How Rigged are the Elections?

First a small bit of humor: someone discussed Obamacare with their sister and wrote this, "My right wing sister posted on Facebook that she was afraid of "single payer" and that is why we "need Trump" then she said she wished she were older to get Medicare. I pointed out that Medicare IS single payer for older people."

We face some uninformed voters, but worse are the cheaters, not the Dems who vote multiple times or the dead people who miraculously "vote" in the millions, but real cheaters -- the gerrymandering politicians.

Read the following story and then tell me whether it's worth fighting for control of the House of Representatives, so we can change this.

Gerrymandering the whole country

Our Changing Economic Times

The Nation magazine wrote that during the third presidential debate the moderator Chris Wallace injected some of his own ideas about economic issues and that they were wrong-headed. I think I've written about this several years ago, but it bears repeating. The times, they are a changin'.

We aren't living in the 1970s when oil was our primary foreign trade interest (large though it was) and we aren't living in the 1980s or '90s when women coming into the workforce was huge and microcomputers were becoming familiar (and then ubiquitous) and globalization of trade with offshoring of jobs was becoming huge. We aren't living in the 2000s when almost all our problems stagnated and nothing got done.

Many of our problems are known, but not solved. We still have a problem with carbon-based fuels and we are transitioning to other energy sources. That needs to continue and hopefully scientists will develop newer better tools for that. Just today, I read an article about potential investments into international electric super-grids could become very important for transporting 'clean green' energy to far away places. These are good developments to deal with issues going all the way back to the beginning of the 20th century when oil was discovered in America. We have become so familiar with microcomputers and they are a huge part of our economy, but we haven't yet gotten them into the hands of everyone. Combine the need for that with the need for universal access to high-speed broadband Internet and there is still room for billions of dollars to be made by somebody. Even in the area of financial transactions the recently developed blockchain software needs to be fully developed and put to good use. We need to take advantage of our technologies.

On the other hand, there are problems which haven't been addressed sufficiently: immigration, the wealth gap, workers below the poverty line, offshoring of investment wealth, a tax system which just doesn't work, a continued need to improve our educational system while at the same time making it more affordable and widely available, continued improvement of our new ACA healthcare system (Obamacare). There is a lot to be done and I've only touched some of the more discussed issues.

The times are changing and we have to recognize that change, not continue to live in a fantasy past which was in fact never better than today.

The Typical Undecided Voters (as seen on Huffington Post)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mx3FDqJRVAk

Thank goodness there aren't more than 75 million of them.

Reasons to Defeat Republican Senators

The first and most obvious is that with Congress on her side, a president Hillary Clinton could get more done.


Then there are these:

Senator John McCain (Republican, Arizona) promises that if Hillary is elected, but the Republicans hold onto the Senate, they will still block any Supreme Court nominations.

http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/10/17/1583617/-John-McCain-promises-Republicans-will-be-united-against-any-Supreme-Court-nominee-from-Clinton

And then he changes his mind:

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/mccain-will-vote-on-clinton-supreme-court-nominee

Senator Richard Burr (Republican, North Carolina) is Intelligence Committee Chairman and confused about recent Russian hacking

http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/10/17/1583552/-Intelligence-Committee-chair-Sen-Richard-Burr-confused-by-intelligence-in-debate

If you are a Bernie Sanders fan, consider this:

https://www.thenation.com/article/paul-ryan-inadvertently-makes-the-best-case-for-a-democratic-senate-budget-chair-bernie-sanders/

Maybe Dems should try to win the Congress specifically to help Bernie.

UPDATE:

Another Rubio-like (supposedly moderate and rational) Republican who is in a close race this year is New Hampshire's Kelly Ayotte. She claims to be someone the Dems look to to make deals. The trouble is that she put Mitch McConnell in as Majority Leader and he kills all progress. Ms. Ayotte may seem reasonable, but that one vote on her part makes her Just Another Republican, a roadblock to progress.

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/10/ayotte-hassan-new-hampshire-trump-229893

UPDATE:

In California a Democratic candidate has earned President Obama's endorsement. His opponent is another typical Republican who is simply odious.

"Not only has Steve Knight called Social Security absolutely "a bad idea," he's a forced-birther who makes no exceptions for the life of a mother, rape, or incest."

http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/10/19/1584506/-President-Obama-endorses-Democrat-Bryan-Caforio-in-CA-25

Support Democrat Bryan Caforio!

