General

Yesterday was a good day. But you don’t want to hear about nerd rants.

I took my wife to the hospital for minor surgery. It was successful, and the patent lived.

There are hardly any places in this state that are “gun free zones”. Post offices, courts, and jails are the limit, as far as I know.

While schools are “gun free zones”, the law says that if you have a permit to carry, you can carry in school zones.

Certain parts of court buildings are gun free zones. When I went to support a friend, I was in the court building, carrying. There was a metal detector between me and the courtroom, which was a true gun free zone.

Post offices were made “gun free zones” when a postal worker went bonkers and killed some of his coworkers. Under leftist logic, that means that The People need to be disarmed when entering postal property.

Postal property including the parking lot.

This is being challenged in court.

If you look at the image, you will notice that there are no references to any legal documents.

For example, the signage in Massachusetts has “G.L.C. 266 § 120” on it. New York’s signage says it is a felony and “Penal Law § 265.01-D, Penal Law § 265.01-E”. Texas signage says, “Pursuant to section 30.05, penal code (criminal trespass), a person may not enter this property with a firearm”.

The sign on the hospital? No such verbiage. That is because it does not have the force of law behind it.

In my state, a NO GUNS sign doesn’t mean anything.

If the owner of the property discovers I’m carrying, they can have me trespassed. That’s it. It isn’t the sign, it is just their right as a private property owner.

They can trespass anybody they want for any reason.

It is nice to live in a free state.

Defamation: A statement that injures a third party’s reputation. It is a type of tort.

Slander: A false statement, usually made orally, which defames another person. The damages from slander must be proved by the party suing.

Libel: A method of defamation expressed by print, writing, pictures, signs, effigies, or any communication embodied in physical form that is injurious to a person’s reputation.

In other words, it is all linked together. In general, we speak of libel as written defamation and slander as spoken defamation.

E. Jean Carroll accused Trump of raping her. Trump denied the allegation he raped her. Carroll then sued Trump for defamation.

Trump lost the defamation case. I believe that the case is on appeal.

This is the case that leftists have been using to say “Trump was found guilty of rape.”

No, he was not. Rape is a criminal offense, tried in a court of law, prosecuted by the state. E. Carroll was unable to find a single prosecutor willing to charge Trump with rape.

She brought a civil case. In a criminal case, the accused must be found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. In a civil case, it is a preponderance of the evidence. Very different.

Nobody on the left is willing to say that a court that finds in the way they want might be biased, while at the same time screaming that any court that finds against their wishes must be right-wing extremists/right leaning bias. In terms of this case, the suit was brought in a notoriously anti-Trump court.

The court allowed statements that did not directly relate to the charge.

In the end, the jury found that no rape occurred but felt that there was a sexual assault. See past articles regarding multiple charges to allow a jury to do the right thing and then give a lesser charge to make the plaintiff (in a civil suit) or the prosecutor a “smaller” win.

The jury awarded E. Carroll 5 million dollars.

Trump makes it all back, and then some

Yesterday, December 15th, Trump reached a settlement with ABC News agreed to pay $15 million to settle Trump’s defamation suit against ABC News for statements made by George Stephanopoulos.

George claimed that Trump had been found guilt of Rape. This is a false statement that damages Trump’s reputation, i.e., defamation.

Rather than a length and expensive civil trial, which they would have lost. ABC News agreed to pay $15 million for the building of the Trump presidential library. They will also pay $1 million dollars towards Trump’s legal fees.

https://www.foxnews.com/media/george-stephanopoulos-abc-apologize-trump-forced-pay-15-million-settle-defamation-suit

One of the ways the left “wins” arguments is by changing the meaning of the words they use.

So, what is healthcare?

Healthcare is anything that is caring for your health. That is the skills of a doctor or health professional. The medications you might take for high blood pressure or pain. It is setting a bone or removing a tumor.

Healthcare is about your mental and physical health. Everything from a band-aid to a heart transplant, and everything in between, is health care.

What is access to healthcare?

This is about your ability to get healthcare.

