shooting down as many of these children as they could. That little blanket meant more to him than any of the stuff those of us in more affluent situations means to us. A little raggedy ass blanket meant, and still does mean, more than anything else in the world to him. That trek of little children fits the title above: Going, going, gone—their entire childhood vanished like it never existed. That’s tragedy writ large, my reflections here are simple nostalgia. Little kids surviving a trip like that, over a thousand miles, in Africa no less, with wild animals and warring adults—simply heart rendering and beyond belief. Stuff like that is impossible to get out of my mind, the worst kind of reality with which to deal. 

It just seems that real meaning has little to do with wealthy stuff. What is gone, that really matters the most to us, is often many simple things. Of course dead parents in many cases. But these were not purchased objects. All our pets of yesteryears, and these too were non inanimate objects or signs of wealth. Most pets are mutts of some sort, practically free for anyone who will adopt them. For someone like myself who has poor memory for names, I still remember the names of almost everyone who lived within a mile of my boyhood home. And they all knew me or about me to varying degrees. Today we are often lucky if we actually know the name of those living next door, and even if we do, that about ends any meaningful knowledge about them. Our intimacy now is through the internet or smart phones or whatever other gadget keeps us busy in cyberspace. None of this has anything to do with bad or good, better or worse, just reflections of how so many simple things of the past are gone with the wind. Times change without any predetermined or ethical fashion. In the short run, which in evolutionary time can be hundreds, thousands, or millions of years, it may seem disastrous; but in the long run, things rebound better than ever—not because of our prayers, our personal input, but because of the laws which govern the process, laws which were created by my idea of God, but don’t ask me to push this idea further than “wherever there is a gift, there must be a gift-giver. The gift giver is God. 

Those lost boys of Sudan, had not a single toy, as we know a toy, but spent endless hours each day, before they lost their childhood, playing games with sticks and a little ball or constructed figurines—what ever. They now live here in America but their minds wax longingly for those simple days back in rural Sudan when they were ‘somebody’ with no baggage of horror stories buried in their psyche. If they could press a button and go back to that simple childhood with their good friends and family, they would do that and leave behind the materialistic items they are surrounded by here in America. The big pictures of life, or the most meaningful things about life, are too often illusional. 

But even those of us born here kind of miss many simple things from our life of earlier years, before all the battles to become more affluent, have more social stature, or endless gadgets, or achievements in business that often left us busy sometimes with screwed up priorities. I can remember spending nights with a flashlight sending morse code signals through a window to a playmate a mile away, spending hours carrying pails of maple tree sap to the kitchen where it got boiled down to syrup by boiling off 97% of the liquid. The house was became a steam bath but somehow my parents permitted it.  And where have most of the fireflies gone? They used to be everywhere, now seldom seen. And snakes, I seldom see a snake anymore even though I walk miles in forest preserves many times a week. Honeysuckle, used to be everywhere, again seldom seen. Rabbits, they used to be running around in the woods in huge numbers, today I guess the hawks and coyotes or whatever have done them in. Rarely see a rabbit anymore. Deer are rarities, at least where I live. Any creature defenseless, has little chance in a world where the means to kill them is available and used. Wildlife is more a nuisance today than any valued part of our environment. 

Remember when we used to race from the corn patch with the corn to put it immediately in boiling water before it lost it’s sweetness? Hell, today with genetic bred super sweet corn that retains it’s sweetness, eating corn on the cob is no big deal. It became a meaningful adventure when one had to go through all the work of growing the corn, picking it, husking it, and plunging it into boiling water. Yum, yum. I still like corn, but what happened to the yum, yum? Replaced by the ho hm, ho hum. We can purchase all kinds of subways today but when I was young racing down to Ascherman's Deli so we could have a ‘railroad’ sandwich, was a highlight of the day—boy were they good. If I had the same ‘Railroad’ sandwich today I would probably find it deficient and wanting. A beat up old Pontiac that hardly ran, and when so, poorly—meant more to me than my car today with every imaginable device on it, together with a manual over 1000 pages long. Even when I first buy it, the excitement is minimal. 

Remember when baring too much flesh was an abomination, a sure tell tale sign of immorality? Each generation flaunted more and more flesh while porno films, hard to come by in my earlier years, had performers who wore masks. Today porn is a big attraction on the internet for millions of people. What does all this mean?  I have no idea. What is left for the next generation to flaunt?  Maybe they will insist on putting clothing back on and sex will be an activity engaged in with a headset, high definition, 3-D, virtual reality high orgasmic sex with whatever image we dial up on the screen. Perhaps kids will be genetically ordered from Amazon. com after filling out a form describing exactly what the kid will look like, plus the nature of their personality. Perhaps our life long companions will be reselected from Amazon.com as we ourselves change over time and need something different, not the same old, same old, tired ass friends of existence of which we have grown tired. These thoughts are nonsensical. How accurate would Lincoln have been if asked to predict life 150 years after him? And he was smarter than the rest of us. 

