Change the Past or the Future?

History is filled with ‘What Ifs.’

If you could go back in time and change things would you?

What if the Titanic had enough lifeboats to service all its  passengers?

What if the SS California had not turned off their wireless for the night and had actually heard the distress call from Titanic?

They were only a few miles away and easily could have arrived in time to save most of the passengers.

Sadly the engine crew probably would not have made it out but fifteen hundred others who died in the frigid waters of the north Atlantic would have reached America shaken and without their personal possessions but alive. 

I do not blame SS California for its failure as they did try to warn Titanic of iceberg dangers in the water but with so many wealthy people aboard the wireless operator was inundated with messages to send out and refused to listen to all else.

The Carpathia tried valiantly to get there in time but the laws of physics and liquid dynamics prevented them from doing so.

The Unsinkable Mollie Brown would not have been a film and when I visited her museum in Denver I would have been trespassing in someone’s home.

Science fiction writers have covered every topic of alternate endings or futures imaginable through the years with regards to titanic like events.

What if that asteroid did not kill off the dinosaurs?

Would mammals ever have survived and taken over the world?

What if that Jewish carpenters son was not murdered a couple of thousand years ago and allowed to continue talking about peace till old age took him?  Would any of us now remember his name?
What if women never got the vote or slavery was never abolished?
I should pause here so my Republican friends can wipe the smiles off their faces and stop daydreaming.

What if my high school Spanish teacher had not found that tiny piece of paper I hid under my butt?

History teaches us but do we learn?

History warns us but do we heed?

And with that in mind I turn your thoughts toward a topic that has polarized humanity for over half a century.

It's a hot button issue that’s guaranteed to start arguments and turn former likable actors into raving lunatics after being caught driving under the influence.

It’s also an event whose very existence has been denied by many who refuse to admit facts into their brains, most notably and dangerously the bearded ugly President of Iran.

What if Hitler had been stopped before killing so many Jews?

In other words, what if the Holocaust had never happened?

Before going further let me assure you that it did and I in no way shape or form am suggesting otherwise!

But what if?

First and foremost there would be many more Jews alive today, or at least I think so.

Steven Spielberg would still be making movies but only about aliens and Liam Neeson would have one less great role to point to.

There would be no Israeli state and the entire Middle East would be Arab territory with occasional visits by nomadic Jews.

The Bible toting radical Evangelicals would have to interpret the prelude to the Rapture in a different way.

And so many more consequences or threads leading from that horrible event that would or should not have happened that I am not smart enough to know or educe.

What I am trying to bring out is while it is romantic to think about how we would change the past given the opportunity we should face the reality that it cannot be done.

And it is entirely possible that while events of the past may have been terrible they are just that, in the past.

And rather than decry them forever we should learn from them and where possible make sure they never happen again.

For the most part we have made things better as a result of past disasters.

The likelihood of another cruise ship setting sail without sufficient lifeboats and trained personnel to load them is near zero.

We may not be able to do anything about an asteroid hitting our atmosphere in the future, sorry Mr. Willis but at least we will be well aware of it long before it does.

And I now know better ways to hide cheat sheets should the need ever arise.

But more to the point, will there be more atrocities in the future?

Will there be pain and suffering brought about by man’s inhumanity to man?

Will natural events such as tornadoes and hurricanes and earthquakes continue to destroy property and ruin lives?

The answer to these questions is undeniably yes!

Can we lessen their effect and mitigate the pain they cause?

The answer to this is also yes.

And the way to do this is through education.

We should embrace science and seek to understand more about our world and the natural forces that shape our very existence.

Closing our eyes to empirical fact is both ill advised and dangerous.

Religion and faith can coexist with science and education as long as the former does not attempt to supersede the latter and impede progress or muddy the waters.

What if we used religion only for personal inner peace and lost the need or desire to proselytize?

What if instead of trying to put the other guy down for personal or political gain our leaders started using their brains to work toward raising everyone up?

If we could admit that some of us have more than we will ever need even if we live to 200 then maybe we could selflessly work toward helping those of us who only have enough to reach next week and build a better future for all.

And if we did all this we might finally be able to lose the ‘What Ifs’ forever.

Fox the Cable and Power!

The following is an entry by a guest reader without a blog of his own currently.

I will not name the source but rather state it is an intelligent affected former viewer of shows on Fox who has seen the light!

The foreign Australian/Saudi Arabian controlled News Corp is conductng an experiment to measure the extent in which it can manipulate the future of the US.

I am referring to the Australian Rupert Murdoch family, with 38% ownership in the Company, and Saudi Arabia's Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, the second largest equity owner behind Murdoch with holdings valued in excess of $2 billion.

The experiment, currently in progress is on a relatively small scale in which just a mere nine to 12 million innocent third party Americans are being used as hostages to create leverage for News Corp as it tests its ability to bully US media companies and influence Washington policies as it pursues its own interests and the interests of Australia and Saudi Arabia.

I am not referring to the heavily biased Fox News which publicly claims to be fair and even, cynically offering a 'we report, you decide' motto nor am I referring to the millions Rupert Murdoch, the Murdoch family, and News Corp has spent this year in supporting right wing causes.

