Author Archives: Curtiswselby

Murder will out, they say. And the difference between murder one and all the other degrees of murder and manslaughter and homicide is mainly based off the question, “Was this premeditated.”

I hope we all know by now that January 6 last year was a riot and a fiasco. Emotions on both sides are volatile, and like a good friend of mine said on the phone today “people aren’t trying to discuss anything rationally. I feel upset about this or that, so I’m going to make the opposition suffer.” If that isn’t very clearly stated, it’s likely my own memory chewing up his thought. I believe he was not saying that he personally was going to make people suffer, but that people on both sides are full of hate against the other side, and neither seems to want to debate. Both sides seem eager to hurl insults, rocks, bullets, diatribes, filibusters, and the occasional bison helmet.

For good or ill, I’m going to continue (at least for now) pursuing my questions from the post: https://wordpress.com/post/tiredmidnightblogger.wordpress.com/147, titled “January 6 Riots Not Very Quiet.”

As some two or three of you may remember, I delved into the question of whether Biden stole the election in a previous post titled “How Much for Just the Republic,” posted: https://wordpress.com/post/tiredmidnightblogger.wordpress.com/161

In that post, I did some research into the claims that Biden stole the election, and while my work was far from exhaustive or definitive, I felt that for me, it warranted the belief that Biden did not, in fact, steal the election and won it relatively fair and square. For those of you who disagree, please feel free to debate. Constructive, intelligent, and respectful commentary would be greatly appreciated.

But what about the other side of the coin? Did Trump, in fact, attempt to lead a coup to overthrow the republic? Will I end up agreeing with the person who posted “Silent Running” to a bunch of pro-Trump video, or will I end up agreeing with CNN that Trump is the greatest villain of the age? Stay tuned to find out!

I have opened a real can of worms with this one. As I should have suspected.

As usual there are at least two sides of this story, if not three hundred million versions.

I’m going to cite politico for the left wing version.

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/01/11/capitol-riot-self-coup-trump-fiona-hill-457549

I’m going to cite Fox News for the right wing version.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/two-questions-jan-6-capitol-riot

Full disclosure….I’m a moderately conservative Republican. Yet I find myself more drawn to the opinion piece of Politico. I has more meat to it (though I’d warn liberals that maybe ignoring Fox is not the wisest thing ever).

The Politico post is written by Fiona Hill. According to Politico: Fiona Hill served as deputy assistant to the president and senior director for European and Russian affairs on the National Security Council from 2017 to 2019. She is currently a senior fellow in the Center on the United States and Europe at the Brookings Institution.

Assuming that is accurate, this would mean she has quite a bit of personal experience with the Trumpmeister. She states the reasons why some believe the January six riots don’t constitute a coup, but then she gives her own rational reasons why she believes this was in fact a true coup.

“Technically, what Trump attempted is what’s known as a “self-coup” and Trump isn’t the first leader to try it. Charles Louis Napoleon Bonaparte (nephew of the first Napoleon) pulled one off in France in December 1851 to stay in power beyond his term. Then he declared himself Emperor, Napoleon III. More recently, Nicolas Maduro perpetrated a self-coup in Venezuela after losing the 2017 elections.”

She goes on to state that a checklist exists to evaluate if someone is performing a coup or not, I’m guessing that she must have learned it from her experience with teh National Security Council.

“There’s a standard coup “checklist” analysts use to evaluate coups, and we can use it to assess Trump’s moves to prevent the peaceful transfer of executive power. To successfully usurp or hold power, you need to control the military and paramilitary units, communications, the judiciary, government institutions, and the legislature; and mobilize popular support.”

If you read her article, she has cogent reasons for why she feels Trump meets all of the above criteria. The reading is pretty chilling for someone who used to support Trump, as I did four years ago.

Now for the evaluation of Fox News. Tucker Carlson gives some personal testimony about what he himself experienced on January sixth, and I don’t like to discount anyone’s personal testimony until I have strong evidence of psychological problems. I haven’t listened to Fox in about four years, so Tucker Carlson is actually new to me.

He doesn’t really establish much in the way of blaming anyone, which to be fair might be the best thing a journalist can do if they simply don’t know. The crux of his analysis centers around two questions: “How did this happen today of all days?” And “Why has this gone on for so long?”

