This will be the first of what will undoubtedly be many revisions of Fred's views of the candidate seeking the office of President in the 2020 election.  In this edition, Fred is taking out the trash -- that is, he is simply going to tell which of the 20 (as of this date) announced candidates are going to be taken out (like the trash) early in the process -- probably before the end of the summer of 2019.  Each candidate in the list below is a "trash candidate" for the reasons given beside hie or her name.  To avoid an appearance of being biased against a gender or race, Fred will list these trash candidates in alphabetical order -- which has the unhappy result of the first name on the list being a woman and a minority:

Tulsi Gabbard -- At 38, Representative Gabbard is just barley old enough to run.  If she had more experience, just four terms in congress, she would still be too young.  Also, she is from Hawaii, a solid Democratic State with only 4 electoral votes.  Finally, whether its popular to say it or not, this Country is not ready to elect a female, Samoan American, Hindu as president. 

Mike Gravel -- Phew, after that last comment, Fred is glad the next trash candidate is a white male -- and old white male -- a REALLY OLD white male.  Mike Grave will . . . sorry, Mike Gravel will be 90 before the Democratic Convention. Hell, when he ran for president in 2008 his slogan was "Vote for Grandpa Mike." He can't decide if his a Democrat or a libertarian.  And he thought it was cool to go to Tehran to attend a Iranian government sponsored  anti-Hollywood seminar.

John Hickenlooper -- This one kinda pains Fred, 'cause he sorta likes Loopy Hickenlooper.  Hey, the man took his mother to see Deep Throat and stayed to the end of the film.  But, he's a term limited governor who never made headlines until he announced he was running for president and his main qualification was that he took his mother to see Deep Throat.  His two elections for Governor in Colorado were squeakers ... not something you want to see if you're counting on winning your home state.  Actually, Fred thinks Loopy might try to stay in through the Iowa caucuses, then drop out when he finishes lower than third. 

Jay Inslee -- Another two term governor, but he never took his mom to see Deep Throat (so far as we know).  Actually, Inslee has much more experience that Hickenlooper, but that is part of his problem.  At 68 (turning 69 before the New Hampshire primary), Inslee lacks the youth that the Democratic electorate are seeking.  Joe Biden would be out too, for the same reason, but he's got better name recognition.  There's only room for one old line Democratic Liberal, with the emphasis on old, in this race, Jay.

Amy Klobuchar -- This is a tough call, because of the female candidates with congressional experience, Representative Klobuchar has the most tenure of the trash candidates.  But she has less than Kirsten Gillibrand from whom she is otherwise indistinguishable.  

Wayne Messam -- If you want to run for president when your the mayor of a smallish city and no one has every heard of you before, you'd better be gay.  One off-season practice with the Cincinnati Bengals won't gut it.

Seth Moulton -- If you want to run for president as a three-term representative, you better have a vagina.  Actually, Moulton does have his military career working for him, and if he were from a swing state, it would make me a possible VP choice.  On the other hand, it was one of the first people to play the "Hitler card" against President Trump, and that is not the type of rhetoric that wins elections.  

Eric Swalell -- If you want to run for president as a four-term representative, you better have a vagina.  Also, don't announce your candidacy on the Stephen Colbert show.  Swalell is so far off the radar, Fred accidentally left his off the list while he was compiling this post.  He's from California, so no VP slot for him.  Most likely he's shooting for Secretary of Education.

Marianne Williamson -- If you want to run for President and you have a vagina, you better have more of a résumé with more than a failed bid for the House of Representative, as an independent, five years ago, in which you finished fourth.

Andrew Yang -- Yang thinks the Democratic party is ready to nominate a business entrepreneur with zero political experience for president.  He's wrong.

So these are the "trash candidate."  This leaves Joe Biden, Cory Booker, Pete Buttigeig, 
Julián Castro, John Delaney, Kirsten Gillibrand, Kamala Harris, Beto O'Rourke, Tim Ryan, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren -- 11 candidates is still way too many.  Fred will try to narrow the field even more in a future post.

As you have no doubt heard Medicare is about six years away from going bust and Social Security likewise will be insolvent a decade later.  Accordingly, following in a great tradition of me who dare speak truth to power, Fred as decided it is time for Baby Boomers to step up and do what is needed to remedy the situation once and for all.  The solution, of course, has been there, staring us in the face, for some time now, as most simple solutions have.  But before revealing it, let Fred digress to remind all exactly what the problem to be solved is.