Ethics, Morality, and Political Expediency in this Year's Campaigns

Donald Trump has said some despicable things. How people react is interesting.

Recent polling information indicates that if only men voted Trump would win the presidency in a landslide. This, to me, is incredible. Have these men no mothers, wives, girlfriends, sisters, or daughters?

Trump immediately seized on this and called for the 19th Amendment to the Constitution be repealed. The 19th Amendment recognizes the right of women to vote and Trump would be happier if they couldn't.

When other politicians weigh situations like this they have in mind the effects on the nation, their party, their own political lives and perhaps other things. Still, when someone like Donald Trump sets the landscape in this dramatic fashion it escapes me how anyone can refuse to walk away from him and denounce the things he has said.

Yet, that has happened.

Senator Charles "Chuck" Grassley, Republican of Iowa, says it doesn't matter what Trump has said.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/chuck-grassley-donald-trump_us_57fe4cdde4b0e8c198a525ee?section=&

Senator Debra Fischer, Republican of Nebraska, at first said she couldn't support Trump and then she flipped back to saying she would support the Republican party ticket, including Donald Trump.

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/10/deb-fischer-donald-trump-229643

Yes, two Republican senators from the breadbasket of America, supposed home of the moral people of America, say they don't think Donald Trump is a bad person who has said bad things.

As one person recently wrote on a discussion board, the Republicans will never again be able to claim they have the moral high-ground on any issue.

One Republican Congressman went even further, saying that if Trump called for rape, he would still support Trump.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/blake-farenthold-trump-rape_us_57fd89eae4b0e9c70229d31a?section=&

It is inconceivable and yet it has happened.

How far will Republicans go to "play politics" to win political power, despite horrible policies, horrible candidates, and obviously untenable positions on social values or morality?

Though I disagreed with Mitt Romney (Republican party candidate for the presidency in 2012) on policy issues, I didn't doubt his character and intelligence. So, it comes as little surprise that the good people of the state of Utah are showing the Christian Right what it means to stand for morality and not just party labels.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/10/08/politics/utah-hillary-clinton-donald-trump-voting/

As of yesterday Trump and Hillary Clinton were tied and a 3rd or 4th-party candidate was tied or ahead of them! Utah has not voted for a Democrat for president since 1964 (for the Liberal Lyndon Johnson).

Will the Christian Right figure this out? Will they stay away from Trump?

The Campaign: October 9, 2016 -- after Hurricane Donald

There is an old adage that if things aren't going the way you want you should just blow everything up and start over. When one person's life is a mess we don't blow up all of society to accomodate them. That is what some Republicans and Donald Trump would have us do. We can withstand this craziness which this presidential campaign has become and we will continue. America is a strong place and we know how to recreate ourselves into a better place and people.

What those who would blow up things want is to put everyone off their feet, so that in the aftermath they have a chance to take control of events. We have seen this before. America has tragically had ups and downs which have destroyed people: stock market crashes, bad food or drugs in the marketplace, scandals revealed, accidents, and more. We don't make many excuses for the criminals and we don't change the rules to retroactively excuse them. What do we do? We try to hold things together and move forward. Those who upset the applecart and hurt people need to face judgment and punishment.

What would Donald Trump have us do, excuse him, disregard his behavior, his policies, and his language? Should we allow everyone to think that in the future there are no rules? That way is only chaos and disaster. The Republican party picked Donald Trump. They could have vetted him more carefully, but they didn't. Who made that mistake? It wasn't Hillary, the Democrats, the media, or anyone else. They have identified their values, their beliefs, and the kind of man they believe in. That won't change even if Donald Trump were to step aside. The die is cast. The stain is there, and like Ophelia's it will not out.

The typical response from Republicans in the face of a minor tragedy is to attack Democrats and try to pull everyone down into the gutter. They seem to think that if we are all dirty, then they won't be noticed. I've already seen examples of this today by several individuals and groups within the Conservative movement. That is truly disgusting behavior. Democrats can't clean their own hands entirely. We are all human. But, Hillary has done nothing similar to Trump. She isn't perfect, but she will never be like the Trump.

Now is time to pull America together after the storm. It isn't time to forgive and forget, but to simply to put things back into working order, pull together, and move on.