And to be fair, they are not terrible questions. The cynic in me is tempted to make fun of the first question, but throwing in the second, it does make one pause. To rephrase the thought in my own language…..if there really was an honest to God coup attempt, why is it taking a year and more to prosecute hooligans that CNN can demonstrably show us red handed on video?

Tucker Carlson proceeds to give some cryptic analysis that might have made more sense to me if I’d kept listening to the party line in the last decade, but he also says something that I think, honestly, both sides need to be putting a lot more thought into: “The Capitol Police were outmanned, out planned, and out-frenzied by the mob that day. It is hard to defend an institution as important as the United States Capitol on a day as crucial as certifying the Electoral College when you face a deficit in all three categories.” And while he is asking his own questions, mine is….why in the hell was it possible for the Capitol Police to be outmanned, out planned, and out-frenzied….by the Q Anon Shamen? I mean….really?

So, as I am a blogger and not a reporter, I’m glossing over a lot here and hoping that you read both articles and did your own thinking. I’m left with two thoughts.

Either Trump really did plan a coup, but did a terrible job of executing, or he is so grossly incompetent that he let the Q Anon Shaman shame him.

I leave you with two videos to consider along with my thoughts on these two articles. You be the judge on whether Trump was a mastermind who failed, or a failure who fell for the tricks of better masterminds…..

So you have some idea what I think about it all, but what do you think? Is Trump a hero or zero, is he a Machiavellian master mind, or has he been duped by clandestine forces we could never ken? Please comment and let’s get a dialogue going.

I had a dream last night. Incredibly vivid and incredibly detailed. Maybe the first lucid dream I had in twenty five years or more. I even knew I was dreaming. And yet, though some things were going on that I didn’t like, knowing that I was unconscious, I so did not wish to awaken.

The details would likely only be interesting to a psychologist or a hard core student of dreams. The only detail worth sharing was that I was in high school, I was a teenager again, and my father had broken another promise. And in the dream, and when I awoke, I had a strong feeling of anguish over my father’s broken promises, and the over the quasi loss of my son, for whom I am fighting for custody in a bitter court battle. And the beginning of “Silent Running,” with the faint sound of sea gulls, was running through my mind.

I haven’t quite shook the feeling yet, and again, likely I’m not conveying it. Possibly none of this makes sense. The best way I can describe it is “our father’s broke their promises to us, and we must start a revolution, a Beltane, purging our pasts, making right what we can, killing ourselves if we must to keep our promises to our children.”

So why the dream? Why am I writing about it other than the insane compulsion to write? At least in part, I know I am not the only one who has had that dream. There is something about it, the dream of being one of the Founding Fathers of your nation, or an Apostle in your church. Bringing something new and beautiful into fruition, something future generations will call you blessed for being a part of.

It was seeded deep in mythology. It’s why we are so in awe (well, one reason why) of Jesus, of George Washington, of inventors, of those who create great theories and great works of art. The same joy you feel when you first marry or your baby is born.

For some happy few, St. Crispin’s Day dawns and God has granted an Agincourt. Few fought against many in a righteous cause, and the righteous won.

But in spite of what we want to believe, the righteous don’t always win. Hector falls defending his homeland. Socrates is condemned to drink hemlock. Christ is crucified. William Wallace is hung, drawn, and quartered. Sainted Joan of Arc is burned as a witch. Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy, and Martin Luther King Junior are assassinated. Daddy promises to take me trick or treating and gets drunk instead.

I look on the promises I made my son, and so many of them are no more than ashes blowing in the wind.

I’ve said a lot of melodramatic, cryptic stuff here. Before I try to tie it all up into a tidy bow, let me go back to the Silent Running music video. I posted something about it on a failed blog I used to write, but I’ll try to do it justice again.

I must have been seventeen, because it was the year I was in football but still at home with my parents. I don’t remember what game I came home from, whether it was one of the very few we won, or not, but I remember for some reason I came home feeling pumped. I felt seventeen for a change, and strong, and like the causes for which I fought were righteous and destined for either success, or for beautiful, quixotic, poetic failure. And I walk in the door with my pads on and my cleats. And for whatever reason my mother is watching something with music videos (I’ll never know what was up with that, perhaps it is another reason why the event was so dreamlike to me). The cool night air from the farm as behind me, and our little black and white tv starts with the late character actor Billy Drago (found out while researching this post he died in ’19 at the age of 73) in a ghostly hologram telling this boy that he knew his father, that his father was a great man in spite of not being in his life, that he is part of the revolution. He imparts (in the lyrics of the song anyway) wisdom to the boy. “Don’t believe the church and state, and everything they tell you.” “Better you should pray to God, the Father and the Spirit will guide you and protect you.” “Teach the children quietly, for someday sons and daughters will rise up and fight where we stood still.”

