5.21.2025 – think God’s on your side

think God’s on your side
John Calvin’s under floorboards
during board meetings

He told me that I should note in my reading of journals, monographs, and texts how all the great predators were theocratic …

that if you were going to rape the land and people, whether it was the original Indians or the working class that followed …

it was important to think that God was thoroughly on your side.

“John Calvin is always under the floorboards during America s board meetings.

From True North by Jim Harrison (New York, Grove Press, 2004).

Probably quote from Mr. Harrison a lot more than I should and I admit it isn’t without some misgivings.

The passage I quote today, I feel it explains much of what makes the Evangelical Church of Trump work.

There is a lot of my West Michigan background in the background of Mr. Harrison, though his foreground can take in a lot of life I did not experience.

And I wonder, do other people get it?

Take the John Calvin reference.

I am sure that most folks might know who Mr. Calvin was, but in West Michigan, where I grew up, John Calvin wasn’t under the table, he had a seat at the table.

The local college was named, Calvin College.

My wife went to a grade school operated by the Christian Reformed Church name Calvin Christian.

Most folks I knew had copies of The Institutes of John Calvin on a shelf in their home.

But I was raised Baptist.

Mr. Calvin was there in our theology with his TULIP acronym*, but we also told the joke that Calvinism was the fear that someone, somewhere, was having a good time.

BUT I DIGRESS.

I make no apology for Mr. Harrison’s content.

It is what it is.

But his use of language and narration and view of life, lives and lifestyle is powerful.

I remember back in the day when I worked in a bookstore and this one customer, who by his dress and manner and overall appearance was probably from what we called, ‘Up North’ which took in the part of the State of Michigan that was north of Kent Country up to and including the Upper Peninsula of the state.

Boy Howdy, maybe just north of the Grand River all the way to Lake Superior.

Nothing wrong with guy understand, but going north, you entered a different world that often times might have been more comfortable had it been about 1952.

Close to the same feeling I get when I drive across the back country of the State of South Carolina.

This feller as I remember him would not have stood had he been in the band, ZZ Top, including the long beard and dark sunglasses.

He was buying a copy of Garrison Keillor’s latest book, though I can’t remember which one.

I chit chatted with him, told him I hoped he enjoyed the book as I read all the Keillor stuff and enjoyed it all myself.

He stopped and looked at me for a second.

“I am getting it for my nephew”, he said, “he needs to read about life.”

Well says I, you should get something by Jim Harrison.

He stopped and looked at me for a second, looked away then back at me and said, “No, no way, this kid is not ready for Harrison …”

He looked off again, then said:

“Someday …”

And he caught my eye, nodded, a nod with a lot of understanding and kinship in it, and walked out.

*The acronym TULIP is used to represent the five core doctrines of Calvinism:
Total depravity,
Unconditional election,
Limited atonement,
Irresistible grace, and
Perseverance of the saints.

5.20.2025 – estimates by the

estimates by the
joint Taxation Committee
rich come out ahead

There are one million American households with incomes above $1 million a year. Based on estimates by the Joint Committee on Taxation, in 2027 they would pay a staggering $96 billion less in taxes. That’s a bigger gift than what the households making less than $100,000 a year would receive, combined, even though there are 127 million of them. That amounts to an average tax cut of $82,000 apiece for millionaires, compared with $750 for the working and middle classes. (That’s bigger as a percentage of income, too. However you slice it, the rich come out ahead.) And for millions of families, those tax savings would be dwarfed by the cost of losing their Medicaid as a result of the cuts in the bill.

From the New York Times Opinion piece, Behold the New Tax Plan: More Complicated, Less Fair, Totally Unaffordable, by Jason Furman.

Mr. Furman, a contributing Opinion writer, was the chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers from 2013 to 2017, kinda sums it up for me.

The rich, the one million millionaires who will come out ahead if the new Big Beautiful Bill is signed into law.

Mr. Furman ends his article that the only thing going for this bill is that, at the end of the day, it IS legislation that was created in the way we were taught in high school government class that tax bills were created, voted on, passed by Congress and signed by the person in office.

Aside from that ….

So I ask myself, why?

