I am going back to school and I do not know what to do. The problem has to do with health insurance. They have very good health insurance at the school. I take the top tier insurance plan for the wife and I. When you have a lot to loose it pays to have good health insurance. You can loose everything in a flash if you do not. To a certain extent, I work for insurance.

The problem is the union says that the price of insurance is going to go up, except for those that are in the union. So do I join the union? I do not know the numbers yet, but I would guess that it would be cheaper to join the union. Why else would they do it. Union membership is down, this is one way to fix it.

I have always wanted a nice cushy union job. Yet my job is not cushy. I stopped wearing a watch long ago as they expected me to work twelve hour days. They would expect more and more from me. I always complied as I wanted my coworkers to be happy. Yet I found them to be elitist and uncaring. They were the smartest people in the room. I learned to be subservient.

Even worse, the people that are in the union are very unhappy. They is always think there is some sort of problem with the union. I just want to go to work and be happy. I do not see happy people in the union. It was not quite what I expected.

Let me take a Masonic view of unionism, which I have read is based on Buddhist roots, is that wages are based on results. If a group of laborers can build a better temple, or cathedral, they receive better wages. The outcome is the priests with the most money receive the best buildings. A simple example of free trade. Builders getting the best price for their work. Be a better builder, and you get more.

Most of my cars are union made. Are they better cars, I would like to think so. Yet some of my union friends do not drive union made cars. They prefer the cars of Japan and Korea. The reality today is most people in unions are in the public sector and service industry. Most union members do not build things, although some do. However the windmills in town were built by union workers. It could be argued that the building of the windmills was a government mandate. So they would also be government jobs.

The reality is that the people that actually build things are an underclass. Unions by their nature separate people into different groups. People that are in unions are better than people who are not. Government being the way it is causes people that are not in unions work for those that are.

So I will probably join the union. Might as well be the priest rather than the laborer.

So I am wondering what our next president will be like. I know Kamala Harris has made a few campaign speeches, so I found a clip from her Las Vegas event by CNN. She starts of with abortion should be a right, and she will make a law making abortions legal.

She then claimed Trump used the Supreme Court to make abortion illegal. She then went on to comment that Trump had passed some sort of law to make him a dictator. She warned that he would weaponize the Justice Department.

For me abortion is a non starter. It doesn’t effect my life. I have no opinion pro or con. I think there should be some sort of compromise in the middle someplace. What I watched was a 15 minute clip by CNN so I would assume they would present Kamala in a positive light.

I had read that Kamala was an aggressive prosecutor, something that was unusual in California. I am all for law and order, so that is not necessarily a bad thing. Yet I found it rather duplicitous when Kamala claimed Trump was going to weaponize the Justice Department. The Democrats have already done a fine job of that!

I do remember Kamala promoting a fund (Minnesota Freedom Fund) to bail out rioters before the election. Having already been a victim of political violence, I saw it as taking names and of those are OK with political violence and making friends of them. So the question is she “Hard on crime” or “OK with political violence as a legitimate tool”.

Trump is known to make up wild stories incriminating his rivals. He does this because that is they way politics works these days. I hope that most of us are above letting a person’s enemies define them. Let them speak for themselves. Unfortunately things like false news narratives(The Steele Dossier) or the burying of real news(Hunter laptop) are often the things that shape opinion. Trump has neither the wherewithal nor the talent to produce such propaganda. Kamala should be safe from his attacks for a majority of people.

To recap, Kamala is younger and she is a much better speaker than Joe Biden. She has the party, the media and so much more on her side. Importantly she can read a teleprompter. To me she was a much better speaker than Elizabeth Warren. Most importantly she is a fresh face in our political world of grumpy old politicians. I would be very surprised if she loses.

I am still trying to get my Golden Continental to idle. I did a couple more carburetor adjustments and went for a test drive. It ran fine when cold but when it warmed up it did a gentle backfire under load. I was planning on having the car inspected the next day. Well, I changed my mind.

I had put in new spark plugs a while ago, and I had noticed that the older plugs that I had pulled out were gapped tighter. The specks had said to set the gap at fifty thousands. The old plugs were gapped at forty five thousands. So I thought I would just reset the gap to forty five thousands and try again. Sometimes there are things that I just don’t understand.

When I removed the plugs to regap them I thought I would check the accuracy of the gauge. Turned out the spark plug gap gauge was reading five thousands too high. This is just a teachable moment. Double check your tools for accuracy. The old plugs and the new plugs were both gapped correctly. I had used a cheap tool and made good parts bad.

If I had simply put the new plugs in I would have been fine. But no, I had to over complicate the process and muck things up. It is hard to get things just right. In this case my plan backfired.

We will see how my next test drive goes.