In the end, I just miss my son. I’d give twenty years of my life to have him with me one more day, watching Mystery Science Theater and joking about cartoons. I wonder if I’ll ever see him again, and there is nothing to be done but try not to be the one who lights the match. I’m going to post a link to both “Silent Running,” and a Phil Colllins song about the loss of a child. Listen to “Silent Running” a few times, and imagine what the seventeen year old is thinking about his father, and what the fifty year old is thinking about his son.

What do you think? Have you ever lost someone important to you? Please comment.

Being who I am, it is tempting to begin with something flippant. And likely before I get done with this article I’ll have a joke or two, hopefully the jokes don’t negate the intense respect I do feel for the man. And I like to think he would have laughed at some of the things I have to say.

Today marks two milestone. One is the obvious one from the headline of this article. The second is the hundredth birthday of the late great Betty White, who’s greatest claim to fame was that she was the Golden Girl who was not on the Star Wars Holiday Special, and was the only one to sit in Deadpool’s lap.

But I digress.

Since the second or third I’ve been reading Walden, mostly slipping into my own reveries, but attempting to stay focused on its influence over the good Doctor. As anyone who knows me or reads this blog can tell, my mind is not the most focused laser beam ever.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1UgcMrhW3c&t=39s

Ok, ok….back to the serious stuff and the book. I think there are three major points to be learned from a comparison of Martin Luther King Jr. and the works of Thoreau.

• 1) There is power in the Christian principal of humility that is echoed in Thoreau’s ideals of simplicity.
• 2) There is a futility in merely voting and hoping that that alone will improve our world.
• 3) Civil disobedience is more affective for positive change then hopeless apathy or enraged violence.

Christianity has taught the supremacy of the virtue of humility since Christ preached the Beatitudes. And while Martin Luther King Jr. sought justice and to reform a broken society, he was first and foremost a Christian. Humility and love were at the heart of his teaching. And in Walden Thoreau paints in detail the picture of a life spent in simplicity, humbly submitting to live in nature and not strive for a bigger house, a fancier set of clothes, to live within one’s means and not enslave oneself to debts for the sake of some trifles we cannot carry into our next life. “Most of the luxuries, and many of the so called comforts of life, are not only indispensable, but positive hinderances to the elevation of mankind. With respect to luxuries and comforts, the wisest have ever lived a more simple and meagre life than the poor.”

Martin Luther King’s words were perhaps even more salient:

The darkness of racial injustice will be dispelled only by the light of forgiving love. For more that three centuries American Negroes have been frustrated by day and bewilderment by night by unbearable injustice, and burdened with the ugly weight of discrimination. Forced to live with these shameful conditions, we are tempted to become bitter and retaliate with a corresponding hate. But if this happens, the new order we seek will be little more than a duplicate of the old order. We must in strength and humility meet hate with love.

Second, Thoreau was not keen on voting, or at least on voting merely. Now, I know I have to be a bit careful here, as most of my audience will come from a democracy, and if people are not willing to vote in a democracy, more and more power will concentrate in fewer and fewer hands. It is a maxim amongst most of my friends that “if you don’t vote, you don’t have the right to complain.”

Thoreau realized that there is a certain vanity to merely voting:

Even voting for the right is doing nothing for it. It is only expressing to men feebly your desire that it should prevail. A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority. There is but little virtue in the action of masses of men.

Frankly, Martin Luther King had to struggle with tools other than mere votes, partly because one of the very injustices he was fighting was for the right of African American’s to vote, period. Nevertheless, he understood the principle too, that merely to vote is inconsequential: “And so we shall have to do more than register and more than vote; we shall have to create leaders who embody virtues we can respect, who have moral and ethical principles we can applaud with enthusiasm.” Martin Luther King Junior.

Last of all, Martin Luther King Junior was strongly influenced by Henry David Thoreau’s protest method of Civil Disobedience. Thoreau literally wrote the book on the subject, and it was taken up by Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Junior to reverse some of the most intrenched abuses of western society.

