I tried again

I wrote this to my Congressman. Ben Cline, 5th district representative to the United States congress: I have noticed that you rarely invoke Donald Trump’s name. You seem to support all of his policies but seem to think that you are insulated from his crude, immature, erratic, immoral, and illegal behavior. I believe that as you continue to support him and his policies, you are obligated to your constituents to comment on his behavior and justify your continued support. Specifically, I am referring to his shockingly boorish, racist, and childish post on Truth Social of the Obamas depicted as apes: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2026/feb/06/trump-barack-obama-michelle-truth-social-epstein-latest-news-updates We deserve to hear your justification for not addressing behavior like his childish AI generated videos and why it is to the benefit of your constituents to accept Donald Trump as a legitimate president considering his lack of judgement, maturity, and fitness of mind. Please make an announcement as to why you believe that he is fit to be president of the United States of America, and how you believe that this honorably represents your constituents? I got the "perfect" response. His staff addressed not one of my questions or comments thereby proving the point I made in my first and second sentences. See below: *********** Dear Mr. Bolgiano, Thank you for contacting my office regarding political speech and rhetoric. I appreciate hearing from you on this important matter. As you know, free speech in America is enshrined in our Constitution and forms the foundation of our government and society. All Americans have the right to express themselves and their viewpoints free from governmental interference or persecution. All voices contribute in a constitutional republic, and a healthy diversity of thought strengthens public discussion and can lead to sound policymaking. Since coming to Congress in 2019, I have also introduced or co-led nine pieces of legislation that have become law and are all bipartisan. I was the first Freshman Republican lawmaker to have a bill signed into law during the Democrat-led 116th Congress. In the 119th Congress I have introduced ten pieces of bipartisan legislation that are currently awaiting action on the House Floor. As a member of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus, I work actively to address issues aimed at helping my constituents, from higher education to domestic violence prevention. Public engagement remains essential to the strength of our communities. I encourage my constituents to get involved in any way they can, whether that be volunteering in their communities, voicing opinions in discussions with friends or neighbors, or taking the time to educate themselves on issues that are the most important to them and their communities. Thank you again for contacting my office on this important topic. Please do not hesitate to contact me if I can be of further assistance. To receive the latest updates from my office, I encourage you to sign up for my e-newsletter at cline.house.gov, like/follow my Facebook, X, and Instagram. Sincerely,

One Man's Junk

We’ve lived here for a long time and we’ve got lots of room ,so many things accumulated through the years. I’m a bit of a packrat and a tinkerer (I call it niggling) so I’ve always seen possible uses of things that some people would throw away. I don’t laugh at those Appalachian yards with old cars among the weeds. Sometimes, parts can turn out to be quite an advantage. Years ago, when I was remodeling an old house, I had to remove a “farmer’s sink” from the kitchen. A farmer’s sink is a place to wash one’s hands after coming in from the fields for dinner (dinner, being in farm country, the big midday meal). No need to go into the bathroom or tromp around the lunch table in your dirty field clothes. It was a small sink near the door of the kitchen where you could wash your dirty hands… nothing more, nothing less. It was plumbed in with old pipe, circa 1930. It was fused into place. Without tearing a big messy hole in the plaster and lath horsehair wall in order to get a big wrench on the joint, I had to disconnect the drainpipe from the underside. You’d need a special plumbing tool to secure or turn the pipe; that would have been an expensive one-time-use tool. I ended up fashioning a tool out of galvanized pipe with a hacksaw. Old pipe left over from jobs done years ago; the kind of pipe that the lady of the house would say, “throw that old trash away.” My homemade tool worked. That was in our 1870 farmhouse in 1976. We moved to our self-constructed house in 1984. I brought that homemade tool with me and stashed it underneath our also homemade outbuilding. Around about 2006, our friends, were building a home near here and moving out of a circa 1900s house in Silver Spring; they needed to remove a “farmers’ sink” from their basement… and it was stuck. AHA! I was able to reach under my outbuilding and retrieve former piece of pipe trash. I have a photo of me “passing the pipe” on to my friend. The tool worked perfectly (damn! I wish I still that that thing). But of course, the overall result is that for every homemade “pipe tool” story there are about hundred “I’ll just hang on to this thingy”, maybe a thousand times, that results in a lot of stuff lying around. You should see my shop. No, no you shouldn’t. I have a hopeless task ahead of me. Likely, someone else will be throwing things into a dumpster and thinking: “This old fool was a nutjob.” In a related vein, I will write about all the 200 or so boards that are 60% too long, wide, or deep, 02% too small, too piney, too walnut, too nice oak, too knotted, too good, too thin, too thick, too plywoody, a little split, not good enough…. (I remember this board; it came from Uncle Fred….) “I can’t use THIS board!" That has resulted in me having a problem. See pic.

