Umbrellas, Spaghetti and Spacetime (Updated and Expanded)

Umbrellas, Spaghetti, and Spacetime 

Updated and Expanded version 2015

by Duane N. Burghard

©2015

The below essay is an updated and expanded version of what is, by far, the most popular piece I’ve written on my blog. I have been promising this update since the summer and I had originally planned to post it in November, but I felt it needed a final “once over” and I didn’t get to that until this weekend … so for those who have been waiting (and those who haven’t see it before), here is your mind-bending holiday gift for 2015.

How do space and time really work? How do they interact with our conscious minds? Why do we perceive the universe the way we do? Questions like these have always fascinated me, but I am especially fascinated by this one: why do some people seem to have as yet unexplainable oddities in their human experience as they relate to space and time? I don't know the answers to these questions, but I have spent no small amount of time thinking about them and looking for the answers and today, I'm going to share some thoughts on what I've found, what I think, and why.

I’m going to start by telling you some thing about me; I compulsively and (at least somewhat) involuntarily look for patterns in sets of data. It seems to literally be in my DNA. I catalog pretty much every input that goes into my brain and then, often subconsciously, I inter-relate it to other things and look for patterns. 

Here’s just one weird example of this tendency. Years ago, when I owned a small chain of retail stores, we were given a strong financial incentive by one of our product partners to attach a particular add on product to a main product of theirs. After several years of doing so, I began to notice that we seemed to have more failures attaching this extra product on Thursdays. At first I thought that I was simply imagining this relationship, but after a time I went into the software that we used to track our sales (which I wrote) and checked. It turned out that I was right. Thursdays were the worst day for selling this product. In fact, we were a staggering twenty percent less likely to attach this product on Thursdays. I checked all of our stores. The pattern held. I emailed other store owners in the industry, and while their numbers varied, the pattern held again. I contacted the product’s marketing director at the manufacturer and shared the data. A few weeks later he emailed me back and told me that he had done an increasing amount of research into my theory and had been shocked to discover that I had in fact identified a bizarre (and to this day unexplained) national trend. This was neither the first nor only time I have found a strange pattern like this simply through observation. Given the extraordinary number of inputs that I process (or that any of us processes) constantly, what made this particular set of inputs stand out?

Now hold that thought while I tell you about something I learned from Facebook. I discovered Facebook back in 2009 and, like many people my age (I am 50), I found it to be a great way to reunite with old friends. But as I reassembled my friends from elementary school in particular, I noticed a really interesting pattern (because, again, that’s what I do). In our early notes to one another, my friends and I often shared bits of things that we remembered about each other as children. What was interesting was that almost everyone remembered the same thing about me: my imagination. I agree that their recollections about me are accurate, I was and remain a pretty imaginative person, but the real question to me is why is that true, and is that characteristic (my imagination) somehow related to this weird tendency I have to find patterns in data, or is it something else entirely?

In order to explore the “something else entirely” option, I need to explain how I have come to see and understand the relationships between consciousness, space and time, and to do that I need to synthesize some pretty deep ideas. So, as incredible as this may sound, let's start by seeing if we can tackle the nature of consciousness, space and time in one paragraph.

When it comes to the nature of space and time and how and why we perceive it the way we do, my primary influence is a British astrophysicist from Cambridge named Julian Barbour. In 1999 Barbour wrote a book called The End of Time. Because my wife and Mother-In-Law were very well aware of my fascination with the subject, they bought Barbour’s book for me as a Christmas gift that year. The only down side to their decision (from their perspective) was then having to spend the next few days listening to me randomly exclaiming  "yes!" and "that's it!" as I sat and read it. Barbour argues that time doesn’t really exist at all. Time is essentially an illusion, a fictional construct of our consciousness. Fortunately, there is a relatively easy way to grasp this concept. Barbour argues that every single moment is a specific, single, contained reality, very much like a picture. We perceive “motion” (time) in the universe for the same reason we think we see motion when we watch television. When we watch TV or a movie, as most people know, what we’re really watching is a series of still photographs being flashed before our eyes at a very rapid pace (approximately 24-30 frames, or pictures, per second). Our brains take in all of those pictures and “stitch them together” creating the illusion that images move on the screen. Barbour argues that the universe is much the same way, and that our consciousness is traveling through these instantaneous moments and simply stitching the changes between them together and creating the illusion of motion and time. I believe that Barbour’s model is correct, but it’s also incomplete.

In order to effectively incorporate Barbour’s theory to my own, we need to add in some basic information about probability and multiverse theory. I am going to avoid getting distracted here and not take this opportunity to branch off into a detailed discussion of multiverse theory, however, if you want to get a grip on where I stand on the multiverse, I strongly recommend the article "Parallel Universes" by Max Tegmark in the May, 2003 issue of Scientific American. If you've done so, or if you just have a good understanding of the concepts, then you already know that, in a parallel universe, I've made the opposite decision at this point in the essay and I have gone ahead and taken a good deal of time to discuss multiverse theory, making this an even much longer essay ... so be grateful you're in this universe. The main point I want to make for the purposes of this essay is simply that all, or at least a sufficiently large set of different choices exist for each of us in each moment and that each of those choices can lead to a partially or entirely different set of choices in the next moment (or some later following moment), in the next parallel universe over (where you made a different choice than you did here … turning left instead of right leads to different choices for each “version” of you in the next moment, and so on). Now with respect to probability, I maintain that there are certain choices in each moment which, while technically possible, are so improbable that they don’t have a universe to represent them (this does not necessarily confine the total number of parallel universes to a finite number, however it probably does confine the number of parallel universes that each of us individually exists in to a finite (if also very VERY large) number.

So, to understand how I perceive the universe, think of the very first instant of your life as a drop of water falling down towards the very top of a single opened umbrella. Actually, it’s not just one drop and one umbrella, but LOTS of initial drops and umbrellas since the number of universes where you come to exist is probably quite large … however, I maintain that there is only ONE universe where this particularly unique version of you began, a singular set of “initial conditions.” In the next universe over where you also come to exist there is at least one difference in the initial conditions. That difference might be large (e.g. you could be a different sex) or it might be infinitesimally small … but let’s stick to the idea that the “you” who is in this hyper-specific universe started as one drop at the top of one umbrella. Each “moment event” is represented by the tip on the top of that umbrella and each spine on my metaphorical umbrella represents a choice you make or action you take (or don’t) … in any case the spines are potential paths that the drop of water (you) can take from that moment to the next. The number of spines (or paths or choices), is obviously variable based on the specifics of the moment in question, and again, some paths are more likely than others, so perhaps the umbrella is slightly tilted or misshapen in some way so that, more often than not, a drop would be more likely to go in one or several ways as opposed to one or several others). Now, I want you to envision the pathways from the tip top of the umbrella and along the spines like they are hollow strands of spaghetti (a tube), and once your drop of water (your consciousness) hits the top of the umbrella, you instantly “choose” and thus follow one of the strands along one of the spines of the umbrella (again, each spine representing a possible outcome for that moment event). The strand you follow is based on the choice made in that moment event. At the end of each spine of the umbrella, the spaghetti tube falls to the top of another umbrella (the next moment that proceeds from the path of the spine you followed based on your choice or action in the previous moment), and what we define as our lives is just an inconceivably hyper-specific trip down a very particular path of spaghetti tubes from one umbrella (moment) to the next … and, from the perspective of our individual consciousness, that’s what each individual universe in the multiverse is.

Basically what I'm saying is that our lives are akin to going down the tubes ... which should be easy for many of us to relate to.

Now here's where it gets a little weird (I know, only now?!). I believe that a very large number of the potential results of every moment event (particularly the probable ones) actually DO happen … which is to say that each of those potential paths does get followed (although obviously not in the same universe). Again, different choices in one moment can lead to a partially or entirely different set of choices in the next moment (or some later following moment) in the next universe over. Sometimes events may cause a “re-collision” of tubes (the same ultimate result with no other changes), other times they may get progressively farther apart. Additionally, different choices in one moment can lead to a different number of potential choices in the next moment in each of the parallel universes that the choice leads to (so umbrellas in the next level down would only coincidentally have the same number of spines).

My explanation so far would probably look like a rapidly expanding pyramid (or cone) of umbrellas proceeding downward from the moment of a person’s birth (well, the one “you” that we’re focused on … other versions of you (the ones with slightly or dramatically different initial conditions) have their own cone of umbrellas). But this cone would not have smooth edges, in fact it would only appear to be cone-like from a significant distance. The closer you got to the structure, the more “bumpy” looking it would be due to the variable nature of the number of choices at different moments. If you’re seeing it that way, you’re getting it so far. But the view we have so far only tells half of the story, and that’s because we are still humans, and thus, we all have an expiration date (or, according to me, we have lots and lots of expiration dates). What I mean by that statement is, as we proceed through life, many of us face a variety of NDEs or Near Death Experiences. I would argue that, by definition, for each moment where you have the possibility of dying, in at least one parallel universe, you actually do die and thus that tube/strand/path comes to an abrupt end. However, when you’re young, the number of options in the multiverse where you’re alive is expanding far more rapidly than it is contracting (put simply, you’re living through more versions of each given moment event than you’re not because there are simply that many more options where you live), thus your cone is getting bigger/wider. However, at some point in everyone’s multi-lives, there is a moment of maximum width, a maximum number of parallel “yous” that exist, after which, there are a decreasing total number of “yous” in existence until, somewhere, the very last you draws its last breath. So the most accurate way to visualize this representation of your life is not as an ever widening pyramid or cone, but rather as one that widens to a maximum width and then recedes again back to a single strand (picture two ice cream cones glued together at the opening … although again, technically the “shape” of the bottom of this structure is one I’ve suggested for easier visualization … which is to say that I’ve simply randomly decided that, as the number of universes where you’re still alive shrinks (as you age), visually speaking, the shape “centers” back to a midpoint … in actuality the bottom shape could look quite weird as the universe where you live the longest might extend downward from anywhere among the broadest point of the cone … although then again maybe not … perhaps the choices which are more likely to lead to your death push you out to the outer edges of the structure where the choices that lead to the longest life are “centered”).