If you are in a vehicle accident, they pick you up, carry you to the hospital, and take care of your injuries. That is access to healthcare.

You are having trouble breathing, walk into the emergency room, they put you on a nebulizer, admit you, and take care of you until you can walk out the door. That is access to healthcare.

You cut your toenail too short, and it becomes an ingrown toenail, badly infected. You walk into the urgent care, and they take half your toenail off and write you a prescription for an anti-biotic. That is access to healthcare.

You think you have a sinus infection, you call your doctor’s office. They schedule you to see your doctor or another later that day. That is access to health care.

Your doctor thinks a skin growth might be cancerous. He refers you to the dermatologist, two weeks later, you are seen, and a biopsy is taken, tested, the results are back to you and your doctor 15 days after first being seen by your doctor.

Being able to get a doctor is part of access to healthcare. So is the ability to get medical tests done in a timely fashion.

In Montreal, CA in 2021, it took 862 days, on average, before you were assigned a family doctor.

As of 2042, on Friday, most of the hospitals emergency rooms in Montreal are over capacity. Most of the over capacity hospitals have had patients on stretchers for over 24 hours, some for over 48 hours. They don’t even bother to give wait times.

A different website gives wait times ranging from just over an hour to more than 6 hours.

The website I found with wait times for US hospitals shows about the same for Boston hospitals. But, a data point that I have is that my local hospital has a listed wait time of 2.2 hours. My personal experience at that hospital is that wait times are generally much less than that. You are normally seen by a triage nurse within a few minutes of arriving.

You can have good healthcare, good access to healthcare, or some mixture of the two.

In the United States, no person can be turned away from an ER because of their ability to pay.

Paying for Healthcare

Paying for healthcare is where things start to get very complex. When a friend came down to visit from Canada, she was horrified with how medical payments were done, here in the states. On the other hand, when she got sick, she was seen by a doctor within 15 minutes of arriving at an urgent care facility. She left with antibiotics, in hand. She had paid in full for her medical service, around $100.

She agreed that her access to healthcare, in the states, was better than it was in Canada. She felt that the quality of her healthcare was better in the states, and she was surprised at how little it cost.

The first issue with healthcare, is that you have no ability to shop for services. Until recently, with the creation of boutique medial services, you didn’t know how much accessing your doctor was going to cost.

I had a slow leak in the rim/wheel of the truck. Not an issue, every other week I gave it another shot of air.

It finally decided to become a fast leak. I called my guy, asked how much to move the current tire to a new rim. He told me. I ordered a new wheel, took it and the truck to him.

At the end of the morning, my truck had a new rim and the cost was within $5 of what he quoted me. The difference being a choice to replace the valve stem.

I came out of my doctor’s office, asked what the cost was. Paid in full. Then three weeks later, gotten a bill for more because they hadn’t coded the office visit correctly. They ate that extra after I made complaints to the administration.

If we agree I have paid, in full, then they don’t get to change the bill later.

Regardless, there is no real way to find out the prices of different procedures, ahead of time.

The next issue with healthcare costs is that the person paying for the procedures/visits is not the person who is getting the procedure. There is no reason for you to shop around when somebody else is going to pay. You will always choose the best quality you can find.

So what about payments?

You can pay at the point of service, or you can pre-pay.

“Point of service” is paying when the service is performed. If you go in to have your car serviced, you are expected to pay for that service before you leave. That is payment at the point of service.

The few times when some vendor or service person has said, “I know you, you’re good for it, come back tomorrow and pay.” has been so few and far between, it sticks in my mind.

My barber only takes cash, no cards. I didn’t know that when I sat down. It got done, found out that I didn’t have enough cash, left my lady as collateral, went and got more cash. I got my lady out of hock and called it a day.

Most healthcare is billed out after service, but is still considered payment at the point of service.

Pre-payment for medical services is when you pay something now for services you might need later.

In America, that is done with insurance. You purchase insurance to cover your healthcare costs.

Originally, health insurance was designed to cover unusual health events. You broke your leg, insurance covered it. You required your appendix removed, insurance covered it. You require a hip replacement, insurance covered it.

