The "Deep State" Is A Myth

Following are selected links to information debunking the lie from conservatives that the "Deep State" within the US government is the major problem to eradicate:

Wikipedia on the "Deep State"

NPR on the "Deep State

Just Security on the "Deep State"

The Democratic Party And Economic Inequality

Robert Reich, Bill Clinton's Secretary of Labor, is one of the most prolific communicators of the truth about the source of economic inequality in the USA. Click on the links below for a 2-part in-depth expose of such, and how the Democratic Party has not been aggressive enough in challenging the lies of Republicans regarding who is responsible for it:

America's Four Stories (Part 1)

America's Four Stories (Part 2)

A summary:

"The Democrats’ weakest story has been the Rot at the Top. Democrats have been reluctant to condemn economic elites who have grown richer than ever and who have used their affluence to corrupt the political system.

"This should not be surprising. Since the 1980s, Democrats have been drinking at the same funding troughs as Republicans — big corporations, Wall Street, and wealthy individuals. And as the Supreme Court opened the spigots of big money into politics, those troughs have become far larger, for both parties."

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"Bernie Sanders told this story about the real Rot at the Top, but other leading Democrats have been reluctant to tell it.

"The Democrats’ failure to tell this story has enabled Republican cultural populism to fill the void, offering Americans who were growing distrustful of the system an explanation for what had gone wrong and a set of villains to blame — immigrants, '“coastal elites,' 'woke'ism, the 'deep state,' transgendered people, 'communists,' 'socialists,' the 'Left,' Critical Race Theory, 'cat ladies,' and other bogeymen.

"But none of these is the real explanation. The real explanation, the real Rot at the Top, has been a new record concentration of wealth and power at the top — enough to corrupt our system of self-government."

Getting Closer To Understanding How Life Began

"Scientists believe that all life on Earth originated from one single organism, the Last Universal Common Ancestor, LUCA. Now, researchers have uncovered evidence that LUCA was much more complex than previously thought, which is puzzling because it didn’t have a lot of time to evolve. This seems to suggest that life can come into being much faster than we thought. Let’s take a look."

Click on the link below for a YouTube video explaining the new information:

Life Began Much Faster Than We Thought

Can A Transplanted Heart Change The Recipients Brain?

"A curious phenomenon has been reported among people who have undergone heart transplants. For some, they believe that they may have received more than just an organ in the exchange, as they report altered emotions, tastes, and even memories that seem to belong to the person who donated it. Could it be that these organs are somehow transporting a bit of their previous owner’s personality into the new one?"

Click on the link below for the details. No, this is not a fringe media article. The source has a fact check rating of "High" for credibility:

Do Donor Organs Transfer Memory?

Authoritarianism: Two Podcast Episodes To Help In Better Understanding

"Authoritarianism and autocracies take many forms. So how do you know it when you see it? Our guide to the erosion of choice, rights, truth and power is Anne Applebaum, author of several books including, most recently, Autocracy, Inc."

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/what-is-authoritarianism/id1195657423?i=1000679860773

"We’re in strange times. In the U.S., we’re finding ourselves in a situation in which the possibility of genuine democratic retrenchment and some version of presidential authoritarian dictatorship is a real possibility. There’s a lot to consider as the liberal democracy we’ve become accustomed to could erode right before our eyes in the near future. Steve Levitsky is a professor of government at Harvard and serves as the director of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies. Levitsky is also a New York Times bestselling author of numerous books including, “How Democracies Die” and “Tyranny of the Minority: Why American Democracy Reached the Breaking Point,” which he co-authored with Daniel Ziblatt. He joins WITHpod to discuss entering into a new era, the uncertainty of this moment, the process by which a democracy might backslide into something that's less democratic and resisting the erosion."

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-democratic-backsliding-happens-with-steve-levitsky/id1382983397?i=1000679858361 

How to Live Longer

"It’s hardly revolutionary to suggest that exercise is good for you, of course. But the fact that people continue to latch on to ever more esoteric minutiae suggests that we continue to undersell its benefits. That might be a data problem, at least in part. It’s famously hard to quantify how much you move in a given day, and early epidemiological studies tended to rely on surveys in which people were asked to estimate how much they exercised. Later studies used cumbersome hip-mounted accelerometers that were seldom worn around the clock. The new study, published in Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, draws on NHANES data from subjects recruited between 2011 and 2014, the first wave of the study to employ convenient wrist-worn accelerometers that stay on all day and night.

"Sure enough, it turns out that better data yields better predictions. The study zeroed in on 3,600 subjects between the ages of 50 and 80, and tracked them to see who died in the years following their baseline measurements. In addition to physical activity, the subjects were assessed for 14 of the best-known traditional risk factors for mortality: basic demographic information (age, gender, body mass index, race or ethnicity, educational level), lifestyle habits (alcohol consumption, smoking), preexisting medical conditions (diabetes, heart disease, congestive heart failure, stroke, cancer, mobility problems), and self-reported overall health. The best predictors for how to live longer? Physical activity, followed by age, mobility problems, self-assessed health, diabetes, and smoking. Take a moment to let that sink in: how much and how vigorously you move are more important than how old you are as a predictor of the years you’ve got left."

