There are predictors, Ray Kurzweil comes to mind, who predict that non-biological intelligence will overtake human intelligence in the fairly near future. This vision of the future where computer intelligence is a billion times more powerful than a human brain, this vision, presupposes that consciousness is nothing more than a sufficiently large pile of zeros and ones.

If this is not true, then it doesn’t matter how gigantic a computer becomes. If it is not conscious, then it is not more powerful than a human brain. Marvin Minsky and Ray Kurzweil are wrong. The Universe is not a computer.

It is not provable of course, but my belief is that consciousness is God experiencing His Creation. It is the prime example of God inhabiting His Creation. Jesus Christ being the other example. I know a lot of people don’t see it that way, and I’m cool with that. We can still be friends.

I’m just saying this is about the pride of Man. The only way a computer could be conscious is if God chose to make it conscious, and why would He?

When you’re a kid, you live, if you’re lucky, as I was, under the most benovolent communism imaginable. All of your needs are provided for. The larger than life leaders love you, and you love them, at least until you’re a teenager. Then you go to college, paid for by that omniscient government of your life, your parents, or, more likely these days, you borrow the money from the real government.

Is it any wonder that there is a powerful communist tendency among young people? I certainly was a communist in my youth. I even joined a communist society, and gave it my all during my prime years.

Once a young person is dragged, kicking and screaming, into the real world where people pay you only if you create something of value that they are willing to pay for, a slow, incremental, political transformation begins to take place. When they marry and have children, and possibly, create a business of their own, this political transformation accelerates.

They become, dare I say it, Republicans.

But now Donald Trump has exposed the Republican Party to be just as big a fraud as the Democratic Party. Bernie Sanders is doing the same for the Democrats. Elizabeth Warren, who is so grievously wrong about so many things, is right, the system is rigged.

Now what? Bernie Sanders is a communist. Hillary Clinton is as corrupt and tied in to the rigged system as it is possible to be. Ted Cruz is, well what can I say, nobody likes Lyin’ Ted. That leaves the Donald. He might be a terrible President. He might be totally ineffectual, like Schwarzenegger in California. But that would still be better than the last eight years.

Give me government unable to do anything over progressive government every time. And it just might be possible that Mr. Trump could seal the borders, negotiate better trade deals, rethink the whole military strategy regarding NATO and the Middle East. It could happen.

It’s worth a shot.

No matter how well organized the Donald Trump campaign is, in the undemocratic state selection processes where the party bosses pick, such as Colorado, Cruz wins. This media spin about how Trump is just too unorganized, or too unsavvy to understand the process, is BS. There is no amount of organization or savvyness that would convince the Republican establishment to back Trump. They don’t like Cruz either, but they are confident that he will lose to Hillary Clinton, whereas they’re not so sure about Trump.

I think it boils down to a split between the globalists and the nationalists, those who think globally, who disdain borders, and those who believe that their country matters. The globalists imagine themselves to be morally superior beings who embrace all mankind (oops, I mean all personkind), as opposed to those backward, ignorant, inferior people who love their country, are proud of their ethnicity, and who like living with people more or less like themselves.

The USA is exceptional in that people actually do make connections across tribal lines sometimes, more than has ever occurred before in human history, and that’s great, but still it doesn’t happen all that much. Black people and white people and Hispanic people and Middle Eastern people and Asian people and Jewish people, Czechs and Slovaks, are all very different, culturally and (dare I say it) genetically.

The deniers of this obvious, scientific truth are in charge in Europe and, to a lesser degree, the United States. The result is very very bad policy like open borders, no child left hehind, aid to dependent children, affirmative action, Muslim immigration, etc.

The globalists are winning of course. They are way out in front. But Trump has exposed the whole charade for what it is. I have no doubt that they will be able to deny him the Republican nomination. They will do whatever it takes. But the con is not holding. The next few years promise to be very interesting.

Watching MSNBC, Rachel Maddow played a clip of JFK about Cuba. I can never get enough of watching Kennedy. Can’t help it. I love the guy. Maddow was trying to make some left-wing point with the video, but I don’t even remember what it was.