I used to describe my father as a liberal’s liberal. A generous contributer to liberal causes and a devoted listener to NPR he always had the inside scoop on the Contoverse de jour. He subsisted on a diet of political mailings from the left along with his NPR. He did not watch TV.

Any point of view other than his own, he called “stupid”. As I considered myself a centrist I would occasionally point out the logic of an alternative point of view. He would not be happy about that and would go off on a tangential rant. I could see his blood pressure going up when he did that. As I cared about my father I learned to let him be happy in his beliefs.

I played some his political games, as he was my father. I would even say “I will put up signs if you get me a nice union job”. That would make him mad as he didn’t like unions. Back in his working days as a physicist the union would not do what he told them to do. Anyway he had a problem with unions. I thought that was odd as he was endorsing union approved candidates.

People historically do not like to have Catholics in the government. Yet unions are OK. I really do not see the difference between them. Back in my Teamster Union days Vinny and Guido ran everything. They were very Catholic. It’s all the same corporation.

So one day my dad asks “If you had the opportunity to kill Hitler, it would be the morally right thing to do”.I was a bit hesitant as I do not kill anyone. He went on to say that if the chance was there it would be the heroic thing to do.

The conversation devolved as he actually wanted me to shoot W Bush, the president. It would be morally justified heroism. Because I wasn’t specifically anti-gun, he thought I knew all about guns, and would have the ability to shoot someone. I suggested that he should not be thinking such thoughts, and we have the rule of law.

I think 999 out of a thousand people would have agreed with me. Yet there would be the one in a thousand that would agree. That is what the deep state is. Media bombardment advocating what is essentially violence. Democrat proxies were calling the opponents Hitler long before Trump.

My father died a unhappy person because he believed their propaganda. Beware, both sides use propaganda. Which candidate said “Don’t worry be Happy”?

There is a very good chance we will have a President Harris next year. This might be a good thing. The world leaders from my youth include Golda Meir, Indira Gandhi, and Margaret Thatcher. All strong powerful leaders. I really could not recall the names of men from the era. Then for something like forty years, no powerful female leaders. We are due for a change.

Women become leaders for different reasons. Look at the ladies I just mentioned. Their paths to leadership were all different. Joe could not go on when the assassin’s bullet missed Trump. Harris now has her chance.

I really do know a lot about Kamala Harris. I remember her telling a story about a child in a school bus. Also she was a prosecutor in California. Additionally she spent some time in the Senate. Most people that run for president have been either a senator or governor. That box has been checked. That first line in this paragraph was unintentional sarcasm.

Kamala is formally known as Vice President Harris. That is a really big box ticked. Even better, her party is the most powerful in the world. The job is hers. She would have to mess up quite badly to loose. After the convention she should be well ahead in the polls.

The media could mess it up for her though. They keep calling her black. I know I can be oblivious, but she does not look black. I know from personal experience the media can manipulation a person’s skin color. But this is a bit of a stretch. Then again, when it comes to politics, when does the media tell the truth?

What could go wrong? I have yet to see Harris give an inspirational Obama style speech. I view her as a sycophant. The same could be said of JD Vance. They are towing the party line till the rope runs out. The problem is all they know how to do is lie. Joe was quite elegant in his delivery of lies. When it came to normal thoughts, absolutely nobody was at home. He did have the support of three quarters of the media, until the debate. After that the only way to win was to take out the opposition. And they missed. Bye Joe.

Welcome Harris. Be brave. You are now the boss. I hope you will be a good boss, we have had plenty of bad bosses. Don’t be like Joe. Don’t hate your people. We should be equal citizens under the law. As a prosecutor, Please do not use lawfare, treat people equally. Earn people’s respect by being fair. Get better speech writers, research your facts. Maybe even build a fence. You can do that now.

Unfortunately these days the easiest way to pass scrutiny, is to not have a history. Vice President Harris is doing well in that department. As a final thought. When all the elderly leaders of the Soviet Empire passed away they ended up with Putin. Don’t be a Putin. Best of luck to you Kamala

I have composed a list of people that I believe are important. Or at least they are important to my world. I have added a few words to help identify the name. They are people that have transformed society.

George Washington Carver – feed the poor

Glenn Curtis – controlled flight

John Ericson – freedom of the sea

Lincoln Beachey – loop de loop

Henry Leyland – self starter

Eli Whitney – interchangeablity

Theoretically I would ask a 16 person class to break into groups of three. That would be three people for every person on the list. Of each group I would have one person write an essay about the subject person, another would do a power point, and a third person would rely on AI for their presentation.

The goal is to show how technology affects our society. If after choosing the subject person and multiple members of a group want to use the same manner of presentation, they would be allowed to swap with another member of a different group.

As the class progresses, students would be required to use different presentation methods.