Two more things and then I bid you adieu. First, another photo of Martin Luther King Junior proving he was truly enlightened.

Last of all, I can’t resist….if Martin Luther King Jr were to step into a transporter with my old collage roommate and they both got mixed up as one superhero….this would be the result:

And finally, what will likely be the best part of the post:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgVrlx68v-0

Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day everyone.

John Wayne was my hero the first six or seven years of my life. He was still alive when I was a toddler, and my dream was to meet him, learn how to be a cowboy from him, ride the range, shoot the bad guys, win the girl (hey, I was a toddler, did you have a better dream as five year old?)

I know he is no longer as popular as he was. People label him nowadays as a racist jingoist. Worse, people say he was a one dimensional actor. It’s not the purpose of this post to defend him, so I won’t, but please accept that he was the hero of a confused, abused, hyperactive five year old Curtis Selby, and for good or ill he became a Jungian archetype to me.

Before he died John Wayne was awarded best actor for playing Rooster Cogburn in the movie True Grit. It was iconic back then, one of the last of the great old Westerns. The image of John Wayne with an eye patch (just like a pirate! Two of my favorite things mixed together like a Reece’s Peanut Butter Cup!), with a bit of a pot belly but still in great shape for an old man, riding his horse with the reigns in his teeth, firing two rifles at the four or six (to a five year old it might as well have been a whole army) bad guys and heroically winning against all odds (take a look at this movie now), that image has became deeply ingrained in my psyche.

Recently I watched the newer version with Jeff Bridges, and I loved it! I honestly don’t know which performance I loved better. Bridges’ performance was amazing, from the growling voice of a man who drinks too much, to his acting drunk (it was an act….right?) to the strain in his face when he was racing so hard to save Mattie Ross, it just made for a marvelous performance.

But to the point I wanted to make in this post: if Trump or any other Republican (or Democrat honestly) really wants to inspire American’s there are three vital lessons to be learned from Rooster Cogburn.

• 1. Marshall Cogburn was tough as nails, like we all wish we were.
• 2. Marshall Cogburn got the job done in spite of obstacles.
• 3. Marshall Cogburn took care of the girl. More on that later.

Rooster Cogburn is tougher than the taco salsa stains on my favorite work shirt. The guy has lost an eye and yet still works as a Marshall, fairly successfully. He rides a horse across at least half of the state of Oklahoma chasing what he believes is a wild goose. He’s willing to kill people he knows to protect his own life and the lives of the innocent. He doesn’t hesitate or flinch when Mattie is bitten by a snake, he rides through the snow, running a horse to death in order to save Mattie, and then not sparing himself to run the rest of the way. I’d love to see a modern politician show any grit at all.

Rooster Cogburn gets the job done. I’m not saying it’s pretty, or that he doesn’t grumble or stumble. He even threatens to quit. But in the end he doesn’t. Justice ends up being served, (though to be fair to Maddie, he is not the man who ends up shooting the bad guy, she is). American’s used to be a people who believed in getting the job done. Now we seem to believe we should go to court and sue each other, or go buy a lottery ticket. While there are limits to self reliance, I think we have lost our way, I don’t know if our society would produce a Rooster Cogburn any more.

Lastly, Rooster Cogburn took care of the girl. I know that is not politically correct. But the principal still works. It wasn’t the fact that she was a girl. It was the fact that this was someone on the team who had been hurt and now needed help. There used to be a time when we took care of each other. If your neighbor was sick you made them some soup and sent it to them. If your neighbor died you helped the widow get the crops planted and harvested. Now its every man for himself. I’ll never forget the bosses I used to work for that would say they were going to take care of their own families whether the team suffered or not. I wouldn’t cross the street to help them if they were on fire and I had a shovel to beat them with.

Well, that is my two cents worth on how True Grit can help America be great again. What do you think? Did you love the movie? Do you think America will ever be great again? Do you ever just want to run around with an eyepatch and say “Argh”? Please comment and share with your fiends.

Rhetoric will likely always rule politics, at least until the very nature of humankind changes. The politics of hate however corrupts and twists the ideals of logic and rhetoric and changes a classical tradition of debate into loud shouts, insults, inflamed emotion, people who somehow don’t believe the rules apply to them.

And somehow, there seem to be people for whom the rules actually don’t apply.