Remember how exciting it was to go to get ice cream or hear the bells of the good humor man? I Iiked Raspberry (pronounced rasp berry) the best. Swimming was equatable today with winning the lottery. The county fair, an amusement park, bumper cars, and a trip to some relative 30 miles away was a planned out, long awaited adventure. Boredom itself was an adventure and forced endless creative ideas to escape from the boredom. When I was in my productive years I would often long for the carefree days of youth sitting around trying to figure out how best to amuse ourselves. Maybe that is why I am content in my terminational years spending every morning before getting out of bed deciding exactly what I want to do for the day ahead. And then I do it, almost always some sort of simplistic inexpensive hobby.  I remember once digging a big hole with a boyhood friend, I don’t remember why, but we kept digging for weeks or months just, I guess, for something to do. But I can remember exactly where we dug that hole. Or the tree hut way the hell out  in the woods. Not much of it was ever constructed do to the distance to drag all the lumber. Hide and seek was fun—and when I tired of it, and it was my turn, I would just go home, a sure fire place they would never think to look. Nice game, you could win by going home. 

A trip to Ebbets Field to see the Brooklyn Dodgers and Duke Snider at 10 years of age with my neighborhood pals is pure nostalgia. This entailed a train ride, then several subway trains, and finally there we were, at Ebbets Field. Baseball is too slow for me today, but when a child it seemed so exciting. When the World Series started there were radios in every class, every workplace, there were no night games, and every workplace managed someway to know what happened with every batter. 

Every generation, when older, could write this kind of musing about those things so long ago, now going, going, gone—being sadly missed. On the other hand, when people suggest I do something exciting these days I reply: "What makes you think I am looking for excitement?" I seek contentment and simple pleasant daily routines. I don’t need a life, I’ve had one. And I am still alive and relatively healthy, I mean enough is enough. Those for whom enough is never enough miss the whole point of life and contentment will be evasive. I am perfectly willing to let the next generation run the show. Change is always the order of the day and will be every year in the future. If we want permanence, then for those my age, this will come soon enough. I don’t think the dead are turning over in their grave about anything. Realistically, the dead really don’t exist anymore. Yes, Elvis is dead, he ain’t coming back. Neither is Lincoln, or any of the Queens/Kings of England, or Roger Bannister to set a new mile record. The original amoeba is still around, still inconspicuous, and popcorn has survived the absence of Terrell Owens on the field stirring things up. 

Going, Going, Going—Gone could be the title of any book written as an autobiography by anyone who has ever lived. Just a weird last thought to bring things to a close here, always a difficult task for me. 

The Role of Hate in the Evolutionary Process

The Role of Hate in the Evolutionary Process

A friend asked one night how the emotion of hate affects the Evolutionary process. My immediate answer was that it has no role in the evolutionary process, only a bearing on how individual humans relate to each other during their minuscule lifespan. Thus, if I hate Honschnivel, and the hatred is so great I kill Honschinvel, the evolutionary process is not altered at all, but I may go to jail and Honschnivel is dead. 

Here I want to rethink the answer and see if it leads to a different answer. I have postulated before that individuals do not affect the evolutionary process. If Lincoln had not engineered the end of slavery, then someone else would have——because slavery has a negative impact on human society and the greatest contentment for the greatest number of humans. It doesn’t make any difference really, whether witches were being burned at the stake by Catholics, Protestants, Muslims, or Jews, the evolutionary process would, by its very nature, lead to its disappearance as a justifiable part of any civilized society.  It does, of course, make a difference to those who were burned at the stake. 

Then again, we need take a look at mass hatred such as Hitler’s attempt to ‘purify’ the human race by killing all those groups who Hitler hated, or at the very least found inferior. We need remember that animals such as dogs have been bred to contain certain genetic traits, and yet, it seems common knowledge that the best pets personality-wise are most often the Mutts. Why is this (if it is indeed true)? Why are there so many ‘mutts’ around without lineage papers? Perhaps because Mutts are actually bred for likability. They get picked to have a home often because they are likable. I remember once picking out a cat at a pet store. There were two calico kittens, siblings, in a cage and I pulled out each one to pet. One couldn’t wait to get back in the cage and the other fought like mad not to be put back in the cage. Guess which one I bought? And that damn cat never lost her enthusiasm for being some kind of shadow of mine the rest of her life. 

Easy to hate is not a likable trait. It may get one elected President but that more reflects just how many voters are really mad about all sorts of things. We obviously have a lot of people angry about widely different things, but in some broad sense, the angry voters voted for the most angry candidate. It was an anger election. 

But this puts the cart before the horse. This musing is not an evaluation of Donald Trump. If a person has a tendency to easily hate for whatever reason, he/she is not likely to find a mate with the best traits to be drawn to them in any marriage arrangement. Trophy marriages are of course different. There it all depends what the trophy is.  If we examine closely the rare footage of modern day humans suddenly coming into temporary contact with tribes who still live isolated in forests having had no contact with modern day humans—it isn’t just a language barrier, but they seem to have more primitive primordial emotional states. Easy to be frightened, easy to anger, easy transformation into most any emotional state. Because humans have a sizable ability to reason, have language, can write books, and so on, each generation learns a lot of social and scientific matters which contribute to progress. Even in my brief timespan in this country things have evolved a lot socially for a lot of different groups. 12 years before I was born women got the right to vote. Desegregation of schools was achieved, all sorts of legal protections were gained by children, voting rights have been more protected, the workplace is open to additional groups of citizens, gays have gotten the right to marry, modest restrictions have been placed on any religious groups who feel a need to impose their own rituals and verbal religious expressions at public meetings, schools, in the military, etc. Each time these are ‘haters’, not in the sense they go around killing anyone, but in the sense they try to block including more people with rights or opportunities once reserved only to themselves and their own ilk. 