You can save a few birds

Many of us have had a bird smack into a window in our homes and seen the bird stunned on our decks or the ground. If it’s very cold out, the bird may die of hypothermia in only a short time. I’ve constructed “bird rescue boxes and given them away to friends. Mine are insulated and made of wood that’s heavy enough that the wind won’t blow them around. You can easily make one that works almost as good from a shoe box, it’s just the right size for songbirds. The box helps to keep them warm and allows them to recover their senses free of the urge to fly off before they are recovered. Oh, we also have strips and dots on our windows (and the fixed windows are tilted out at the top to reduce the amount of reflected sky a bird sees). The population of our eastern songbirds has fallen significantly in the last few years. Every little bit helps.

Bump

“Bump”, said the 10-year-old boy as the ’55 Chevy station wagon rolled down the highway at 55 miles per hour. The car went “bump” a half second later. “Bump” said the boy as another dark patch appeared on the highway on the road to the beach where everything was wonderful. The car went “bump” and the trailer went “bump” a half second later. "bump bump" “Bump” said the 10-year-old boy when he could see from the backseat that there was another black patch on the pavement just ahead, because it was obvious. “Bump bump” said the car and trailer a half second later. “Bump” said the 10-year-old boy because he could see that every bump on the highway jerked another drop of black oil off of the bottom of the thousands of trucks and cars that drove this highway. Each drop a black stain on the pavement. He stopped saying; “bump” because no one was noticing.

“Bump” said the 11-year-old boy the next year as his friends’ dad and four children, one friend each, rode down the highway to the beach where everything was wonderful. A bump lifted the car and half second later “Bump”, said the boy to himself. The same group drove on the same highway to the same beach where he would not see a single black person. “Bump” said the boy one or two more times when he saw the black spots. Didn’t anyone else see? “Bump” said the 12-year-old boy to himself as his sixth-grade class learned about the Civil War from the perspective of Jim Crow America; and this was the state of Maryland, not Mississippi. “Bump” he said to himself as his class “celebrated” the Centennial of the Civil War and over one half of his classmates chose the South in a mock debate. Why say anything aloud if people can’t even hear it? “Bump” said the 16-year-old boy as the first black students were admitted to his high school; two girls and one boy. “Bump, Bump, Bump!” said the boy to himself as he realized that those three students were all high achievers (even though the white students didn’t seem to notice and the jocks made a "pet" of Vernon). And certainly the faculty and principal never said anything. Maybe they couldn’t see anything. Maybe they couldn’t say anything in a high school just 10 miles west of Cecil County, cradle of the Maryland KKK. Maybe they said it to themselves because they knew that no one was listening. Or maybe some of them were racist. “Bump”, said the 20 something man as he attended college where there were black athletes but very few black students. “Bump! Bump!” said the 38-year-old man when he attended his high school reunion and the small statured black man and his six foot tall blond wife attended. He and Vernon shared memories of high school life. “Bump”, said the 78-year-old man as he remembered the black spots on the road to the beach when he was ten because he could see that every road bump caused oil to spot the road where everyone could see it and ignore it. “Bump”.