If you require an annual physical, insurance doesn’t cover it. Most of the maintenance costs of healthcare were paid out of pocket, not with insurance.

The government broke this model.

The benefits your employer gives you are part of your total compensation package. Only some of those benefits are taxable. One of the things that is not taxed, is your healthcare costs. Nor the amount your employer pays towards your healthcare insurance.

Consider the following, you are offered $50,000/year. You pay $13,000 in health insurance per year. That leaves $37,000. The government takes 30% of that, leaving you $25,900.

A different firm offers you $45,000 per year with matching insurance payments. This means that you will be paying $6,500 in insurance and the company will pay $6,500 for a total of $13,000. Your taxable income is $38,500. The government still takes 30%, leaving you with $26,950.

By taking a lower salary $5000 less, you get to take home just over a $1000 more. Not bad.

These tax games actually changed the face of medical insurance. For healthy, young people, this equation wasn’t as persuasive. So “insurance” started to cover healthcare maintenance. This drastically increased the cost of insurance.

Whereas, before, the insurance company could play the odds, taking money from everybody, knowing they would only have to pay a few, the new model required them to collect money and pay money for everybody.

A healthy 25-year-old didn’t cost the insurance company anything, on average. But now that maintenance is included, even the 25-year-old costs money. All of that had to be paid for.

The other place where the government interferes with insurance pricing, is in boundary limits.

There are places in this country where the side of the street you live on changes the cost of your medical insurance.

While you might think you have “Blue Cross/Blue Shield” insurance, I can promise you that you do not.

If you look at your insurance card, you will find that you have “Blue Cross/Blue Shield of STATE”. This is because medical insurance companies can only offer medical insurance in their state.

This means that there are 50 different Blue Cross/Blue shield insurance companies. Are they inter related? Yes. It is a legal fiction that keeps them separate.

In addition to the visible insurance costs, there are other hidden insurance costs. The federal government of the US takes a part of your income and uses it to fund Medicare and Medicaid.

When people talk about “free healthcare” in the UK or Canada, they are lying. There is no free healthcare in any country.

It is free at the point of service. The citizens of those countries pay for their healthcare via taxes.

The NHS of the UK spent $231.6 Billion on health services in the 2022/2023 budget year. This is out of a budget of $1,551 Billion. The NHS budget was 15% of the total budget.

This puts the price, per person, at about $3,400, or $13,600 per family of 4. Just about the same as the pre-Obamacare cost for family insurance in the United States.

The point is that healthcare in the UK is NOT free.

What they mean by “healthcare”

The left conflates healthcare with paying for healthcare. In the process, we have created a situation where healthcare costs more for most people. Access to healthcare has gone down. And the quality of healthcare seems to be slipping.

But, the left yells that more people have access to healthcare than ever before.

They didn’t really get more access, they just changed how much they pay for healthcare and who pays for healthcare.

I’m reminded of a show I watched a few years ago.

In the show, the couple set out to find out if they could live as a couple at menial labor.

He got a job, but I do not believe she did. His job did not have healthcare benefits. He was working at nearly minimum wage.

She was prone to getting UTIs. About 6 months into this experiment, she came down with what she knew was a UTI.

So they went to the ER to get treated. They ended up with a bill in the thousands.

They held this up as a reason people can’t live on such low wages.

They cheated for their story. First, she could have gotten a job. If they were as good as he said they were, they should have been able to work their way out of that starting wage/position. They didn’t.

Second, the cost of an ER visit is pretty high. The cost of an urgent care visit is much lower. My last urgent care visit included minor surgery. My total cost, before insurance, was less than $200.

The cost of diagnosing a UTI and prescribing an antibiotic is around $100. There are telehealth options available today that are even cheaper.

By making a shitty decision, they cost themselves over $1500 in medical bills, which could have been less than $125.

Conclusion

Make sure you hold them to using the right terms. Don’t let them redefine words to confuse and conflate the different issues at play.

This is a special day for me. It has been years since we gathered as a family at my parents’ home for a Thanksgiving feast, but that is a memory I hold dear.

