And speaking about spoilers

So in this Democracy Now, interview,

Billion Dollar Mistake

there is a discussion and analysis of the 2016 election, as how
all that stuff shook out, to where we are now, and one element of
that is the " minor " party effects. This spoiler issue involved
a splitting of progressive efforts.

What I am suggesting is that this issue will be reduced by
having a non-partisan presidential election.   As I said before,
we are really not loosing that much, by implementing such a
system.  The question is if you would go to having two opponents
when there is already an incumbent. You could go both ways with that,
but you have to have  ,kind of, two major election in a row, so
advantages, but some disadvantages as well and that could just be
over kill.  But I'm sure there might be a clever way to a least
try and get the best of both worlds.  Perhaps the answer is to
always have 3 major candidates for all presidential elections.

I think this bipartisan election system would give minor party
candidates greater exposure as well as reducing or eliminating
a spoiler type effect in the final election process.

briefly, bi-partisan presidency search, party together

So a brief google search I fount this article:


partying together  2007

And stuff, more bipartisan president

Now I just discover the following correlation between liberal
and conservatives via which comic books they like:

liberal-or-conservative vs marval/dc-readers--1512365

In a perfect world, of course, nothing from the D.C. universe
is capable of penetrating the Marvel universe, most likely
on account of the large amount of dark matter which separates
them, or maybe it has something to do with the speed of
light in a vacuum?

But that is only a digression, I just want to make a few comments
about a bipartisan election of a president, which does make sense
to me.

First there needs to be local organizations with a desire to improve the
election of presidents, that I think would also be locally focused on
getting more people connected to the voting process.  These
organizations would have representatives from all local parties.

The area in terms of local would need to be large enough to
to have multi-parties.

Now if you look at the previous election of 2016,   essentially all
the candidates of all the parties,  mainly republican, democrat,
libertarian and green would all run together and be voted on
at each primary election, so that at the end you would have the
two most popular candidates running opposed to each other.

In this way, by the end, even though there would be a winner
take all final election,  by the end, the issue of republican
versus democrat would be greatly diminished and there would
also be necessarily a co-operation among parties at the
local level in-order to develop and support this kind of
a multi-party presidency.   But most important as the organization
which most directly supports the president, it would also
have a responsibility to ensure the efforts and tone of the president
would in fact in action be one of encouraging bi-partisan efforts
in the legislature.  So the president would make efforts to
bring the parties together from the top while the electorate
is working to bring the parties together at the bottom.

Now some would suggest that the gives the president in fact too
much power.....  Well, perhaps that is true but would also I
suggest limit the amount of mischievous or counter-productive
behaviors in which a president would effectively be able to
engage in.

Finally, I think this would also create a more secure process
for the selection of a U.S. president and even should logically
be less expensive.  I think it would also create a more positive
atmosphere in politics generally, and finally I believe, create
a social culture better able to serve  effective problem solving.

And Stuff, Something is going on here ....

So I just note this Washington Post Article,,,,

John McCain

What do I think?   Well, I think that this is a assertive message about
what needs to be done to move a more sensible and realistic
approach to helpful problem solving forward, at least in this country so
we can begin to succeed  with solutions to those over whelming
problems, issues and concerns which seems to overwhelm us today.

How should it be that these conversations become exclusive?  That
only certain people can be engaged,  when the way forward is
clearly to expand the conversations, dialogues, consultations  and
efforts to discover, the proper ways to proceed.  Because the road
forward must be a road of discovery.  These solution are unknown
to us, now, and solutions are usually not obvious or simple, but
the more insights we can entertain, will hopefully bring us closer
to genuine clarity and the brilliance of a future in which the best
interests of EVERYONE, is considered, and not that of some
particular group or unique segment alone.

And so if Mr. McCain was not a genuine American hero,
previously, I would suggest, he  may be one now.

But there is no question in my mind, that the people of this
country have a great deal to consider and many actions
to yet to undertake.

Meanwhile, I can only wish Mr. McCain my best wishes
 on his own personal journey of discovery.  The sun always
arises in the morning ....

And Stuff,The Nature of Democracy

And stuff ,,, is an expression I have come to use very extensively,
and loosely it would translate to: I'm not sure where this starts
and how it ends,  so who knows.

So to begin with, when I began this, I kind of suggested that
democracy is somewhat inaccessible, but really it is more than
just the idea being difficult.  There is a reference in this blog
to the idea, which is the relationship between the folks living
in the country, and those who live in the city, where this idea
of democracy or at least the word developed.

So, for example, you can use this term to belong to a category of
things, like political systems.  But that only takes us from a bit
vague, to a lot more vague.  So for now I will just include this
notion as a thing.  Democracy is a thing, okay.

Now,  the nature of things in general, is a thing, when actually observed
or considered would really be best described as a process really,
because the nature of things, common to all things, is they are mostly
or in fact all changing.  Even something like a proton is changing and
so it can be applied to all kinds of things.

