Have Republicans Learned Nothing?

Sometimes I wonder if the Republican Establishment has learned anything. Why can't some of them accept the fact that for all intents and purposes that Donald Trump is going to be the Republican candidate in the November General Election? Forget the Third Party option. Historically all third party candidates do is drain votes from the party's nominee.

It has been said that a vote against Trump is a vote for Hillary. This may not be accurate as I strongly suspect that the Independent who is running as a Democrat in the primaries is currently measuring his support for an independent run. If Bernie Sanders does run as an Independent that will be devastating to the Clinton Campaign. It will not necessarily benefit Trump, however. A split like that on the Democratic side will likely discourage voters from turning out to support trump thinking that there could be no way Trump could lose. Clinton or Sanders could technically win by default because their supporters would turn out in droves, possibly winning a few states that Trump may otherwise win.

Republicans that are unsatisfied with Trump should give up the Third Party talk and hope to God that Sanders does not enter as an Independent. I would hate to see a situation in which (and this scenario, as improbable as it is, is not impossible) no one gets enough electoral votes for a win, sending the outcome to The House of Representatives for President and to the Senate for Vice President. What happens in this scenario: Trump gets 17 states, Clinton get 17, states, and Sanders gets 16 states? We would have a constitutional crisis since the House is constitutionally required to vote by state. No one would have a majority. Article 2 of the Constitution does not state how to resolve a tie between the candidates. Do we really want to risk that?

Contemporary musings: Time to Rethink Our attitudes

Contemporary musings: Time to Rethink Our attitudes: As someone who is white and have been assaulted/mugged/beaten up/robbed/et cetera by criminals of various races, creeds, genders, or other p...

Time to Rethink Our attitudes

As someone who is white and have been assaulted/mugged/beaten up/robbed/et cetera by criminals of various races, creeds, genders, or other persuasions over my lifetime (especially in my youth)I feel somewhat qualified to say that one of the problems we face in dealing with the criminal element and delinquency we have to stop dissecting everything by race and social class and stop making excuses from them. I have lived in the Inner City ghetto and housing projects growing up as have millions of others. Claiming the the lack of economic opportunity is the cause of crime is INSULTING to the millions of us who were raised in such and often worse conditions that have and are still pulling ourselves by our bootstraps. Millions of us would rather work than be dependent on government handouts. We do not go out committing crimes or inciting riots. The overwhelming majority of us have always had good, positive with relations with the law enforcement community. It is not an Us versus Them conflict. There is no conflict with anyone other than the criminal element and those of us who want to see our communities improve.

The point I am trying to make rather unpithily (the opposite of pithy) is that social scientists, social engineers, and most importantly social commentators need to stop making excuses. Every one of these criminals...yes, I said criminals for that is what they are...have had the same opportunities as anyone else in similar circumstances. For whatever reason they have failed to take advantage of them. Some opportunities are readily available. Others have to be worked for and earned. Regardless of circumstance they are there. We choose which opportunities we want to partake of all them time. It is time to stop making excuses and start telling the criminals among us that their behavior will not be tolerated. PERIOD!

Congress Must Change Its Rules

It would be easy to fix the entitlement attitude members of Congress have with some rule changes. The major catch in the plan I will be outlining is that only Congress, the House and the Senate, can change the rules. Many members are not about to give up their cushy leadership positions in order to more effectively serve those who elected them to office.

My rule change suggestions would apply to both houses of Congress. Here it is:

1. Eliminate seniority in Congress. Each after each election each member of Congress starts over at Square One when they take the Oath of Office. It is the same oath and the same rules apply to freshman legislators as to those who have been reelected many times. This proposal would do away the the designation of "Senior Member."

2. No member of Congress shall serve in any leadership position more than once. No member of Congress shall serve in any leadership position for more than one congress (two years). No member of Congress shall seek a leadership position without having served a minimum of two congresses without such a position.

Campaign financing:

I hated getting fundraising emails this past campaign season from outside of Maryland's 1st Congressional District. Congressional fundraising should be done only within the district in question. For this to happen the Constitution would have to be so amended.

3. No one running for a seat in the House of Representatives or the Senate shall accept campaign contributions from outside the congressional district they are running for in the case of the House of Representatives or the state they reside in in the case of the Senate. All congressional campaigns shall be funded by those residents the members shall represent.