Bankers Speak about the Economy

Today on C-SPAN I've watched several panels of bankers discussing the world economy and many factors causing it to be as it is. Their analysis of how things came to be seems good. And though they generally said American banks have never ever been in better shape, not one gave Pres. Obama or the Federal Reserve credit for getting us out of and past the recent crisis and getting the economy growing. None complained the economy was growing too slowly, but none mentioned the negative effect of the Republicans in Congress. The one comment about how easy it would be to get things done in Washington, D.C. sounded like something a banker might have said in 1981 -- ludicrous for today.

The world is constantly changing and they've been focused on their businesses, so it is easy to dismiss their myopia.

I heard several suggestions of where the problems lay and in most cases these were things which have existed forever and they are things being improved as they spoke. I didn't hear many important suggestions which would improve the overall economy, just self-serving lobbying/begging for favors.

One comment struck me as very interesting because it echoes something I've thought a long time. When you have a well-designed system and you are looking for ways to improve it you can begin by looking for the things causing friction. Improve those points and things will work better.

I didn't hear any of them speaking about friction points in the overall economy. Sure sure, there was mention of burdensome regulation, but little else.

I heard people are being paid more, but none were ready to acknowledge that this is essential to making the economy work faster (or better).

I heard them saying infrastructure spending in many parts of the world could be very good (a business they fund) if it were done well, but I didn't hear them saying how that infrastructure would make the wider economy work better or what specific kinds of infrastructure spending they would favor for America.

I heard them saying greater educational opportunity was important, but not how it would be funded. Somehow I doubt they would favor higher taxes.

As with most things coming from Wall St. in the last few decades (and perhaps longer than that) it seemed to be all about bigger profits for them.

It was understandable that I didn't hear explanations of why other kinds of businesses weren't borrowing money. The banks have a lot and would apparently rather buy back stock than lend the money, but why don't other business leaders borrow? Apparently there are trillions of dollars sitting idle around the globe and people simply don't want to risk making a mistake on a bad investment. Everyone wants a rigged game, a sure bet. I don't know what the dangers of making a mistake might be. They didn't expand on that.

Asked why they and other businesses don't want to actually risk anything and the answers were all about attitude and fear. The common folk are doing better and are more confident, but apparently the rich are scared to death and can't do their work properly for shaky hands.

This is the same kind of attitude they had in 2007-09. You would think strong leaders would be past that and onto conquering new horizons. But no.

I'd love to hear from some business leaders (aside from bankers) and a couple of union leaders and a couple of politicians involved in funding things. It would be fun to see them all point fingers at one another. Where is the leadership they might argue? Well, I'll tell you. Pres. Obama has offered leadership and they have ignored him. The leadership from the boardrooms of the terrified and drooling hasn't been nearly as good.

We are apparently no longer in "the home of the brave".

If only I had heard there is a friction point here or there. Those sorts of things can be improved. But, men's psychies are a little harder to fix. Maybe they need the fear of corporate raiders to inspire them to act. If all these bankers want to buy stock, then why wouldn't corporate raiders want to buy companies. If all these companies are worth so much then why not just buy up lots of companies and replace their leadership with people who can get things done? It worked pretty well at the car companies during the recession.

Installing Linux Operating System - Ubuntu 16.04 LTS

I had thought of installing Linux long ago and have delayed and stalled and procrastinated.

In school this past year I became more convinced it had to be done because Microsoft had begun spying on people via Windows 10. Even more recently I saw how they had begun to take over my user account to force me into using the Microsoft account system. They want to hang onto customers, but not by offering better service or better prices, only by force.

Well, school is over and I'm studying a variety of things which may complement my schooling. I have looked a bit at the city's attempt to get a Municipal Area Network (a MAN) by participating in a contest run by Frontier Communications and I have been educated a bit about the state-wide effort to get broadband everywhere. I have studied the recent IBM computers to see what they are doing. There are a lot of them out there, so it may be good for me to know a few things before being asked questions. Their POWER processor (used in the AS400 and later) is still alive and evolving and their (newer) z/System processors are apparently doing very well. The limiting factor with IBM is their need to maintain backward compatibility. But, if someone wants to start with a z/System computer and add VMs with Linux or use only Linux, then IBM is onboard. They actually approve of Linux in a big way. They even have added something called an IFL to make their machines work better with Linux and they have a LinuxONE concept. Yes, IBM is perfectly comfortable with the Open Source world. The distributions of Linux they approve most are: Ubuntu, Red Hat, and SUSE. So, I've begun to look at installing those on my computer.