So in the U.S., we are all of us the guardians of the process, and our
main concern must be what in what direction is the process
proceeding.  Is it evolving toward something better that it is
right now or is it devolving into something less.  How can we
accurately assess or determine that?

Well, I think it needs to be evaluated at the level of values or
attributes to which we can ascribe to it and so we ask are
these values reflected in the process being supported and
enhanced by the process.   You can see this is not an easy
thing to evaluated because first you need a list of these
values.   I can throw out one that is quite important for
everyone and that would be justice.  Is justice the value
being supported and enhanced by the process we are
encouraging and participating in?  There are certainly
others, but I am just throwing this out as something
we need to consider individually, but most probably
best to be considered collectively and cooperatively
as well.

There is certainly more to this kind of evaluation,
which includes, what are those institutions which
are responsible for this process we call democracy?

How do we break out those institutions?  For example, some
might be media, science, religion, medicine, business, education.
And finally now, who is really in charge here? I would say
it would be the individual, but beyond that the individual
is supported and re-informed and re-enforced by those
around him.  What is really important is that we come to
a place where  our engagement with the process and the
nature of our involvement becomes more important
really than what we somehow attempt to add it all up
to be.  In other words, what we all are doing and how
we are doing it becomes the arena of the highest
concern and the subject closest to our attentions.

So, I just need to add, that if we are not all somehow
connected to these processes in a genuine way, then
the conclusion would be, it is not really democracy
that is at the core.

More On, problem solving

So this is a youtube video of Dwight Eisenhower after JFK assassination:

Eisenhower Speaks About Murder of JFK (1963)

I was interested about his recommendation that the nation stand behind

the government ---- >>>> ( be united )

So he was facing the situation, like " we have a problem ",,, and how

do we respond,,,, we come together, we are united ... this is the source

of our strength in a difficult time.

My point is that in the arena of problem solving, having diverse

perspectives pays off.  Very rarely does a " first solutions " take,

because they are often issued as expediency, a stop gap measure,

only gradually do you reach the point of a more permanent and

complete solution.

So I suggest as I have throughout this blog that attempts to

reach solutions which involve very diverse opinions is a genuinely

good thing, and we should not limit ourselves to say a liberal

or conservative view point, nor should we presuppose one

perspective to be superior to another, because, we are facing

a situation in the moment, in the present, which might require

one or the other perspective and sometimes both.

But most important the diverse perspectives allow for the 

testing of potential solutions before the phase of implementation.

That testing would perhaps be only in the form of an idea, yet

the benefits of that idea may lead to a strategy to prevent

difficulties arising in the future.

Also,,,, it should be quite clear to most people that an analysis

is not the same as a solution.  An analysis speaks to the problem

of course, but may not and probably should not imply the solution.

 And it's not easy.  And it does require efforts.  And it is a difficult

and time consuming task, and in fact the preparation for that task,

in itself is difficult and requires varieties of skills which includes

clarity of thought and judgement and should involve the

best evidences and information available to assist in that process.

Sport, Politics, Big Numbers, Ruling and Service

As usual I don't know what other stuff might be but I'll just
throw it in there in case it comes up.

So first big numbers.  Now I'll just throw a few out there,
but of course billion is big, million is big, and 5 can be big.
You know sometimes you can feel bowled over by 1.

Now 7 or 8 billion is of course a big number, and it is hard
to imagine, but there are 7 billion people on earth and that
is hard to take in.  It is very hard to imagine what all those
people are doing, and it's even harder really to imagine
them all doing it at the same time, nevertheless that is the
way it is.   Of course you might wish to look at it anyway
you want but, that is what is going on, on our curious little
globe.

So, you will see that sport is very popular throughout the
world, physical education, and playing with one ball or
puck and when you play the game it's all about the one
ball, which makes sense and this very sensible idea of a
game, throwing and hitting the one ball, or grabbing and
running with that ball, or however it goes.  The one ball,
and the one guy with that one ball somehow will achieve
the victory.

Some how this idea of sport has been maintained and
encouraged greatly in our political thinking and life and
the sense of one ball, and one person who has that ball
achieving the victory.

The idea that we can achieve some victory together may
be a bit hard for us to imagine or visualize how somehow
that the game can be played in some kind of co-operative
or collective way, and that the victory might be somehow
a collective victory is hard to imagine.

It seems to me that this collective nature of our environment
is really important to consider and how co-operation can
be achieved and how success can be achieved collectively
is quite important to accomplish some of the very difficult
problems and issues that we face now.  It comes down to
this simple idea.  Can a group achieve a success that the
individual might find extremely hard or impossible to
achieve, and how the group can collectively deal with that
success.