Positive feedback? The real danger of Artificial "Intelligence"?

In the beginning of searchable data bases like Wikipedia and Google the problem was how to enter all that information. The fear was that we’d never get that huge backlog of information all loaded in and an “ignorant” incomplete library would lead to bias or manipulation. Now, these systems have evolved into AI Large Language Databases. As millions of people have queried the data bases, the questions and the answers have become part of the data that the models have learned to search, reword, and reply to. The AI Large Language Databases are now copying words, phrases, sentences, paragraphs, and whole explanations of concepts. The bases are using computer speed to generate these things based on how often they are found.... IN THE DATA BASE! They are now quoting themselves, and they are indefatigable enterers of data. They are using queries by billions of human questioners to answer things they have "seen" in the data base that they are rapidly becoming the majority contributor to. They are quoting their quotes of the quotes of themselves. Look up "positive feed-back" and see what you find.... but the AI Large Language Databases may have already distorted the answer by running it through their tautological echo chamber of feed-back. Gee, what would happen if you asked it whether or not it is quoting itself?

Dismissive Journalistic Report of near-earth objects

So, the “tour bus sized” asteroid that zipped by earth on September 24, 2020 and missed us by 13,000 miles was dismissed in the paper as no big deal. Let’s look at that little old rock. The kinetic energy of a moving object is defined as ½ mass times velocity squared (1/2M times V squared). If the bus was 50 feet by 8 by 8, it had a volume of about 100 cubic meters (100M cubed). The mass of rock is about 3,000 kilograms per cubic meter (3,000Kg/cubic meter) that’s 300,000 kilograms for our “bus rock”. The velocity of sun orbiting asteroids varies but 15 kilometers per second (15,000 meters per second) is a good guess (15,000 KM/SEC). The exact velocity of this object is known so this calculation can be corrected if necessary. Multiplying ½ M times V squared we get about 6.7 X 10 to the 13th power (lottsa zeros) joules of energy. The bomb that the USA dropped on Hiroshima, Japan contained about 6.3 X 10 to the 13th joules. So, had this little rock hit Earth, it would be about the same as that atomic bomb”. Where it hits is kind of important. One smallish Abomb isn’t a big worry, but imagine if it had hit North Korea; what do you think wing nut extraordinaire, Kim Jung Un would have done?

Cutting Entitlements and defining the words you use

Two words need to be redefined in the minds of the American people; liberal and entitle (entitlement). From the dictionary: Liberal: 1) One who advocates greater FREEDOM of thought or action. One who has these principals. 2) Not narrow or bigoted; broad minded. 3) Free to give or bestow, generous. Entitle: To justly qualify a person or a claim; to give a right (as in; his labor ENTITLES him to his wages). So: Entitlement: That which is due to legitimate claimants of their just rewards. For the last 40 years republicans have argued that I should be able to keep my money and invest it in ways far better than the Social Security System (ala Ayn Rand). They, the republicans, have never delivered a policy based on this philosophy, even when they were in complete control of the White House, the Congress, the Senate and the Supreme Court as they are now. Now, they tell me that my Social Security “entitlement” isn’t mine. But the money that I have been forced to invest in the general fund of the USA (my taxes, the money THEY spend every penny of on their deficit causing short term pork-barrel pet projects), is theirs to give to billionaires in a cut to their taxes. I’m a “moocher” and don’t deserve my SS, or government services like good weather reporting by NOAA or important medical research. Those “entitlement expenditures” need to be trimmed. The best way to do that is to allow the richest man in the world decide how tax dollars are distributed. SO Sorry! He doesn’t have diabetes, He doesn't shop for food; his life is nothing like any other human being in America. I can’t do much about him stealing my tax dollars, but Social Secruity is my money. It’s even double money, matching funds from my employer (those private business guys that the republicans hold up just an inch below the statue of Ronald Reagan [the God]). It’s my money. I’m entitled to it, and if that’s a bad thing, then I’m a liberal and I’ll own that too.