Some Pictures Of Random Value

 

"It's The Economy, Stupid" Is Just Plain Stupid - Or Cynical, Even

 As we enter yet another disheartening election season, we are all about to be beset with the onslaught of advertising from the republicans about how, if they get control, gas prices will plummet, high paying jobs will be a dime - nay, a nickel - a dozen and a Tesla will be priced at the modest sum of $15,000; sirloin steak will cost a dollar a pound and chickens will be pounding on all the doors of all the citizens of the Republic that they may leap into those citizens' pots. 

Lest you think this to be another anti-republican diatribe, hear this.

If the republicans had the presidency, the Senate and the House, the democrats would be primed for the same ad campaign.

That's the way it goes, year after year, decade after decade.

Never in that time does any member of the electorate ask some obvious questions: "Why would the party in control allow jobs to be scarce and financially flaccid? Why would the party in control allow gas prices to require bank loans for fill-ups? and so on and so on.

The answer to all those questions is disquieting.

The answer to those questions, and many kindred questions not here posed, is all the same.

The party in control, or the party out of control - neither - have any control over the economy.

The economy is a monster that wanders on its own random walk through history, leaving mansions and mayhem in its wake; but politicians don't have any control of its random walk.

So why do they always claim that they do?

Because the electorate are morons.

A Letter To Vladimir The Diminished

 Mr. Vladmir Putin
The Kremlin 
Moscow. Russia 103132

Dear Mr. Putin:

We, the people of the world are writing this letter to discuss a few things with you by asking some questions.

First on our list is, what gives you, a single human being, license to decide that an adjacent country is not a country, and, not being a country, should have all of its high-rise residences, all of its single-family homes, all of its railroad stations, all of its supermarkets, all of its shopping malls, all of its dams, all of its cropland and all of its standing crops destroyed?

How do you have that right of decision, and how does not being a country, even if that were true, which it is not, give you the right to reduce that landmass to rubble?

Even if it were not a country, forty-four million of our fellow beings and their cherished dogs, cats, rabbits, chickens, guinea pigs and too many other non-human citizens to mention here, live there; and they have lived there for at least a thousand years.

Please don't consider question one to be confined only to the war crimes enumerated; they are all we could remember as we write this letter.

If you have defense for your myriad other atrocities and war crimes, please feel free to respond.

Second on our list is, why should anyone, anywhere, accept that a bunch of pieces of paper in boxes from theatrically trumped-up polling places and/or from people's homes where your goons with guns have accosted them and told them they must vote, and told them how they must vote, unless they want to hear the gun go off, in a geographic area that has been reduced to rubble by you and yours, constitute a plebiscite that has given you the go-ahead to annex a sovereign country's territory to yours?  

Third on our list is, how do you justify the robbery, rape, murder, terror and mayhem - to mention the major tactics - meted out by your military minions in the sovereign country which you have chosen to invade?

Finally, we come to the real question, which is the pivotal question and the crux of this letter.

What makes you think that, when you launch your first nuclear weapon, that you are going to win something?

What will happen immediately following that asinine action will demonstrate many things, but primarily among them, it will demonstrate that there are only losers in nuclear war.

Your billion dollar palace will be ash as will the rest of us, as will you.

We all lose.

So, fuck you very much,

Signed For: The People of the World

Some Democrats Are Pretty Opportunistic Also

 Just in case you think that I only accuse sociopathic republicans of political opportunism, consider this.

Newsom vetoes bill proposing safe drug injection sites in California

The only reason I can think of that he would do this is that he is looking ahead to his likely imminent run for the Democratic nomination for president; he doesn't want the kind of ads that doing the right thing would allow to appear against him.

As for sociopathy, do you know who he used to be married to?

Duoply Defined

 du·op·o·ly

[d(y)o͞oˈäpəlē]

NOUN

a situation in which two suppliers dominate the market for a commodity or service.

Re-packaged: The Sociopath Duoply

 Listening to NPR this morning I heard a republican strategist waxing ecstatic about the "opportunity" ronnie the dildo has to show his high level of leadership and executive ability in the face of the onslaught of Hurricane Ian.

She couldn't say enough about how, in the face of catastrophic winds and biblical walls of water, ronnie will show how mechanically fit he is for the presidency.

I can't help but conjure images of video streams blanketing the state of Florida - as soon as Ian has gone into the Atlantic - of Ol' ron upon the inland sea that was Fort Meyers, in a Cigarette Boat, shouting joyously - as the boat broaches yet another floating corpse, "that's 16!! Way less than feared".

Back awhile ago donnie the dildo said "I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters, OK?"