Now there is an interesting notion to be considered here,
which is the notion about ruling or service.  The idea
is that if you have a lot of people these people have to
be managed or controlled.   Now I think the more important
idea is that people need education first.  And if everyone
can see clearly  possess the skills necessary to achieve
good collective results, then controlling becomes less of
an issue.  Key to this all is the idea of service which becomes
very important to this whole conversation and concept and
the role this plays in our interactions and behaviors.  And
it is not a static but evolving notion.  As we experience this
the horizon expands.

Simply this requires some effort to consider, but it seems
this issue is at the heart of the concepts that have
repeated themselves throughout this blog.

And Now, a word from our sponsor , Power

We have 30 seconds from our sponsor .....


So, we look around and what is this power/ ?

Well, we can see,

Wind Power,
Water Power,
Power of Light or Sun,
Power of Earth,

as well as

Physical Power
Emotion Power
Power, Light of Truth
Power of the Individual
Collective Power of People
Power of Unity,
Power of Mind ...

And many others ...

This might not relate quite so well to the rest of the blog,
but I wish to point out or express in my opinion,
that this power of mind is quite special, and worthy
to consider and worthy to consider what it might mean.

And consider this how it may be possible, and I believe
is possible for us to focus and concentrate this power,
in connection with this other power we can call,
Power of Unity,,,,

Now back to our regular broadcast ....

Happy Bastille Day

So I need to say a few things about Bastille Day, and for an Italian,
well, as you know the Italians  did not do so well...

Anyway, what Bastille day means to me, is, there is a mountain, and
the mountain is steep and difficult to climb, but you climb it anyway
not just because you can, but you really, really want to and almost
you really, really need to.

And that is what Bastille day means to me.  You know there is a
great challenge but you accept that challenge, because the result
is an achievement, and really,,,,,  how many of us, now wish to
achieve something?    And we know we should and we know we
must, but you know if we try to achieve this success together,
well then, how much better is that.

Now we must agree, this is what the people in France in the 1790's
were confronting, from what appeared to them to be necessity,
not desire.  This is what philosopher's refer to as Enlightenment,
but that is of course another story for another time.

So right now we must confront tyranny, in various forms, but I think
one great tyranny  we all face equally is the tyranny from within,
that makes us believe that we can not be more kind, more generous,
more understanding, a better friend, and ultimately wiser,,, and believing
that is a great oppression.  But certainly we can all at least imagine
freeing ourselves from that tyrant.  I believe that is true.

So we look at the mountain and we desire to reach that summit.

We should all aspire to reach that, and much better if we aspire
to reach that together.  We can imagine the benefits we might gain
and anyway how hard can that really be?

Happy Bastille Day Eve

Yes, tomorrow is Bastille Day maybe we should not forget.

Now following along with the idea of a bi-partisan presidential
election process, I ran into this link:

Unity08

It is interesting that thoughts and efforts in this direction have

already taken place,,

Now we have to talk about success and failure, but it seems

like a successful effort along these lines would begin

locally....

Anyway,,,, 

You can't have it all

Now going back to the tyranny of a two party system you have to(two) look
at the high level of turning our world into a binary reality of
one way or another.  We can either be wealthy or we can be poor.
It is not possible to be wealthy and poor at the same time ( is / are )
and example of the kinds of problems that are going on in our world.
While at the same time it's going on in me as I write this.

I can name more of course, but there is also a general thought about
co-operation, what that means for us to co-operate together.

That is why we have to reconfigure our process of consultative
behavior, simply the way we come together to discuss our
common issues.  That means the process has to be encouraged
at the top, and that means we have to demand that behavior
at the bottom.

So there is this big distinction between the sense of " individuality ",
the the collective sense but I suggest that both a strong sense
of identity is possible at the same time you can have a strong
sense of community, common connection, common cause,
and common purpose.


So I'll just leave you with a stark reminder about the real world.
Light is both a wave and a particle.  Just is.

What are you going to believe?

For a long time now, I have had the believe that the U.S. performed a
role as servant to the rest of the world.  I believe I learned this in school,
at home, in general, and also probably from T.V. and radio.

Maybe, I got it all wrong, maybe I just was always confused, but it's what
I thought, and at the heart of it I still think it could be or should be the
correct view of the ways things could, should, or might be.

If that is true, the the person that leads the U.S.,,,, if we call the President
the leader, really needs to be extra-ordinary,  maybe not so much in
himself but in the resources available to him, in the form of those human
resources which can support him in that mission.

Of course, as I said, maybe I have it all wrong, but if I am right,
then some of the ideas I have suggested should be considered, I
think ????

follow up on last post, what does that look like

Okay,,,,

at a local level the bipartisan caucus would meet a lest every 4 years
just like any party, and would sends delegates for suggestions recommendations
to state caucus and then to a regional caucus.  Regional delegates would be
selected for national caucus , and from that would be selected the national
list of presidential candidates, which would then run in primaries in each
state and the primaries end with two conventions and those would be the
two ( or I guess it could just as well be 3, but 2 or 3 conventions ) ....