Click on this link for more details.

Eisenhower Was Right

"President Dwight David Eisenhower, perhaps the last real Republican, had a 90 percent tax rate for the super-rich during his administration.

"Eisenhower explained it this way: The super-rich could avoid the high taxes by investing their money in things that make America stronger. If they wanted to avoid high taxes, he said they could invest in business expansions and higher employee wages. They could give a million or two to tax-exempt non-profits that feed, house, and clothe poor people of America, among other things.

"They did some of that, but the Eisenhower years generated enough taxes to launch and complete the labyrinth of interstate highways, the largest road project America had ever seen and is needed again."

Eisenhower Proved That Higher Tax Rates Could Work

A Reminder: Claiming A Miracle Is A "God Of The Gaps" Fallacy

Click on the link below for an in-depth expose of how the Catholic Church handles this fraudulent enterprise and how it is fueled as much by the indoctrinated, ignorant members at least as much as the clergy:

Inside the Vatican's secret saint-making process

It's Not A New Story

The USA just experienced a brutal "assassination" of the CEO of a major healthcare insurance corporation and there is no lack of conflicting responses to such. Much of the comments from social media are making jokes, fueled by legitimate anger over corporate greed in this area of our economy. While I abhor such responses, I understand what is fueling it. 

Click on this link for an article by my favorite American historian, which places this event in the context of other events in US history that were also motivated by corporate greed.

An Expose of Elon Musk

"No one better illustrates the sinister consequences of great wealth turned into unaccountable power than Elon Musk.

"Musk, the richest person in the world, is not only claiming presidential authority to fire federal workers, but he’s posting the identities of those whose jobs he wants to eliminate — with the clear intention that his followers harass and threaten them so they quit.

"Musk is utterly unaccountable. He has never been elected to anything, but he spent $120 million helping Trump become the president-elect and is now acting as if he’s Trump’s co-president, calling himself Trump’s 'First Buddy.'

"After buying Twitter for $44 billion, Musk turned it into a cesspool of disinformation and conspiracy theories and manipulated its algorithm to give himself 205 million followers, to whom he is now distributing treacherous lies.

"In recent days, Musk boosted posts on his website singling out the names and job titles of four federal employees working in climate policy and regulation who have done nothing other than hold titles Musk dislikes. All four targets are women."

Click on the link below for more:

Musk’s dangerous bullying

A Look At The US's Historical Battle Regarding Liberalism

"When Movement Conservatives convinced followers to redefine 'liberal' as an epithet rather than a reflection of the nation’s quest to defend the rights of individuals—which was quite deliberate—they undermined the central principle of the United States of America. In its place, they resurrected the ideology of the world the American Founders rejected, a world in which an impoverished majority suffers under the rule of a powerful few."

Click here for a perspective from my favorite American historian, Heather Cox Richardson.

What Makes the Eastern U.S. Drought Different from the West’s

"Water levels are dropping in reservoirs. Multiple wildfires have ignited tinder-dry brush, exposing people across the region to harmful air pollution levels. It has barely rained for weeks.

"This time we’re not talking about the frequently drought-plagued western U.S. but rather the typically wetter eastern portion of the country—where an unusually severe drought has triggered water restrictions, damaged crops and fed as many fires in six weeks as New Jersey typically sees in six months. Some of the effects resemble those of dry periods out West, but drought in the East is a bit of a different beast."

Click on this link for the details.

It's Sad That I Have To Say This: Flouride In Drinking Water Is Safe

"RFK, Jr. and other potential and current government officials have spread shaky health claims about fluoridated water. Scientists explain the evidence behind its safety and benefits"

Click on the link below for the details:

Flouride in Drinking Water Is Safe. Here's The Evidence.

Beware The Billionaires

"This is an ideology gaining in popularity amongst tech billionaires that the world is inevitably heading toward a collapse, and that instead of trying to prevent that collapse, we should rip off the band-aid as fast as possible to get to the better world on the other side. While there’s a cold logic to it, it’s a dangerous philosophy that ignores the incalculable human suffering that such a collapse would create."

Click on the link below for more about this real sub-terranean movement that is visible through Elon Musk and most of Trump's support:

Why Some Billionaires Are Actively Trying To Destroy The World

A Possible Solution To The Energy Storage Problem?

"As we look to transition to our electric future, researchers are still stumped about how to store the electricity generated by inconsistent renewable power sources like solar and wind. Now, scientists report progress in storing energy by shifting the shapes of molecules, a solution that could be directly combined with photovoltaics. This idea makes a lot of sense — at least to me. Let’s take a look."

