Predictions Regarding Trump

I have mentioned several times in the past few months a couple of things that I think President Trump will attempt. I have not written them down, however, or published them in any way. And one of them appears to be coming true. I saw a news headline this morning saying that President Trump is trying to get the November 2020 elections postponed. On the CNN website this morning, the headline reads, "Trump floats delaying election despite lack of authority to do so" (www.cnn.com).

My predictions have been focused on the fact that President Trump wants to stay in power. It has long been reported that he seems to have great respect for leaders like Vladimir Putin (Russia) and Kim John-un (North Korea). Why? My suspicion is that it is due to the fact that they are in positions of power that they will not lose. Trump wants to be a dictator. He wants to stay in power indefinitely.

And my first prediction, which I formulated shortly after the massive scope of the COVID-19 pandemic became clear, was that this would be an excuse for him to try to postpone the November 2020 election and stay in power, until "safe elections" could be conducted. He has now floated the idea.

This is, admittedly, not the first I have heard of this idea. Three months ago, LegalEagle's Real Law Review on YouTube published an episode called, "Can the President Cancel the Election & What Would Happen?" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQLbNekBU1A). The point of the information shared on this episode is that even if the election were cancelled, the president's term ends on January 20, 2021 ... and the provisions of the Constitution related to filling a vacated presidency would be activated. I did not see this episode until sometime earlier this month, but obviously other people had the same "prediction" as myself as to the fact that President Trump will attempt to postpone--or even cancel--the November 2020 elections.

So ... before I miss my opportunity to do so ... let me state my second prediction. I am putting this in writing on 30 July 2020. If Trump wins re-election in 2020, my prediction is that he will work to repeal the Twenty-Second Amendment to the United States Constitution, which places a two-term limit on the presidency.

Of course, it may be that he attempts to alter the Constitution in other ways, but this would be the easiest way to do so, in my opinion. A bit more broadly, though, my prediction is that President Trump will seek--through alterations to the U. S. Constitution or its Amendments--to stay in power beyond two terms of office.

I am not in favor of this, of course. I am not endorsing or condoning such efforts, should President Trump seek to do these things. The truth is that I wish we had a different Republican candidate for the 2020 election. But I have put my prediction in writing. Trump wants to stay in power. He will do so, first, by attempting to delay or cancel the 2020 elections, declaring that he should remain in power until elections are held. Additionally, he will attempt to alter the constitutional term limit on the presidency to remain in power beyond that.

The Real Legacy of Joe Paterno

This morning, the NCAA sanctions regarding Penn State University were announced in the wake of the Jerry Sandusky scandal.  Those penalties were severe:  $60 million in fines, no post-season appearances for four years, reduced scholarships for four years, and all of the wins since 1998 vacated.  There are plenty of critics, who suggest that the NCAA has overstepped.

In my mind, this represents a signal ruling for our culture.  It represents a swing of the ethical pendulum … in a positive direction.

We have all heard of the “good old boy” networks.  Perhaps we have seen them portrayed on television or on the big screen.  Maybe we’ve experienced them firsthand … positively or negatively.  It was business-as-usual, and (in the worst cases) it became de rigueur.  Things were swept under the proverbial rug, winks were traded, and the prevailing expectation was that nothing was amiss as long as it was not blatant.

More recently – and I’m thinking of the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal – media scrutiny has led unethical leaders to embarrassing confessions.  The person’s character was called into question … doubts surfaced as to whether it may have affected other areas of their lives … but, in the end, the major effect was to provide fodder for comedians.

The NCAA sanctions announced today tell a different story.  They tell us that a flawed character and a good-old-boy mentality cannot be overlooked.  We should not praise a person for their accomplishments in one area of their lives when we discover other areas which hide filth and corruption.  Bad people are not worthy of praise … regardless of what they have “accomplished” in other areas.  Character counts.

Again, there will be many critics of the decision.  I see a glimmer of hope, as the sanctions tell us that the ethical pendulum has returned to a serious consideration of the value of the person behind the deeds.  This may be one of the few positives to spill out of a tragic scandal … but it is clearly a positive direction for our culture.

Smart Phones and Routines

I haven't posted here in about a week.  The reason is because my routine has been thrown off.

As you may have noticed, if you've been reading my posts, a lot of my news comes from Yahoo! sources.  And that started because of a pattern I adopted while checking email accounts.  I have an account with mail.com, and I would check it.  There are a few news links on the sign-in page there.  The I would go to the my.yahoo page, to check my Yahoo! email.  And the news feed on Yahoo! was better (in my opinion).  So it came to be that I would get my "news update" from Yahoo each evening.