Then the candidate from the two conventions would run in the national
election.   One would be selected.... Now if you were really crazy, you
could add the electoral college, but not sure why, since at this point we
most likely have a very tedious and boring political system,  but I'm
guessing we could still have balloons and buttons, which perhaps,
is what it's all about in the first place.

So I think it would be worth while, and you know it would be about
integrity in our national politics. Integrity, security, all that stuff. It
the process of building such a system you would probably want it
to be a hack free as possible, which means, most likely, hand counted
ballots,,,, who I know counting ballots by hand ,,,, hard job,,,,,
Not sure at all about this details, but certainly if some one is smart
enough to hack it, we all should be smart enough to know how to
avoid the problem......

Now of course there is one great problem, dems have blue, pubs
have red,,,,, what color would bi-partisan be ???????????
Orange ???,,,, pineapple,,, is pineapple a color ????

Some Proposal, or maybe just an idea

Now let us imagine a non-partisan president, elected through a non-partisan caucus,
to which people could belong and they could be either democrat or republican or anything
else.  In addition people who run for office could also run in this party, but it's
primary job would be to elect the president.  So imagine a democratic senator, who
wished to be president would sign up to become president with the non-partisan caucus.
Likewise a republican governor who wanted to be president would likewise sign-up/
register or really it could be anybody or someone, just registered with the non-partisan
caucus. we could call it the npc, cpn, pnc, or something else.



Now,,,,,,   one of the chief jobs of the president would then be to " encourage ",,,,
ideally in a positive manner, a general non-partisan approach to problem
solving in the congress.  He would have to be something like a coach.

Also,  considering the level of tech we have these days, such a system
could be analysed to determine it's performance as it might be compared
to our current system of election.

Two party system

So I just found this wikipedia article:

Two-party_system


And several interesting quotes from that:

Herein lies the central tension of the two–party doctrine. It identifies popular sovereignty with choice, and then limits choice to one party or the other. If there is any truth to Schattschneider's analogy between elections and markets, America's faith in the two–party system begs the following question: Why do voters accept as the ultimate in political freedom a binary option they would surely protest as consumers? ... This is the tyranny of the two–party system, the construct that persuades United States citizens to accept two–party contests as a condition of electoral democracy.

— Lisa Jane Disch, 2002^[36]

and

 Political analyst A. G. Roderick, writing in his book Two Tyrants, argued that the two American parties, the Republicans and Democrats, are highly unpopular in 2015, and are not part of the political framework of state governments, and do not represent 47% of the electorate who identify themselves as "independents".^[40] He makes a case that the American president should be elected on a non-partisan basis,^[41][40][42

Thinking about thinking , some more

How many thoughts do we think in some period like 60 minutes ?

Neurologist should know something about this.

But I think anyone could guess a number like 1 or 10 or
200.

Now it might also be clear to understand that the most common
thoughts are probably non-verbal and require generally a certain
kind of focus and concentration.  For example tying a shoe
is a very good example of probably mostly non-verbal thought
but considerable focus.

We also might have verbal thoughts, which would be connected
to things that we often have verbal communications with someone
else about, like " I think I will go to .... ",

But clearly billions and billions of thoughts are happening at
any given moment.

Now,,,, as we see then to achieve effective collective action
requires a process by which these thoughts should
become harmonized, and the point of that harmonization,
the process of making smooth and balanced,  we can
see reflected in the natures of actions you make as an
individual at any given time.

 From the previous post you can relate
the concept of transformation and thinking

This balancing and harmonizing of thoughts must clearly
come at a cost. So then, how much, are you willing to pay?

States and Transformations

Now this refers back to this post: interplanetaryhome 2016/11/ unique-states

So I am not talking about states like nations, in particulars, but the idea of
states references a lot of phenomena.  Almost everything can be connected
or related to the idea of states and state transformations.

In the above link, I marvel at the notions of human states, individual human
being transforming in motion, and the image of that.  And from this prospective,
The Undivided Universe you see what a fantastic image it really is. So many
states and so many transformation it overwhelms the mind.

At the beginning of this blog I kind of imaged that by periodically changing the
somewhat imaginary states of conservative to liberal on a local level,
our political process could in some ways be resuscitated.  I'm not really
convinced it would work out all that well, but when you imagine
on a planetary level, the state changes happening all in time, in human
beings and also in those factors which affect the human condition,
just think how arbitrary those notions really appear.  It perhaps can
be amusing to consider ourselves attached to such limited notions,
but really, just think of all the states and all the transformations.

So I was going to get back to that notion of thinking which is
very closely related to the notion mentioned above and in
particular with that notion of transformation.  I will endeavor to
get back to that notion, soon.