Meaning of Putin's given name

From my decades old Russian text's my guess that Putin's given name Vladimir means conqueror of the world.

His problem is that the tilt of the Ukraine to the west is taking away his buffer from NATO.  And NATO was created as a buffer to the Soviet Union.

Ironically Zelensky's given name Volodymyr seems to me to mean the same thing.

Still here!

 I'd almost forgotten this blog.  It even took me awhile to find it.

If you know me, please let me know that you are reading this.

We have been in a senior apartment for almost two years.  Long ago I had regular coffee in a group that included three residents in the complex.  It is the only senior housing that I know of that is in walking distance of the university, of a public library, a post office, a super market, and more.

 One of the annoyances/amusement is a company that has made quite a few pages and touts them as great improvements for its customers.

Reading through the guide, I found lots of weasel works like "exciting new".  Why am I not excited?

 One, they made some changes that took away some things that I found convenient.

Two, they offered some alternatives with a certain logo but the alternatives did not have that logo.  Fortunately, the alternatives were in walking distance of the site I had been using.

I keep telling myself to send a letter to the executives enumerating what doesn't excite me.

If you are in Duluth, you may know the company.

Anybody here?

 There were a few peeks at this blog, but apparently not by anyone I know personally

Still here

 Here I sit in our apartment at Pines I.  Taking lots of long walks, reading online newspapers, and watching DVDs.

If you know me, please let me know that you are reading this.  If you do, I might just add some thoughts about the neighborhood, the local and national reactions to the pandemic, and all the various politics helpful and detrimental.

Hello, Loyal Readers

I'm still here, but so many newspapers to read.

One problem is that I can't find where I keep the URL for this page.

 If I don't get back online soon, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

Vote! If you don't vote will you get even worse candidates?

 I'm still here.  But I don't get to see much about the traffic here.  I just haven't figured out just what I have to reset.

 We have settled into senior housing after selling our house.  We are in a location where we can walk to almost all the places that we need to go. 

We have cast our 2020 ballots at city hall.  We were surprised that we had to wait, not long, but it sure beats standing in line on November 3.

We are also happy that we live in a state that honors vote integrity.  We can see this by the way parties keep switching around.  I would like to vote Republican, but I haven't seen any real Republicans since Arne Carlson replaced a child molester on the ballot for Governor.

See also Dave Durenburger's book When Republicans Were Progressive.

As for the title of this article: Hilary Clinton may have won the popular vote, but would she gotten the Electoral College vote if 90% or more had shone up?  The less than 70% vote was not worthy of a democracy.

If you are an American be sure to vote.  Sorry, you don't get to vote twice this year for not voting in 2016.

Masks and government

I find it amazing that so many people don't want to wear masks because they don't want "government" telling them what to do.  Can we assume that they don't want to stop for red lights or stop signs?  Government is telling them what to do to protect others from their actions, whether its stop signs, wearing seat belts, or wearing masks.

As part of Independence Day they should read the Declaration of Independence.  There are copies all over the web including at senate.gov.

One key point of the signers was "That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed..."

Of course, all the governed aren't going to agree to each point of the "just powers",

And your right not to wear a face mask ends where my nose begins (paraphrase of Supreme Court Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., a Republican, your right to move your fist ends where my nose begins).

Test of new format

I wonder how "exciting" this new format is.  I do know the print I type is small.  I can increase the size of what I see.

The future is not ours to see!

I am wondering if it is worth continuing this blog.  It does not get much traffic and Google is going to change the formats of blogs later this month.  I found the original format difficult to set up and as I haven't done any programing for years, I don't think I want to bother learning the new system.

Still around

I’ve been neglecting this blog for a variety of reasons.

For a long time it seems that all the readers were trolls from Russia or Italy.  Today the bulk of the readers were from the United States.

An indicator of usage seems to have stuck and wasn’t increasing at all.