If you're not confused yet, I'll help by adding another piece. My theory is that, for reasons I don't understand but accept based solely on perceived observation, the umbrellas (and more relevantly, the tubes of spaghetti) within this vast structure can twist and, as a result, the strands get intertwined in an occasionally quite messy way.

Which brings us to the really weird part. My theory is that the outside edges of the spaghetti tubes represent the borders of our conscious perception of our path/universe. It’s at this point that I start to rely more on observation than theory. It seems to me that, like many things in the universe, the “material” (or fabric) that the spaghetti strands (which contain our conscious perception) are made of is far from perfect. These imperfections do not allow the traveling drop of water that represents your consciousness to “leak” or escape but, at least for some of us, they do seem to allow us to occasionally see (with varying degrees of clarity and awareness) outside our “tube.” These cracks (or more accurately stretched out holes) may exist for everyone, but some of us clearly perceive them more readily than others. Given the nature of the universe as I already understand and accept it, it’s not difficult for me to imagine a universe where such imperfections exist (in my experience, the universe is hardly a perfect place).

Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on your point of view) the vast majority of the time, these holes don't allow our minds to perceive anything else (beyond our reality) because a given hole in our strand of spaghetti doesn't line up with anything other than the outer skin of one or several other strands of spaghetti (you don't see anything beyond the hole in your wall of consciousness because there's nothing to see but the outside surface of another wall/spaghetti strand). But every now and then, the holes line up, and every once in a great while they line up long enough for us to gain some perception of an alternate universe. Given the multiverse theory that I accept (which states that the very nearest parallel universe is no closer than 1 times 10 to the 10th to the 28th power meters away ... again, see Tegmark's article for the science behind this assertion) there are two possible ways that I could understand how information could be transferred between two strands. The first would be if the space between these holes were connected by wormholes that fold the vast distance in space between them. This seems unlikely to me because I can’t think of a reason why this would be the case (and yes, I’m very aware that I’m pretty out there already in terms of not having a “why” about much of what I’ve already written, but I would also note that cosmology is a science that doesn't answer the "why" question nearly as often or as well as many of us would like). The second possibility is, for whatever reason, more plausible and more likely to me; quantum entanglement. If we head over to Wikipedia, we find Quantum entanglement defined as, “a physical phenomenon that occurs when pairs or groups of particles are generated or interact in ways such that the quantum state of each particle cannot be described independently—instead, a quantum state may be given for the system as a whole.” It seems at least plausible to me that there might be enough particles in a given alternate universe version of our brain that are so similar that some level of entanglement exists and thus some amount of information sharing is possible (different subatomic structures of different versions of you might be sufficiently similar to allow for some kind of entanglement).

If my explanation is correct (or correct enough), the holes in a given person's spaghetti strand could occasionally line up with a variety of parallel worlds, some very similar and some pretty dis-similar. But the thing about spaghetti is that, once two strands are entangled, they often tend to stay that way, at least for a while. So, in theory, a person who is able to perceive these holes in the tubes that border our conscious perception of our universe would eventually get the chance to have multiple looks at the same parallel world. Imagine a parallel world, for example, where Archduke Franz Ferdinand is not assassinated and the July crisis of 1914 never happens (Princip either doesn't kill Ferdinand or is stopped). As a result, World War 1 either doesn't happen at all or plays out very differently. Without World War 1, Germany might not be punished to the degree that it was in our universe and, as a result, Adolph Hitler never becomes more than an agitated Austrian artist (meaning that World War 2 also doesn't happen or doesn't happen at all the same way). This doesn't mean that there aren't other conflicts and other results at all, but it does mean that such a parallel Earth would historically evolve quite differently. As many of you know, there is an entire genre of fiction literature that surrounds this concept called alternative history. I often wonder if the authors of alternative history books are actually making their stories up or if they've simply gained a small amount of awareness of and/or access to the world they write about. Suppose they just think that what they’re writing is merely their imagination but what’s actually happening is that they’re describing an actual parallel world, one that they’re not even consciously aware they have access to. Are my highly detailed dreams just a random compilations of inputs? Do I really have a great imagination, or am I “cheating”? Am I really simply reporting the results of occasional glimpses of other Earths?

I find the above theory a fascinating one, but I readily concede that it's just plain crazy to a lot of people, and there's not a lot of science to back it up, so let's ignore the holes in the strand thing for now (fair enough since most people obviously can't consciously see beyond the borders of their strand anyway … if they could then a lot more people would be talking and writing about this sort of thing and I’d seem a lot less crazy) and let's look at some of the truly bizarre oddities of life within our own individual strands.

So I am defining time as how we mentally interpret/explain the “travel” of our consciousness between moment event universes (my interpretation of Barbour), and I am doing that because that's at least plausibly consistent with our observation. But does the relationship between our conscious perception and the order of event universes have to be “chronological”? I doubt it. I am convinced (in no small part by my interpretation of Barbour’s theories) that all events are equally “real” and not happening “in order” but rather all happening at once (as I have often explained, your great grandmother is still very much alive, she’s just not alive here, she’s alive in all the moment events between her birth and death … to say that they are in the past is like the number 13 saying that the number 11 no longer exists). So each moment is as equally real and present as any other, they’re simply happening in different spaces (with time again simply being an artificial construct of our conscious mind that exists to keep us from the confusion that would ensue if we perceived everything happening at once or out of order). A number of modern physicists make a very effective argument for this explanation, and I recommend an episode from Season Two of “Through The Wormhole with Morgan Freeman” called "Does Time Really Exist?” for a much better explanation than I can give you (by the way, that episode also includes an interview with Julian Barbour). But if time isn’t real, if all events are equally real and happening in different spaces, then why does everything at least seem to happen in order? As noted above, I don't think it does. Obviously most of us perceive it that way most of the time, but it seems obvious to me that it's a “rule” that can be violated, maybe not at the Slaughterhouse Five level, but at least a little bit.

This past week (on December 22, 2015), I celebrated my 26th Wedding Anniversary with my wife. Because of our schedules that day, we had a private, celebratory lunch instead of our normal dinner. I arrived at the restaurant  (in a parking lot adjacent to the largest Mall in our city) a few minutes before her. As she and I met in the parking lot and walked towards the restaurant, I was suddenly overcome with the certainty that my possessions in my car were not safe. I told my wife that I would meet her in the restaurant and turned back towards my car. As I approached it (still several rows away), I saw a young man in a hooded sweatshirt walking along the row of cars that included mine. His head moved rapidly from side to side as he moved along the cars and it quickly became obvious to me that he was checking the trunks of each car to see if any were unlocked. My trunk was locked and my belongings were safe from this young man’s malicious intent, but the experience served as yet another example to me that some details of some events may “leak” through time.

Dean Radin, an engineer and faculty member at Sonoma State, did a somewhat controversial study a few years ago at the Institute for Noetic Science in which he attached skin conductors to individuals to measure their stress levels while showing them images, some emotionally charged, some not. The data from these experiments consistently showed that a statistically significant number of people began to biologically react to the emotionally charged images several seconds before they appeared. The implication of Radin's work is that at least some information is somehow “leaking” backwards in time. Many of us are familiar with the concept of intuition, and it seems rational to conclude that sometimes that sense is simply a random coincidence, but if time isn't real, then it makes perfect sense to me that some information about another event might find its way backward up my spaghetti strands, and we might perceive that information the way we hear the noise of something we're moving towards as we travel down a tube, like a train in the distance. Our inability to perceive it more clearly also makes sense since it is at a “distance” down the strand and, as a result, our conscious minds process the information as little more than a vague sensation that's rarely useful.

Somewhat similarly, Professor Darrell Bem at Cornell University did a study in which he asked subjects to choose between two curtains. In each case, one curtain had nothing behind it, and the other one had an image. Bem found there was no statistically significant difference in the choices made. But when he changed the experiment slightly and made one of the images in question erotic in nature, the results changed and a statistically significant number of people chose the curtain with the image more often. I should note that Bem's findings have been criticized by, among others, my former neighbor and good friend Jeff Rouder (who I've known for many years as our youngest daughters are best friends). Jeff is a nationally renowned Professor of Neuropsychology at the University of Missouri who applied something called a Bayes Filter to Bem's data. Rouder asserts that the application of the Bayes filter eliminates the statistical variance. However, whether Radin and Bem are entirely correct or not is less relevant to me than the fact that these studies and others seem to clearly indicate that our minds are processing more information than we are fully consciously aware of, and the degree to which we are aware of the information we are receiving does seem to vary significantly from person to person. As a result, it does seem reasonable to me that what some people might consider to be paranormal (with respect to the perception of space and time at any rate) is more likely to be merely a minute genetic mutation of some kind (probably a subatomic glitch in our brain, basically a defect). Again, I sadly lack the training and funding needed to spend years of my life in search of the empirical proof I would need to grab a Nobel Prize for proving my theory, but I can say that, for many years prior to the end of 2013, I felt as though I was being constantly bombarded with the very specific subconscious suggestion that I should shut down one of my businesses by the end of that year. I did not listen to that “little voice,” and the results were devastating. Was my “little voice” actually a stream of information leaking backwards to me in a form I just couldn’t quite hear strongly enough to act on? I can’t prove it, but convincing me that these regular feelings are just a random coincidence would be extremely difficult.