No, this comes from something my mentor gave me.

When he was in collage, he had many good friends. Friends he kept until his death. When that first Thanksgiving came around, his friends went off to their families, and he went home to his. There was no feast for them. There was no celebration of thanks among those friends.

They took a look at the calendar and discovered that the second weekend in December would fall on the 10th. They decided to initiate the DEC-10 day.

This is, of course, a pun. The Digital Equipment Company manufactured the DEC-10 computer. The DEC-10 is the computer they were using. It is the computer which my mentor used to write BASIC for the local schools to use.

So today, the house is mostly empty, just the wife and I. The children arrive tomorrow. So there is no feast today.

That happens on Saturday.

We have Friendsgiving. This happens on the Saturday after Thanksgiving. It is when we have all our friends over to enjoy each other’s company. It is a created family of sorts.

We will also invite acquaintances that might have had a lonely holiday. Making sure they are welcome too.

No matter where you are, which side of the political aisle you are on, please slow down, stop, and before you feast, give thanks for all you have.

One of the most difficult tasks economists have is to judge the cost of things. If I’m paying $3/dozen for eggs and you are paying $1/dozen, do your eggs or mine cost more?

This gets even more complex when you start to consider currency differences.

When I’m discussing past prices, I like to convert the cost at that time to hours of labor. How many hours of labor does it take to purchase this item.

In 1976-77 A brand new Apple II would run you around $900. Today, I can put together a similar class of computer for around $1000. CPU, Memory, Disk, Motherboard, and case. In 1976, that $900 was somewhere around 150 hours of my labor, call it 4 weeks of full-time labor.

Except that I was only working part-time. This means that my actual cost, saving everything, was going to be around 10 weeks.

Today, that $1000 computer is going to cost me less than a week of labor, ignoring taxes.

The problem with using hours of labor to compare costs is that the value of your labor varies greatly. At the time, I was working in a computer store, the first in the state. My friends were flipping burgers. I was making twice as much per hour as they were, sitting in front of a monitor typing.

Whose labor value do we use? When comparing my grandfathers’ salary, I used historical records for machinists, which he was. As a skilled laborer, he was paid much more than the average.

In 1986, to try to give people a more innate sense of how much the cost of living varied from location to location, and from time to time, The Economist published the “Big Mac Index.”

Why would an index based on a fast food restaurants’ menu item be of any use?

The answer is one of consistency and inclusion. If you were to compare a generic “hamburger” from location to location, you would get wildly changing values. That could be because of the cost of the burger to the restaurant, or the hamburgers could be different. Does one have a slice of American cheese on it and the other premium Swiss? Is one made from grass fed organic ground beef and the other from Sysco’s finest? Is one burger 4oz pre cook weight and the other 2oz?

It makes a difference.

A Big Mac is standardized everywhere. That stupid jingle is correct for every Big Mac ever made. McDonalds even standardizes the amount of sauce that goes on each sandwich.

This means we are comparing apples to apples. Or, in this case, burger to burger.

The second part is inclusion. We know what goes into each sandwich. Those base ingredients are source relatively locally.

While the restaurant might be buying their meat from McDonalds, they are buying it from a location nearby. This means that the transportation expenses are in the price of the burger. This means that the cost of meat is in the price of the burger.

The cost of each item that goes into the burger is included in the price it sells for.

There is a cost of doing business, insurance, property tax, rental costs, undocumented payments to government organizations and NGOs (bribes), heating, cooling, building maintenance. These costs are all rolled into the final price of the sandwich.

The final cost is that of labor. If the labor market is strong, workers will be making more, if it is weak, labor will be paid less.

This also accounts for the cost of living in a particular area. In a location where it costs more to live, the workers will want more money per hour. While people in lower cost of living areas might want the extra pay, they are not going to get it.

I interviewed for a job in California once. As part of the interview process, they flew me to San Diego for a week. I spent the week house shopping and interviewing. I finally found a home that I was willing to live in.

Even though they were going to almost double my current salary, I would not have been able to afford a house in San Diego. I turned the job down.

