{"id":21341,"date":"2017-03-24T10:38:53","date_gmt":"2017-03-24T15:38:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=21341"},"modified":"2017-03-24T12:11:59","modified_gmt":"2017-03-24T17:11:59","slug":"21341","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=21341","title":{"rendered":"Ideas when they are like mosquitoes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve been spilling my thoughts out the past couple days with the same sort of orderliness one slaps oneself while standing in a swarm of mosquitoes. Reading four non-fiction books in short order has only added to the swarm of ideas that I&#8217;ve been swatting at. The 1920 Book has taken me through the GOP&#8217;s Chicago convention and dropped me off in San Francisco about to follow the Democrat&#8217;s quagmire.  The book on China today left me with a rebuttal of sorts to my recent suggestion that a China that can&#8217;t take a joke (or criticism) can&#8217;t hope to surpass America. In fact, the last chapter described a millennial who has been dissing Chinese culture and politics for eight years and has a huge following on the Internet. Of course, the Chinese Communists are now insisting on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2017\/mar\/24\/hong-kong-selection-not-election-china-favoured-candidate\">choosing Hong Kong&#8217;s new leader<\/a> twenty years after Britain handed its old colony back to the Mainland. (Claudia reminded me that we were in England with our kids when that took place.)<\/p>\n<p>Today, I hope to get two things done. I&#8217;d like to read some more about 1920 America. In much the same way that visiting Israel last year put a match under my toes to finally read the Old Testament I&#8217;m getting more serious about reading good historical books about every decade from my Grandfather&#8217;s birth in 1887 until my youth when he advised me never to vote for a Democrat. <\/p>\n<p>To that end I have a number of books I&#8217;d like to dig into. Next I may read the rest of Mr. Speaker. I only got through the first 79 pages of the 378 page tome five or six years ago&#8230;wait&#8230;Ah my search engine found it&#8230;.<a href=\"http:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=10922\">three years ago<\/a>. Thomas B. Reed brought order to chaos during the Gilded Age taking an unruly House of Representatives, not unlike today&#8217;s, and putting it to good use before its members spit him out like a prune pit. This was a time when America had relatively weak Presidents and the Robber Barons were in charge. Reed has always interested me since Junior High when I read John Kennedy&#8217;s spare history <strong>Profiles in Courage<\/strong> and saw Reed awarded one of JFK&#8217;s nominations for greatness. <\/p>\n<p>The other thing I&#8217;d like to do is find the bass parts for tomorrow&#8217;s sing-a-long at St. Scholastica.  They are on the Internet and I&#8217;d like to get in a little practice. I have the sheet music but I learn better by ear. <\/p>\n<p>I also have to add one more post about another difficulty the old Red Plan school board has placed on the current board&#8217;s shoulders. That&#8217;s next.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve been spilling my thoughts out the past couple days with the same sort of orderliness one slaps oneself while standing in a swarm&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[95,47,25],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21341"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21341"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21341\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21355,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21341\/revisions\/21355"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}