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There was a moment in time when I thought Hillary  should run; a moment in time when, in fact, I thought she would have made a decent president.  That moment was 2004.

Sure, she’d already sold us out by voting for the Iraq war, but she still could have got away with it; made a few outraged speeches about how she’d been lied to, vowed to bring the war to  an honorable close, etc…

I suppose it was logical of her not to run.  Stay in the Senate a few years, build up the old resume, not look overeager.  But,  we needed her then and she wasn’t there.  She could have won the nomination.  She’s not exactly a honybucket of charisma, but compared to John Kerry she’s downright magnetic.  She probably would have won, too.

Except, she didn’t think so.  If she thought it was going to be a Democratic year, she would have gone for it.  The woman is a political animal and she’s wanted to be president her whole life.  So, she  stayed out, and the rest is history.

When 2008 rolled around, I supported her in the beginning.  The ‘electability’ argument.  I was disenchanted with her, but figured she could win and, despite her political cowardice, would make a halfway decent president.  But when Obama took Iowa, I figured “Damn.  If a black guy can win in Iowa, maybe he can win anywhere.”  And I got behind him.

She probably figured she had  it  in the bag this year, with Obama not running.  Surprise, surprise, surprise.

I feel a little bit  bad for her, knowing how  bad she wants it, how much she  feels entitled to  it, but she blew it.  It wasn’t a failure to hire the right campaign manager in 2008, it wasn’t a failure to get enough endorsements or say the right thing in the right place at the right time.

Quite simply, she missed her moment.  Her moment was 2004.

Let’s start tonight’s blog with the full disclaimer: this subject is way over my head.  I do not really  understand what the  Higgs Boson  is, nor how they can calculate a weight for dark matter,  nor most of what  this article  was about, but I’ve  got an  opinion on it anyway.

It’s a blogger’s prerogative, which is a self-granted prerogative, which is the  very  best kind of prerogative.  I give my opinions on films without being an expert on film making or even the history  thereof, I give my opinion on art despite the fact that the best I can draw are stick figures, I give my opinion on pending court cases without  always hearing both  sides because that is, in fact, a blogger’s role.  I give my opinions.  It’s up to other people to give theirs.

If someone reading this does, in fact, understand the physics, feel free to leave a comment telling me how  full  of shit I am.  It would be educational.

The main premise of the article is that maybe we’ve reached  the limit of what we can possibly learn about physics.  Right there I started thinking ‘bullshit.’  We had about a thousand years of that thinking between Aristotle and Galileo and then Kapow! All hell broke loose.  We don’t know what the  next huge breakthrough will be but  little  breakthroughs happen all the time.  The stream has  most definitely not dried up.

Then, one of the reasons they  gave is this (and I’m copying it verbatim because, again, I don’t really understand it.): “In reality, the Higgs field is just slightly on,” says Cliff. (Harry Cliff, a particle physicist at Cern.  “It’s not zero, but it’s ten-thousand-trillion times weaker than it’s fully on value — a bit like a light switch that got stuck just before the ‘off’ position. And this value is crucial. If it were a tiny bit different, then there would be no physical structure in the universe.”

O.K.  So we don’t know how we got so lucky as to be in a universe that exists.  But, look at it this way.  Let’s say there are ten thousand trillion possible settings for the Higgs Boson, and the  one we’re at is the only one where  a universe could actually exist.  That means there are ten thousand trillion alternative universes which don’t, in fact, exist.  I suspect the number is actually much higher because, you know, by  not existing, they leave plenty of  room around them for other universes to not exist in.  But, we’re in the only one of those  universes which does exist.  Lucky, right?  Yes, but inevitable.  Only the universe in wich we exist could be the one where we actually exist to debate this question.

That’s about it.  I’m out for tonight.

Death, death, death,  it’s all around.  Today it is Alan Rickman, also 69, also cancer.  I think of him as Snape, of course, although I mentioned his death to my  wife and she said “Oh, he was the bad husband from ‘Love, Actually,” right?”

Alan Rickman.1946 – 2016. RIP

I’m noticing on  facebook that  many people remember him from different roles, which is nice.  He was a good actor.