Using a Big Mac equivalent, we can get a better idea of what the true cost is for different locations.

In Hawaii, the price of a Big Mac is $5.31 while in Mississippi, it is $3.91. This implies that it costs more to live in Hawaii than it does in Mississippi.

As a final thought on the Big Mac index, I remember McDonalds advertising that you could buy dinner for a family of four for $5.00 and have change.

That isn’t the case, anymore.

Conversations with friends can be difficult. One of my friends is burdened by the inequity of the world.

Because he is conservative and a strong supporter of the Second Amendment, his issues with inequity are putting him in serious mental anguish.

What Has Been

You struck out, westward, when you found a place to your liking, you made it your own. This included clearing the land, building your home, cultivating your ground, hunting, and surviving.

If you were lucky, you might find an abandoned homestead to take over. You paid for that home with the sweat of your brow. Nothing was easy.

In other cases, you might be close enough to civilization that you could purchase your home. Be that the wood to build it, or the house itself. You could also buy a house from the previous homeowner.

As time went on, the areas around the towns became more built up. The houses within the towns became more valuable. People invested in their homes, making them still more valuable.

Still, it was almost always a buyer’s market.

With vast amounts of “free” land, land was cheap, if you didn’t want a big house, your house was cheap too.

When you start seeing more expensive homes, they were passed down from father to son, as was the land. The family’s wealth was tied up in their land.

It’s NOT Fair!

But that means that those who came first got it easy! They got it cheap! There’s nothing left of ME!

My grandparents bought their home in the early 1900s. If I recall correctly, they paid around $5k for it. According to the googler, the average house price in 1929 was $6k. In 1929, my grandfather was likely earning about $1700/year. So a house would cost about 4 years worth of labor.

My house cost about one year of labor, the year I bought it. My house is actually cheaper than my grandfathers house. And my house is huge in comparison.

My grandparents, with their three daughters, lived in a two bedroom, one-bath house. There was a living room and a dine in kitchen. There was a full, unfinished basement. My grandfather built the detached garage later. It had a massive porch that extended the entire width of the front.

Grandpa added a back porch that was closed in to make it 3.5 seasons. Oh, there was a big mudroom off the back entrance.

When we were looking at houses, our minimum requirement was two full baths, four bedrooms, large kitchen, dining room. What we ended up with was larger than that. And it was still cheaper than my grandparents’ home.

It is fair.

But they didn’t have to pay as much!

It is all relative. My grandparents didn’t spend as much on entertainment. When they did go out, it was often very cheap dates. A nickle movie with popcorn and a soda was a 1/2 hour of labor. A movie with popcorn and soda is about 3/4 of an hour of labor today.

My friend wanted to buy a house for 2 years of labor, while having “needs” that would cost him 5 to 6 years of labor. And being upset.

His argument is that if they people that had come before were to stop being “evil” and “greedy”, there would be more houses.

The issue is that the housing market is currently a seller’s market. The demand is higher than the supply. This means that sellers can demand more money. When they get to where they are going, they will have to pay more as well.

Listening to people dancing at the “profit” they made selling their homes on Monday, and bitching about how unfair it is on Friday when they have to pay more for a new home, makes me giggle. I feel for them. I don’t understand why they don’t get it.

If we were just to…

We have a small lot, for the area, which backs on a few acres of forest. I do not want somebody to build a house right behind us. My options are to purchase the property behind us, risk it, or get the government to zone the land to stop new building.

I would like to purchase the land outright. That would be the best option for us. The risk is fairly low, there isn’t much demand for new housing in our area. But going to the zoning board…, now there’s an idea.

The wonder of the zoning board is that you can often convince the zoning board to put limits on the uses of property to protect the community.

We will zone land as noncommercial to keep traffic out, we might zone an area for single family dwellings to give people a sense of space and property, we might zone an area for high density housing or even trailer parks.

Zoning laws help protect the community from things like semi-trailers driving down the road in front of your house. The government put a US highway through my grandparent’s town. It was the street in front of their house. When they moved in, the road was a tree—lined boulevard. The first time I saw it, it was a four lane road with street parking on both sides and big rigs running through town all day and all night.