I spent more of my time posting comments to articles on the New York Times, the Washington Post, and some times on the Star Tribune and Duluth News Tribune.  The Post is wide open, posts immediately, and rarely deletes a comment.  The Times reviews comments before posting them.  The Star Tribune and the Duluth News Tribune have much less space and might edit beyond all recognition.  I’ve just about given up on the Duluth News Tribune.

Maybe lots of my readers are “Trump weary” and get enough of him via TV and daily newspapers.

I’ll try to post a wider range of articles.  If you ore a relative or a friend, send me your thoughts.

Note to Rep. Pete Stauber (MN-8)

Are you for res publica or res donalda?

Res publica is Latin for public things.  I am all for a political party that puts the public before special interests. Sadly, I have seen few examples of Republicans who put the public before special interests.  Since 2016, I have seen few Republicans who put the public before the interests of Donald Trump.

I once was a Republican precinct finance chair.  I even was 3rd in fund raising of 13 precincts.  But Ronald Reagan’s nomination over John Anderson was a disappointment.  The only Republicans I was interested in after that were Bill Frenzel and Arne Carlson.

George Washington in his Farewell Address warned about factions.  I hope you will take the time to read his address.  You can find it on the Senate website (https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/resources/pdf/Washingtons_Farewell_Address.pdf).  You can also find the Constitution on the Senate website (https://www.senate.gov/reference/Index/Constitution.htm).  Please note that it calls for three equal  branches of government, not a government for the interests of the President.

Sent to Pete Stauber, Amy Klobuchar, Tina Smith 2019-12-04

School performance: are we asking the right questions?

Much ink has been spilled on school performance, but are we asking the right questions?

Most of it is directed to de facto segregation.  That is, schools with mostly minority students perform worse than schools with mostly white students.  But is that right question?

I think a better question is what is the balance of performers vs. disruptors.

I have been in public schools with majority white and I’ve been in schools with a big mix of students.  In both kinds of schools I have found performers of all kinds of backgrounds and disruptors of all kinds of backgrounds.  The success of the schools depends more on how the students and staff encourage the performers and minimize the impact of the disrupters.

If you move the performers to “better schools” will you deprive some of the remaining students of the “protection” and role models of the performers?

What happened to "law and order" Republicans?

If Republicans wonder why I vote for Democrats, the recent attack by a group of Republican representatives is one of the reasons.  It amazes me that members of the "Law and Order" party would stoop to vandalism in the House of Representatives.  Their protests were even more ridiculous because several Republicans were in the closed meeting.

See https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/23/us/politics/republicans-storm-trump-impeachment-hearing.html.

I would like to vote for Republicans, but only when they live up to their name: res publica (public things). Instead they seem to be working overtime to promote Redonaldcons.  I didn't care for Ronald Reagan, but Donald Trump certainly makes Reagan look like St. Ronnie!

Take back your mind

There are thousands of brain snatchers all over the web.  Some snatch your brain by putting other people down.  Some snatch your brain by getting you to act against your best interests.

You can take your mind back by staying away from social media.

Instead of getting your news from social media sites, read several online mainstream newspapers.  You can read many of them free, but you can support them by subscribing.  And you will find a variety of opinions in all of them.

I myself read the Duluth News Tribune, Star Tribune (Minneapolis-St. Paul), Washington Post, and New York Times.  I also listen to podcasts of God Morgon Världen, Science Magazine, and To The Best of Our Knowledge.

This blog entry was inspired by a library book that was displayed on a little stand at my eye level: TEN ARGUMENTS FOR DELETING YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA ACCOUNTS RIGHT NOW by Jaron Lanier.

Consider that the Russians didn’t interfere with our election.  It was far easier to interfere with the minds of people who get their news on social media.

And distrust anyone who rails against “lame stream media”.

Reagan’s words to today’s “conservatives”

Would Ronald Reagan admonish today’s so-called “conservatives” with “There you go again”?

I supported and voted for John Anderson in 1980 because I saw him as a real Republican who was concerned with “res publica” (public things).  Rather than have a laundry list of “ills of what was wrong” he concerned himself with balancing issues.