The question before our Republic now is hauntingly the same that the election should have answered. The election should have clearly decided who was President. Biden says he won. Trump says that Biden stole the election and we should “stop the steal.”

Somebody is wrong. At least one side, if not both, are lying.

Biden’s claim is pretty straight forward. We can quibble all day long about the individual votes, but the electoral votes (assuming that the polling numbers as reported are correct) simply are what they are. Biden has 306 electoral votes. Two hundred seventy are required to win, so Biden wins.

Trumps claim is built on the belief that some states actually voted for him instead of Biden, but those states were effectively stolen from him via fraud. This claim is a lot harder to evaluate.

As a simple person with a fly by night blog, I’m going to keep my analysis simple.

Trump needed thirty six electoral votes to win. Three contested states could have provided him that. Arizona with eleven, Georgia with sixteen, and Wisconsin with ten votes would have been enough to turn the tide. I list these three because of the states that went for Biden, these were the ones with the smallest margins of difference, and thus the easiest way for Trumps claims to be valid would be for the margins to be accounted for by fraud.

Arizona was carried by Biden by 10,457 votes. Let’s examine the likelihood that there was enough fraud to account for 10,457 votes. Trumps claim is that the database for the entire county of Maricopa, Arizona’s most populous, was deleted. Let’s be fair, if that were true, there would at least be grounds for suspicion of fraud, or gross neglect on the part of the vote counters. According to their own website, there are 2.6 million registered voters in Maricopa county.

https://www.maricopa.gov/5539/Voting-Equipment-Facts

That would give Trump grounds to question the election there…..however……

An independent group calling themselves the “Cyber Ninjas” (a name that inspires even more trust than Tired Blogger What Blogged at midnight” recounted votes and while they found mistakes….the mistakes actually meant Biden had won by some three hundred votes more than had been reported.

https://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2021-09-24/trump-loss-in-arizonas-cyber-ninjas-audit-unlikely-to-discourage-other-states

My last point to make before moving on….the data base had not been deleted. I’m going to cite two sources here, one that at least explains why there is so much confusion on this topic, the other definitively discounting the data base deletion.

https://www.azmirror.com/2021/05/18/audit-official-says-he-recovered-files-undercutting-claim-county-officials-deleted-them/

https://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/laurieroberts/2021/05/19/arizona-election-audit-screwed-up-no-apology/5167088001/

So while it is confusing, I think we can accept that Arizona went to Biden.

Next we go to Georgia.

Georgia went to Biden by a margin of 11,779 votes. Let’s examine Trump’s claims there.

So Trump’s claims in Georgia were twofold. Votes were sold for ten dollars a pop, and that five thousand dead people voted. I gotta be honest, I’ve heard claims like that in various parts of the United States for about thirty years, and both Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity have been claiming for at least the last twenty years or so that Democrats win by using the names of dead people and voting under those names to pad out their vote. Now let’s examine these claims, remembering that we need to find at least 11,779 votes to change these sixteen electoral votes for Trump.

The claims about pay to play votes have been tracked to an organization called True the Vote. I’ve never heard of them before, they may be the best thing since sliced bread, and I certainly don’t want people to be payed to vote. (Unless I get to be paid to vote. Please make out your checks to Tired Blogger, and place the checks….what….the FBI wants to talk to me….uh….never mind). But evidently there is some debate about how many people have done this, and the best I can gather is that one person who is refusing to allow his identity be known has shared this information. While I do get the happiness of my party to find one witness to the fraud….I really don’t like to make decisions with only one witness. So let’s file this one under “maybe true, maybe not.”

So what about the Zombie Apocalypse of dead voters? According to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, an investigation only uncovered four fraudulent dead voters. On one hand this frankly does prove there is fraud, and the Republican claim that dead Democrats vote is not baseless. Having said that, we basically account for four votes.

That means our friend with the secret identity had to somehow drum up 11,775 votes for Trump to actually have a valid claim to the state. I’m not even going to talk about the audits, frankly, we could have saved millions by just turning the IRS loose. Find the person in Georgia who didn’t claim exactly $117,750 in income and we have both our culprit and one more state toward Trump being the legitimate winner.

I won’t hold my breath.