For those whose minds are not yet reeling, I will leave you with one more possibility. It is also possible that nothing I've written above is relevant to our universe, and that's because it, and our perception of it, is entirely the result of a computer program. For those who didn't see the movie "The Thirteenth Floor" several years ago, the idea is that our universe is a super massive computer simulation and we are simply programs in it. And what about the laws of physics? Well, they’re just programming too. I have often wondered about this idea. As I have now publicly admitted to friends, I remember vividly waking up on the morning of October 17th, 2000, and hearing about the death of Missouri Governor Mel Carnahan. I had two unshakeable sensations that entire day; first, that there was something very wrong with the universe, that something (Carnahan's death) had happened that didn't actually (“really”) happen; and second, that even though I could remember the previous day and every day prior to it for almost the whole of the 35 plus years I had been alive, somehow that day seemed like it was the very first day of the entire universe. Perhaps I was right. Perhaps our universe is nothing more than a computer simulation that was written to play out a “what if” scenario by historians FAR into the future. It's possible, but if so, the good news is that we may not have to wait long to find out. I'm referring to the Holometer Experiment, a highly specific investigation that’s just started at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. The Experiment will attempt to determine whether our perception of a three-dimensional universe is just an illusion. The possibility that our universe may be basically a computer program (or hologram) is a pretty well accepted theory, but to me, the real question is this; if our universe is merely a simulation and we do figure it out, will our knowledge of that fact “ruin” the game and end our universe?

Who knows ... after all, it could just be my imagination.

Defending America

by Duane N. Burghard
©2015

I was having lunch with a relatively new friend of mine today. She’s from a Pacific Island nation and spent most of her life in New Zealand and Australia before moving here to the United States about 11 years ago. Now right away I need to make a confession: immigrants impress the hell out of me. They make me think about my paternal great grandfather. Sadly, I never met the man, but I think of him often. About 110 years ago, he decided that he didn’t like what he saw going on in Europe (did he see World War 1 that far off? Who knows) … so he picked up his family (including my grandfather and great uncle) and moved thousands of miles away from his home in Germany, across an ocean, to a place he’d never been, a place where he didn’t even speak the language, and with nothing, he started over. If you don’t think that takes incredible courage, well, I disagree.

As the conversation went on, my friend got more comfortable sharing some of her experiences (both good and bad) here in the US, but it was clear that there was something else that she wasn’t saying. Finally, she felt comfortable sharing some of the questions and concerns she had about what she had been observing in our country lately (specifically our political discourse … or lack thereof), and she asked me what I thought. Today’s essay is largely what I said to her, but as I thought about it for the rest of the day, I realized that what I said to her included many things that I also what I want to say to everyone … so here it is.

First, I told her that I thought that all of her questions and concerns about America today were legitimate, and I further admitted that I shared many of them. I told her that, in fairness to us, it really didn’t used to be this way. I explained that, some time ago, a group of individuals came to power in Washington who believed (I think mistakenly) that government should be intentionally broken so that it literally can’t do anything, even the things that everyone agrees it should do. They accomplished their goals through an intentional, long term effort to manipulate a segment of the population (which, with the help of one sympathetic media corporation in particular, they did quite effectively). They glorified ignorance, vilified science and did everything they could to polarize as much of the population as possible (separate and divide … and once they’re divided, they’re easier to conquer). In short, they created a monster whose only ultimate use was the destruction of our Republic itself (which, and not to defend them in any way, I don’t actually think was their original intention … but when you seek power for its own sake and believe that the ends justify the means and you fail to begin with the end in mind … well, that’s what happens).

But then something odd happened: the monster broke free of its masters, and took on quite a life of its own. Elements of their own movement which they had once so effectively manipulated and controlled began acting unpredictably and, ultimately, uncontrollably.

My friend said to me, “aren’t you worried?” I told her that while I am watchful, attentive and certainly quite concerned, no, I’m not worried. And then I told her why.

I told her about a comedian I remembered from the mid-1980s. His name is Yakov Smirnoff, and he used to end his shows in that era with an observation that I have always really loved. He noted that you could go to Italy, but you’ll never be Italian. You can go to Russia, but you’ll never be Russian. And then with a smile he said that you can go to France, but you will never, ever be French. But you can come to America, and you can be an American.

We are a nation of immigrants, and in that rich diversity is our GREAT power. I grew up in Chicago. My Dad’s wholesale foods business was on North California Avenue, just a couple of blocks north of Devon Avenue. That section of Devon Avenue has frequently been highlighted as one of the most ethnically diverse neighborhoods in the United States (I promise you that the vast majority of you have never seen so many different languages in store windows in a 5 or 6 block section anywhere else in the country). I grew up watching Arabs and Jews, Greeks and Turks, Indians and Pakistanis, all with businesses right next to each other. Many of them were our customers, and they all interacted with each other in a peaceful, harmonious and productive way, every day. Do you know why? Because while they were still Jews, Arabs, Indians, Pakistanis, Greeks, Turks and many other things, they were also something even more important: they were Americans.

Along the same lines, while it may disturb many of my friends to hear me say this, many of the people I disagree with on America’s radical right are correct about one thing: America IS a Christian nation. But it is also a Muslim nation, and a Jewish nation, and a Catholic nation, and a Protestant nation, and a Hindu nation, and a Buddhist nation AND an Atheist nation … and again, a BIG part of our greatness is in our ability to take all of those things and many more and pull them together into a unique whole that recognizes and respects everyone’s belief or non-belief. THAT is a big part of what makes us great.

Yes, there are politicians and media outlets that are literally selling fear, and an entire subculture of consumers who are buying that fear, but I refuse to believe that, when push comes to shove (and politically, and FAR too often actually, it is now), that we would choose to turn our backs on such a core principle of our nation. I believe that candidates for office who have nothing to offer but fear, who want to kick out immigrants, block others from coming, and worst yet force some to carry special identification to separate them … I believe that these ideas are so fundamentally far from the GREAT ideals of our nation, from the courageous and compassionate cry of

"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

… people who preach against this message are SO far from who we are that, given the choice, we will NOT turn away from the values that are so central to our strength.

I still fundamentally believe in the nation that I wore a uniform for and swore an oath to support and defend, and I believe that we will find our way through this challenge. We can (and will) see through the fear salesmen and choose to “fear not”. We can (and will) choose liberty over a false sense of security. We can (and will) come to terms with the fact that we may not ever be 100% safe from another terrorist attack, but knowing that we can still choose to not “let the terrorists win” by giving up the very things that are so central to what makes America great. And more. We ARE capable of creating and maintaining a state that can effectively provide and work for the people AND peacefully co-exist side by side with a vibrant and productive private sector. We can simultaneously act sensibly towards our environment AND profitably towards our economy. We can rid ourselves of the cancer of fear and the leprosy of division and again be Americans FIRST.

But I’m also a pragmatist and I love spreadsheets and databases, and the good news is that, when I look at the numbers, I see these things already happening (and I see the demographics of younger and “minority” voters in particular pointing in this direction). I see positive change as inevitable. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but slowly, inevitably, inexorably, I see a better future coming.

It won’t be easy, of course, but nothing worth having ever is. I told my new friend that I hope she sticks around for it, because America needs her too.

Duane's Bible Stories: Who Touched Me?

by Duane N. Burghard
©2015

My wife pointed out to me this morning that, many years ago, when I would spend time studying the Bible (usually in preparation for a sermon), I would indulge my rather bizarre sense of humor by humorously enhancing some of the stories. She mentioned this while quoting one this morning and, since I have been in search of something to write about (and really don't want to write the things I'm thinking about either politics or the horrific events in San Bernardino this week), an example of this part of my warped brain seems appropriate for the day.

This story is from both the 5th Chapter of the book of Mark and the 8th Chapter of the book of Luke (the former is my preferred version and the one I will expound on below, though for the sake of accuracy I will note that it was the latter that my wife was talking about this morning). Jesus and his disciples are on a road trip across the country side and have just encountered Jairus, the head of a synagogue, who has requested that Jesus come to his house to see his dying daughter. We'll pick up the story there (Mark 5:25).

And a certain woman, which had an issue of blood twelve years,

And had suffered many things of many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was nothing bettered , but rather grew worse,

When she had heard of Jesus, came in the press behind, and touched his garment.

For she said, If I may touch his clothes, I shall be whole.

And straightway the fountain of her blood was dried up; and she felt in her body that she was healed of that plague.

And Jesus, immediately knowing in himself that virtue had gone out of him, turned him about in the press, and said, Who touched my clothes?

(and THIS is where Duane goes "off the reservation")

And the disciples looked one unto another and said, "Seriously?! Is he messing with us?"

And when the others were unwilling to speak, Peter (the impetuous) said, "Master, are you kidding? There's like ... thousands of people here all crowded up."

And when Jesus said nothing, Peter continued, "there's ... well there's a LOT of touching going on here. It's a crowd!"