Why do these people fall all over themselves to applaud that feller in the Oval Office in the way minions applauded leaders like Saddam Hussein and Joseph Stalin with each person looking left and right to make sure they were not the first to stop applauding.

In another really good read, Brexit’s Failures Could Foreshadow Trump’s. Just Not in the Way You Might Think, by David Runciman, a professor of politics at Cambridge University and the author of “How Democracy Ends,” I found what think is the penultimate clue to understanding what is going.

Mr. Runciman writes, “Trump’s project is to restore the United States to its imagined past glories, to forge an America indifferent to the wider world, which makes Britain a hanger-on, hoping for a lucky break along with everyone else. Trump has little time for the ambitions of other countries when he is so wrapped up in self-centered fantasies of his own.“

The toadies, for lack of a better and not sure there is a better word, are hoping for a lucky break along with everyone else.

If they support the guy, maybe, just maybe, the guy will smile benevolently on them and reward them in way only a multi-billionaire can.

It’s playing the lottery and hoping for a big payoff and like the lottery its possibilities outweigh any misgivings.

But playing the lottery only asks for you money.

Playing that guy asks for your integrity.

Playing that guy asks for your soul.

Choose wisely.

The rewards may be less and the price may be higher than you think.

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5.16.2025 – amazing country

amazing country
hardly begun to dream of
its own destiny

Headquarters Guidon – 5th Corps – Army of Potomac
My Great Grandfather was the 16Th Michigan of the 3rd Brigade of the Ist Division of the 5th Corps

In Volume II, Glory Road, of his three volume history of the Army of the Potomac, Bruce Catton writes after the Battle of Chancellorsville, a young officer heard soldiers singing Rally Around the Flag Boys and that:

They were putting everything they had into a song that had suddenly taken on enormous meaning, and words like “the flag” and “freedom” had become revolutionary, the keys to a great future.

It might be, indeed, that this idea of freedom was something that had no limits whatever.

It might begin as a limited thing, simple legal freedom from purchase and sale for the poor black man, and in the end it would become freedom for white men too, freedom also for all of the unguessed potentialities of an amazing country that had hardly begun to dream of its own destiny.

I, for one, refuse to believe that the unguessed potentialities of this amazing country that has hardly begun to dream of its own destiny will let the future of this Country, the future paid for by those who fought and died for this Country from 1775 to the present, might be determined by the current person in office and the current administration.

That person in office and that administration meddle with the Constitution of the United States and We, the people so named at their own peril and I see the day that this sleeping giant rages forward and woe betide those who stood on the wrong side of history.

5.15.2025 – all persons born

all persons born
naturalized in the US
are citizens of

Constitution of the United States of America

Fourteenth Amendment Section 1

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Passed by Congress June 13, 1866, and ratified July 9, 1868, The New York Times commented, on the amendment passing, ON JULY 17, 1868 …”And why should it not have been accepted? It simply proclaimed that all citizens born or naturalized int he United States were citizens of the United States and of the State in which they resided.” (NYT The 14th Amendment, 7/17/1868).

How could this be open to interpretation?

Green is green.

Red is red.

Waiting on the current administration to tell us otherwise.

5.14.2025 – no regulating

no regulating
artificial models of
intelligence

According to the article, Republicans propose prohibiting US states from regulating AI for 10 years by Johana Bhuiyan in the Guardian (5/14/2025): Republicans in US Congress are trying to bar states from being able to introduce or enforce laws that would create guardrails for artificial intelligence or automated decision-making systems for 10 years

The bill:

TITLE IV—ENERGY AND COMMERCE
Subtitle C—Communications
PART 2—ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY MODERNIZATION
SEC. 43201. ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY MODERNIZATION INITIATIVE, states: No State or political subdivision thereof may enforce any law or regulation regulating artificial intelligence models, artificial intelligence systems, or automated decision systems during the 10 year period beginning on the date of the enactment of this Act.

I have heard of its too late to lock the barn doors after the horse escapes, but to prohibit, for 10 years, anyone trying to lock the barn doors …

And yes, the rest of the analogy applies.

That horse escaped a long time ago.

So no matter really but what else will these bozos come up with to waste my time.