4. Members of the House of Representatives must maintain a home and reside within the congressional district they are elected to serve. Likewise Senators must maintain a home and reside in the State from which they have been elected.

Congress must reform its rules if it is to be a true representative government. Congress was never intended to be a lifetime profession for its members.

This missive has been written solely by Onnie Duvall who is solely responsible for its content.

Needles are indeed found in haystacks

OK! Yes, I know it has been since forever ago that i last posted something. A lot has happened since then and I will address those issues at another time. Today I want to share what just happened a few minutes ago. Those of you who are LDS will understand. Those of you are are not members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, feel questions free to ask me about it. I apologize in advance to be writing this assuming everyone will know what I am talking about.

There I was indexing Smyth County, Virgnia death certificates for 1922 as part of the church's indexing program when I came upon a record the name of Elisa Cress, maiden name Pafford. As I have Cress ancestry I recognized the name. I went into Family Search straightaway and found Eliza (remember, standardization of the spelling of names is a rather recent development in human evolution) Pafford, wife of Samuel Cress. I noticed that some of my information was only approximate and was able to fill in a few blanks.

I knew there was a reason I have been so interested in indexing Virginia death certificates and always hoped to find someone I was related to. I found one and yet it wasn't even in the line I was concentrating on.

Ramblings about books, book selling, and things

I have been trying not to use my blog for any sort of merchandising or promoting of financial activities...even for myself. I still do not intend to actively promote anything however I will from time to time (hopefully very seldom) make a mention of my efforts of trying to sell used books.
As some of my readers know I have been trying to sell used books for the past eight years. For a little while I was making a fairly good run at it until the economy began to turn in early 2007. What's that? The economy didn't crash until late 2008. No, economies don't crash all of a sudden. There is a build up to it and the more government tries to fix it, the worse it gets.
In April 2007 I began noticing a decrease in sales. While my inventory never did include the so-called "valuable" books, I did, and still do, have a small inventory of books priced in the $50 to $300 range. It was these books that stopped selling first. Over the past 5 years even the least expensive books have stopped selling. Some people say that it wasn't necessarily the economy that caused my books to stop selling, but the advances in digital technology. That may have had some effect, but in my case, very little. Most of my holding are of books that are older and have not been or ever will be digitized. Even the USGS (U.S. Geological Society) publications that I have still sell even though they are almost all available online at no or very little cost through the USGS. Some books you just need to feel in your hand and in dealing with scientific reports the ability to pencil in margin notes when doing your own research is essential.
I still sell the books that I have, but very rarely do I add any inventory. I sell online through two venues, amazon.com and biblio.com. I am trying to deplete my inventory and only have 1127 books left to go. As much as I like selling and dealing with books I am afraid that in the current economic climate (very stagnant and in certain areas, such as where I live on Maryland's Eastern Shore, still in decline) it is just not a viable economic opportunity. I wish it was.

