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I HAVE A DREAM

Tomorrow is Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a national holiday, and also the kick-off to the voting for the U.S. president on November 5.  How important is the Iowa caucus?

  • This caucus will only select 1.6% of Republican delegates to Milwaukee in mid-July.
  • Nearly two-thirds of Republicans in Iowa are either white evangelical or white born again Christians.
  • Since 2000, no Iowa Republican winner has ever become president.  However, in 2016, Ted Cruz beat Donald Trump.  Then Trump in 2000 beat off challengers, but lost to Joe Biden.
  • Only Barack Obama in 2008 won the Democratic vote and went on to become president.
  • In 2020, Biden lost to Pete Buttigieg, made a recovery in South Carolina, which will be the third primary site, and will probably determine which Republican will become the party nominee for president.
  • Why?
    • The way these caucuses/primaries are organized, independents can sometimes determine the winner.
    • While all states generally allow anyone to show up and say they are Republican, New Hampshire will have a lot of them actually cast a ballot, with few Evangelicals there.
    • Thus, it would not be a surprise for Nikki Haley to actually beat Donald Trump in that state, especially if Ron DeSantis drops out after Iowa.
    • However, there are a lot of Evangelicals in South Carolina, and even though Haley was once governor there, all previous polls show Trump far ahead of her (similar to Iowa) in this state,
    • Why do Evangelicals support Trump, who is a crackpot and lying criminal, or will be in a short while?
      • Trump got 77% of the 2020 Christian worshippers in 2020.
      • Why do these individuals who are normally righteous vote for someone like Trump?  Watch this.  Americans are weird people.
    • Key dates, then?  January 23 for the New Hampshire primary and February 24 for the South Carolina primary.
  • Between now and February 24 there are signs that the Supreme Court will allow Trump to be on the ballot in every state, and soon thereafter either pass on countermanding the D.C. Appeals Court decision removing immunity for Trump if tried and shown to be guilty, or confirm that decision.
  • About third party candidates.
    • Joe Manchin would seriously hurt Joe Biden.  But I can't imagine Manchin trying to help Trump become president, for there is no chance of himself actually winning enough votes to prevail.  Unless, of course, Manchin wants a dictatorship and has been promised a role in Trump's administration.
    • Whether No Labels or Liz Cheney, other third party candidates will help Biden.
    • Robert Kennedy Jr. should not be a factor.
  • About the Iowa caucus.
    • I feel cold when my room air conditioner temperature drops below 75 F.  My wind chill number is 75 F.  In Iowa, the temperature with predicted winds could drop the wind chill temperature to minus 40 F.  That is 115 F colder than when I'm cold.
    • Plus, these caucuses all start at 7PM Iowa time.  They don't vote in the daytime.  Sure, they will be in a warm room, and will drive in a warm car, but their nose will freeze walking from the parking lot to the building.  Plus, if something happens to your car on the way there and back, your life will be in serious danger.  This problem is exacerbated in rural areas where roads are not plowed.
    • Then you show up to vote for almost no purpose, as Iowa is so insignificant.
    • Trump should under any circumstance get half the votes, with Haley and DeSantis at 20% each.  Haley should beat DeSantis, which means he should drop out, helping her.  Vivek Ramaswamy will get around 10%.  Why is he doing this?
  • Speaking of the 100 million Americans facing an extremely cold day (even the NFL is postponing a game, and it will still be snowing on Tuesday in Buffalo)
  • And, by the way, 2023 was the warmest year on record, 2.12 F higher than the 20th century average.  Plus, the 10 warmest years since 1850 have occurred in the past decade.  There is a 99% chance that 2024 will rank among the top five warmest years.
  • About heat, looks like the Gaza War is expanding to Yemen and other spots.  In addition, democracy is being threatened in Ukraine, for the Russians are gaining strength, and Ukraine is losing support.
  • Then if Trump is elected president the world will really be in trouble.
On that note, I dive into I Have a Dream.  A little more than 60 years ago in 1963 Martin Luther King said to a quarter million spectators at the Lincoln Memorial that he had many (a dozen?) dreams, just one being:

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

While our country has not yet attained anything close to equality, thanks to him, we are heading in the right direction.

Click on the above graphic to read the details.

King's dream raised the quality of life for the Blacks of America.  Other dreamers include:

  • Mary Shelley, who had a vivid nightmare at the age of 18 more than 200 years ago.  This was during the cold volcanic winter caused by the eruption of Mount Tambora, when Europe had no summer.  Three years later, she wrote Frankenstein, the world's first sci-fi novel.
  • Robert Louis Stevenson was in 1886 trying to write The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and woke up from an opium-induced nightmare to complete the plot.
  • Albert Einstein in 1905 had a vivid dream that that sparked his relativity theories.
  • Danish physicist Neils Bohr woke up from a dream that led to his atomic theory in 1913, and won a Nobel Prize nine years later.
  • In 1953 James Watson dreamt of a spiral staircase, or maybe it was two snakes intertwined.  Anyway, with Francis Crick, they discovered the double helix structure of DNA.
  • In 1965, Paul McCartney woke up from a dream, and on awakening wrote the music to Yesterday, which has been covered by 2,200 artists.
  • Or watch this video.
I really don't like to dream, for most are not pleasant.  Fortunately I rarely remember any dream, but I did once doze off on a plane trip back to Baton Rouge, and had a dream which led to my finally succeeding in building a tunable laser for my PhD research.  That was more than half a century ago.  Without that dream I probably would not be where I am today.

Most of my dreams are not sleeping dreams.  Same as Martin Luther King, for he just used that term to describe his thoughts.  I did not dream about hydrogen to spur me to draft the first hydrogen bill when I worked in the U.S. Senate from 1979-82.  The Blue Revolution was not a sudden insight, but instead the coming together of decades of bits and pieces, from the OTEC legislation I shepherded through Congress, my interest in global warming, thoughts on next generation fisheries and my sense that this process could enhance the environment while providing profit opportunities for investors.  It just made sense to package them all into a pathway for progress.  Watch my TEDx speech of a year ago.

   

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