And Peter, realizing that he wasn't getting it but also feeling a sense of urgency about getting the group going again, ran and stood on a nearby rock and shouted out to the multitude, "Umm, excuse me! Can I have your attention please? Listen, uhh, we're sorry to interrupt the trip here but we have kind of a situation. At some point, just a few minutes ago, umm, well, someone touched the Master ... and, well obviously there's a lot of people here and we don't know who it was and, well, it's ... apparently we need to know. So to make this go as quickly as possible, what we'd like to have everyone do right now is to number off one through twelve, and then gather in your groups according to your numbers, and we'll have one of the main disciples here join each group where we'll quickly interview each person, find out who the toucher was and, in theory, get this over with and then we can all get back on our way over to Jairus' house."

And Jesus facepalmed and quietly said unto himself, "seriously Dad, I have no idea how much longer I'm going to be able to do this."

And Peter, sensing that there was more, added, "also, I know that many of you are getting pretty hungry, and I just wanted to let you know that we're only about a chapter away from fish sandwiches for everyone so, if you'll just be patient a little longer, we'll take care of that too. So, thank you!"

And the woman, realizing that if the job was left to these men, they'd be here all day, raised her hand, stepped forward, explained, apologized, and begged forgiveness.

And Jesus, knowing that she misunderstood, smiled at her and said, "no, it's totally cool, I just wanted to meet you, that's all."

And Peter, still standing on the rock, rejoiced and said, "never mind! We're good!" And they continued on their journey.


Or, you know ... something like that .....

Where Basketball and Character Meet

by Duane N. Burghard
© 2015

Author's Note: First, a HUGE apology to all of my readers. I was shocked this evening to discover that it has literally been two days short of TWO MONTHS since my last post. I knew that I had been very busy with my new job and I knew that it had been a while  ...  but I swear that I didn't realize that it had been THIS long.

For the few fans who have written me asking about it, let me also add that the updated and expanded version of my most popular essay "Umbrellas, Spaghetti and Spacetime" is in fact finished (and has been for weeks). I haven't published it because I haven't decided whether or not to try to get it published as a Kindle Single yet (trying to make side money as a writer is important to me, and while my first novel is selling well, it's not doing that well).

Anyway, this week's essay is something of a cheat too in that I didn't just write it. In fact, I wrote the original version of this essay in early 2004 (the night after attending the Missouri Class 1A and 2A high school basketball championship games, which were, at that time, held at the Hearns Center on the University of Missouri campus in Columbia, Missouri ... which, of course, is where I lived at that time). Unfortunately, that original version has been lost to history. The version below is an edited one that I made for it to be published in 2010. I thought of it the other day when a coworker and I were discussing basketball, and I thought it was worth digging up and posting on my blog. I hope you like it ... and I promise to get my act together and start writing again.

The essay was originally called:

1A Sports

The night of the class 1A boys and girls basketball championships at the Hearnes Center has become one of my favorite nights of the year. You might find that odd coming from a man who grew up in a city of millions (Chicago), but the truth is that there is no more pure an experience of what is good and right in sports to be found on the planet.

Everyone from each of these little towns is here. Grandparents, parents, children, friends, relatives, the entire student body ... I have an image of four towns with just a lone policeman driving up and down their empty streets to make sure no one steals the whole town while everyone else attends the game.

There aren't any slam dunks, no shoe contracts and no showboating. But there's also no talking back to the officials (there was one technical foul all night), and the players always help each other off the floor when they fall. It means every bit as much to them as an NBA Championship (and indeed, for many, this is that moment for them), yet they still manage it with more grace and maturity than the vast majority of professional athletes.

There's something unique in these games, something abjectly pure, perhaps because there's nothing else here but the game. And they love it, and you can feel that they love it.

At halftime of the 1A girls championship, they brought out the 1984 1A final four girls. The girls from Lincoln High School all wore the same shirts. They huddled on the floor and cheered after they were announced. These ladies are all just a year or two younger than me. They're bankers, realtors and housewives now, held together forever by a few moments here on this floor two decades ago. And they still feel it. As the game continues I look over at them and I can see them, watching the game, watching themselves, remembering all the pain and joy, the winning and losing that seems to mean so much more in a smaller town.

As the end of the girls championship game gets closer, I start paying closer attention to a girl on the team that's going to lose. She's clearly one of their most talented players, and her attitude is easily understood by everyone in the building; she's going to lose over her dead body. As the game gets more "out of reach" (they will lose), she seems completely oblivious. I never once see her look up at the scoreboard. She doesn't know the score. She doesn't care. There is no score. She just wants to play as hard as she can for every second she has left on the court. I ask the person next to me with a program "who wears 14 for Walnut Grove?"

"Amber Blunt," he replies, "she's a Senior."

A Senior. These are her last moments in her last game in high school, and she gets to spend them losing the championship. And yet I see no fear or agony or disappointment or sadness in her eyes as the minutes become seconds. I see only drive, intensity and focus. It's impossible not to be amazed, humbled and inspired watching someone with such a focus on excellence, such a pure, unadulterated passion for the game. That's why I come here, every year.

When I was younger I wanted more than anything to be President, for a million reasons. Today when I think about it, I have fewer reasons, but there is still one thing I would do as President; I would come here on this night. And I would bring the media, and invite some big star to come in and sing the national anthem. And I'd congratulate the winners and the losers. And they might be excited by all that (certainly the fans would), but then the game would start, and we'd all see what I come for each year; a reminder that there's still a place in the world where sportsmanship and the love of the game still reigns.

Obamacare is working! Thanks ... Republicans??

by Duane N. Burghard
©2015

In case you haven't heard (and let's face it, if you've been paying attention to conservative media, you absolutely have NOT heard), early results are in and, so far, it appears pretty clear that the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) is working. Back in June of 2015, The Atlantic magazine reported that, officially, some 16.4 MILLION additional Americans are now covered by some kind of healthcare. That number represents a drop in the uninsured of over 35 percent, which is the best improvement in over 40 years. And what groups are the biggest winners? Well, again, according to the official numbers, minorities and young people posted the biggest and best gains.

And yet it would be something of a massive understatement to say that the Affordable Care Act is a rousing success with the public. As of a year ago (the last spot I could find poll results that I thought were truly non-partisan), only 37% of those polled said they completely approved of the law (although, perhaps more interestingly, the same poll revealed that a staggering 75% of those who were newly insured did). And then of course, there's our "do nothing" House of Representatives which, despite its staggering inability to address basically ANY problem facing our Republic today, has found the time to vote to repeal the ACA over fifty times now.

And this brings me neatly around to my point today, which I suppose you could describe as a PROW (Political Rant Of the Week, for those who don't regularly read this blog), but I don't see it as a rant as much as a ... well, a point of confusion on my part. In a sentence, I truly do NOT understand the ridiculous, vitriolic, completely over the top and most importantly irrational hatred that most Republicans express when it comes to the ACA. After all, IT WAS THEIR PLAN!

Yes, that's right. I'm sorry to shock some of my more conservative friends who don't know this, but the Affordable Care Act was, in actual point of fact, originally, a REPUBLICAN based and sponsored health care plan. The "birth" of the ACA actually took place at a Conservative Think Tank organization called the Cato Institute back in the late 1980s (you may also find articles listing another Conservative organization, the Heritage Foundation, as another "founder" if you will of the basic outline of the ACA, although that was in the early 1990s). In fact, at one point (1993), a bill that looks a LOT like the Affordable Care Act (and the similarities are anything but accidental) was introduced in the Senate by a Republican and had the support of a majority of Republicans in that body. Now, it may be hard for some of my readers to understand how such a thing could start from such a Republican based, but also frankly bipartisan beginning, and yet end up with the name "Obamacare" and then be labeled things like "socialism" and "the root of all evil in the universe." Believe me when I tell you that it's a pretty big mystery for the rest of us too (although the label of "socialism" is the one that drives me particularly crazy as the use of that term to describe the ACA is probably the most ridiculous misnomer in the history of American politics (and THAT is saying something!) and only serves to demonstrate the pure and unadulterated idiocy and ignorance of the person so describing it. But that said, once President Obama chose it as the "compromise of least resistance" and the idea most likely to get the votes to pass, well, evil it became and evil it was to everyone whose lives are so sadly laser focused on opposing everything the President does (usually if not always for no reason at all, other than the sake of opposing him).

But again, here we are, in late 2015, and every day there is more and more evidence that the ACA is doing what it's supposed to do ... AND it's saving us money (collectively, though not always individually) ... IF you compare it to the costs of the same level of care for the same number of people if we didn't have the ACA. If you think about it, this should make sense since the focus of the program was to add millions to the pool of insured persons which, by definition, allows insurance companies to develop ever better and more accurate premium models (which does, in fact, drive total, aggregate costs downward ... it is what the insurance industry calls the "law of large numbers" in action).

Overall, of course, the total costs have gone up, but that's exclusively because the number of people covered and the aggregate coverage provided have both gone up substantially, however, the two curves are absolutely not congruent.

At this point you'd be forgiven for thinking that I'm a big fan of the ACA, but if you think that, you'd actually be wrong. While there's no question that decreasing the number of uninsured persons in our society is a good thing (and it does in fact have a positive effect on controlling some costs within our health care system, and it also brings us closer to what other western democracies have done, though they are still doing it far better and more efficiently than we are), the ACA fundamentally fails to address the elephant in the room: the exploding costs of healthcare and drugs in America. Of course, the ACA was never intended to do that.

