Monday, October 27, 2014

Ukraine: It’s Somebody’s Move???

When I heard the results of the Ukrainian Parliamentary elections I immediately thought: “OK Putti, your move next”.

But then I thought for a minute.

It’s really our “move” next.

“Move” as I am using the word implies choices and reactions to changing circumstances.

Puti is the lucky practitioner of a no surprise, no change environment.

That doesn’t mean that reality is not constantly shifting underneath his feet that bestride the world like some surreal Russian-sized hobbit.

It just means that he is oblivious to the shift.

So he has no “move”.

He is on auto pilot.

He is going to resurrect as much of the USSR as possible.

So he has never not been going to send the tanks into Kiev for some trumped up reason or other.

I am, in fact, really surprised that he has waited so long.

I thought it would happen as soon as his Fête d’Hiver had concluded.

But then I hadn’t thought about the Soviets taking back Crimea.

That made some delay in the tanks prudent.

But now – the election is plenty of the necessary anti-Russian premise, and Puti’s psychotic Russian domination need makes such a premise necessary (the term Sudetendeutch pops to mind)  – the tanks will come.

So the question is: “do WE have the guts to make the obvious move?”

Or is it 1 September 1939 all over again?

Sunday, October 26, 2014

The Direction of the Trickle Doesn’t Matter

I got en email from an old friend recently.

He was decrying Hillary Clinton for espousing trickle up (you may have heard it here for the first time) economic policies.

He was equally negative about the more classic idea of trickle down.

The whole thing caused the following outburst from me.

********************************************************

Which way the trickle matters not.

The CURRENT stage of the problem is that millions of low skill jobs have disappeared to computers.  Those jobs are not coming back and the people that once had them mostly don’t have any job and are not buying things and contributing to economic growth.

The WE ARE IN THE SHIT stage of the problem is that millions more of medium skill jobs are disappearing every day.  More no pay, no buy, no grow.

The IMMINENT stage of the problem is that millions of mid to semi-high skill jobs will disappear in the next few years: basic accounting, basic legal, basic radiology, various transportation functions to name a few.  More no pay, no buy, no grow.

The jobs that will be left, and there will be many, all will require a degree of intelligence and a level and type of education that has passed most of the unemployed and imminently unemployed by.

So except for a few rappers, basketball players and assorted published bullshit artists there aren’t many replacement sources of income for the legion of unemployed. 

And it won’t be long before no one will be able to buy tickets or CDs or published bullshit.

Selling dope won’t even last because nobody will have any money to buy it.

No wonder rich people live in gated communities with houses full of guns. 

The problem they face is that ultimately their wealth comes from the spending done by all those people who no longer have jobs and have no money to spend.

Even the wealthy will begin to feel the pinch.

And all of the wealthy’s food and services comes from those now unemployed people who used to provide it, but don’t do that anymore.

I think I see end game.

Monday, October 20, 2014

Kill Them Dogs

I think I just heard on NPR (I pledged recently) that Muslims can't be around dogs (the Koran forbids it, I think I heard).

I also think I heard that muslims need to kill all dogs because they (the dogs) are unclean (or un-muslim, perhaps) or that muslims need to kill everyone who owns a dog.

That might be something I didn't really hear, but I think I did.

The whole thing I am recounting here is so weird that I doubt that I really heard it.

So y'all can ignore it.

But...

The anti-dog thing - if true and not hallucinated by me - was new news to me about a cult that has more weird beliefs than the republican party. 

Or even Christianity.

Tuesday, October 7, 2014

Your thoughts? You've spent more time in Europe

The subject of this post was the subject line in an email I got form an old friend this afternoon.

After reading the text that he had sent me I had to think for quite a while.

I thought through a BIG martini, a half bottle of Hogue red blend and a great red chicken burrito mélange that I created under the influence of the former.

During that several hours I formulated a response.

The email had pasted in it an anti Islam, anti immigrant outburst from a far right Dutch politician.

Here is a little of it for flavor.

It is titled: In a generation or two, the US will ask itself: "Who lost Europe?"

“Dear Friends,

Thank you very much for inviting me.  I come to America with a mission.  All is not well in the old world.

