Lament of the Messiah

Lament of the Witness I

My youthful indescretions haunt me.

In the eyes of my children

and in their own mistakes.

 

How can I communicate what I have learned?

unless I somehow can communicate this;

In my aching bones, I am reminded

Of Youthful stupidities.

I thought I was indestructible.

And My elder stupidities hurt even more.

I have lied

I have run away from what I feared.

And now I pay.

And now I pray.

And now I ask:

 

Said I:

Why do you call me, to meet you?

At this same place I tarry

Pointing out a path

You and I might have taken sooner?

Then you send me a human messenger

Quoting old and dusty tomes

Written by mere men.

 

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Status for November 21 2018

Status Thanksgiving 2018

It is hard to keep up with everything happening. I gave up trying to report on all of it. Instead I'm focusing on the most important things to me, things I noticed, or reactions I want to share. I'm writing this on the MARC train. The internet sucks and there are no plugins, so my time is limited. The nice thing is that I can see the towpath from the vehicle. It is almost winter and the leaves already fall. So the view includes the potomac through the trees.The Potomac is high and muddy. Looks almost more like the Mississipi as I remember it than the Potomac I'm used to. Normally the water is boiling and swirling over rapids here. But it looks tranquil right now. The Sun only recently came up. I can hear snips of conversation from commuters. To me this is very peaceful. I never expected my legs to give out the way they did. One of the things I loved the most was walking. Never was good at running. But I could walk for miles. Now it hurts to walk half a mile. So I don't go to DC as much as I planned to when I moved to Brunswick. I'm only 63 years old. Maybe this will improve. Passing point of Rocks. Went under the Bridge that marks route 15.

I should have given you permission to skip this post. But indulge me please

I'm calling Trump Trumptater from now on:

Just for Fun -- How would I do Mars

How would I do Mars? I'd start by setting up a support system for humans. We've done a lot. We need to do more surveying and to put into place an infrastructure for communications and information.

Step One

Need to pre-position:

• GPS, Weather, Ground imaging and communications satellites. Put 8 in Polar orbit and 8 in Mars-Synchroneous equitorial orbit; minimum. That would cover the entire surface.
• Also satellites have to be in orbit that image our Sun and with Earth. These can be part of the ground imaging satellites.
• We need supplies in orbit. Including vessels for emergency return to Earth. The first landers sent to Mars should be empty and sit in orbit.
• We need to pre-position enough equipment, gear, vehicles and supplies so that they will already be there when humans arrive.
• Continue exploration

Drones to explore and hunt for lava tubes, resources, and map out landing sites and mineral resources.

Including flying explorers, tunnel exploring unmanned vehicles, etc...

First Milestone

No humans until shelter, water supplies and minerals are mapped out.

Step Two

• Pre-Position habitat, energy production, and similar resources near the best located site for a human settlement. A mix of equipment in kit format that can be assembled by humans and equipment assembled by robots.
• Send Robots to assemble what is needed
• Assemble, power, energy, water, fuel storage and generation abilities.

Including solar panels, cleaning robots, fuel cells, wind mills and the like.

• Stockpile backup parts and backups to the backups.
• Continue exploration, including new drones.
• Run power, communications between the assets
• Prepare a landing site.
• Lay guidance and communications assets at each site.
• If tunnels available, put assets in the tunnels. Bury what can be buried.

Second Milestone

Go/No go based on whether enough supplies are pre-positioned for Marsnauts to use and live on.

Now you can send humans.

Daydreaming.

Garcia Lorca and Charlie Chaplin

Naturally, As soon as I finished my post “The Death of Garcia Lorca”, I'm lying in bed and I start thinking:

“Hoover!”, “Garcia Lorca!”, “Emma Goldman!”, “Red Scares!”

Garcia Lorca should have lived a long and productive life had he not been shot down in a fusilade of bullets along with other "rebels" in 1936.” There are real parallels.

Darn! I'm not done. Oh no! Oh My! “Charlie Chaplin was in many ways our Garcia Lorca!”

The Death of Garcia Lorca

This post follows where I wrote in the post: “The Life of Garcia Lorca and Fascist Spain.”

Garcia Lorca, knew with a massive dread that his days were probably numbered. Yet he soldiered on in his project to improve the live of Spaniards and Spanish people in general.

Trump Escalates -- Trump is not Above the law

We won the house. That means our Democracy is not yet dead. But it is still endangered as illustrated by what Donald Trump did yesterday.

Improving Scrutiny - Lessons from Trump and Kavanaugh Part I

Without Scrutiny Any System Fails

The Athenians were driven to put the vetting job into jury functions or ruling councils by experiences with demagogues or military rule. The difficulty of controlling officers was such that Athenian born philosophers came to be somewhat cynical about the prospects for survival of Democracy. But the lesson of history, including recent history, is that without formal vetting and accounting, monarchy, dictatorship, oligarchy and plutocracy all degenerate into tyranny, kakacracy (rule by the worst) and kleptocracy (rule by thieves); and resulting violence, inequity, & misery. There really is no good alternative to creating a system of scrutiny that has integrity.

Vital to our Survival as a Nation and a World are:

Separation of Powers

Scrutiny involving:

1. Free Press
2. Legislative Oversight
3. Executive Oversight
4. Judicial Oversight/Jury Forms
5. Scientific Scrutiny
6. Establishing Measures
7. Holding officers to account by those measures

Last day til tomorrow

Tomorrow is the midterm election. Both Maryland and National Republicans are transparently lying with claims that they'll be "bi-partisan" and moderate. Kathy Afzali is running ads attacking David Trone as an insider, bashing County Executive Gardner for the over-growth in the county and pretending that she's not an insider. The whole party is running a campaign of blatant lying. Trump and his Trumpers country-wide are suddenly for the ACA they spent the past 8 years trying to end and claiming they are for protecting people against Insurance Companies messing people up over pre-existing conditions, blatant lies. I'm writing on this on the website "The Brunswick Democrat" but I'm worried. This sort of lying works. It is known as the Big Lie. Trump practices it. He learned it from a long series of dictators and demagogues.

Will they succeed?

Please Vote

The Death of José Antonio Primo De Rivera

One reason I started latching onto José Antonio Primo De Rivera and Federico Garcia Lorca, is that after fascism fails in a country, no one usually will admit they ever were fascist. That is not so much the case with José Antonio Primo De Rivera. To Spanish speaking Fascists, Primo de Rivera is still a hero. Why? Because he too died at the outset of the Spanish Civil war. General Francisco Franco made Primo De Rivera a hero, and thus he became enshrined in Catholic, Falange, Fascism ever more, as a hero. He was no hero. Spanish Fascism didn't originate with Primo De Rivera it originated as much with his father and King Alfonso.

Lessons Learned

There are three main lessons to be learned from Rivera, his life, and his death:

1. General Fancisco Franco was doing what Fascists do; creating myths.
2. Killing the leader of a totalitarian group does not stop the movement.
3. Fascists turn scoundrels into heroes.