In fact, I now have a LiveCD (really a DVD) of Ubuntu 16.04 LTS and have booted from it. It works just fine. I'll be installing it the rest of the way to my PC tomorrow. But, let me begin telling you about how I got this far. It's a bit strange.

I went to the http://www.Ubuntu.com webpage and began reading. instructions it was pretty horrifying. They didn't just say to download an ubuntu.msi file and click on it.

There is apparently an installer program which I have yet to find and the file you download from the site is an .iso file which can't be run as a program. I wasn't entirely stumped, but upset that these technically capable people still have a tin ear about the regular public. If you want to make your product accessible you have to do more.

Here's what I did instead:

Step 1:Discover how many bits your Windows computer uses for storage: Right-Click <Start>, select <System>, and look for System Type. My computer has Windows 10 and uses 64-bits for each character stored. Then, from Ubuntu.com, I downloaded the .iso file which is for a 64-bit computer. For my computer it was "ubuntu-16.04-desktop-amd64.iso". It's a big file, about 1.4 GB (1,400 MB).

Then I read other web pages for some instructions. I even found one Youtube.com video by a young kid (can't tell you his age, but he must have been <= 13) who knew how to install-to-dual-boot or install-toUSB perfectly and the video was helpful -- far more helpful than the Ubuntu.com site. I watched the kid's instruction video. He was very professional about it and gave all the important details. I couldn't have done better.

So, all it really required was media to boot from. My PC won't boot from any USB, so I had to look for some DVD disks (CD discs don't hold enough) and I found a package at Walmart. Thank you Walmart!

If you want to create a USB "LiveDisk" the kid's video said you need a tool to transfer the .iso file -- a Universal USB Installer (a UUI) and he gave a website. You will have to look this up and get this (or some other) tool for the job.

Step 2: I put in a new blank DVD (this won't work with a formatted disc) and knowing Windows 10 despite having no instructions from Ubuntu.com, I right-click on the .iso file and tell it to "burn to E:" (to the DVD).

It doesn't just copy an .iso file, it essentially opens a package (not unlike a zip file) and sets up enough file structure to put a bunch of files on the DVD. This gives me the essentials on the DVD

Step 3: On a pre-Win8 computer you have to get into the boot settings and set it to start from the CD-ROM drive. Well, I had already done this.

In fact, I have always had that as a default. It's not every day you put a bootable disc in the CD-ROM, so it doesn't hurt. then, when you do need it to boot it's ready. He also pointed out that on Win10 you go through the OS Settings to make an adjustment. I tried that and my computer didn't respond the same way. I'm not sure why. Anyway, I restarted the computer and it booted properly.

To adjust the boot order can be a little tricky. It may take a bit of practice. When you start/restart your computer there will be a quick display on the screen of some Fx function keys you can press to adjust your computer. You need to press the Function key which lets you go into the BIOS settings or Boot Settings. There you have an old-fashioned text-only display and you use the cursor keys or <Enter> key to move around. You navigate to the Boot section and Boot Device Priority. Here you want to ensure the CD-ROM (or USB if that is your desire and if it is possible) is first in the list and your hard disk drive is second. This way, when it boots, it will look to the disc in the CD-ROM (or USB) for the operating system to load. When you make a change, be certain to "Save and Exit". If you have the LiveDisk in the CD-ROM (USB) when it returns to booting, it will look there for the OS.

When I go ahead with the boot process it put the Windows window icon on the screen and I didn't know what it was doing, but then it brought up the boot loader menu and allowed me to pick LiveDisk Try Ubuntu. It loaded right up. No problems.

Step 4: I checked out the icons on the left side of the screen (the Launch bar) and I tried Firefox and everything worked fine, including the network connection.

I learned later that it changed something somehow because when I returned to booting Windows it had the time set incorrectly and I couldn't correct it.

There were 4 important steps, but there are a few more to fully install it on my hard disk. This is much less scary than anything the Ubuntu.com site suggested.

For tomorrow:

The kid went onto show how to partition your hard drive to install it there. It made perfect sense to me and I'll be doing that tomorrow. But, for now, know that getting a LiveDisk Ubuntu Linux is NOT hard and that YouTube.com videos can help.

********here*********

Suddenly, *******here*******, my Windows Operating system rebooted. I didn't ask it to. I wasn't given a choice to stop it. It just rebooted and installed updates for several hours. That's one more reason to switch away from Windows to an operating system that respects my control of my machine. Thank you Google (Alphabet) for keeping what I had written as a Draft.