Our recent 5 to 4 Supreme Court  decision that corporations have the same rights as individuals, allowing corporate money to flood the political marketplace has facilitated this new form of democratic corruption, empowering News Corp.

The experiment I am referring to involves News Corp's outrageous demand that New York and Tri-state based Cablevision's annual retransmission fee to Fox TV be increased from approximately $70 million to $150 million.

While Fox's demand is negotiated, Fox has pulled the plug on its broadcasts otherwise aired on Cablevision, affecting three million homes.

News Corp knows their demnand is unreasonable and has thus refused Cablevision's offer for binding arbitration.

This has nothing to do with money and is all about power. To further extend its power, News Corp has aired public announcements advising Cablevision customers who wish to watch Fox TV to switch carriers, pointing the way to Direct TV, Verizon, or a simple antennae since Fox TV channel 5 is carried free on airwaves leased to them by the U S Government.

Perhaps the our FCC should give News Corp its own ultimatum; return Fox 5 et al to Cablevision while you negotiate fees by October 25 or we will revoke your transmission bands.

Foreign ownership of critical media and public utilities is not typically considered to be in the interest of National welfare.

Serious consideration of the potential consequences of foreign interests controlling our media (the News Corp), our gas utiities (i.e. National Grid), and electric utilities (i.e J-Power, Iberdrola) should be high on our Government's to do list.

Wonderfully said by a concerned citizen.

Without government oversight the owners of the Foreign Fox Family of networks will continue to inch it's way into our government until it will be too late to turn it around.  And then, heaven help us!

Blame Obama or the Republicans? BOTH

An e-mail circulating around now has to do with how member countries of the United Nations vote.


In it we are told that every Arab and Middle East nation votes against anything the United States wants between 70% and 80% of the time.


We are also informed that these nations receive billions of dollars in aid from us.
The idea is that since they do not ever seem to come to our side then we should not send them aid.


This is a tough argument that easily could have its roots in the chicken and the egg scenario.  


But it also could have an analogy in our Congressional troubles.


Special interest groups such as the health insurance lobby and the gun lobby to name just two also send aid in the form of bribes to our Senators and Congressmen.  The big obvious difference is that here the votes are generally cast favorably for them.


I submitted this fact to the person who sent the e-mail to me stating that perhaps we should have our wonderful lobbyists send the aid to the Middle East since they are so much better at getting results.


I received a satisfying, "Very Funny."  But what followed was an interesting question, in light of what is happening in DC, "Do you still think President Obama is a good President?"


My reply follows herewith:

Like the old Pennsylvania Dutch ad said, “Get to know what good is!”

President Obama should not be judged on everything that happens for the following reasons:

The loyal opposition has decided to block any and every measure he tries.  If this were a movie even you would be booing the Republicans!

But knowing this fact and the fact that one of their Senators even claimed that he would stop Obama and cause his Waterloo I must agree that he has not been a good President.  I say this because he failed to realize that the enemy was sitting on the other side of the aisle.

In previous administrations the President has always faced opposition from the party not in power.  That is how our government is set up and must remain that way lest we deteriorate into a dictatorship.  And further since most dictatorships lean toward the evil with wealth and power for the few as the goal I believe we can agree this would not be desirable.

The difference today is that no matter what President Obama proposes the Republicans are against it. And it does not matter what the proposal is!  He has offered up Republican ideas only to be condemned by the right!

So the full answer to your question about Obama is simply, YES – He is not a good President.  But the full answer is The Republicans are fully FULLY to blame and should be thrown out on their ears as soon as possible!!!  His main failure was to believe that the Republicans actually cared about Americans and wanted to govern for the good of the people.

DEATH CAMPS???

Give me a break!

The entire Republican Party should be ashamed of themselves for taking the bribes of the lobbyists to bastardize all that could be good in their quest to regain power and glory and more money.  (And don't think I've forgotten the wolves in sheep clothing like Lieberman!)

You may not believe it but the middle class suffers under the Republicans and always will.  We are further from the so-called upper class than ever and the gap widens every day.  The insurance companies and corporations know this and want to keep the rest of us in the dark. I cannot blame them for that is their job – making more money to the point of being obscene for themselves and their shareholders.  But I do blame our representatives in DC for allowing this obscenity to continue.

One man cannot make a difference in his lifetime.  It takes two to tango and it used to take only a majority in America to get things done.  I fear we have entered into a long period of stagnant government where the loud and obnoxious will rule and the rest of us will merely waste our time blogging about it!

When the founding fathers wrote about this nation being “of the people, by the people, and for the people” they did not have corporations in mind!  Unfortunately with the recent Supreme Court ruling that has been altered a bit and we now have to contend with contentious corporate CEOs as well as their boards who frankly do not give a rat’s ass about you or me.

I thought it was bad when the Republicans acceded power to the likes of Fox and their morons Limbaugh and Beck etc. but with corporations now being allowed to spend as much as they wish to turn the weak minded of this country into lemmings we are seriously in trouble.

Care for some tea?