The ACA was intended, again, by its originally Republican authors, to allow for insurance and drug companies to continue to make radically higher profits (hence the creation of an insurance exchange with private insurance companies ... a major reason why the description of the ACA as socialism is just one of the dumbest things I've ever heard). The lack of ability to control costs is actually the source of the greatest amount of Democratic Party frustration with the ACA. Most Democrats would have preferred (and most still would prefer) something a lot closer to a "single payer" solution which would allow for the costs to be far more controlled. Essentially, what Obama has accomplished (and frankly, I should more accurately say, once again what Obama has accomplished) is more of what the Republicans wanted than the Democrats ... and for this they crucify him daily.

So, despite their success (and their refusal to even acknowledge their success), the Republicans continue to lambast the ACA daily. This constant and ongoing opposition is very confusing to me because, as time goes on, the empirical successes of the program (and the number of people positively affected by it) will continue to increase. A FAR better strategy, in my opinion, would be for the Republicans to (correctly) remind everyone that the ACA was in fact THEIR idea in the first place. If they're concerned about the need for some political cover in making such an about face, they could pass some meaningless amendment to it and declare it "fixed now" (though I seriously doubt this is necessary ... they've cultivated followers who are so extreme and obedient that, within 24 hours of the change of position, I would expect Fox News et al to be extolling the virtues of the great Republican success that is the Affordable Care Act and how Obama almost ruined what is clearly a great American success story etc.). In any case, it would seem to make much more sense to me to simply declare victory and move on.

But regardless of what happens with the Republicans and their position on the ACA as we move forward, the elephant in the room (or the other elephant I suppose), the costs issue, will remain, and there appears to be precisely ZERO political will to deal with that problem right now. Interestingly enough, Secretary Clinton spoke out this week specifically about controlling drug costs. Unfortunately, I view almost all promises and proposals made by Presidential candidates rather cynically (I find them largely ridiculous because they often involve things that the President has basically NO control over ... which makes the campaign promise meaningless beyond the grandstanding points earned with followers and potential followers who lack the basic civics education needed to know that). It seems more likely that Clinton was making her point to capitalize on the anger and frustration regarding the young billionaire who bought an AIDS drug and jacked the price from $13.50/dose to over $750/dose (which is, no question, outrageous ... but the young man has since spent the week becoming one of the most hated people in America, has promised to lower the price substantially, and is now under Federal investigation for fraud and lots of other fun charges ... karma, it seems, was actually awake and paying attention this week). Still, I applaud ANY efforts to control these costs because the ACA isn't going away any time soon ... and my point is that, whether you like it or not, if you're looking for the party to credit or blame for that fact ... well, it's probably NOT the party you thought it was.

PROW: Pentagon Critics Are Shooting At The Wrong Target

by Duane N. Burghard
©2015

OK, I need to stop writing about politics soon and get back to science and/or science fiction, because this crap is depressing!

That said, I need to give you at least one more rant from my position as radical centrist. This week, it's my friends on my far left that are driving me nuts. A number of people on social media this morning have rediscovered an article from early June of this year. The article makes a fairly incredible and frightening claim about our nation's military spending. The headline reads, "Report Reveals $8.5 Trillion Missing From Pentagon Budget." Now that's a headline that will get the attention of just about ALL of my "long haired, sandal wearing hippie" friends (and be clear, I have a LOT of them). Unfortunately, despite being very intelligent about a number of things, many of these friends let headlines like this trip what I call the "stupid switch" in their heads. Now, before my conservative friends start laughing, we ALL have stupid switches (and don't start throwing stones conservative friends, because, especially now, you guys live in houses with a LOT of glass). A person's stupid switch is what causes them to say, do or think something because someone else says or does something that fundamentally aligns with a (usually less than totally rational) bias in their head. So when you're fundamentally inclined to be opposed to military spending because you feel your nation's spending priorities are out of whack and because you've been exposed to some legitimate, specific examples of waste, fraud and abuse in defense contracts in the past, and you marry that inclination with a bombastic headline, well, stand back, because the ocean of self-righteous indignation can't be far behind (and again, conservative friends, I encourage you to hold your tongues, because your people have elevated self-righteous indignation to a freaking art form). Unfortunately, I'm easily distracted from the crap I'm supposed to be doing today, so when I saw this headline, article, and the corresponding hullabaloo, I felt the need to comment.


So let me start by noting that, when we're talking about money in government budgets, there's a BIG difference between "missing" (aka unaccounted for) and flat out wasted or stolen (although wasted is a frankly subjective term, so let's stick with what an auditor would define as fraud or theft). With respect to the specific claim in the articles, first, the total dollar figure spans a TWENTY YEAR period. Now, that's still an average of just over $400 BILLION per year, so we're still talking about a LOT of money, but remember, the headline writers want you to be outraged and angry in the streets, ready to fight with your friends. We can't have people walking around calmly saying, "hey, let's have a calm and rational discussion about this potentially disturbing issue," I mean, who would tune in for that? But let's get back to the issue here of the galactically large difference between missing/unaccounted for and stolen/fraud.

A deeper look into this issue quickly reveals that the overwhelming bulk of the money involved here is NOT, in actual point of fact, an example of theft, waste, fraud or abuse (SOME of it very well COULD be, but we don't KNOW that). No, what we're talking about is that there are trillions of dollars worth of government defense contracts that are simply unaudited. That does NOT automatically mean malfeasance or fraud, it means they don't know what happened to the money. I have no doubt that, in and among all of that money, there's probably a good deal of government waste to be found, but the article's title and implication are both VERY misleading in that the reader is meant to instantly conclude that ALL of the money involved MUST have been wasted.

With that having been said, I absolutely do agree that this is a pretty big problem, and pointing the finger of blame for it is pretty easy. You see, the problem began (in my view, very un-coincidentally) with the Republican takeover of Congress in the mid-1990s. Upon taking control of Congress, the Republicans actively took actions (mostly in terms of funding and resources) to discourage the normal level of auditing to take place. As a former military officer, I feel very comfortable saying that this failure to adequately care about, fund, monitor and follow up on the audit processes at the Pentagon was one that frustrated, irritated and just plain pissed off the people inside the Pentagon as much or more than anyone else (they don't like it when contracts don't get audited either and they absolutely DO want to know where the money is going). And it wouldn't take long at all for this backlog of audits problem to balloon completely out of control.

Many of you reading this are probably also relatively unfamiliar with the frankly inconceivable size and scope of what's involved in a military audit. To help you out, allow me to first familiarize you with the military's general rule regarding paperwork: if it moves, make a copy of it, if it doesn't move, make copies of it until it does. Second, let me tell you a brief story about my lone experience with an audit at the Pentagon.

In the early 1990s I was a Department Head at a Navy shore command in Rhode Island. As part of my job, I was in charge of the deck, admin and supply divisions (which is to say that I had fiduciary responsibilities). I was also the Command's Legal Officer. During my time there, another officer filed a formal discrimination complaint against my Commanding Officer. Not long after this, the command's Executive Officer (XO) called me into his office to direct me to assist in the command's defense regarding the officer's allegations. Part of that defense required me to audit a small contract, which immediately looked fishy to me (because the signature on one of the documents wasn't an officer whose name I recognized, and it wasn't a senior officer associated with our command, and it normally should have been). I noted my confusion to the XO. He was grateful that I cared more than he did, happy to assign me to do all the work, and promptly returned to the 12 inch tall stack of junk in his inbox.

I crossed the street to our base's command office and took the odd document in question to the Base Commander's secretary (who, of course, I knew). I asked her about the officer whose name appeared on the document. She assured me that the officer did not exist. I then made the mistake of asking if she was sure. She looked at me with relatively forgiving and only slightly condescending eyes and said, "Lieutenant, I have been in this job for over 20 years, I absolutely guarantee you that, not only is there no Captain by that name attached to any part of this base right now, but there has, in fact, never been a Captain by that name attached to this base in the entire time I have worked here." I lowered my head apologetically and retreated.

Fortunately for me, the Navy has this wonderful tool called the Blue Book. In the Blue Book is the name of every officer who has ever served in the history of the United States Navy. Surely, I thought, I will find this missing officer in the Blue Book and then be a lot closer to finding out why he was involved in the first place, etc.

He wasn't there.

Not only was there not an officer by that name in the Navy at that time, but, in the entire history of the United States Navy, there had NEVER been an officer with the name typed and signed on these orders. Well NOW I had a mystery.

Fortunately, this is the United States Military ... and like the X-Files, the truth is almost always "out there" ... somewhere, you just have to be willing to suffer to get it ... and when I say suffer, I mean paperwork.

The military loves paperwork more than pretty much any other entity on Earth, and a side effect of that affection is that there is almost never a piece of paper in the military that isn't attached, in some way, to lots of other pieces of paper. In this case, the contract I was dealing with included a set of orders, and they in turn were connected to actual payments on the contract. Unfortunately, the events involved were so long ago, that the only copies of relevant documents remaining were in the Pentagon archives. I returned to my XO and told him that the command needed to pay my way down to D.C. so that I could track down the documents in question. I was on the highway to D.C. only a few hours later.

I had never been to the Pentagon archives. In fact, to be honest, I hadn't known that the Pentagon archives existed (probably should have, but I didn't). I drove up to a very nondescript, three story tall, long, thin building in the D.C. area. I was frankly unimpressed with the building and its size, but I was also relieved because, in looking at the building I thought, "how hard can it be to find the right documents here?" I walked in the door, showed my orders to the guard, and was eventually told to go to the elevator, go to level B and wait for assistance. I did as I was instructed, but I was completely unprepared for what happened next.

