As a volunteer at the Worcester Rally, I was able to take a few photos.

The Worcester Telegram & Gazette has the article Sanders supporters say his message will resonate in Worcester.

Steven Greenberg of Sturbridge, another volunteer for the North High rally, said he supports Mr. Sanders’ positions against economic inequality and “the rigging of the system in favor of the very rich.”

Finally, The Worcester Telegram & Gazette features people with whom we agree 100%.

Naked Capitalism has the article Job Guarantee Versus Basic Income Guarantee.

As much as many readers advocate the idea of basic income, I suggest you consider the results of the one time it was implemented in historically on a large-scale basis: the Speenhamland system, in early industrial England. As Karl Polanyi describes at length in his classic, The Great Transformation, the long-term results were disastrous for the laboring classes. I strongly suggest you read the long-form discussion here, but the short version is that the guarantee wound up lowering wages and serving as a subsidy to employers.

The introduction on Naked Capitalism indicates that the video discussion will be well worth seeing. I have only had the time to watch the first 7 minutes or so, but it looks like it is going to live up to the promise described by Naked Capitalism. I want everyone here to have the chance to watch the video, long before I get to watch the whole thing myself.

I want to be able to refer back to this post to complete my viewing of the video. Some of the reason why I write this blog is to preserve links to items I want to read or see (and maybe even reread and re-view).

YouTube has the video Ralph Nader & Abby Martin on Rigged Corporate Elections, Clinton Criminals.

On this week’s episode of The Empire Files, Abby Martin interviews American political figure Ralph Nader about the 2016 presidential race—from the “Brown Shirt” Trump movement to “corporate criminal” Hillary Clinton—and the reality of who has power in America.

There are a tremendous number of ideas to think about in this video. As for the Bernie Sanders campaign, if this is a revolution we are joining, do we have anything to say about its goals, its strategies, and its tactics? If Bernie Sanders truly wants a revolution to help him govern, and I think he does, then the people in that revolution are going to make up their own minds as to what they want done, as they should. Ralph Nader presents ideas that the revolution ought to consider.

If you know anything about Ralph Nader, you probably don’t expect him to pull any punches. You won’t be disappointed.

There was an interesting Facebook post by Nadya Maqdisy. It centered around the following image.

Just a little food for thought when you try to answer George W. Bush’s rhetorical question, “Why do they hate us?” Think about this when the Republican candidates and the Republican lite candidates tell you we need to get tougher on those Arabs (Palestinians), How much tougher are we supposed to get before they finally give in?

I always wonder if this getting tougher after all they have done to their kids already, is the “thought” process that abusive parents go through. Is there a similarity between that “thought” process and the one we go through when we decide how to handle the terrorists.

It is hard to have sympathy for our predicament – if we relent, they will be free to exact the revenge on us that we deserve – when we are the ones that chose to put ourselves in this box in the first place.

After making the above observations, I read one of the comments on the original post.

Syedasim Alizaidi – Actually they need another like great Hitler for lesson.

Steve Greenberg – That is kind of a silly response. Perhaps what Hitler did is what got the Zionists into this fix that they are in. They think and you may think that a response that is way out of proportion to the alleged crime committed will finally make people get the point. No, it just leads to further escalation.

So what is the answer, you might ask? Well, I think it is a response that the Republicans laughed at when a Democrat, I can’t remember whom, made a suggestion. Treat terrorist acts like the criminal behavior they are instead of treating it as a war. The punishment needs to be applied to the people who commit the crime, and that punishment should be in proportion to the crime committed. There should be no collective punishment involving people who have committed no crime. The punishment should not be 10 times worse than the crime committed. No criminal “justice” system has ever totally abolished all crime, but it should try to keep criminal activity at a tolerable level that let’s law abiding people go about their business for the most part. If you think you can do better than that, then you are expecting way too much.

Alternet has the article What Really Caused the Implosion of the Occupy Movement—An Insider’s View by Yotam Marom.

The subtitle is:

Taking a hard look at some of the self-sabotaging behaviors of the left.

This article encourages me to have some deep thoughts about how best to help Bernie to win. It also encourages me to think about my own tendency to self-sabotaging behavior. Thinking about it helps to improve performance, I hope.

I post about this article on my blog so that I will have a permanent reminder of this article. I feel that it is something that I will want to remember for a long time. My reasons for posting this are not aimed at anyone else, but myself.