There is a tremendous danger looming, and it is very difficult to be optimistic.
We might be in the final stages of the Islamization of Europe.  This not only is a clear and present danger to the future of Europe itself, it is a threat to America and the sheer survival of the West.  The United States as the last bastion of Western civilization, facing an Islamic Europe.


First I will describe the situation on the ground in Europe. Then, I will say a few things about Islam.  To close I will tell you about a meeting in Jerusalem.


The Europe you know is changing.

You have probably seen the landmarks. But in all of these cities, sometimes a few blocks away from your tourist destination, there is another world. It is the world of the parallel society created by Muslim mass-migration.
All throughout Europe a new reality is rising: entire Muslim neighborhoods where very few indigenous people reside or are even seen. And if they are, they might regret it. This goes for the police as well. It's the world of head scarves, where women walk around in figureless tents, with baby strollers and a group of children. Their husbands, or slaveholders if you prefer, walk three steps ahead. With mosques on many street corners. The shops have signs you and I cannot read.  You will be hard-pressed to find any economic activity.  These are Muslim ghettos controlled by religious fanatics.  These are Muslim neighborhoods, and they are mushrooming in every city across Europe. These are the building-blocks for territorial control of increasingly larger portions of Europe, street by street, neighborhood by neighborhood, city by city.”

And it rambles on in this manner for another 1500 or so words.

Here is what the martini and chicken told me to say.

“My Paris observations are:

Lots of Islam problems; however; Wilders is a Fascist. 

I haven’t gone to les banlieues – I have been on the fringe of them at St Denis, and that has been pretty grim but not on a cultural basis, but on a class basis; nobody that I saw appeared to be included in the “system” and therefore nobody there seemed to have much to do. 

They just stood around and looked hostile.

But I have been many many times in what I think of as the fringe banlieues- which are most definitely not to be called banlieues - closer to down town (they all have arrondissement designations so they are definitely not banlieues) where there is an absolutely amazing amalgam of colors and languages and storefronts and foods and vegetables and meats and drinks and stuff and services; and all of the people in these places that I have seen them have, in their multi colored, multi lingual, multi cultural ebb and flow (and there have been a lot of white French woman avec votres enfants among them) all seemed to be getting along.

Take a walk through Porte Saint Denis and up rue du Faubourg Saint Denis to Boulevard de Magenta and back down Boulevard de Strasbourg to Passage Brady and through la Passage back to rue du Faubourg Saint Denis. 

See what YOU think.

I think “vive la France”.

Islam probably is a huge problem as a political movement in Europe, and probably in America.

Among young Islam men who really need a piece of ass and can’t find a vent I think we have a problem.

However, I don’t think Islam is antithetical to Western Culture.

As a source of potential new ideas – if the piece of ass problem ever gets solved – Islam may very well be the wellspring of a new infusion into our world of ideas and things just as it was seven hundred years ago.”

Sunday, October 5, 2014

A Thought for Secretary Xi

Of course you can at any time reduce the Hong Kong protesters to stacks of human rubble.

And of course that would probably be accompanied by vast piles of Hong Kong bricks and mortar rubble.

And of course that would pretty well settle the question of whether 1.3 billion mainlanders are going to be pushed around by a few million island dwelling ex British subjects.

And that would probably make you feel really good.

The feeling might not be long lived however.

Rubble is almost always detrimental to domestic tranquility.

It seems to me as an American who has seen and continues to see in his own country vast twists of political chicanery passed off as good governance, and who has seen that charade consistently accepted by many of his fellow citizens as good governance, (how else can one explain 2001 – 2008?) that there is a less drastic method of settling how the 2017 election is going to be conducted.

Why not add one more candidate for CEO of the City, making the choice for the winner of that office to be from among four rather than three candidates? 

And why not let that fourth candidate be chosen by convention of the people of Hong Kong?

That would go partway to giving the protesters what they want want but leave the chances of who wins heavily in favor of the Party.

Maybe partway would be enough.

The downside for the Party would be that the whole thing would become a crapshoot, but it would be pretty much a rigged crapshoot: it appears that many of the residents of Hong Kong seem not to want to make waves and would most likely line up behind the Party’s choices.

It would probably be prudent for the Party to retain the ballot counting function, however.