This continued, even after switching almost all of my email to GMail.  I continued to check my mail.com account, then go to Yahoo! ... not to check email, but simply to get the news.  Most days, I would not even log in on the Yahoo! site, but would simply scroll through their news feed.

A week or so ago, I discovered a mail.com app for my smart phone.  I was checking for a particular email that I was hoping would come through, and the app made sense -- because I could check the account on my phone without having to go through the web browser.  So I installed that app, and I've been getting all of my email messages on my phone.

And that has disrupted my routine.  I would check email, go to Yahoo! for news, and find something to write about in the process.  Now I'm getting email on my phone, and sometimes I never even make it to Yahoo! for the news feed -- because checking email was the "trigger" that led me to the news items.

I have heard that mobile technology is where everyone is going ... that there will be fewer desktop computers and far more tablets, notebooks, and other portable devices.  There are enough things that I do (and need to do) on a desktop or laptop unit that it is hard for me to envision the change.  And yet, perhaps I just had my first taste of it.  With the smart phone getting all of my mail, it has disrupted my routine and changed how I do things.

It's subtle.  It's a small thing.  But my routine has changed, and it has done so because of a phone app.  Once we have an app for that, we change.

Optimizing Bureaucracy

I think I've mentioned that I've been driving my current vehicle for over fifteen years.  That was the last time I bought a vehicle from another individual.

A couple of days ago, I traveled three hours to see a vehicle I had found online.  I liked it, and the seller and I agreed on a price ... so I bought it.  We read the back of the title, filled in all the blanks, and he gave it to me with the keys.

Today, I went to the motor vehicle department to pay the taxes and apply for a new title.  There I discovered that there was information at the top of the title which I hadn't read.  There is another form which has to be filled out.  It contains basically the same information on the title itself ... with an added section where the sales price is recorded.  But I cannot register the vehicle without this form being completed.  And the seller lives three hours away.

I read an article a couple of years ago about the rules changing on how tax is collected on a motor vehicle sale.  Apparently, the state realized that most people report a lower-than-actual sales price when it comes time to pay tax.  This form is supposed to help combat that.  It is no longer a matter of verbally telling the clerk what was paid.  Instead, both the buyer and seller have to sign a document where they state the price of the sale.

And so it is that cheaters cause increased bureaucracy.  That is true in most things, I suppose.  If everyone followed the rules, we could all enjoy significantly less time and expense involved in red tape.  A lot of our tax money goes to pay people whose primary task it is to enforce the rules – knowing that a large number of people will violate the rules if there is no enforcement.

Rule utilitarians suggest that we should find the optimal set of moral rules.  The "optimal" set of rules must take into consideration the likelihood of people actually accepting and following these rules, of course; the cost of enforcement has to be considered in determining whether a better set of rules exists.

When I look at real-world bureaucracy, I wonder whether that goal is achievable.  After all, as the adage goes, rules are made to be broken.  In order to have a greater likelihood of adherence, the standards have to be lowered; the higher the standards are raised, to greater the cost of enforcement.  I'm not at all sure where the happy medium is to be found in such a situation.

Motivating a Teenager

I asked my son to work in the storage building today, while I was at work.  I explained, in very clear terms, that we needed to move stuff from the garage to the storage building, so he needed to re-arrange what was already in the building to create room.  I even gave him a good idea of what we'd be moving, so he knew how much space was needed.

When I arrived home, I asked him how much he'd gotten done.  "Well, I didn't see that much that could be moved."  Oh really?!?  So I put on some old clothes and went out with him.  As soon as we opened the door, I asked him what he saw, as far as space.  "There's some room on that shelf, and there's an open spot over there, and ..." ... and he correctly identified five or six spaces into which things could be moved to create space.

Which tells me that he isn't blind.  He just didn't want to do it.  He could clearly see where things could be moved -- but he had no desire to move them by himself.

I (sort of) remember being that age.  Did my Dad get this exasperated with me?  I think I did what I was asked to do.  And since I did (or I think that I did), I'm not quite sure how to motivate my son, who seems to have no inclination to do these things on his own.  I've tried tying his allowance to her performance of chores and tasks around the house.  He goes a couple of weeks without an allowance, complains about having no money, and things are still left undone.