Unfortunately the Republican Party has devolved into a blame machine in which Democrats can do no right.

If the Republicans were real conservatives, wouldn’t they be all in favor of considering many ideas rather than be in lockstep on one set of ideas?

If they were real conservatives, wouldn’t they read the Constitution very carefully instead of corrupting it to fit their own ideas?

If they were real conservatives, wouldn’t they heed Washington’s advice in his farewell address to avoid factions?

Once upon a time the Senate was called the “greatest deliberative body in the world.  Now it has a Majority of one who obstructs any legislation that he doesn’t like.

Don't protest Trump! Boycott him!

The Star Tribune had an article today titled "Trump's rally in Minneapolis targets Democratic fortress" by Jessie Van Berkel.  I sent her an email suggesting that protesters stay away because he feeds on opposition.  I suggested that they hold alternative events all over the city with the closest no more than five blocks.

Like this little blog, this suggestion won't be acted on by many, if any.

Why bother?

In a galaxy far, far away, I started this blog with the hope of earning a few dollars every so often.

At first, most readers were from the U.S. and Canada.  Now I get dozens of visits from Russia or Italy.  These are probably trolls who are hoping I will click on their URLs which they hope will trap me into some nefarious scheme.

The few dollars never got to the level at which Google would send me a check.  With only a few dollars to go to that level, the meter stopped.  Then Google sent me an email that I hadn’t made certain changes or something or other.  I’ve long forgotten how to edit the site and really don’t want to figure out how to do it again.

If you’ve been a long time reader, I thank you.

Maybe I’ll post something else here now and then; maybe I won’t.  Che séra, séra!

New and improved??

I have been using computers for over 60 years, starting with a cards in/cards out IBM 650 to Univac mainframes to the earliest personal computer to “The Computer for the Rest of Us” (The Macintosh).  Look up the ad “Why 1984 will not be 1984”.

Unfortunately, 1984 arrived with Apple’s OS X.  Everything has changed from gradual changes to complete changes that make previous data unusable, requiring days and weeks to update.  Many of these changes are difficult to decipher or many hours to undo (like an update that moved giga-bytes of data to the cloud.

Now Yahoo! had done that with it Finance pages.

For years, I have kept a spreadsheet of weekly data for several stocks or mutual funds.  I had Yahoo! set up to give me closing prices every Friday.

I missed a week and when I tried to have Yahoo! give me my data, nothing happened.  i went to bed frustrated not knowing what had changed.

On Saturday, I figured out that I had to completely rebuild my list.  When I requested the list, I found out that it had the high and low prices but not the closing prices which is what I really wanted.

I went to Yahoo! help section and found out that I was not alone.  Many commenters were very upset about the changes.

Well, back to figuring out how to get the data I want.

https://yahoo.uservoice.com/forums/382977-finance/suggestions/38499625-think-your-changes-out-before-springing-them-on-us

Let’s run government like a business

For many decades, there have government critics who think government would be better if it were run like a business.  Be careful what you ask for; you might get it.

If government were run like a business, then the president (or governor) would be approved every year by the Senate.  This approval would be almost automatic every three years. The President would hold his position until he retires, quits, or is fired by the Senate.  If  the Senate fires him, there would be few if any hearings

The President would appoint new members to the board as previous members quit or die.

Every year, the voters would get to approve a third of the current members of the board.   They would have two choices: for or abstain.

Rather than have a variety of public services available to all citizens, there would be fees for every service.

You want to get mail, you would have to pay an annual fee or by piece each day.

You want to drive somewhere, you would have to pay an annual fee to each jurisdiction you drive in or pay a toll each time you drive in a certain jurisdiction.

You want to have a quick response if you have a medical emergency, a fire, or a robbery, you would have to pay an annual fee to each entity or pay before you get the help.

And on and on it goes to where we might have to put coins in our refrigerator to open it.

None of us really likes to pay taxes, but without taxes our lives would be chaos.  Supposedly, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. said, “I like taxes, they buy me civilization.”  And he was a Republican!!