Thus, it does seem we need to consider physical changes in the human species over evolutionary time, and social changes as somewhat separate entities. It is hard to visualize what sort of physical changes are needed for the human species to survive. If the environment changes too drastically it is hard to predict which trait or traits might enable a few to survive. Our current situation is such that there is now an exponentially growing human overpopulation; this absence of responsible reproduction will come with severe consequences, but which avenue or avenues the evolutionary process will employ to correct human overpopulation is hard to predict. But no species yet has a good survival rate from overpopulation. That’s Biology 101. 

It does seem hate plays a role in whether a society can remain peaceful and just. Hate leads to violence and violence begets violence. We have a front row seat for this process right before our eyes today. What is different today compared to hundreds of years ago in this country is the powerful weapons available to those who hate certain other groups of any ilk. It is not just atomic weapons, but smart missiles, drones, biological weapons, non uniformed enemies, well armed citizens, land mines, suicide bombers, endless opportunities to kill people at random (terrorism), and so on. In the past citizens mostly had to be worried about armies, the police, and the lack of human rights for all groups. 

When I was young it was unthinkable to go into a school and mow down as many kids as possible before being shot yourself. This mowing down innocent people is becoming almost a daily headline. The latest of course is simply driving your car into a bunch of people. Behind all these activities is a degree of hate toward certain groups of political, religious, racial, cultural, and economic class divisions. In this sense, hate is going to play a role in the future. With all these modern ways for practically anyone or any group to commit terroristic acts, all the modern technology in the world cannot prevent it. Thus, for the human species to continue to exist in a manner those of us who are affluent live today, this ability to hate has to become evolutionarily extinct. Is this possible? Only the Shadow knows. 

We could focus on any past evolutionary situation in which something has to give or species start to become extinct right and left. In general, certain species do adapt, by chance, in time to survive, and sometimes there is no adaptation soon enough for that species to survive. I reckon, in this sense, hate is a human genetic trait that has to be weeded out one way or another or humans can no longer exist  together in social groups. 

At this point I guess I have changed my mind. Hate does have immediate affects on individual human interactions which are of no importance to the evolutionary process. But hate also has a social component which can have a bearing on the future of our own species, something like our greed has had on other animal species. Humans have created the 6th evolutionary period in which massive extinctions of species is occurring. These other species are becoming extinct not because we hate them but because we have overpopulated the planet. This failure of responsible reproduction is not a product of hate. However, the level of hate in any overpopulated species will rise as individuals of the endangered species are forced to eliminate other members if they are to survive.

The question my friend raised was probably directed as to what advantage hate gives a species as an evolutionary advantage. I suppose we could say hate motivates. We ‘hated’ outhouses and pots in the house to collect excrement. So we invented plumbing and indoor toilets. That’s a good. Those who hated slavery were motivated enough to engineer the elimination of slavery at a tremendous cost of lives. That’s another good, again, unless you were one of the dead soldiers.  

But, hate and overpopulation are not a good mix at all. We can see the beginnings of this right now. Survival, in the midst of species overpopulation, becomes wrapped in the tendency to hate others who are managing to grab pieces of the limited pie that we want ourselves. Reason, which in this case would be to enforce responsible reproduction on everyone, gives way to what is essentially human genocide. Others have to be gotten rid of so that we may live (have access to the pie which is limited in size). We know who the enemy is—it’s the 2% who own 90% of our nation’s wealth, or the blacks in the ghettoes, or the hispanics in the farm fields, or the Asians taking up so many spots at Universities, or those on welfare, or the gays who so suddenly have equal rights, or the unions who make products more expensive, or people with certain wrong inherited religious beliefs, or inferior races, or inferior cultures, and so on. It is never, for the vast majority of people, a case of human overpopulation, but it is the presence and actions of certain groups of people. The sudden obsession of some with ‘family values’ is nothing more than ‘hate’ (in some form or fashion) of others whose presence is hated, and so the ‘family’ circles the wagon, they stand their ground, they arm themselves, and a battle of course will at some point ensue. And as more and more people come to feel they have nothing left to lose, they will become terrorists and at least take a lot of people with them in this modern day spectacle of suicide by lottery.  

Thus, it seems hate has both a personal price, and when human overpopulation exists, hate attempts to solve the overpopulation via elimination of the competition. Driving a car into a large group of people is only the beginning. Science has given us a wide assortment of ways to kill large numbers of people——atomic bombs, smart missiles. chemical weapons, biological weapons, drones, disruption of necessary services such as electricity, gas, food supplies—whatever, roving riots, land mines, assassinations, etc. In times past, hate could lead to limited levels of killing. Today, hate can lead to far more victims. And as we currently are beginning to see, once the violence begins in this or that direction, it begets more violence, and over time it becomes some sort of ‘sick’ contest in which the object is to kill more individuals than ever before.  Our response to date has not been encouraging, as we simply threaten to teach those engaging in such violent actions by being even more violent in our response. To threaten people who have nothing left to lose (in their minds) that we are going to kill them and all those of the same bent, is hardly a deterrent. This is nothing less than a promise to engage the battle on their own terms. Most terrorists don’t even plan much of an escape, they simply kill as many people as they can and then wait to be killed themselves or be easily caught and thrown in prison. The race is on alright—but it is not the race we think we are in—the killing contest—but whether humans can learn to practice responsible reproduction before global human genocide occurs on a grand scale. So far, as terrorism progresses, the band just plays on. The young are overwhelmed or just oblivious, while the old simply try to hang in there, go gently down the stream until they take that final great leap into the unknown. 