Yesterday it was a friend of a friend, she seemed to think I might  have known him too, we worked at the same place at the same time, but there were a lot of people in that office and I didn’t  know very many of them well.  I couldn’t place him.  Yet, his death was sadder because he was only 44.

After David Bowie  died, a different friend posted a clip of a blues singer, Otis Clay, who had the terrible misfortune to die  on the same day as David Bowie.  I’d never heard of him before, but it was a cool video, and sad that I only came to know him upon his death.

I guess it’s fortunate for Miguel Cervantes and John Adams that they died before the advent of social media and thus, presumably, were individually mourned.

My point is, I guess, as far as I have a point, is that this year is off to a hell of a bad start with people dying almost every day.

Somewhere in the middle of all that, though, I have a new nephew (grandnephew, I  guess – he is my nephew’s son), Michael Eric Stalter, and life carries on.

Things definitely seem to be breaking Bernie’s way.  The endorsement from Move On was expected, that’s Bernie’s people, all the way, the whole “We are the 99%” crowd, but it’s nice that it was such a wide margin.  The non-endorsement endorsement from Joe Biden was music to my ears.  What  he  said  was succinct, correct, and deadly  effective.

Then there are the polls, which show Sanders leading in Iowa as well as New Hampshire.  I’ve got a theory about this.  I suspect Sanders may have been leading in the polls for awhile (if the poll was on my facebook feed, Sanders would be winning by about 90-10), but the press, absolutely determined to ignore him no matter what, has been downplaying any good polls Sanders got, and playing any which  showed Hillary leading out of proportion.  Then there was the incident when they (I’m not  going to look  up which network did this, but it was one of  the big ones), just flat out reversed their numbers.

But, with all that ignoring and downplaying, they are going to look foolish if Sanders does anything more than squeaks through in Iowa.  If he totally crushes it, the question will be “How did the press miss this?”

So, they have to start mentioning the possibility, and Hillary needs to start de-emphasizing Iowa and New Hampshire, using rhetoric like “It’s a long campaign” or “You can’t predict the end result from a couple of small states.”

But, they mean a lot.  They mean the press will be forced to start covering Sanders or else they are just hastening the day when social media totally takes over their role and they become irrelevant, except for entertainment.  Which would not be a bad thing.

A free press is critically important to a Democracy, but it doesn’t have to be in the form of television and newspapers.

Anyway, when the press starts covering Sanders a little more, that will give him a big boost in South Carolina.  Then Hillary will say “wait for Super Tuesday,”because this is a replay of 2008 and it’s easy to write these predictions, just substituting Sanders for Obama.

She will become increasingly aggressive, and nastier in her attacks, because that’s what happened in 2008.  At some point, I expect the words “socialist Jew” to slip from her lips.  And then she will lose.

O.K., my goal tonight is simply to hammer out 250 words and be done with it.  I can’t comment on Obama’s state of the union address because he hasn’t given it yet.

The new is on TV and they’re talking about the assaults in Cologne.  Yes, it was a very bad thing.  But, I don’t think the right way to end the problem is to limit immigration, or to make it easier to deport people, although if they’re assaulting and raping people then, they deserve whatever they get.

I think the thing to realize is that on New Year’s Eve, there are lots of people on the street, lots of them are drunk, and crazy shit can happen.  Next year have a few more police on the street, and maybe lay  on some free transport so women can get home safely.  Although race may actually have figured into it this time, the real problem is assault, and that can be dealt with without bringing race into it.

Slowly, everybody seems to be forgetting about the Bundy bozos.  The death of David Bowie, electoral politics, there are always other things happening in the world.  Maybe they will all just slink off home when nobody is looking and that will be an  end to it.

That’s not actually good enough.  I’m not a violent or vindictive person, I’m not one of those whose been saying the Feds should go in  with massive force and kill them all, and I don’t think they need to do egregiously long jail time.  A couple  of years would do, so they have a felony on their record and see the seriousness of their crime.

Fining them won’t do any good because they just won’t pay the fine.