There was Jack laying it out. He was saying that the divide between us and Cuba was because a cabal of conspirators had stolen the freedom of the Cuban people, and had then subjugated them to a foreign power, and as long as that was the case, nothing was possible. As soon as that was not the case, then everything was possible. He sounded like the most right-wing person in the current Presidential race in either party.

Meanwhile, Barack Obama is in Havana apologizing to the Castro brothers, on behalf of the United States, for being so mean to them for the past 50 years.

Nothing has changed in Cuba, but everything is possible anyway. That was Rachel’s point. Isn’t that wonderful?

Donald Trump is not Gandhi. When he is attacked, he fights back. When organizations like moveon.org, supporters of Bernie Sanders, organize an attack intended to deprive Trump and his supporters of their first amendment right to free speech and freedom of assembly, when they attempt to disrupt and shut down Trump speeches and rallies, then Trump and his supporters have every right to defend themselves. The fact that the media, the Democrats, and even the other Republican candidates are all spinning this self defense as Trump being responsible for the violence directed against him, is remarkable.

I predict it will backfire. I for one do not want a President Gandhi. I want a President who fights back when we are attacked. I want a President who encourages Americans to stand up for themselves against terrorists and invaders.

There is no mystery about why people vote for Donald Trump. They vote for him because they believe there is a chance that he might actually stop illegal immigration, bring manufacturing jobs back to the U.S., and either keep us out of foreign wars, or if that’s not possible, at least win them for a change.

People are not voting for Donald Trump because he is a crude, vulgar, blowhard. They vote for him in spite of his entertaining personality because they are desperate, because it is a certainty that none of the other bought and sold candidates will do anything they say they will do, except Bernie of course, who is wrong about everything.

The establishment hates Trump because they don’t control him and because he threatens cheap labor and globalism, and they will do anything to stop him. We are about to witness a well funded incredibly vicious campaign to destroy Donald Trump.

Will he be a great President? Nobody knows, but it looks to many like he’s the only chance we have.

Donald Trump is not a racist. I hope screaming racist is the plan, because it won’t work. If I were Donald Trump, I would not disavow anyone. I would say I want all the votes, racists, axe murderers, the KKK, the Black Panthers, the Clintons, criminals of every description, the saints and the sinners. I want all the votes. Let’s make America great again.

Most of my racist, homophobic, islamaphobic, xenophobic, sexist, and just generally bigoted fellow Republicans didn’t like the oscars at all. They objected to the continuous rant about race even though, for quite awhile now, black people have won more acting oscars than their share of the population. Indians, Asians, and Hispanics hardly ever win oscars, and nobody’s making a fuss about it. So there was that, and then all the usual suspects, glorification of homo and trans sexuality, the bogus rape epidemic, climate change alarmism, Leonardo DiCaprio whining about “corporate greed”, etc., etc.

Me, I just expect it. It’s Hollywood. Sure, it’s annoying and stupid, but Chis Rock was very funny, and even-handed in a Chris Rock kind of day. The man and woman on the street in Compton clips were hilarious. The pretty people were gorgeously dressed, there was good music, great movie clips. What’s not to like? It was a good show. I was entertained most of the time.

There’s an enormous amount of great acting, directing, writing going on these days. Who cares if they’re all a bunch of nitwit liberals. Hollywood has always been that way, with some exceptions, Reagan, Wayne, Kazan, Eastwood, James Woods, Jon Voight. Next year maybe they can get Trump to host, if he doesn’t consider it to be too far beneath the dignity of the President.

I was on the debate team at Iowa State in 1962. We went to a debate tournament in Jackson, Mississippi. I had never been to the South. We stopped at a roadhouse on the way to Jackson. The jukebox was playing “The Ballad of Ross Barnett”, the man who stood at the gate at Ole Miss to keep the niggers from coming in. When we were checking into our Motel in Jackson, the black guy carrying our luggage kept his eyes downcast, never looked us in the face. I had never seen behavior like that before. My partner and I won the debate tournament. Interaction between the North and the South was, believe it or not, rare in those days. Later, we were hanging out with the team from Millsaps College where the tournament was held. They were smart and charming, and apologized profusely for the backward racial bigotry that was all around us. They said that the only reason we had won was because, “Y’all yankees can talk so much faster than us.”