Ghettos——Cause and Reduction/Elimination, Part 2

Ghettos——Cause and Reduction/Elimination, Part 2

The following is based on the assumption that Government is responsible for the kind of communities which exist within it’s borders. If our formative years were not a suitable environment for the development of a healthy body and mind—well, as a child we were not to blame. If ‘family values’ as a term only applies to immediate family, then such a society is in trouble. If ‘family values’ is not meant in the sense Jesus and other major prophets used the term as ‘human family values’, then global peace and prosperity cannot be attained. If the needs of a society do not trump individual family values, then human society, as some of us more affluent live, is doomed. The ‘have nots’ will cause societies to implode as they have in the historical past. Not having a a reasonably balanced distribution of wealth is a death knell to societies. 

To eliminate or reduce the size of our ghettoes in this country (or the world), responsible reproduction is an absolute necessity. To shrug our shoulders and dismiss this as “well this is never going to happen” is simply to endorse massive species destruction, including our own species. There is no wiggle room here. Imagine if all the citizens of our own country were required to live in Iowa. Hard to imagine isn’t it? Well, that’s about the density of Bangladesh today. And when the oceans rise, Bangladesh will lose one third of it’s land mass. On my!  Not to worry, Trump the Charlatan Intellect, assures us climate change is just a hoax. 

Priorities always matter. We spend more on military matters than all of the other industrialized countries put together and yet we really haven’t won a war since Korea if we disregard Grenada and the Balkans. Using modern day weapons to invade other countries and ’save’ them in wars where the enemy is not in uniform is pointless. After we pulverized any infrastructure worth destroying and killed hundreds of thousands, sent million of refugees streaming into countries who don’t want them—then tired of the invasion after endless years and leave—the only thing certain is that the invaded country will then be run by roving bands of thugs while violence begets violence will rule the day. Then add terrorism to the mix and we have a catastrophe. On top of that the citizens of our country (the invader) will be a prime target of terroristic vengeance. Sounds a tad familiar doesn’t it? Even worse, we didn’t save any country, and instead we now behave more and more like them with violence, terrorism, intolerance, widespread worker dissatisfaction with salaries, health care, pensions, etc soaring at an exponential rate. 

America has always been the best leader when we lead by example. We need forget military bases all over the world. They are worthless to us except to maintain all these global invasions. And that approach to foreign policy is not working out too well. 

The first priority, as mentioned, is a government mandate that enforces responsible reproduction. This is a musing unto itself so for now, we let this just be a statement. Yet we need remember that little else we do matters in the not so long run without global responsible reproduction. 

Next, we need to abandon the use of property taxes as the primary basis for funding education. Property tax collection in ghettos is not exactly a huge revenue generation. All children in any society deserve to have the same amount of money spent on them for education. It always stuns me when people who support the use of property taxes to fund schools say, “Throwing money at this problem is not the answer”. Well then fine, we can just reverse the situation and use the money collected from property taxes in the ghettos and use that to fund schools in affluent areas and use the property tax money collected in affluent areas to fund the schools in the ghettos. After all, money is not the answer the affluent claim. 

The above two are a good start. Now let’s look at the kind of matters that citizens are concerned about in their lives. Quality of education is one. Safe environment is another. Job opportunities is another. Good health care is another. Good pensions are another. Livable wages is another. Maybe I missed something here, but this gives us a good start.  A workable political system is another ,and right now we don’t have that either. Responsible reproduction and a workable political system are the two biggest hurdles we face on the planet today. Those are the toughies. 

The rest of the hurdles are more manageable. The federal government should take responsibility for collecting tax money for education and then it should be distributed to all school districts across the country so that the same amount of money is available to educate all children. Curriculum would be controlled by individual school districts. Competition is good and those curriculums which produce the best results will be copied. If there are curriculum matters to be voted on these votes should probably be limited to those who have children in the schools. They have the most vested interest to vote for the best schooling. 

At this point it becomes true that money isn’t everything. Science has advanced enough now that we know, for children to develop properly during their formative years, they cannot maximize the development of their genetic potential if they suffer from chronic high levels of stress hormones in their blood. Thus, we need to keep track of these hormones via periodic blood tests. The reasons for chronic high levels of stress hormones will vary and the solutions will often be quite difficult. And of course, just who is it that will spend so much time working on a solution for an individual child?  Well, computers have realistically halved the amount of time any teacher may need to spend giving lectures to the class. Half the time the students can be busy on their computers and kids like using gadgets to learn things from anyway. Naturally this means each child needs to have their own computer lap top. Of course some people will scream bloody murder at the government spending money to buy all students a computer. Then again, most parents end up spending their own money to do this, so they actually save money since everyone is taxed not just those with children. 