Level B was several floors below ground (and I'm guessing from the time in the elevator it was at least 4 floors down). When the elevator doors opened, I walked out and my eyes went as wide as possible. I was inside a space that was several football fields large. Directly in front of me, on the well polished tile floor, were painted driving lanes (a mini version of what you'd see on the street). Within seconds an electric golf cart pulled up and a young man said, "Lt. Burghard?" I showed him what I was looking for. He studied the document for a moment and said, "OK, hop in."

We drove for several minutes through the "roads" in this incredibly cavernous space, past endless rows of shelves that were filled, from floor to ceiling, with folders and papers. The size and scope of the space was simply beyond my imagination. Finally, we arrived. My escort parked his golf cart and said, "we have to walk from here." Eventually we found the file on the contract that my documents referenced. The contract however, was for a pest control seminar involving personnel for a command that was nearly 200 miles away from ours. And then, there it was. Attached to the Pentagon records, there were references to TWO checks. One at the correct command, and one at our base.

Since you're probably interested in what happened at this point, before I go back to my main point let me quickly tell you what happened. Upon making this discovery, I immediately knew that we were dealing with an instance of fraud against the United States Government, which meant that I was about to be acting beyond the scope of my authority. So I contacted NIS (the Naval Investigative Service). An agent met with me two days later. I gave him the results of my audit, he thanked me and went away. A few weeks later he returned to my office with security pictures from a local bank and asked me if I could identify the individuals in the picture (the agent had tracked the second check to this bank at this date and time). I recognized the young man (fortunately NOT one of my people, in fact not even attached to my command), and, behind him in the corner, the officer who had filed the complaint against our Commanding Officer. Both men left the building that day in handcuffs. Both men went to prison.

Now, here's why I told you that story.

Think about the size and scope of what it took for little old me to do a simple audit on a small contract ... and now consider the task of auditing trillions of dollars of contracts dating back twenty years. Even if we had the political will (and we don't), the sheer size and scope of the auditing job to be done at this point is beyond what is possible. There aren't enough people or enough hours in the day. You'd have to recall THOUSANDS of people to active duty (and very specific people, people like me, officers with auditing experience) and you'd need to create a literal army of auditors. That alone is NEVER going to happen for dozens of reasons, but even if you somehow could, then you'd have to have some kind of organized and methodical approach to the audits, then you'd have to give the auditors authority to interrupt the current work of hundreds of thousands of troops and contractors and employees (which would be insanely costly to them) and, most importantly, you'd have to have hyper-specific guidelines regarding what constitutes waste, fraud and abuse ... AND, then you'd need a MASSIVE army of lawyers to follow up on the results of those audits ... and remember that, to be cost effective, each of those prosecutions has to make the government more money than all of the above costed (which is INCREDIBLY unlikely).

My point here is that it is incredibly hard for the Department of Defense to keep up with its existing audit responsibilities under ideal conditions, much less under conditions when the resources and manpower needed for the task are being squeezed out of existence. I should also note that I have serious doubts that the Department of Defense is somehow unique in having this problem. My guess is that a specific, intentional effort to reduce the frequency and efficacy of government audits is a government wide issue and that, yes, the blame, if any, for this fact belongs more with Congressional Republicans than any other group.

Since I can hear the stupid switches of my left leaning friends suddenly tripping again, and since I feel the need to try to say something positive about how to "fix" this gigantic problem, let me see if I can address the best way to do that. Basically, right now, it's impossible. Not only do you not have the necessary political will, but you have a party in power that has no interest in solving the problem. And removing them is not going to happen overnight (this leads to a somewhat separate rant about gerrymandering that will have to wait for another day). To "fix" the problem, you need to replace the Representatives causing it. Given how gerrymandered their districts are, you are VERY unlikely to do that by simply trying to run good candidates against them in a majority of those districts. That plan simply won't work (and we know this because it consistently hasn't). You have to travel farther down the food chain, specifically, to the STATE legislatures. Control of the state legislature, in most cases, gives your party control of the redistricting process which, after the next census, in theory, gives you your first rational chance at shifting the balance of power. Sadly, for my left leaning friends, this is spectacularly unlikely. Why? Because, if you haven't noticed from their Facebook feeds, NONE of them are getting all excited and frothy about their state rep candidates. In fact, most of them don't even VOTE for their state rep candidates (for far too many Democrats, voting means showing up once every four years and voting for President, which is why we see the results we see). They ARE, on the other hand, all excited about Bernie Sanders, and convinced that electing him will save and change the world (though if you try to engage them on how that might happen specifically, you'll usually be treated to a rather depressing lesson on the failure of our education system to instruct people on how our government actually works).

But let's suppose we actually did all of those impossible things I list above. After you do that, the idea that we're EVER going to know what happened to most of the money from most of these contracts over the past twenty years is looney. The amount of human manpower needed to go back and perform all incomplete audits just during Obama's Administration would be prohibitively expensive ... which brings me around to my overall point: articles like the one I saw being referenced today prey on people's existing prejudices (ooh, I don't like the military, therefore everything they do MUST be super evil and corrupt and everybody there must be equally evil and corrupt, which is just bullshit). They also sensationalize and get people all pissed off about a problem that's endemic to ANY sufficiently sized bureaucracy (again, you think the Defense Department is alone here?), and finally (and most importantly), they leave the reader mad at the wrong people ... the people in the Pentagon are NOT to blame here (just as the Banks are NOT to blame for our financial crisis). In fact, whether you believe it or not, this problem pisses them off more than you. People interested in actually FIXING the problem should be hyper-focused on seizing and maintaining control of their STATE legislatures and working up from there ... that's EXACTLY how the religious right seized power in this country ... but since that's just not as sexy as yelling about Wall Street and "feeling the bern" and since we can't get people to VOTE for more than one office more than once every four years, basically, we're screwed ... and, as usual, there's really only one way to fix that isn't there .........

PROW: When the Stupid Literally Hurts ...

by Duane N. Burghard
©2015

Sorry I've been away for a few weeks. After my last essay, I returned to working on my second novel a bit, and then on my business, and then on a new business project ... and somewhere in there, I kind of lost my blog voice (which happens) for a moment. Fortunately, as is frequently the case these days, Facebook was there to rescue me today.

So today's Political Rant Of the Week (PROW) comes to us courtesy of the State of Colorado ... not for something they're doing that's particularly stupid, but for something they're doing that's actually quite brilliant, helpful and generally good, but that they're going to stop doing ... and in this case, the stupidity of stopping will quite literally hurt.

In 2009, Children's Hospital Colorado (near Denver) and a number of other hospitals in the state, began an intentional and focused effort to increase the presence and use of pregnancy preventing implants (e.g. IUDs) in teenage females. Their intent was to lower the number of unwanted pregnancies among young people and, simultaneously (obviously) lower the number of abortions performed. Unlike the pill or condoms, IUDs are statistically far more effective at preventing pregnancy (they also don't have to be thought of immediately in advance of sexual contact). Unfortunately, a very small percentage of teenagers use them, and part of the reason why is that, unlike the pill or a condom, IUDs are significantly more expensive (hundreds of dollars) and can only be implanted by trained professionals, adding even more to the cost. To overcome the funding problem, the state of Colorado was given a $23 million grant from the Susan Buffet Foundation (and yes, Susan Buffet is billionaire Warren Buffet's wife).

So what happened? Well what do you think happened?? By 2013, teen births in Colorado had dropped by FORTY percent (substantially more than the nationwide drop for the same period). Statistics for 2014 haven't been officially released yet, but officials have noted that the number has continued to decline. Similarly, the number of abortions performed on teenagers in Colorado has also dropped significantly during the period.

So what do we have here; teen pregnancy is down, abortions are down and births to teens are down. I HOPE that we can all agree that these are all good things. But that's not all. You see, when teen births go down, all sorts of other good things happen too. Colorado's Medicaid expenses have gone down as a result. With fewer teen births there is a savings in government assistance. More of those teenagers are finishing high school and going on to lives where they will earn more, pay more in taxes, and have more opportunities. These all seem like really good things. They also seem like the sorts of things you'd want to see continue, right?

Apparently not.

You see, the money from the Buffet foundation recently ran out, and so Colorado's Democratic Governor John Hickenlooper (yes, that's his real name) went to his state assembly to get the money to continue this program, a program which, had it been using state funds all along, WOULD HAVE BEEN PROFITABLE in that it has saved the state more than the $23 million the Buffet foundation has invested ... and that's where the trouble began. Republican State lawmakers (a generous title indeed given all they do to NOT make laws) say that the program is too expensive and that it "sends the wrong message" to teenagers. Some have raised concerns about the program leading to an increase in Sexually Transmitted Diseases (though there is, to date, not a shred of evidence to support that fear).

It's at this point that several "rant alerts" go off in my head. I'll see if I can get them coherently organized for you (no promises).

First, let's talk about being pro-life. While I'm sure it will not surprise any of you, I am firmly in the camp that has long been known (and somewhat badly named) as "pro-choice" ... which, incidentally, is the same camp that many if not most Republicans belonged to before Reagan. Although you would be forgiven for not knowing this today, it is in fact true that it was the Republican Party that first endorsed the landmark "Roe v Wade" decision back in 1973. They endorsed Roe because it was consistent with their conservative "hands off" approach to government. They recognized that the decision had less to do with abortion and more to do with not letting the government have a hand in deciding what we can and cannot do with our bodies (legally speaking it was about the interpretation of the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment ... in any case the decision was and is consistent with an actually conservative approach to governance by a state). Today, sadly, pro-life has come to simply mean "pro-birth" and there is precious little (if any) interest in the life of the individual once they are born. But the one thing that I thought the so called pro-life community and I could universally agree upon, was that lowering the number of unwanted pregnancies and the number of abortions is a good thing. So when we see a program that is empirically lowering the number of abortions (AND SAVING MONEY), it would seem to be a "no brainer" that we could all agree that funding such a program would be a good thing. Alas, no, it turns out that, in this case, logicians need not apply.