For some time now the political class has performed the most miraculous of conjuring tricks by convincing the (admittedly gullible) electorate that Social Security and Medicare are not entitlements, but contractual rights assured by the existence of private accounts consisting of payroll deductions pooled and invested in trust funds that will assure a non-ending supply of benefits.  Meanwhile, these "trust funds" have existed no where but on paper kept in a musty file cabinet in a federal office building in West Virginia.  (Actually, Fred is not certain that the file cabinet is musty or even still there -- but this was where the paper was kept 20 odd years ago when a story on the mythical trust fund was reported on 60 Minutes).  

In truth, the massive "surpluses" generated by the payroll taxes of Baby Boomers during the last 40 years were long ago spent on other things and masking the true extent of the federal budget deficit.  Remember when Bill Clinton balanced the budget?  Well, in truth, he never did -- what he did was reduce the amount of money borrowed from sources outside the federal government to just less than the amount needed to service the debt.  In truth, he could not have done this but for the availability of massive surpluses because the Baby Boomers were entering their peak earning years and were not yet retiring.  They were all putting their shoulders to the wheel and their noses to the grindstone (ouch) and paying lots and lots of payroll taxes.

The problem of course is that the Baby Boom generation was followed by the Baby Bust generation.  So now as the last of the Boomers turn 55 and the overwhelming majority of them have entered retirement, with an average of 10,000 more doing so each day, the difference between SSI/Medicare revenues and outgoes is no longer huge -- or in some recent months even positive on the revenue side for Medicare.  Meanwhile, the "trust funds" that are supposed to provide for the Baby Boomers cannot be tapped unless the gubment can fund them from current general revenues, which are already close to $1,000,000,000,000 short on meeting other expenses (you read that right -- $1 TRILLION).

So what is the simply solution to this apparently insoluble "reality of the math"?  Contrary to what the title of this essay might suggest, I am NOT suggesting that Millennials kill and eat their parents.  That is a barbaric and cruel suggestion.  What's more, being one himself, Fred can assure you that the elderly are not at all tasty.  Moreover, they are laced with all sorts of pharmaceuticals, riddled with various aliments and disorders, and generally not  likely to be appropriate for the vegan/keto/locavore diets of Millennials in any case.

No, the solution is much more benevolent.  The Millennials should export their parents.  And by export, I mean, of course, as human chattel.  I foresee many benefits from a revival of the slave trade in reverse.  First, as it would be most beneficial to dispose of the more affluent who place a disproportionate burden on SSI/Medicare, the trade would be overwhelming Caucasian and, thus, would serve as a much more satisfying atonement for the Africa slave trade than reparations.

Second, a thriving trade with China, which could cease to use its own population in its factories and mass construction projects, would swiftly reverse the imbalance in imports.  Furthermore, Americans could take pride in the fact they were once again leading the world in factory production (albeit under the lash of their Sino masters).

Third, Millennials are forever decrying the lack of new opportunities while bemoaning that they will be the first generation to have a worse standard of living than their parents.  Both complaints would vanish as the renewed slave trade would create all sorts of business opportunities, not merely for building and securing slave pens, but for designing apps for tracking runaways, following trends in the market, etc.  And as for having a lower standard of living?  Fogitabodit! Millennials might not all benefit from the boom -- BUT THEY WON'T BE SLAVES.

Fourth, there is no fear of a glut in the market.  Baby Boomers will likely have much lower life expectancy once deprived of their Lipitor and Plavix.

Fifth, Millennials will find affordable housing in desirable locations such as Florida and Arizona, which be rapidly emptied as the trade booms.

Sixth, should supplies become scarce, GenXers will be available as new source of raw material, as will the Millennials themselves in the 2050s.

So, there you have it.  A solution to, if not all, at least a fair proportion of America's ills.  

Fred is constantly fascinated by people who are so certain they are right, they will simply ignore reality rather than entertain the possibility that they are wrong.  The desire, the willingness, nay, the insistence on standing one's ground in the face of all credible evidence and reason to the contrary is a part of the human condition.  What we now know is that this phenomenon has a cause (or rather a group of causes) called cognitive bias.  These are psychological rationalizations that our minds employ to keep us from going crazy by constantly having to reevaluate reality. 

From an evolutionary perspective, this makes sense.  If we didn't have cognitive biases when we lived on the savanna, we would have to stop and think every time we heard a rustle in the undergrowth that sounded vaguely lion-like, "Hmm, I wonder if that could be a lion.  It was a lion the time Ogg was eaten, and when Mooga was eaten too, but I suppose . . .  AAAAAAAAA!  Lion."  Nope, better to just run away first and never ponder whether it was a lion.  In fact, better to believe that it ABSOLUTELY WAS A LION AND I JUST ESCAPED CERTAIN DEATH!  Never mind that Pooga and Dooga are laughing their a**es off as they watch you run away from a rabbit.  It was a lion, you know it, and they are big, stupid Neanderthals! 