As criminal, treason and civil charges close in on him from so many sides it's hard to count them, donnie - lotta people are saying - is wishing for those calmer days of yesteryear.

Close aids say he has bought a Glock 19 and has been Googling "grade schools near Mara Lago".

Time For The Fifth Avenue Gambit

 Back awhile ago donnie the dildo said "I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters, OK?"

As criminal, treason and civil charges close in on him from so many sides it's hard to count them, donnie - it is reported - is wishing for those calmer days of yesteryear.

Close aids say he has bought a Glock 19 and has been Googling "grade schools near Mara Lago".

A Big Opportunity For The Florida Sociopath

 Listening to NPR this morning I heard a republican strategist waxing ecstatic about the "opportunity" ronnie the dildo has to show his high level of leadership and executive ability in the face of the onslaught of Hurricane Ian.

She couldn't say enough about how, in the face of catastrophic winds and biblical walls of water, ronnie will show how mechanically fit he is for the presidency.

I can't help but conjure images of video streams blanketing the state of Florida - as soon as Ian has gone into the Atlantic - of Ol' ron upon the inland sea that was Fort Meyers, in a Cigarette Boat, shouting joyously - as the boat broaches yet another floating corpse, "that's 16!! Way less than feared".

A Postcard From Iceberg

 Sometime in March/April Iceberg Point becomes a riot of color.

There are two purple flowers that attract pollinators.

And the all but invisible occasional cactus show themselves with beautiful yellow statements of being.

The Tale Of The Domino Bomb (How It All Went Blooie In 2022)

 From Jake Epstein of Business Insider

Ex-CIA officer says Putin is 'completely cornered' and the chances of him using tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine are increasing 'by the day'

An ex-CIA officer said Putin has been backed into a corner over his months-long war in Ukraine. 

Robert Baer told CNN that the Russian leader is unlikely to deescalate, given all his setbacks.

Baer also said the chances that Putin turns to tactical nuclear weapons are increasing. 

As military setbacks in Ukraine force Russian President Vladimir Putin into a corner, the odds that he turns to tactical nuclear weapons continue to increase, an ex-CIA officer said.  

"I think the chances of his de-escalating are close to zero ... he simply cannot give up so much ground and be seen to be losing and continue as leader of Russia," Robert Baer, a former CIA case officer, told CNN on Tuesday.

"The chances of his using nuclear weapons — at least tactical nuclear weapons — is going up by the day," Baer added.

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

About seven months ago one man with delusions of lost ancient empire invaded the land of Kiev Russe with the intent of setting up a puppet regime to replace an emerging, democratic, western leaning Ukraine.

"Forty-eight Hours" echoed down the halls of the Kremlin, even into the room with the very long table where the gnome sat dreaming of a miniature empire in the near abroad; "forty-eight hours".

Seven months and up to 80,000 Russian casualties later the gnome is in trouble.

Even after all the terror, torture, rape, murder, mayhem and mass civilian graves that the Russians apparently think are a valid substitute for modern, surgical special military operations, even after all the destroyed homes, churches, shopping malls, train stations, apartment buildings, even after all the burned and destroyed crops and cropland, even after all those war crimes Ukraine continues to prevail.

If 300,000 untrained, undisciplined rag-tags swept up from the streets of the Russian outback can't turn the tide of inexorable Ukrainian victory the gnome says he's going nuclear.

I always thought that the script for the end of the world would have motifs and themes grand and sweeping, not small, pointless and stupid.

But T.S. Eliot called it with amazing accuracy.

And the world stands by saying "Uh Oh; Uh Oh".

A Florida Man Out Of Control To The Detriment Of All Of Us

 Back a while a trump wanna be look alike - ol' ronnie the dildo desantis - fellow sociopath with ol' donnie the dildo trump, got a great idea.

"I can do just like ol' greg and ol' doug are doing in their states.

"I can send a bunch of spicks to some 'sanctuary' locale in the North.

"What a great gambit.

"Gets me home free in the 2022 election and sets me up for the presidency in 2024.

"And the beauty part is Florida pays for it because I'm acting on 'illegals'.

"But I can't send any Florida illegals because we need them on the sugar cane and all that.

"The Florida Farm Bureau would crucify me.

"And there are too many strong Florida Venezuelan Americans who would not allow me to send their family members out of state.

"I guess I better go look somewhere else.

"Texas sounds good.

 So ronnie the dildo sent Perla the Blonde to San Antonio to pass out McDonalds gift cards to Venezuelans who were milling around here and there.

Ol' greg hadn't gotten around to putting them on busses yet.