So let's talk about sex. One Colorado State Rep said that she thought that funding the program would send the wrong message. She said that the message was, "feel free to have sex with everybody." Now, just so we're clear, I haven't been a teenager in just over 31 years, but I did used to be one, my children are teenagers, and I have been able to keep up on what they're generally like over the years. In my experience, the desire to have sex is a pretty universal desire of the average teenager. Certainly when I was a teenager, I was rather ... focused, on members of the opposite sex. And by the way, if I may run off track into a separate rant for a moment and attack this ABSURD school dress code issue that we're seeing today ... I'd like to be CLEAR that, when I was a teenager, if I thought you were attractive, what you were wearing made absolutely NO difference whatsoever (and if I wasn't that into you, your attire similarly made no difference ... I know this is true for girls too because I dressed the way I did and yet several girls still actually went out with me). Telling girls that THEY are responsible for what guys think or do as a result of what they wear IS in fact a perpetuation of rape culture (not to mention an incredible insult to men who are being told that they're not capable of controlling themselves or acting responsibly). The bottom line is that, regardless of what a girl is wearing, a guy either wants to have sex with her or he doesn't, and either way he IS still fully responsible for controlling himself AND for paying attention in class.

But this is nothing new. Teenagers have been wanting to have sex since before the term teenager was invented. And the idea that we can train people out of this desire (especially in a society whose members do NOT all share the same religious or moral background or beliefs) is without a single example of success. In fact, the states which spend the most and place the greatest emphasis on abstinence only education are the same states that have the highest rates of unwanted teen pregnancies. And according to Advocates for Youth.org (and their website references a number of empirical studies) there is NO statistical evidence that "youth enrolled in abstinence only programs were any more likely than those not in the programs to delay sexual initiation, to have fewer sexual partners, or to abstain entirely from sex." Put simply (in deference to those who apparently need it to be put simply): IT DOESN'T WORK.

So we have a program that, empirically, is lowering teen pregnancy, preventing abortions and saving the state money ... ALL of these things are things that the Colorado Republican Party SAYS they are interested in ... and yet a large number of them oppose funding this program. And this brings me neatly around to my last mini-rant of the day: State Legislatures.

As incredible as it is for me to see on my screen as I type it, this December will mark the 10th Anniversary of my announcement to run for Congress in 2006. One day I will write about that amazing experience and the many good and bad things I learned about our system and how it "really works" (from the standpoint of a candidate), but for now let me say that one of the things that became increasingly important to me during that campaign was ensuring the success of "downballot" candidates (specifically people running for the State House and State Senate seats in my US Congressional District).  In fact, one of the things that I am most proud of was that, even though I didn't win that year, a significant number of people within the party credited me with keeping my opponent so busy and spending so much money on defeating me, that he didn't have time to do his normal interfering work (funding and working for downballot candidates) in other races. As a result, to this day, many people in the party give me partial credit for the election of several downballot candidates. Why is that a big deal? Well, despite the lack of money and sexiness in those races, your state legislature is enormously important and, in actual fact, has a far greater impact on you and your daily life than you might think (including the fact that most state legislatures get to draw these ridiculously gerrymandered US Congressional District lines which intentionally protect (most Republican) Congressmen ... and that protection makes them less willing to compromise and more prone to the gridlock we so often see today).

So at the end of the day, what do we have? We have a program that's working, saving money, preventing unwanted pregnancy and lowering the number abortions. It seems to me that ending such a program would be, to quote Stephen Colbert, just about the dumbest f*cking thing I've ever heard (and I would remind my readers that the preceding designation was NOT intended to be a competition ... though it does seem to be working out that way) ... but sadly, that's probably what's going to happen. Yes, Colorado can look forward now to a future with increased abortion, higher teen pregnancy and higher social program costs. And why? Well, mostly because so many of the citizens of the State of Colorado just don't take a greater and more interested role in who is representing them in their state house (I say this because the number of people who vote for state representatives in most districts is decided lower than those who vote for statewide or federal candidates in those same districts). As a result of this lack of interest and participation, we once again all get to live with the will of the majority ... of organized people who vote ... and there's really only one way to fix that isn't there?

PROW: The Mishandling of Bush and Clinton

by Duane N. Burghard
© 2015

Like many of you, I was hoping to avoid this level of involvement in NEXT YEAR'S Presidential Election as an issue for at least 5 or 6 more months, but apparently our national need for goofy political theater has overtaken our desire for peace and quiet, so at the risk of adding my voice to an already annoying chorus, I will again step in to the fray this week with my "Political Rant Of the Week." And in this week's episode, I'm going to focus my attention squarely on the expected nominees; former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, and former Secretary of State (and First Lady) Hillary Clinton. Each of these candidates has had a fairly major "wow, they really stepped in it" moment in recent days, and both moments exposed a really serious problem for them. Let's let Jeb go first.

Just last night, the former Florida Governor gave a "major foreign policy speech" at the Ronald Reagan library in California. The locale has often been the backdrop for major policy addresses in which a candidate or office holder lays out a "grand vision" of some kind or another. To be clear, the reviews of Bush's speech from the left and the right were not kind. The speech was labeled "vague" and "shallow" and "a hodgepodge" by critics on both sides, and was certainly not short on revisionist history concerning his brother's administration.

And then came the gaffe.

Bush was blistering in his criticism of President Obama and Secretary Clinton regarding their "fatal" error in Iraq. He criticized what he called the "premature withdrawal" of forces from the area. He said that the Obama Administration "stood by" as our "hard won victory" was "thrown away" in a "blind haste" to leave Iraq. It was a finely crafted, carefully worded, harsh and devastating attack ... with only one teeny tiny problem.

The "Status of Forces Agreement" to which Bush was referring, was signed on November 18, 2008 ... and while President Obama had already won the Presidential election at that point (and was President Elect Obama), the agreement was actually negotiated by, agreed to and signed by his brother, then President George W. Bush. Even worse, the only way the Obama Administration could have legally altered the agreement and stayed in Iraq, would have required a vote of the Iraqi Parliament to allow the troops to stay. And just to put that last little fact cherry on top of this awful sundae, President Obama did in fact send emissaries to Iraq (including members of President George W. Bush's Administration) to request that the agreement be altered so that more troops would be allowed to stay (a request that was turned down). Needless to say, the media has descended on this part of Bush's speech like a school of blunder starved piranha (ironic in a campaign season that includes Donald Trump, who is quite literally a one man blunder machine), but before we talk more about what I consider to be the key underlying problem here, let's check in across the hall at Clinton headquarters.


Just a few days ago, Secretary Clinton was asked to say whether or not she supported the Keystone XL pipeline expansion. Now, in fairness, not getting a yes or a no answer from a politician when they're asked a question that most of us would consider to be yes or no in nature isn't exactly new. Further, asking a politician whether or not they support something has frequently failed to receive a clear answer, and sometimes that's even fair and logical (for example, the candidate might say, "I support this part but not that," or "I can't support it until it includes this"), but even in those cases the candidate's relative position on the topic is generally pretty obvious based on their response.

Clinton flat out refused to answer the question,

The former Secretary of State later "clarified" her non-answer by saying that it was inappropriate to comment or "second guess" President Obama while he was still in office. Now that is very thoughtful of her, but here again is the teeny tiny problem with that answer: to date, Secretary Clinton has had NO problem either commenting on or second guessing a variety of other positions and issues where she and the President both agree and disagree. As a result, that response seems, well, maybe just a bit hypocritical and like she's completely trying to dodge an issue that is important to some of her larger campaign donors (a major image problem for Clinton within her own party).


Now, let's put these two moments together and see why they both have me so annoyed. These two candidates are, statistically, very likely to be the nominees of their respective parties next year ... and that, to me, is highly distressing at this point, and not because I care whether the brother of a former President and the wife of another are running. I want the best candidates that the parties can deliver, regardless of who they're related to (and BTW I am most emphatically NOT either stating or implying that's what we'd have, only that the arguments for not nominating them based solely on who they're related to seem silly to me). No, I'm highly distressed because they are the likely nominees. Further, in many ways, very credible and strong arguments can be made that they are in fact the two most qualified individuals running as well. But given those facts, in my opinion, they should both be way better than to be caught in moments like these. Governor Bush looks like a flat out idiot this morning because of this speech. He should immediately clean house. He should fire the idiot who wrote the speech, fire the idiot who didn't fact check it, and maybe go back to the mirror and have a long talk with himself about what the heck it is that HE actually thinks as opposed to what his handlers are telling him to say. Similarly, Secretary Clinton (who, let's face it, already has credibility issues with a good portion of the electorate) looks like she couldn't be honest with people if her life depended on it. She has simply GOT to learn how to, as they say, "ATFQ," and that's not going to happen until she jettisons whoever it is inside her campaign who is encouraging her to be so careful that it's impossible to be seen as even remotely honest or genuine.