Click on the link below for the details from a noted physicist:

This New Energy Storage Idea Makes A Lot Of Sense

A Summary Of Trump's Disasterous Financial Plan

"The economy was a key issue for American voters. Trump has promised to make incomes 'soar' and make the cost of living 'come tumbling down.' But economists — like Financial Times global business columnist Rana Foroohar — aren't convinced. Foroohar says that Trump's plans for deregulation, tax cuts, and tariffs will likely bring an economic downturn. She joins Hari Sreenivasan to discuss the practicalities of the Trump agenda."

Click on the link below for what is ahead for the USA and the planet if Trump is true to his word:

What Will Trump's Economic Plan Mean For America's Wallets?

Time: What Is It, And, Is It Real?

"What if time is not real, but an illusion? Isaac Newton believed time was absolute and ticked at the same rate for everyone, everywhere. But Albert Einstein shattered that view with the theory of relativity. He showed that time is intertwined with space to form what we now call 'space-time.' Time can stretch and compress. 

"But physicist Carlo Rovelli proposes an even more radical idea. Rovelli argues that time might not exist at all. He suggests that time is not a fundamental feature of reality but an in invention of our brains in order to make sense of the world, to impose a cause and effect to events so they are not nonchaotic. 

"Craig Callender, a professor of philosophy, also supports this idea. The idea of time as an illusion comes from quantum mechanics. Einstein's theory of general relativity treats time as an intrinsic part of reality. But in Quantum mechanics, time isn’t malleable, and doesn’t change like other properties of a quantum system. Recording the passage of time requires an observer to consult a clock external to the quantum system."

Click on the link below for more:

Could TIME Really Be an Illusion?

What Trump’s Win Says About American Society

"To make sense of the election, we must first understand the discontent that gave Donald Trump the victory. This is the theory of Harvard professor and political philosopher Michael Sandel. He joins the show to discuss the polarization that fueled Trump's campaign, and the failure of the Democrats to present themselves as the party of change."

Click this link for an interview with a philosopher/professor with an encompassing view of the overarching problem in US society today that has been simmering and growing for many decades.

The History Of Modern Science

"Modern science is generally considered to have originated in Western Europe between the 15th and 18th centuries. However, there are different views on when exactly it began, including:

• The High Middle Ages: Some say that modern science began in 1277.

• The Italian Renaissance: Others believe that the Italian Renaissance was a rebirth of the sciences.

• The Scientific Revolution: This period is traditionally thought to have begun with the Copernican Revolution in 1543 and ended with Isaac Newton's Principia in 1687.

• The 17th century: Some say that modern science began in the 17th century when the world was examined more closely with instruments like the telescope, microscope, clock, and barometer.

(AI Overview)

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No matter the EXACT date, it has been within humanity for several centuries and has advanced exponentially since the above. And yet, the majority of humanity has no clue about it.

What If Nazism Had Won? It Has In The USA

"If Adolf Hitler had won World War II, Europe would have been drastically reshaped under Nazi rule, with devastating consequences for its people and cultures. Hitler’s vision, outlined in Mein Kampf and Nazi ideology, called for a hierarchical society dominated by the so-called 'Aryan master race.' Countries across Europe would have been reorganized into puppet states or directly incorporated into a vast German empire, while the Slavic populations of Eastern Europe faced enslavement or extermination to make room for German settlers. 

"The Holocaust, which claimed the lives of six million Jews, could have expanded even further under a Nazi victory. With no Allied forces to stop them, the Nazis might have fully implemented their plans for the genocide of other groups they deemed "undesirable," such as the Roma people, political dissidents, LGBTQ+ individuals, and people with disabilities. The cultural and intellectual diversity of Europe would have been irreparably destroyed, as the Nazi regime sought to homogenize society under its oppressive rule. 

"Economically, Europe would have become a continent of exploitation, with German industry thriving at the expense of enslaved labor and plundered resources from occupied territories. Countries like France, Poland, and the Netherlands would have been forced into servitude, with their economies subjugated to fuel the ambitions of the Third Reich. Resistance movements and uprisings might have continued, but they would likely have been brutally crushed, leaving little hope for freedom under the Nazi regime. 

"In the long term, a Nazi-dominated Europe would have isolated itself from the rest of the world, fostering a climate of fear, oppression, and cultural stagnation. The United States, the Soviet Union, and other nations outside of Europe might have become counterbalances to Nazi power, but the cost of such a world would have been unimaginable. Europe, as we know it today—a place of unity, diversity, and shared values—would have been replaced by a dark and oppressive dystopia under Nazi control."

Click on the link below for a half-hour video presenting a "What If" that is a reality in the USA with MAGA winning:

What Would Europe Be Like If Adolf Hitler Had Won World War II?