Now to the most challenging aspect here. Sometimes chronic high levels of stress hormones can be from stress in the school environment (bullying, social interaction problems, etc.) These problems are not a one approach fits all kind of matter, but in most cases the situation can be made better. And every time we make it better we are helping the affected student better develop their potential during their formative years. Many times the chronic high levels of stress hormones are from home situations. This requires a substantial encroachment into family situations. The idea that parents are without reproach in their family matters, as it relates to children, needs to be substantially tweaked. If a child has chronic high levels of stress hormones in their blood and the problem is not limited to the school environment, then it is time for family consultations with teachers and social services about the situation. And yes, all teachers will need to take additional course work to ensure they understand how to evaluate chronic high levels of stress hormones in a child’s blood. To set up this evaluation procedure for every student with chronic high levels of stress hormones is a massive undertaking. Thus, the immediate question is just where does all this money come from to properly run our educational systems?  Well there are a lot of potential avenues to reduce expenditures. Some include, in no particular order:

Reduced expenditures on military matters including all these overseas military bases. Other countries don’t have them, so exactly why is it we need them except for a vain attempt to control the rest of the world or be the world’s policemen?  It isn’t exactly working out is it? How many countries can an American safely wander around without being a member of a tour group gawking at architecture, buildings, and dining on fine cuisine. If we wanted to really understand a country then we would be better off living with a middle class family for a month. The buildings can be seen on large screen TVs at home and so can fine dining be found at home. 

We should change our situation of having 25% of the world’s prisoners in our jails at a cost of $30,000/yr. How many people have been arrested for selling or using marijuana since 1970? “In 1973, there were 328,670 arrests reported by the FBI's Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) for drug law violations, out of a total 9,027,700 arrests nationwide for all offenses.  In 2015, there were 1,488,707 arrests for drug law violations out of a total 10,797,088 arrests nationwide for all offenses.” I will make no attempt here to go into great depth about statistics. When changes are made to a society that involve expenses, the experts have to crunch the numbers. The point here is simple enough: This ignorant War on Drugs, which we have given high priorities to since 1970 has not reduced drug use—in fact as our ghettos grew in size drug use grew at an exponential rate. We tried mandatory sentences, in part so more politicians could get elected with this promise while our prison population has soared, young people selling marijuana (if  poor) were given sentences as harsh as ten yeas, and all this at a cost of $30,000 a year/inmate. So if the kid is in jail for 10 years that is $300,000 for one street smart ghetto ‘punk’. Wow. Wouldn’t it have been cheaper to give him $200,000 and let him retire on it? I’ll try a wild guess here, let’s say we averaged 800,000 drug arrests per year since 1970. Let’s say the average time in jail was 5 years and this is a total guess—well hell, others can fiddle with the math. Let’s just say the obvious. We have been spending billions of dollars a year to sustain 25% of the prisoners in jail worldwide. And this just managed to permanently terminate meaningful employment for millions of Americans. Like who is eager to hire someone who has spent meaningful time in jail for drug charges? 

I know, the first things I suggest here to reduce are the very things we are superior to compared to other countries—military expenditures and our police/politician/prison system War on Drugs . These are the two areas we lead the world while other industrialized countries put more money into education, health care (not really, as we don’t have the best health care for all our citizens, but by far the most expensive health care system), mass transit, and so on. 

When we shift priorities, there are massive shifts in where money is going and where the money in is coming from. For example, when 45% of Americans pay no federal income tax (it keeps going up) and 77.5 million households do not pay any federal income tax, then this puts a massive tax burden on the paying middle class to offset the poor paying in nothing and the very wealthy paying taxes on very little of their income. Plus, if more people had jobs paying a livable wage, millions of people would not have to work two jobs, there would be more jobs available, and the amount of tax money coming into the the government would rise substantially. People who work decent paying jobs have money to spend and this stimulates the economy, and puts more people to work. On top of this, if the 2-5% of our citizens who own 90% of our wealth had to pay legitimate tax rates on this wealth via progressive income tax rates and inheritance taxes, the amount of money coming into the treasury from putting more people to work at decent paying jobs and forcing the real wealthy to pay taxes on all this wealth they own, well—it is obvious we would have an exponential increase in tax revenue, which combined with downsizing worthless military expenditures, treating the war on drug abuse as a medical problem instead of a criminal problem—with just all this we would be suddenly wallowing in massive amounts of money to be spent on a high quality, more just educational system. In addition, the whole idea of using machines instead of humans to perform a lot work was to reduce the work week from so many people working 70-80 hours per week. And this worked, the work week for most fell from 70 0r 80 downward until it hit 40hr/wk and then it froze. A full time work week today should probably be 30 hr/wk. This would help full employment and enable more people to deal with the stresses of modern environments. 

When I think of our government welfare mentality in this country I think of the saying: “Give me a fish and I eat for a day, teach me to fish and I eat for a lifetime.”  Welfare in our country has always been geared to giving someone a fish for a day. Come Thanksgiving, the affluent staff the soup kitchens in their area and cleanse their conscience about the less fortunate. So it just seems the time is ripe to give all students good schools and good teachers, good health care, a safe neighborhood, and job opportunities. That is the collective duty of all citizens. That is how the Golden Rule works in reality. If we are willing to receive, we have a duty to give. Societal needs trump individual needs. A disturbing image is that some of these medically ‘damaged’ products of the ghetto are often booked on Judge Judy so we can all be amused by Judge Judy, raised in wealth, and earning $47 million per year, belittle these victims of the ghetto during their formative years. The offspring of the rich can be damaged via chronic stress during their formative years too, but the likelihood is much less, except for the offspring of the very wealthy who are often emotionally imbalanced for different sort of reasons.  