Unfortunately, in the modern world some humans have figured out that if they can make other humans think that there is a lion in the underbrush, those humans can be made to seek protection without question whether there is a lion (or even why there would be a lion in suburbia).  This is why propaganda works so well -- it plays on primal fears, most especially the fear that we will not be able to procreate.  

Wait, I hear you cry, how did sex get into this?  Well, it's very simple.  In evolutionary terms, not getting eaten by a lion equals being desirable as a mate.  More generally, having good survival instincts means being "savanna smart," and we all want our potential mates to think this is something we have and that in turn we can pass on to our children. We don't want to look like lion bait in front of She-ooga, because, in modern terms (according to Ron White) "You can't fix stupid."  Thus, because we don't want to look stupid, we have put our cognitive biases to work to convince our potential mates that we aren't lion bait by reinforcing our certainty that we know better than to fall for something as painfully obvious as the truth. Fortunately, because Shee-ooga has the same cognitive biases, it often never occurs to her that our certainty does not seem to conform to reality.

Now Fred is willing to admit that he falls into the old cognitive bias trap now and again, and probably a lot more often than he realizes.  Indeed, the belief that one is not susceptible to cognitive bias is recognized form of cognitive bias.

So, as a public service, Fred presents this list of cognitive bias phenomena with brief explanations.  How many can you recognize in yourself?

Tribal Epistemology -- Information is evaluated based not on conformity to common standards of evidence or correspondence to a common understanding of the world, but on whether it supports the tribe’s values and goals and is vouchsafed by tribal leaders.

Dunning Kruger Effect -- The tendency for unskilled individuals to overestimate their own ability and the tendency for experts to underestimate their own ability.

Availability Cascade -- A self-reinforcing process in which a collective belief gains more and more plausibility through its increasing repetition in public discourse (or “repeat something long enough and it will become true”).

Confirmation Bias -- The tendency to search for, interpret, focus on and remember information in a way that confirms one’s preconceptions.

Backfire Effect -- The reaction to disconfirming evidence by strengthening one’s previous beliefs.

Curse of Knowledge -- When better-informed people find it extremely difficult to think about problems from the perspective of lesser-informed people (but see Dunning Kruger Effect).

Empathy Gap -- The tendency to underestimate the influence or strength of feelings, in either oneself or others.

Illusory Truth Effect -- A tendency to believe that a statement is true if it is easier to process, or if it has been stated multiple times, regardless of its actual veracity.

Irrational Escalation/Sunk Cost Fallacy --The phenomenon where people justify increased investment in a decision, based on the cumulative prior investment, despite new evidence suggesting that the decision was probably wrong.

Negativity Bias -- Psychological phenomenon by which humans have a greater recall of unpleasant memories compared with positive memories, thus reinforcing the belief that bad things happen far more often than they really do.

Normalcy Bias -- The refusal to plan for, or react to, a disaster which has never happened before.

Planning Fallacy -- The tendency to underestimate task-completion times (also known as Anti-Murphy Bias, referring to "Murphy's Law").

Semmelweis Reflex -- The tendency to reject new evidence that contradicts a paradigm.  This is especially problematic in the scientific community, where dogmatic insistence on a "proven" theory often results in ridicule of the new discovery that falls outside the expected result.

Third-person Effect -- Belief that mass communicated media messages have a greater effect on others than on themselves (also know as False Immunity Bias, that is the belief that one is immune from being influenced by the media).

Parkinson’s Law of Triviality -- The tendency to give disproportionate weight to trivial issues. Also known as bikeshedding, this bias explains why an organization may avoid specialized or complex subjects, such as the design of a nuclear reactor, and instead focus on something easy to grasp or rewarding to the average participant, such as the design of an adjacent bike shed.  It's also the basis for most magic tricks in which the magician distracts the audience by having them focus on a trivial, but easily followed, pattern.

False Consensus Effect -- The tendency for people to overestimate the degree to which others agree with them.

Hello friends.  Yes I know that there are not yet any, let alone many of you out there.  But let;s be real -- how many blogs with only three posts have followers?  Every blogger has to start blogging and stick with it before anyone every reads of cares about what the blogger blogs.  So after not quite two years of neglect, Fred is trying to get blogging again.  Its a modest goal of commenting on the news at least once a week and perhaps writing some more cathartic essays occasionally.  So here's hoping Fred has really gotten motivated this time.  His goal is get a few followers in time for the 2020 election.