Naked Capitalism has the article Clinton, Sanders, and the “Progressive Give-Up” Formula (with Clinton’s Warning of a “Grand Bargain” to Come) by Lambert Strether. He really lays it on the line.

Clinton is trying to put Sanders in the same pine box that Reagan put Mondale in; that’s her formula for victory, and may explain why she’s become so confident; after, the formula’s worked for thirty years. Sanders should give consideration to the idea of not helping Clinton do that. He might start by ignoring small ball like family leave, and pointing out that FDR won World War II (not to mention an empire, but that’s another story) by ballooning debt to unheard-of levels. FDR — a very popular and successful Democrat, as I recall — used good judgment in doing so, and served the public purpose.

Here is why Clinton is so dangerous. Sanders needs to get the courage to start telling the American public the truth about this. He can’t continue to be afraid to tackle this issue. Fear of letting the middle and poorer classes know what the rich already know is bad for the country and bad for the Sanders campaign.

Thanks to Marden Seavey for posting this item from YouTube, Is light a wave or a particle?

Let me be clear, I am in full support of what Sabine Hossenfelder says in this video. My comments below are only intended to amplify what she is saying. These comments are only intended as an additional way to look at the problem of thinking that there is a paradox here, and seeing how physicists are now avoiding creating such paradoxes in the minds of future students and non-physicists.

It seems to me that physicists started naming things like quarks and leptons to get away from the mistaken idea that likening these quantum mechanics thingies to Newtonian mechanics thingies would provide insight into what they were. That original comparison to familiar concepts left us with the non-answerable question of whether light is a wave or a particle. As Bill Belichick would say, “It is what it is.” As this narrator says, light displays some particle like properties and it displays some wave like properties, but it isn’t either of those two things. Particles and waves are abstract and simplified concepts that describe some properties of certain thingies. These thingies are what they are. You can only talk about the properties that they exhibit.

Put another way, particles and waves are models of reality. They simplify reality so we can write down and solve equations to predict what will happen in reality. Since the concept of particle or wave is a simplification of reality, we can not expect reality to behave only as the simplified model does. Reality is more complex than the model. If it weren’t, we wouldn’t need to simplify it to get some understanding. A simplified model only works in the situations where it is applicable. In other situations the model does not give you correct results at all. In the situation where light can be modeled as a wave, then the wave model is a good explanation of what light does. In situations where light acts as a particle, then the particle model gives a good description of what light does. Outside the domain of applicability, the model does not give a correct description of what light does. If we find a domain in which neither model is good, then we won’t be able to predict what light will do at all. In such a domain, we would have to see what light does, and then try to come up with an explanation of what rules light is following in that circumstance. Rather than calling that third model by a name of something that we have some insight into, we might just give it a wacky name to make sure nobody thinks that light is actually that other thing to which its behavior is similar.

I leave it to my friends who are more expert in physics than I am to tell me where I went astray and said something above that was full of crap.

The First Unitarian Society has the article Who Stole Christmas? T’was the Unitarians by Julie Brock, Ministerial Intern.

Before Christmas became about peace, love and department stores it was the at the crux of a culture war. The Unitarians were able to put a stop to the debate by taking Christmas into their own hands in the 1800s.

This is a nice companion piece to the poster from Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

Here is a News release I received from the campaign.

From: Rania Batrice <raniabatrice@berniesanders.com>
Date: Wed, Dec 23, 2015 at 6:32 PM
Subject: NEWS: Bernie Sanders Continues Radio Push Across Iowa
To:

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Bernie Sanders Continues Radio Push Across Iowa

December 23, 2015

Contact: Rania Batrice (512) 968-2818

DES MOINES, Iowa — U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders’ campaign on Thursday continues his outreach on radio stations across Iowa with the launch of a new statewide ad. The ad, “Sound,” emphasizes Sanders’ commitment to “leaving this country and our entire planet habitable for our kids and grandchildren.”

“Sanders has put forth the most ambitious climate plan of any candidate…reducing carbon pollution by 80 percent and creating a clean energy workforce with millions of new jobs,” the ad says.

“Sen. Sanders is proud to have been the first presidential candidate to stand with thousands of Iowans against the Bakken Pipeline,” said Bernie 2016 Iowa state director, Robert Becker. “Iowa is a global leader in generating clean energy and the quality, good paying jobs that come along with that technology — as president, he will make combatting climate change a national priority.”

“Sound” can be found here.

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