There is another saying that bears attention: “It takes a village to raise a child”. All parents are not good parents. Some parents, for varied reasons, simply cannot be good parents. Today we pretty much say to those kids with poor parents: “Tough luck, you have what you have.”  We too much blame victims, and this tendency is never more in place than today. When someone says ‘black lives matter’ most non blacks will say, “Well then concentrate on all the killing, robbery, and assault that goes on in your own black neighborhoods”  I see, blaming the kids who grow up to perpetuate the ghetto environment will certainly correct the problem. It is, to many people, a genetic thing or a religious thing, or a culture thing. We know a lot of parenting, at all levels of society, varies considerably. Science now tells us that in addition, if children are allowed to go through their formative years with chronically high levels of stress hormones, then many of these children will end their formative years with damaged physiology, damaged emotional states, damaged mental abilities—but  we still act angry when we see damaged products of their formative years behave ‘like animals’. Maybe if we allow children to be raised as animals they may end up acting like animals. Then we blame it on genetics. 

Another statement which comes to mind about the current nature of our society is this: "I do not believe that just because you're opposed to abortion, that that makes you pro-life. In fact, I think in many cases, your morality is deeply lacking if all you want is a child born but not a child fed, not a child educated, not a child housed. And why would I think that you don't? Because you don't want any tax money to go there. That's not pro-life. That's pro-birth. We need a much broader conversation on what the morality of pro-life is."  (Catholic Nun)

Priorities tell us a lot about any society. Right now our society values the elderly (mostly because they vote) and pegs social security benefits to any rise in the cost of living. We highly value our own family via ‘family values’. We value the very wealthy (they mostly control the three branches of government) and we give them endless tax breaks, tax deferments, tax exemptions, tax shelters, and so on until some of the wealthiest don’t even pay any taxes and most of the affluent pay a smaller percentage of taxes on their income than the poorest who do have to pay income tax. We don’t value the poor since the minimum wage is not pegged to any rise in the cost of living. If the minimum wage had gone up with the cost of living since 1955 it would roughly $22. We are not really sick of welfare, just sick of providing ever increasing costs of welfare to the poor. I, for example, pay no state tax on my pension. I only have to pay a 15% tax on my capital gains from stocks. I get huge tax deductions on my charitable contributions. And the game goes on and on, with the affluent and wealthy getting endless ways to avoid paying their fair share of taxes. In the meantime, the poor guy who pushes a wheelbarrow around all day and makes enough to pay taxes, gets no tax relief and will pay at a tax rate 3-4 times what I pay for shuffling papers around. In other words, today many of us tend to resent welfare to the poor and turn a blind spot to where most government welfare goes—to the affluent and the wealthy. Finally, the cost of taxes should go up automatically with the cost of living. Right now we have the absurd situation in which a politician cannot get elected unless they promise to reduce taxes. This means the national debt will continue to soar because the cost of living for government operations goes up too. Even worse, any tax cuts invariably are huge for the wealthy and chump change for what’s left of the middle class. All the poor get is reduced safety nets in an attempt by politicians to reduce expenditures of government at their expense. 

This is not the kind of musing best written in long lengths. There are too many aspects for focus to be kept very long, both in reading the epistle and writing it. In the end, the ‘devil is in the details’ and of course I am not the one to effectively provide the details. So I will stop here and Part 3 will follow when I find the mood to refocus on this topic. For government to provide suitable communities for all their citizens is no small task, but not solved, the society which is ruled by that government is doomed.  

Discrimination—Considered Aspects

Discrimination—Considered Aspects

In a world where humans are born by chance with genetic, environmental, cultural, religious, physical, mental, and personality differences, it comes as no surprise that discrimination of some sort becomes a rampant feeling. God’s evolutionary process, governed by His/Her own created laws to govern the process, depends on discrimination for progress. What fits best survives down the line, what fits least, does not survive down the line.  For humans, this includes not just physical changes but social changes as well.  Thus, the end result is good and amazing, albeit the process to produce progress is rather messy.

Birth itself is the ultimate discriminatory process. There is little we can do about our physical appearance, our place of birth, the historical age in which we were born, who our parents are, what neighborhood we grow up in, where we go to school, what kind of health care we get etc. Some individuals are born with cards in their hand which have the likelihood of disaster written all over it.  I reckon there are those who believe God decides all of the above on an individual basis. Nevertheless, such a belief has no evidence whatsoever. Not surprisingly, we create a self serving image of God. Thus, the image created is naturally rather self-serving and of course, just to be safe, always forgiving. At no time does God appear in the sky to everyone and say, “All right, listen up, make a note of this”. No, we instead, more often, just buy into the belief that he talks to us via inherited religion or religion by way of marriage. Or that God selects the Pope to be his official intermediary between us and God—even though many particular Popes have committed the cruelest of crimes, which is not to say many have not been good ethical individuals. We get even sillier and sometimes say at weddings “Let no man put asunder what God has put together”. We all know if this were true God must be an idiot since the divorce rate in our country is around 50%.

It seems the best our human species can do, to maximize the contentment for the greatest number of people, is to level the playing field the best we can, and find a way to replace human created religions with the global ethical principle of the Golden Rule—do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Let’s be direct here. When we treat others as we ourselves would like to be treated, then discrimination is kept in check. Equality though, is never an option, not in an evolutionary process which depends heavily on diversity and chance as important operative parameters. Only death creates equality, thus making any individual ’superiority’ very short lived in evolutionary time. 

