I had several topics on my mind this morning when I sat down at my computer to create my daily post. Part 2 of my train series.  Maybe tomorrow. As Thursday is health day for me in this blog site, I have a couple of topics in my mind:  which supplement pills to take and why?; does one get less mentally stable with older age?; Part 5 on the science to stop and reverse aging; should you continue to get vaccinated?....and so on.  Well, they'll all come in the future. I decided, instead, to spend one more day meandering through that Blue America Tsunami. But first, I noticed that Donald Trump again appeared on the cover of Tim e magazine.  Last month he broke the record of Richard Nixon.  With this latest, Trump has now been on the cover 57 times.  Click here to see the first 56 covers. Why are Republic states given the color red , why are Democratic ones blue, swing states purple ?  From Wikipedia: Our flag is red, white and blue. During the Civil War, m...

While it was not a big surprise for Democrats to flip both houses of Congress, what happened yesterday was still in many ways historic, and most importantly, will go a long way to preserve American Democracy. First of all, I've never before in my life ever watched the results of any midterm election.  Yesterday I was glued to my TV set, from 11AM Hawaii time to 10PM ( which was 3AM ET ).  The attraction for me to watch so long was the building euphoria of a Blue American Tsunami. From Newsweek : While midterm elections typically favor the party out of power, the scale of this year’s result points to a broader rejection of the Republican administratio n. Since 1946, the party controlling the White House has lost House seats in 18 of 20 midterms, with an average loss of about 26 seats.  On the other hand: The milestone potentially sets up a new political dynamic in Washington. A President has not had to deal with a Congress completely controlled by the opposition party si...

Martin Luther King was assassinated on this day, April 4, 1968, spurring the passage of the landmark Fair Housing Act of 1968.  I repeat two videos I took when we were in Memphis. Vicksburg is a small town of 20,000 in Mississippi, and a battle site of the Civil War. Vicksburg is located at the confluence of the Mississippi and Yazoo Rivers. Across the Mississippi River is Louisiana, Long occupied by the Natchez Native Americans. Built by French colonists in 1719. Incorporated as Vicksburg in 1825. Jefferson Davis, Confederate president, based his family plantation just south of the city. Was a key Confederate river-port, and in July of 1963 surrendered to General Ulysses Grant, marking a turning point in the war.  In 1876, a flood moved the Mississippi River away from Vicksburg, damaging the local economy, which only returned in 1903 when the U.S. Army Corpos of Engineers built a diversion canal to the city. Terrible Black-White problems affected this area from after the Civi...

Before the nostalgic topic of the day, the latest on what is happening in the Israel-Iran War. The fact that Israel actually had the audacity to bomb Iran was a shock. The Iranian response came, but was weaker than expected. So far, after four days. Iran:  220 deaths, with 1,000 injured.  Don't believe what they report. Israel:  24 deaths, 600 injured. The Iron Dome defense does have U.S. participation, but still allows maybe 5% of drones and missiles to penetrate. Incidentally, Trump wants a  Golden Dome for America  at a  cost of $175 billion . Won't be easy, for Israel is 400 times smaller than the USA.   Much of the hardware came from the U.S. in many billions of dollars since 2011 . The critical contention is that the difference between the iron and golden ones is like comparing a kayak to a battleship. This is not a war for territory.  Israel just wanted to eliminate their most serious existential threat, that of extinction, and felt th...