My Conversion ot Mormonism

How often do you just sit there wondering what to do? I have that problem right now. I have been in a writing drought the past 5 weeks or so. What to write about? There's so much I can say on certain events, but why draw attention to the negatives, especially with the political and economic situations being what they are. It would be too easy to whine about a Congress full of spoiled, entitled children who can't seem to play well together or an economic policy that is based on failed and discounted economic theories of the past. I want to be more positive today and not dwell on those matters even though they are still of the utmost importance. So what should I write about?
It has come to my mind that many people do not really know where I came from and how I became the person I am today. Yes, I know I have touched on a few things in my most recent blog, but there is still so much more. As many people know, I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a Mormon. Yesterday in church the talks dealt with conversion. I think today I will share with you the story of my conversion.
Did it really begin in 1978 when I first visited Salt Lake City and joined the church or did it actually begin in 1966 when I first read something amazing in an old encyclopedia. Probably the latter. My family had an encyclopedia set given to us that was already 10 years old at the time. Well, it was my first ever encyclopedia and I just loved flipping through it and reading the articles on different subjects. How many 10 year old kids do you know who had even heard the word zygote (the last word in the encyclopedia) or even knew what one is? I remember seeing a picture of a boy kneeling on the ground being handed some tablets from a man standing above him. I was curious so I read the accompanying brief article. It was interesting and then I moved on. Little did I know that almost 12 years later that picture would return to my memory with a fuller understanding of what it was about.
I was raised in the Protestant Episcopal Church. I recall when I was 11 attending confirmation class and studying the beliefs and practices of the church. While the rest of the kids studied the Catechism I also read the very back of the Book of Common Prayer, the section entitled "Articles of Religion." This gave me more of an in depth knowledge of the beliefs of the Episcopal Church. I was amazed at the differences between what was actually taught and practiced with what was in the "Articles of Religion." I asked the minister of the church about that and he said that the articles are just there. He didn't even recall them being taught in Seminary. I kept this in mind. When I was 14 I was placed in the Baptist Home for Children in Bethesda, Maryland. We were compelled to attend the Baptist Church, more specifically at the time, the First Baptist Church in Silver Spring, Maryland. There I learned more details about God and Jesus Christ than I ever learned from the Episcopal Church, but I never changed my church membership. I remained an Episcopalian. When I went home to Baltimore for visits I attended Old St. Paul's Episcopal Church and noticed that the worship service had changed. The went with what was known at the time as the "New Liturgy." There is no way to easily explain it. Instead of a fairly streamlined and simple service that I was used to it was full of ceremony and ritual. It was explained to me that it was how the early church worshiped. Hmmmm. Flash forward to age 21 and the Spring of 1978.
I was working at the American College of Cardiology in Bethesda at the time and was trying to decide where I should go on vacation that year. I had traveled some before and I had heard people talking about Salt Lake City and how nice a city it was. I decided that I should see for myself what everyone was talking about. Every year the College holds an convention somewhere in the US. There was an office that dealt with exclusively with that so it received promotional information from cities all over the US. I asked them for information on Salt Lake City. Within a week I had a package from the tourist center in Salt Lake and began studying it. I made my reservations at a hotel in downtown Salt Lake City (Temple Square Hotel) and bought my bus tickets. I traveled everywhere by Greyhound in those days. After a 42 hour bus ride I arrived in Salt Lake and checked in to my hotel.
My original plan was to simply clean up, eat dinner, and rest at the hotel that first night. It didn't work out that way. Once I had cleaned up from my trip I looked out my window and noticed that my room looked over Temple Square. Like a magnet I was drawn there. I walked around and saw some exhibits, spoke to some people and then took the tour. Even then I did not do things in the normal order. I still prefer to do some self-exploration before I take formal tours whenever I can. I noticed something right away. Salt Lake City did not look like a desert. It was a modern city and very green. The fact that everything was so green is what told me that some very special people had settled this area. I returned again to Temple Square after dinner and stayed until closing continuing to learn all I could about Utah, Salt Lake City and the Mormons. I learned about a very ugly part of American history. About a time when a church could be persecuted because it did not follow the basic beliefs of an existing church and had the audacity to call itself the "true church of Jesus Christ." I just wanted to learn more and more and more.
I spent three days in Salt Lake City and took all of the requisite scenic tours. Every free moment I had was spent at Temple Square, a place where the outside world just seemed to disappear. By the time I left Utah I was convinced that someday I would become a member of this church. That day came sooner than I ever dreamed it would.
I had been home for two days and had a friend over playing some games when there was a knock on the door. There were two young gentlemen in suits with name badges identifying themselves as missionaries of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Since I already had company they said they could return the next evening and so they did. We got to talking about what I knew about the church and its beliefs and I told them about my trip to Utah. I also told them I had many questions. They challenged me to ask my questions and they surprised me by being able to answer every one of them. They then gave me the big challenge -- the challenge of baptism. I said, "Sure. When?" They then told me they had a few lessons to teach me first but that I could be baptized in about three weeks. On July 28, 1978, I was baptized in the Kensington Ward chapel which is next door to the Washington DC Temple.
It has not always been an easy road trying to live the gospel of Jesus Christ. I know I can do much better, that I come short of expectations in so many ways. The gospel teaches us that life is a probationary state and full of challenges that we need to overcome so that we may again return to live with our Heavenly Father. I plan to strive for that goal for the remainder of my earthly existence.