The riots in Charlottesville, the last Presidential election, and the growing global ineffectual government control over the immediate planetary conditions, which threaten massive destruction ahead for most species, are all consequences of human overpopulation. Bluntly put, how can discrimination be curtailed when more and more humans are seeking larger and larger pieces of a pie which does not have unlimited size?  It isn’t just discrimination itself which is on the rise, but also the growing inability for us to discipline ourselves over ‘enough is enough’. We should make no mistake about it—when enough of —whatever— is never enough, then compulsive behavior and addictions thrive, and neither of these mentalities brings contentment. The nature of the problems we face today are very complex, often very technical, and we are often asked to vote on issues which so many have little real knowledge base to have an opinion. Elections have become almost exclusively disingenuous brain washing, a process to which we are all susceptible. 

Like it or not, we all live now in a world that is ‘essentially the best of all possible worlds’ for a few and the ‘worst of all possible worlds’ for far too many. If the evolutionary process was a play, this may well now be the time in this play when the ‘shit hits the fan’. And to the extent this is true—well, the flying shit will not discriminate. Whenever calamity hits of any sort, no religious cabal in history has ever been protected. “The battle is over folks and none of the troops who were Southern Baptists got killed.” “The stats are in folks, and fewer Catholics die from cancer”. “The tornado which hit the town yesterday killed almost everyone except Jews”. “Hurry folks, baptize your young girls. God never lets Muslim girls get raped”. 

During my productive years I was exposed extensively to all sorts of people of every ilk, almost on a daily basis. I cannot say I ever found any admirable human trait which is not found amongst diverse groups of humans. Part of the problem in our country is that we have managed to allow the wealthy to mostly control all three branches of government and rig the system for their monetary benefits. This leaves the rest of our population free to attack each other as the cause of our economic or social misery, whatever the particular misery be. It was unfortunate that ‘Black Lives Matter’ had not been promoted as “Black Lives Matter Too”.  So now we have the debate as to whose lives matter instead of the debate centered around whether all lives do matter. Then we have the conservative right who peddle that all lives matter until after birth, then their attention shifts to ‘family values’. The kids are left to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. 

Now comes the frustrating part. Ethically speaking, all lives do matter and thus it is the collective responsibility of all humans to level the playing fields, live by the golden rule, and thus enable the maximum number of citizens to reach the maximum level of contentment. Unfortunately, we manage to devise all sorts of rationale as to why others are less important, including ‘family values’, inherited religious beliefs, cultural differences, economic differences, racial, political, personality differences, physical differences, etc. Why people even riot at major sport events sometimes over which team won. We lock people up because they don’t use the same recreational drug that we do, we ok a system in which property taxes are used to fund local schools, ensuring that the poorest children will always get the worst schools and teachers, and so on. We have, for the most part, convinced ourselves that self serving attitudes are not only ethical, but the proper focus of our efforts to be successful. It always puzzles me when some athlete gives a ‘humble’ “Glory be to God” when he wins an athletic contest while I wonder why God helped an athlete win and not the 75 million homeless refugees living in refugee camps. If God really did that I don’t think much of God. 

Some people, not many, seem to be truly accepting of all varied cultures, races, religions, and so on. Abraham Lincoln comes to mind as maybe the best ever practicing the Golden Rule. Obama is up there too, and others too, but most of us are prejudice to varying degrees. That is a bit weird too as everyone says Obama is black, but he is just as much white as black since his mother was white. It is noteworthy that both Obama and Lincoln understood human nature enough not to get too mad at racists. Lincoln made it clear that had he lived in the deep south his thoughts on slavery would likely have been different. He made it clear that circumstance does not make someone right either. God, the Devil, right and wrong, are not determined by human circumstantial, cultural, ethnic, or any other parameter of diversity, but by the laws which govern the evolutionary process. If we want fairness and the maximum number of people to reach a maximum level of contentment—if we want this—then we collectively are responsible for this to happen. But that is hard work, praying to God to do all this is easier, so we have endless idiotic selfish prayers heading God’s way. Every army, every human cabal believes God is on their side. Really? If this is true, God’s chosen human cabal would have been firmly in control of human societies long ago in history.  

One role of any government is to promote non discrimination toward all its citizens. But even that is tricky. Few people, at least at first, thought Obama was against their own group. He kind of got elected, despite being black, because he seemed to be on everyone’s side.  But then certain groups began to get human rights that only certain others had before, like the right to health care, or right to marry whomever one chooses, and put in a lot of federal regulations to ensure all citizens could compete with a more level playing field. That is when more and more people began to feel conflicted about Obama and his ‘playing favorites’, when in fact he was only leveling the playing field wherever he could for any group who needed the playing field leveled. The biggest failure Obama had was his inability to force a more reasonable distribution of wealth. This is not about socialism, but about not letting too much of any country’s wealth be owned by 2-5% of the population. Money, to a large extent, controls who gets the tax breaks, the tax deferments, the tax shelters, the lowest tax on their source of revenue, and so on. There is no longer any means to make the wealthy pay their fair amount of tax. If Obama couldn’t make a dent, who else will ever succeed? It is so bad now that, despite our huge debt, no politician can get elected unless they promise a tax cut—which will inevitably be chump change for the average person and millions for the wealthy. And the national debt grows. Why would social security payments go up with the cost of living and not our taxes? And why don’t minimum wages go up with the cost of living? 

