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,

While love and happiness prevail, my mind nevertheless wanders and wonders a lot.  I see homeless people and realize that with only a wrong decision or two, that could have been me.   I have been lucky,  Very lucky. I consider my life to be a success.  Of the  117 billion born , surely I rank in the top one-tenth of one percent.  In other words I am among the best 11.7 million  Homo sapiens  who ever lived.  I'm tempted to improve this by another order of magnitude to 1.17 million, for it has only been in the past century that life became tolerable for most, but all this analysis is meaningless, for what is success? In this thoughtful mood, I looked back on certain points in my life and wondered where I would be today if I made another decision.   A big one was, which college? As a junior at McKinley High School in Honolulu I was only an above-average student, with no athletic talent and little social skills. Then my life changed.  My blog describes this all. I did not bother to ap

Already the House Majority leader, 57-year old  Steve Scalise of Louisiana looks to be the next Speaker of the House.   No vote was taken on the floor today because he doesn't quite have the 217 votes.  If this doesn't happen tomorrow, then the Republican problems continue.  Another, and perhaps more serious personal one, is that he was two months diagnosed to have  blood cancer , for which he is being treated. You might remember that Scalise only six years ago was one of four shot at a Congressional baseball game.   He almost died . Watch President Biden's first major remark about the Israel-Hamas War.   I have never seen him so emotional. Also from  ABC News : MORE: Biden says US death toll rising in Israel, confirms Americans taken hostage The Israeli Defense Force (IDF) has disclosed that in May, when Islamic Jihad launched a barrage of rockets towards Israel, 95.6 % of the Iron Dome interceptors launched by the system successfully destroyed incoming rockets . "Of