Occasionally, we find zoning laws designed to protect our farm land. The farm up the road was on the market for 10 years. Nobody was willing (or able) to buy it. In the end, they were able to sell off about 5 acres of the 100+, which became 3 lots with big houses on it.

Zoning laws kept that farm from becoming a huge apartment complex, or a subdivision.

If we were just to allow people to build as many houses as densely as they want, then house prices would be low enough for me.

Conclusion

I’m wealthy, by world standards. By world standards, I’m part of the “1%”. Then again, so are you.

The people of the United States are unbelievably wealth. The poorest of the poor in America are obese. They are not starving. Some might be hungry, but they are not starving.

I’ve been in section 8 housing to service computers. At a time when large, flat screen TVs were running 1000 to 2000 dollars, they had three.

When I was in high school, at one bus stop the “poor” kids would get off, they would run into their tar paper shacks. These were the kids who got to go to gym class as their first class. So they could use the showers.

They were so poor that they didn’t have enough running hot water for showers. I don’t know if they had showers in those shacks.

I do know that there were always two or three late model Cadillacs in the driveway.

The “poverty line” for the United States is higher than the average income of most countries in the world. Even some 1st and 2nd world countries.

If what you want as a home isn’t here, you need to look further afield or change your specifications.

Crying over what has been isn’t going to change anything.

Complaining that the people with wealth are “greedy” and “evil” isn’t going to change anything.

If it is the government standing in the way of lower costs, then we can get the government out of the way. That doesn’t mean that all zoning laws are bad, some might be.

In general, being upset that some people have things you want and are unwilling to give it up, or are willing to fight to protect their property or the value of their property, is only going to make you mad.

Stop stressing over what others have. Take stock of what you do have and give thanks.

I’ve had a slow leak in the right front wheel of my truck for the last year. When I went to have it fixed, I found that it wasn’t the tire. It was the wheel that was leaking.

Leaking tire? $20. Leaking wheel? $150+

Well, that slow leak isn’t slow anymore. Ally asked for a ride to the store. When we got to the truck, the left front tire was flat.

I could have pulled the air hose to the truck, filled the tire, moved the care to the garage and changed the tire there. But…

I decided that I was feeling old, so I was going to change the tire using only the in vehicle tools.

The tools were not where I expected to find them. Which makes sense. I looked for them under the left rear passenger seat. It was empty.

You don’t put the tools on the left. That would have the driver’s door open for an extended period of time with the driver not paying attention to traffic. Of course, it is under the right rear passenger seat.

The package consists of a hook on a rod, 2 straight rods, the tire iron, and a column jack.

I put the hook and extensions together, then went to find the magic hole to lead to the tire let down. Do you know it is designed to be done in the dark, with your eyes closed? There is a cup designed to accept the hook end. Just feed the rod in until it can go any further, rotate counterclockwise.

This old man was under the truck looking. Trying to find that stupid hole to feed in the rod. I got it done. I got the tire out.

Then it was time to do the tire change. A trick for youngsters, break the nuts free before you lift the tire off the ground. Much easier when the tire doesn’t spin.

In the course of breaking the lug nuts free, I manged to break a stud. Not a huge issue. Just another one of those things.

In the end, I used the car jack to get the tire off the ground. It wasn’t difficult. Surprisingly so. I used the tire iron to break the lug nuts free. After the one stud broke, I did as well.

I finished using a 1/2″ breaker bar and a floor jack.

In the end, I felt like I was able to do the task with the tools at hand.

Practice Your Skills, Even the simple ones

Is this something I could have done faster and easier with my impact wrench, floor jack and such? Yes. But I would not have practiced a skill I want to have. Practice, practice, then practice some more.

Story Time

Years ago, mom took the VW Micro bus in to the tire shop to get new tires put on. She was instructed to tell the staff that she wanted the lug nuts torqued to a specific setting. Per the manual.

When they were done changing the tires, she asked, “Did you torque them as specified?” To which the manager replied, “Of course we did.”