What this comes down to, in my opinion, is that both of these candidates are very obviously allowing themselves to be "handled" by "political professionals" who are not only failing to correctly "handle" them, but are in fact instead making them look like stupid, weak and frightened doofuses. The American people are pretty clear about what they like and don't like, and one thing that they consistently really, really don't like, is a candidate who appears to be packaged and handled and controlled. They like it when they feel like a candidate is being honest with them ... even when that person is an blowhard media-hound buffoon ... and if you need to ask me who I'm referring to there, please don't, I'm already depressed).

Now, for those of you who don't know this about me, I know former Vice President Al Gore. We're not "buddies" and we don't talk on the phone, but we've had several opportunities over the years (via his Climate Project organization) to speak one on one, face to face, and I'm comfortable that he could probably pick my face out of a lineup. Here's why I told you that: Mr. Gore has a public perception issue. Most people who don't know him personally think he is dry, humorless, stolid, robotic, etc. This was a HUGE problem for him during the 2000 election campaign (a campaign during which I was horrified by the degree to which he was "handled"). The frustrating part for people who know him is that he's actually NOTHING like that public persona. In all of my interactions with him, I have found him to be warm, thoughtful, animated and funny. Because of my life experiences (mostly running for Congress a couple of times), I know a number of current and former national politicians, and NONE of them are as completely opposite from the public perception of them as Mr Gore.


My point this week is that the "macro" issue behind the challenges facing the Bush and Clinton campaigns is that they seem to be following the "Al Gore 2000" campaign playbook ... which is to say that they're going way too far in "handling" their candidates. They're so afraid of saying the wrong thing that they're not saying anything of substance. And they're not answering questions in a way that gives their audience a sense of their integrity or clarity on any issue. The end result of this approach is that they are endangering their candidates chances and making it harder for the electorate to make an informed choice. They are, in a sentence, accomplishing the very opposite of their intentions ... and that's bad for my country.

It's AMERICAN to disagree AND get along

by Duane N. burghard
©2015


I was unsure of what to write this week ... and then I found myself talking to my wife this morning about a weekend Facebook interaction with one of her brothers. It was during this conversation that she suddenly said, "Stop! Right there. I think you should write down all of that ... everything you just said." So I'm going to do that ... which means that this week's essay is actually little more than an exercise to find out whether or not you agree with my wife.

My very first post on this blog, nine months ago, was about Facebook and the importance of not "unfriending" people we disagree with. Today I'm going to talk a bit about why I think that's so important.

First, a bit of background. The brother-in-law in question is a white male in his late 50s with a high school education. He is a rural homebuilder (and a very good one) by trade and, not surprisingly (given the data I've already given you), he is politically very conservative. The discussion in question centered on the Affordable Care Act (aka the ACA, or frankly least accurately aka "Obamacare"). My wife had posted a meme correctly noting that calling the ACA "Obamacare" is a bit of a misnomer and her brother took the opportunity to express his profound dissatisfaction with it.

Not liking the ACA is fine (for the record I have some serious issues with it myself), but, as with all things, while I don't mind people liking or disliking things and saying so on Facebook (as I have noted many times, it is still a (mostly) free country), it is important to me that people like or dislike things for intelligent, logical and most importantly accurate reasons ... and that is where I often reach the point where I feel compelled to hit the "Reply" button.

My brother-in-law started by noting that "it's Americans that hate Obamacare." This is empirically untrue, and so I found a variety of empirical references from conservative news sources (which I hoped he would react better to) like Fox News and Bloomberg pointing out this factual error and noting various apolitical, unbiased poll results demonstrating the popularity of the program. I also noted the report last week in Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), hardly a liberal group themselves, noting the significant success of the ACA as a program.

For the record, here is the exact quote from the JAMA article:

"The ACA’s first 2 open enrollment periods were associated with significantly improved trends in self-reported coverage, access to primary care and medications, affordability, and health. Low-income adults in states that expanded Medicaid reported significant gains in insurance coverage and access compared with adults in states that did not expand Medicaid."

Finally, I again noted (as I frequently do) that I find it odd that so many Republicans have such a vehement opposition to the Affordable Care Act, and the reason I find it odd is because, of course, it was originally their plan! If you look into the legislative history of the Affordable Care Act, you will find it's origins come from a group of Senate Republicans. It was their compromise solution on health care and, at one point, it had the support of the clear majority of Republican Senators in the United States Senate. I have LONG thought that the Republican's opposition to a program that continues to get more and more successful and popular as time goes on is ludicrous. In my opinion, a FAR smarter approach would be to do a 180 degree flip, tout it as a rousing success and remind the American people at every opportunity that it was the Republicans who were responsible for it. Not only would this be the politically smarter course (in my opinion) it would have the side benefit of being historically accurate. Instead, they have responded with efforts to demonize it, repeal it and label it socialism (which is just beyond stupid to me every time I hear it ... how anyone could look at a private insurance marketplace and label it socialism indicates a level of ignorance that just scares the beejeebies out of me).

Note that at no point so far am I trying to get him (or you) to like or dislike the ACA, I'm simply pointing out that saying that Americans hate it is inaccurate. But it's his response to my references and then my response to him again that really gets to the heart of why it is so important to have conversations like this one.

In his next response, he noted to me that he didn't need to get his information from a poll, he knew everyone hated it from personal experience. He then took the opportunity to compare it to Social Security (which he incorrectly referred to as an entitlement program ... Social Security is, of course, most emphatically NOT an entitlement program) and to express concerns about the costs (which is, I think, actually a very legitimate concern and criticism of the ACA, and one I actually share).

I responded to each of these points. I have always been deeply troubled by what I see as an over-reliance on anecdotal "personal experience," especially when reliable, much larger scale data exists to inform or educate us. I am certain, for example, that we all know people who don't like the ACA (and it's certainly logical that he would know more of those people than I would), but the whole point of having empirical polling data from apolitical, unbiased sources is so that we can go beyond what we know from just our own first world experience and have a better, clearer and more accurate view of the world as it actually is (especially when that differs from what we think it is). I also clearly explained what Social Security is and how it is most emphatically NOT an entitlement program and has nothing to do with our budget deficit (other than the government raiding its trust fund so that it can pay cheaper rates on its borrowing). My point in this response was to emphasize that everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but not to their own facts, and we have to start from a factual basis before we can make the progress needed to have a more valuable discussion.

(By the way, I also noted that we shared a significant concern about the issue of health care costs and that this concern was the key reason that I and other Democrats resisted supporting the ACA initially. Many Democrats who voted for the ACA "held their noses" in doing so and only voted for it because it, like so many other things in our nation's history, was a compromise.)

Now I know that, at this point, many of my readers are thinking, "jeez Duane, why are you even bothering with this?" Well, I'll tell you: because it's IMPORTANT. In fact, I believe that having and participating in discussions exactly like this is critical to the future of our country. The United States of America is a Republic, and our Republic was quite literally designed and built for the specific purpose of creating a sustainable way for people of good conscience who have differing viewpoints to coexist as efficiently, effectively and harmoniously as possible. This is what democratic Republics do! And they do this through compromise. Our nation's entire history is literally riddled with compromises. The Constitution, our nation's most important founding document, contains a whole series of compromises. The goal of our government has always been to create a framework that allows for people with different views of the same issue to craft a "least worst" solution that often ends up making everyone a little unhappy but is also something that everyone can live with. And we agree to these compromise solutions so that we can continue to live and work together. Anyone who doesn't agree that this is IMPORTANT work, anyone who thinks in "my way (or my side's way) or the highway" absolutes is, in my opinion, fundamentally UN-American. This is a VERY big problem in our society today, something I strongly blame on the gerrymandering of Congressional districts (when you're a Congressman in a district that is drawn to protect you (as a Democrat or a Republican), you literally have a disincentive to compromise and an incentive to become increasingly polarized ... that's a BIG problem in a society that requires compromise to work properly).

The point is that my conversation with my brother-in-law is really just a microcosmic example of trying to make our Republic work. It is a conversation between people of good conscience who disagree (although I'm not entirely sure that we do actually disagree as we haven't yet uncovered the legitimate, fact based reason for his opposition to the ACA ... but I certainly accept that there may be one), and if we simply "agree to disagree" and walk away, well that might work for the two of us in this one instance, but as a society it's NOT working and isn't going to work for us in the long run. We have to find ways to get along and reach the compromises necessary for the core functions of our government to operate.

Compromises are everywhere in our society. Don't want to participate in the ACA? That's OK, you don't have to, but then you have to pay a special tax. That's a compromise. You don't want to vaccinate your children? That's OK, you don't have to, but then they can't come to public school. That's a compromise (individual liberty vs pubic health). You want two houses of Congress? OK, compromise (known in fact as the "Great" Compromise).

If it's not clear why compromise is so important yet, here's a disturbing bottom line to all of my conservative and liberal friends: the people who often strongly disagree with you are NOT going away. There are a LOT of them, and to dismiss them and call them names and worst of all ignore them will only make our situation worse.

In the case of the ACA, yes, I have to say that I'm a little miffed by the visceral animosity that so many of my conservative friends have towards it ... because it was their idea! President Obama only selected it as the legislative solution to advocate because it was the compromise he found that could get the votes to pass. But if you want to compromise the compromise, OK, that's literally why government exists (most of the laws passed by Congress are actually modifications to existing laws!). But we (and that means our politicians, but it also means US) have to be aware of the fact that there are other people who are not, by definition, evil who don't want what we want ... so in order to coexist, each of us is going to have to give up some of what we want. That's not a weakness, that is quite literally our STRENGTH.