I’m at 982 words now, and have satisfied my own curiosity about at least the two most likely states. I may come back to Wisconsin or other states later if enough readers ask, but I honestly think we can put this question to rest. For good or ill, I think Biden won, fair and square. But what do you think? Please let me know in the comments.

I have friends on both sides of the spectrum. And yeah, my son is autistic, but that is not what I mean. Some of my friends are very conservative Republicans, and some of my friends are mildly liberal Democrats. And both of them have a very different take on the January 6 incidents of last year in Washington DC.

Very likely nobody is here looking for more facts about the situation, and that is good, I don’t have the resources to do in depth investigative reporting. At this point I’m just a tired citizen trying to make sense of the world, blogging because of an intense need to write but lacking the time or discipline to stay in the habit. But perhaps some of you are in the same dilemma I am in.

I’ve been told a lot of very controversial things about January 6. So I’m going to do the very opposite of what a real reporter would do. Instead of telling you what I know, I’m going to share what I’ve been told, but don’t know the truth of.

1. Donald Trump actually won the election. Biden stole it.
2. Donald Trump planned a coup and meant to steal the election.
3. The protests were intended to be peaceful, but “bad elements from Antifa and BLM started violence that cascaded out of control.
4. The FBI was behind the violence, which they instigated as an excuse to arrest right wing believers (but to my knowledge no home coming queens….what…..? That was in the seventies? Never mind!)
5. Donald Trump had colluded with Russia to win in 2016, and was upset because he thought their collusion would help him again.
6. The ballot counting machines were built by a company owned by Nancy Pelosi’s husband, and he had them programmed to ignore ballots cast for Trump instead of Biden.

Likely every one that looks at that list will say “Curtis you ignorant Republican” ! Of course that item is true!” I realize I’m beginning my second (or is it third) blogging career at a disadvantage. I’m likely one of the least informed people in America at this time. So you rightly ask yourself, “why read this?”

Here is the answer (for those with the patience to keep reading). I think there are tens of millions that are confused about at least one of these points. Maybe one man trying to seek the truth can inspire the others. Maybe if enough of us seek the truth, (not the advantage of my party, not what Rush Limbaugh said before he died (may he rest in peace), not what Anderson Cooper said (though he is pretty cool if you aren’t so partisan you can’t listen:)). But what is the truth?

Seeking those answers, predictably enough, is proving very difficult. For one thing, I’m attempting to get this written in a forty eight hour time frame (likely impossible), and the internet is just being frustrating. I look up the question, and I find that there is a plethora of posts “proving” that the election was not rigged (which I would actually love to support, but the articles are strong on stating it and often short on evidence, i.e. who are you quoting, what is causing people to believe one way or the other, when was this study conducted, where did you find this evidence, why has this happened, the only good question being asked is “to what extent is Trump to blame”).

Are we the people, whether liberal or conservative, simply going to bury our heads in the sand and let the media of whichever wing do our thinking for us? Are we humans or are we rabbits?

Thus far, the best posts I’ve found for the question as to the claim that Biden stole the election are these:

• https://www.npr.org/2020/12/09/944385798/poll-just-a-quarter-of-republicans-accept-election-outcome
• https://www.npr.org/2020/12/02/941610826/government-controlled-media-in-eastern-europe-promote-claims-of-stolen-u-s-elect
• https://www.justsecurity.org/74622/stopthesteal-timeline-of-social-media-and-extremist-activities-leading-to-1-6-insurrection/

All three articles support the claim that Biden won legitimately, but two of them are as close to concession as I can find that there may have been at least a grain of truth to Trump’s claims that the election was rigged. The first one is telling in that it frankly says little about the truth of any claim, it just mainly reports the demographics of who believed what just weeks prior to the insurrection. The second reports on how Hungarian news media believe Trumps claims (I notice there is no evidence given there either….we just believe or disbelieve random reports that illegal ballets appeared and legal ballets disappeared). The last point blank tells us they believe Trump is full of it, but instead of reams of polemic and denouncement, they do honest reporting on attempting to give us a timeline of the social media posts of insurrectionist leading up to January six.

I’ve frankly bitten off more than I could chew in 750 words or less. I’ve already gone over that self imposed limit, and still have come to no conclusion, nor have I even answered a single question. Hopefully I have at least set out a tolerable outline for how to attack this subject, what questions should be being asked. Now I have to figure out where to find those answers.