Mom got the bus and drove it around to the entrance. Took the tire iron from the roadside tool kit and went back inside.

She told the manager to come take on lug nut off and replace it on each wheel. The manager shrugged and called one of his guys to take the car back into the bays to do what was requested.

“No, you do it with this”, holding up the tire iron.

He tried, was unable to do so. Mom explained that she needed to be able to change the tire if she was alone with her kids. That she wasn’t going to be able to call him to do it for her when on a road trip to Wisconsin.

The manager “got it”. He sent the bus back in and they torqued the lug nuts to spec.

Ally has an event at the Fort this weekend. I drove her up Friday to stay the next two nights.

We arrived after dark. The moon was bright, the skies clear.

Ordinarily, visiting the fort is stepping back into a bustling place where I have so much to do.

Tonight it was silence. There was nobody but Ally and I.

We got to listen to silence. It was wonderful.

It was dark. Walking through the entrance in the dark is different. The shadows are longer. The palisade, taller, more imposing.

I stood there for a while, thinking of what it would have been like to stand sentry in the dark. My eyes adjusting to the moonlight, watching for the waving of the grass. Listening for anything disturbing the sleep of the fauna.

It is a beautiful memory.

Hopefully, a short one.

I’ve been accused of reacting quickly to situations. Mostly, this is a result of anticipating different situations and making a plan, long before anything happens.

I used to need to walk about a mile from where I parked to the office. This meant I had to carry my briefcase, with “extras”, my coffee travel cup, and my fat old self that distance. Sometimes in the rain, sometimes in the sunshine, and often in the cold and snow.

My briefcase was slung over my left shoulder, my left hand holding the strap. My right hand, held my coffee travel cup. Before I left the vehicle, I repeated, “if attacked, toss mug at attacker, draw.” and “Just drop the mug.”

I never needed to do those actions, but it meant that I had already decided what to do if needed. Preplanning and positioning yourself to have the advantage.

This required me to think about me, about how I respond, about what I would do. It is the easiest level of introspection.

Introspection becomes more difficult when you have to look at yourself, warts included, to figure out if you have done wrong. If you need to change.

If somebody says I did something wrong, I always treat it seriously. I always look to see what I did wrong and, if I was actually wrong, how to change myself to keep from making the same error.

This is difficult to perform honestly. You need to be willing to admit errors, and accept responsibility for your mistakes.

It Is His Fault

If you are not being honest with yourself, it is easy to blame others. It is his fault, not your own.

It isn’t that you didn’t study for the test, it is that he put things on the exam that he didn’t warn you about.

It isn’t that you didn’t start your project until the day it was due, it was the size of the project.

It isn’t that you said objectionable things, it was that he was mean. He wasn’t fair.

If you look at a situation where you feel like you should have succeeded, but didn’t, and you are looking at outside reasons, stop.

Look at yourself. What did you do wrong? What can you do differently.

Just because you’re paranoid, doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you

If you look at yourself, and you believe that you didn’t make a mistake, then you can investigate outside causes.

That means investigate.

It does not mean leap to the conclusion. There are often other reasons. Look at yourself first.

When you are looking at outside forces, don’t look at the motive. Look at the actions. Solve the actions before you assume motives.

If you are told that you did something because you have impure motives, this isn’t going to accomplish anything.

Did he perform better than you did. Did she put in a great effort than you did. Did they beat you because they were better than you.

If so, be honest with yourself. Move forward, changing yourself, to do better next time.

I am reminded of the image showing a US soldier on a hillside with civilians hiding behind him. The caption reads, “The difference is that we ourselves between them and the enemy, they put them between themselves and their enemies.”

It was, and is, such a powerful message of the differences between the animals and the civilized nations.

One of the more disgusting things I’ve seen out of Gaza was a video of Hamas placing the shattered body of a child into a bomb crater, to be found with a great deal of anguish on the faces of the actors.

The child was already dead. His skull was hanging open. It was disgusting.

I support Israel. I hope they root out every last terrorist bastard and send them to get their 72 raisins.