But again I stray, a genetic defect. We are now faced with differing groups blaming each other for their own miserable economic status. If they were smart--the poor whites, poor blacks, poor hispanics, poor anything, would pool their resources, find good educated candidates, put their names in a hat, and whatever name comes out they just all agree to vote for that candidate. There is your majority and there would be no need for debates or campaigns. Just go vote and get a Congress and President that will energetically proceed to make the wealthy pay their fair share of taxes, make the same amount of money available for all children to have good schools, good teachers, good health care, good job opportunities, and safe neighborhoods. Alas, all this is futile if we cannot learn to enforce responsible reproduction on our own species. Where is Abraham Lincoln to engineer another miracle when we need him? We don’t associate Lincoln with a particular religion, a particular ethnic group, a particular culture, a particular anything except associate him with honesty and fairness. He came out of the woodlands, a dreamy eyed product of nature, solitude, and ethical superiority. Of course Trump would say “Lincoln is no hero of mine. I like heroes who don’t get killed”. Like maybe Santa Claus and other assorted illusions. 

Government has failed to provide tolerable formative year environments for more and more of its citizens. This has been going on now for over 50 years with Republicans and Democrats in power, and yet those most in need see little change in their economic status or a safer neighborhood. So they are angry, very angry——and Trump expresses round the clock anger at just about everybody and everything—so guess who all the angry people vote for?  Right, the angry candidate. And which candidate for President has never shown in his past any interest in the less fortunate of any ilk? All Trump has consistently done in life was to inherit a lot of money, stiff contractors, workers, and investors, finagle paying little or no taxes, focus entirely on amassing as much wealth as possible by making sure those with whom he comes in contact always get the short end of the stick.  And is he really the one who is going to pry some of the wealth of the richest away from them and return it to the society from which it was derived? That seems a bit of a stretch. He preys on people’s prejudices and fosters discrimination between all diverse cabals in our nation. Each group now sees other diverse groups as the cause for their own misery. Oh what a tangled web we have weaved this past 50 years. We have met the enemy and it is us.  

Vintage Pics Number 6

Vintage Pics #6

https://plus.google.com/+BackintheusaUs/posts/D2k3sTSZzxB  Grand Central Been Around a long time

https://plus.google.com/+BackintheusaUs/posts/HZVC7fZWFdd  I had a friend whose swimming trunks were pulled down by a wave. Smile. 

https://plus.google.com/photos/photo/103524575902549068062/6443449294645174338?icm=false Don’t ask the gas mileage on this sucker.

https://plus.google.com/+BackintheusaUs/posts/ApW3FDxidHs I was alive back then. Funny how some things that are a part of your life we never question at the time. 

https://plus.google.com/+BackintheusaUs/posts/Ac9UUcRaKNF  I guess Bill Cosby isn’t a favorite anymore. Sex addictions have ruined many people

https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/photo/103524575902549068062/6446450775569484482?icm=false She is getting ready for a hot date

https://plus.google.com/+BackintheusaUs/posts/R5YpCtAQWyuThey were really popular for several years

https://plus.google.com/+BackintheusaUs/posts/DzMvEDmenrW  interesting

https://plus.google.com/+BackintheusaUs/posts/CMqjkfy41vE I could have guessed this I think. He was a good actor

https://plus.google.com/+BackintheusaUs/posts/N6kfy6aXLeJ  Terrell Owens inherited this title

https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/photo/103524575902549068062/6453083440953703234?icm=falseI wonder if we can buy one for an adult to use today?

https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/photo/103524575902549068062/6453082937881165090?icm=falseAll is cool except the chair

https://plus.google.com/+BackintheusaUs/posts/Xv41JqK7usu  I used to have a drinking hat but don’t see it in the picture.

https://plus.google.com/+BackintheusaUs/posts/UqwJwUPFMVN might have been a neat place to live in back then

https://plus.google.com/+BackintheusaUs/posts/jHezT1GQFGX this must have been before they got arrested for such a thing. Doesn’t look anything like my history teacher Ms. Tripp

https://plus.google.com/+BackintheusaUs/posts/WyWzRdBdGHj neat pic since I am a Lincon buff.

https://plus.google.com/+BackintheusaUs/posts/Kc8VEsxB6ub this seems the pic which most accurately portrays Honest Abe. 

https://plus.google.com/+BackintheusaUs/posts/7MMNJJVyNfT  Every five minutes? Wow.

https://plus.google.com/+BackintheusaUs/posts/W6V8rfh7prb  Doubt they would walk in Harlem dressed like that today. The streets of Harlem used to be packed 24 hours a day. Not today. 

https://plus.google.com/+BackintheusaUs/posts/8q5aJDVmUC1 Remember back when wars were a conflict between two armies in uniform?

https://plus.google.com/+BackintheusaUs/posts/X7oVjvNd9e9 Have you checked on your great grandfather lately?

https://plus.google.com/+BackintheusaUs/posts/fHRBP7z3zqG these two leaders make an interesting duo

https://plus.google.com/+BackintheusaUs/posts/WuuZJSkm2W5 George Carlin is the rigid mind’s Devil. One of the best: “I don’t believe you just said that”

https://plus.google.com/+BackintheusaUs/posts/YwcPKX84hJr I bet they never envisioned a big screen TV

https://plus.google.com/+BackintheusaUs/posts/AMuye3GfHNx Now that we all can be in public with weapons I am waiting for my Sherman Tank. 

https://plus.google.com/+BackintheusaUs/posts/YK824EyAUfP He never changed much in looks after as he aged.