Obviously, I'm not gifted at motivating a 15-year-old.  If anyone knows where the magic elixir is, pass me a bottle, if you would.

Vehicles I've Owned

I'm in the market for a vehicle … my current ride is getting old and the repairs are becoming frequent enough (and expensive enough) that it's time to find something different.  Notice that I didn't say "something new," because I can't afford a new car right now.  I might be able to swing the payments … but the insurance would eat me alive.

I got to thinking about the cars I've owned.  I've been driving for about 35 years now (yes, I'm giving away my age).  I've had seven "primary vehicles" in that time, unless I've overlooked one.  I've owned another three vehicles … at one time I had two vehicles, and I've owned two that were my wife's car.  (The rest of the time, she has driven one of her parents' cars.)

My first car was a 1967 Pontiac Bonneville.  I learned a lot about cars with that one, and it's one of two vehicles on which I broke even.  My older brother, who is two years older than me, got it when he was sixteen.  Two years later, he was ready to trade it in on a new vehicle as he left for college; the dealership was going to give him $100 for it, so I paid him $100 and assumed ownership.  Two years later, I sold it for $100.

The other car on which I broke even was a Chevrolet Caprice; I don't remember what year model it was.  The fellow I bought it from had driven a lot of highway miles, so the price was lowered because of the high mileage.  I lived six blocks from work, five blocks from the grocery store, three blocks from the Laundromat – and seldom went anywhere else.  I drove the car for a couple of years, at which time it was considered a low-mileage vehicle.  I sold it for about the same amount I'd paid for it, two years previously.

I've forgotten the year models on almost all of these, but my other primary vehicles have been a Chevrolet Monte Carlo (which I only owned for about five months), a Buick Electra, a Toyota Corolla, a Ford van, an Oldsmobile 98 Regency, and a 1995 Ford Ranger (my current vehicle).  We had a 1997 Chevrolet Cavalier for my wife, and a 2000 Buick Century was the second vehicle we bought for her to drive.

I've only bought one car brand new … the Cavalier.  Everything else has been used.  And just about all of them were driven for quite a few years before I got rid of them.  After all, I bought my Ranger in 1997 when it had 13,000 miles on it; I've had it for 15 years, and it has 188,000 miles on it.  That has become my pattern … buy something used and drive it a long time.

Hopefully I'll find a good replacement in the next few weeks.  I hope to find something with low mileage ... and drive it for a number of years to come.

Being Dedicated to Health

It is difficult to be dedicated to a healthy lifestyle.  At least it is for me.  I've heard that gym memberships are cyclical -- with memberships rising around the first of the year (New Years' resolutions) and at the start of summer (swimsuit season) ... and tapering off between.  So maybe it isn't just me.

Years ago, I was working at a place where there were three other men I worked with.  I'm 5'11" and I probably weighed about 170 at the time.  One of the guys I was working with weighed about 275 ... another was around 220 ... and the third was a 6'4" beanpole.  In that group, I was the little guy.

In my current position, I work regularly in a group with seven other guys.  All but one are slim and trim; the other outweighs me by a good amount.  So, in this group, I am the second heaviest.  Yes, I've gained some weight.  But whether I feel overweight, or recognize that I need to lose some weight, largely depends on who I'm being compared to ... and who I find myself surrounded by.

Yet, even as I realize I need to lose weight, it is hard to commit to the changes that will make it happen.  I spend a lot of time sitting behind a computer.  I drink a type of coffee that is flavored, and I've drank Dr. Pepper since I was in high school.  I know that just changing those three things would make a difference -- eliminating the "empty calories" and getting more exercise.

The truth is that, while I've been overweight for the past few years, I've never really tried to diet.  Yes, I have sporadically watched what I eat a little better, and I've increased my exercise at various times.  But I have never really, seriously tried to diet.   Even with what little I've done, I can attest to the fact that it's hard to do.

I recently got a book for my Kindle called "The Sugar Divorce:  Fitness Over Fifty."  According to the blurb, the book explains how sugar affects insulin ... which determines whether the body is storing fat or burning it.  And when we start looking at complex carbohydrates ... which are complex sugars ... like bread and pasta ... it only gets worse for me.  I absolutely love Italian food, and bread is one of the best things about nearly every meal.

Apparently, the book also dovetails with a 4-hour body diet plan -- which I have not yet heard about.  I'm going to give the book a read and see what I can learn.  Maybe I'll find the motivation to make some changes which will be lasting.