She promised them, if they would get on her plane, that they would have jobs and their kids would have slots in school and they would all have English classes post haste and their American dream would commence directly.

And ronnie the dildo's blond recruiter - Perla - got a bunch of people on a plane.

The obvious question of why the governor of Florida thought he had any jurisdiction over "illegals" in Texas has never been asked.

Obvious stuff like that is outside our scope these days.

Probably just feed the fake news folks for another day.

If anybody were allowed to ask that question.

However, now that all of that is history, I was curious who paid for ronnie the dildo's campaign gambit.

I was pretty sure I would never know because the republican PACs are dark, dark, dark.

But when I Googled it, it was easy: the State of Florida ponied up $615,000 for the flight.

So the citizens of Florida have just paid over a half of a million dollars for an election campaign stunt by their governor: he recruited in a distant state some people who are legally in the United States - we did sign the Geneva Convention - and tricked them into getting on a plane to almost nowhere; and then crowed about it in a news conference to his mostly rube-based fellow Floridians.

Luckily for ronnie the dildo, his constituents like being screwed, so life goes on in Florida; but in any normal state ronnie would be asked to pay for his little fun campaign gambit.

Or in any hyper-normal state they might arrest him and put him in jail for malfeasance and high crimes and misdemeanors.  

But not in Florida.

So I am quite sure that they won't even ask who paid Perla.

Or what her function is in the desantis apparatus.

Images Des Marchées

 For color and artistry, I have never seen anything that competes with a French market.

So I have taken a lot of pictures of them over the years.

Here are some of them.

A Wild Guess About Who What Where In Paris

This looks a lot like Louis Phillipe, the last King of France.

It looks like he is coming out the back end of the  Élysée Palace.

The painting cuts off le coq de France at the center top of the painting.

Luckily, I have taken pictures of it.

More About Big Oil's Profits: This From The Guardian

 Yesterday I posted my musings about a number pushing the upper limits of decency.

The number was the aggregate profit of the oil industry over the last fifty years.

Here is a link if you haven't read it and want to read it: Noel McKeehan: Adventures and Opinions: Big Oil's Profits Over The Last Fifty Years (noellivefromparis.blogspot.com)

After posting that item I continued to poke around the net.

Interesting.

Here's what I found The Guardian saying on the subject:

"The oil and gas industry has delivered $2.8bn (£2.3bn) a day in pure profit for the last 50 years, a new analysis has revealed.

The vast total captured by petrostates and fossil fuel companies since 1970 is $52tn, providing the power to “buy every politician, every system” and delay action on the climate crisis, says Prof Aviel Verbruggen, the author of the analysis". 

So, while not paying taxes they have purchased the world's leaders.

And have a lot left over.

Big Oil's Profits Over The Last Fifty Years

 I was watching PBS Newshour Saturday when a segment came up about the disparity between Big Oil's Advertising which clearly says that they are all on target to being non-fossil based by 2050 and the truth which is that that is complete bullshit.

That notwithstanding, I was bought up short by an end of segment factoid: Big Oil has made 2.8 billion dollars a day in profit for the last fifty years.

I had a sense that that is a number so big that it might test my ability to comprehend it.

But I tried.

To comprehend it.

Here's what my calculator came up with.

I think that that is 51 trillion one hundred billion dollars.

Not a trivial sum.

Remember: that is profit, not revenue.

That got me to wondering what the US government has spent on average each year over the last fifty.

That turns out to be about 2.1 trillion dollars a year.

Toted up over fifty years, that's 105 trillion dollars, or about half of what one American industry has made over those years.

I wondered next what percent the American economy is the oil industry?

That percent turns out to be 7.6%.

So, over the last fifty years 7.6% of our GDP has generated profits that are about half of what the government has spent in its annual budgets.

I'm not smart enough to deal with what I sense to be what we call in bar-room discussions "an anomaly".

We can't afford a first world health care safety net; we can't afford universal childcare; we can't afford free post-secondary education; we can't afford universal long term health care.

There are many more things we can't afford but right now I can't remember them.

But we can't afford any of the things that I have itemized - or so say Ol' Mitch and the Boys.

But we have one industry that is less than ten percent of our economy generating profits amounting to about half of the US annual budget.

If they were to have paid a tax rate of 35% - which is what they claim - they would have picked up roughly 17% of the Federal tab over the last fifty years; surely the other 90% of the economy must have generated some profit?

Do they not pay taxes?

If they did would that not have perhaps brought the kitty available for spending on things the American people actually need to a level for the United States to become a first world country?

As I said, I'm not smart enough to see through what I perceive to be an anomaly. 

Another Image Dump

 I usually don't put copyright notice on images of stained glass or other art.