I end with a heartfelt plea. If you have read this far and can forgive my ignorance, please help me, yourself, and your Republic. Ask these questions. Unless you have definitive proof already, please ask them and ask them again. Search the internet. Search your libraries. And get a dialogue going. If you don’t think I’m good enough fine, but find a platform and get the questions rolling. Quit letting the biased media of both sides steamroll over our intelligence. Neither Trump nor Biden could get away with any lies if we lived in a true Republic full of intelligent, informed citizens. Ultimately, it’s not even about who stole what election. Are we intelligent enough to know if it happened, and are we intelligent enough to know the appropriate reactions to what has happened and to strategies preventative action for the future.

As always, please please comment and let me know what you think. I’m going to finish with a quick video about a scholar who researched a question about Martin Luther King Junior till he found an answer. If his quest for truth is relevant, surely so is this. may God bless America and our troops!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBq7VB21Lac

Ok, so maybe I am exaggerating…..but I think it’s curious the company name is so similar to Thanos. It’s like they were trying to hide the name of the real CEO. “Thanos inc? Uh….no….it’s Theranos….yeah…that’s it…that’s the ticket!”

So let’s see if I understand this case….So Elizabeth Holmes had a brilliant idea (and I mean no sarcasm, this actually does sound like it would be a wonderful thing to do) back when she was at Stanford to develop a wearable patch that could monitor the patient and adjust the dosage of drugs and notify doctors of significant changes in patient’s blood variables.

On its face, a layman like me reads that and wonders 1) is there a science fiction book with this technology, 2) why was this not thought of before, and 3) what are the realistic possibilities for this kind of technology?

As for a partial answer to the first, science fiction has been predicting the future for a long time, but here is a simple list of items currently used by the medical industry that may or may not have been inspired by James Bond, but are awfully similar to things he uses in the films:

https://etactics.com/blog/wearable-technology-in-healthcare

As to the second question: the best I can gather was a patent issued in 1995:

https://patents.google.com/patent/US5800481A/en

For some reason that does not seem accurate, I would swear I remember something like the modern patches from the late 80s and early 90s when my grandparents were in the hospital, but it is easily possible my memory is incorrect. At any rate, some technology that at least suggested a patch for recording heart rates was around by 1995.

As for the last question, evidently the idea is more than realistic, and some form of patch monitoring is extensively evident:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4403087/figure/fig01/?report=objectonly

So, it seems to be a great idea, highly applicable, one that actually has it’s roots going back to ancient Egyptian medicine.

What could the problem possibly be?

To begin with, the corporate partners that Thanos…I mean Thanatos….I mean Theranos chose to work with were evidently nonplussed with the results.

After three years and $350 million dollars invested in retrofits, Safeway (holy hell, Safeway is still a thing?) backed out of a deal in 2015. Walgreens I guess was the next corporate behemoth to go ballistic from test failures, going so far as to sue the company (I hated them so much, I sued the company….) in November of 2016. (Mommy….Daddy….I’m thankful for the $30 million settlement….hush little Tommy, that won’t be settled until June of 2017, now shut up and eat your Turkey before it gets cold).

Whatever it was that caused the retail partners to back out, the big red flag hit in February 2015 (“Happy Valentines darling……here are accusations of fraud.” “Oh John….you shouldn’t have!”) Stanford Professor (Elizabeth’s alma mater) John J. P. Ioannidis was quoted in the Journal of the American Medical Association that no “peer reviewed research had been published in medical research literature.” Well….I can’t see any problem with that….

As scientific allegations began to mount, Holmes (elementary my dear Watson….we’ll turn to the government to fix our problems). She planned on having then Vice President Joe Biden tour the facilities. A fake lab was created in the hopes of deceiving VP Biden. All of this was reported in the December 25th Wal Street Journal. Which makes me wonder….did Biden know he had been hornswagled. How did the public come to know?

This is the problem with our current Democracy/Capitalistic market. We are not well informed. Ok…fine, we know now that this whole things was a fraud, but at the time, based off of the things that other people were doing, there didn’t seem to be any reason for several years to doubt that this was going to be a godsend to patients and to the market itself.

I still have questions. Why was there no peer review? Why are corporations willing to invest hundreds of millions in technology that is not peer reviewed? Why was Obama golfing instead of touring this lab (that last is maybe untrue).

What do you think? Please comment, let’s get a dialogue going about the corruption of modern science.