Archives for January 2023

• *Wherein I seize a tour bus and charge off with the terrified passengers and I proceed to tell them about the sites I am taking them to see. Naturally, I know nothing about what I speak.

Saturday, January 28, 2023.

Lawrence O’Donnell had Timothy Snyder on his show a few nights ago. It was a short piece, but it was the best analysis I have heard about anything. Snyder is a history professor at Yale. His area of expertise is Central and Eastern Europe. He has written a number of books. One is entitled “On Tyranny – Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century.”

He was asked about the recent arrest of an FBI agent.

The agent was arrested for taking money from Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska. He took money from Deripaska while working for the FBI and after he left. The agent was in charge of investigating the Russian attempts to influence our elections.

Let’s backup. Paul Manafort was Trump’s 2016 campaign manager. He was passing information (internal polling information, etc.) to Deripaska via an intermediary. Manafort had worked for Deripaska before the Trump campaign. In fact, one might suspect and conclude that it was Deripaska that wanted Manafort to be campaign manager for Trump.

Let’s not forget that a woman aboard Deripaska’s yacht recounted Deripaska discussing with three English speaking people the 2016 election. She was in Thailand and tried to flee via a stop in Moscow where officials boarded the plane and roughly took her off. Nothing much has been heard from her since.

Now Deripaska is linked to an FBI agent who was supposed to be investigating him.

All this is a re-enactment of what happened in Eastern Europe a decade earlier with the former Russian backed president of the Ukraine. I can’t remember all the details and I wasn’t able to find the clip.

The second part of the interview O’Donnell asked about Margorie Taylor-Green’s comments about our giving aid to Ukraine. Her stand is we need to keep our forces strong here and that it’s gotten way too expensive.

Snyder’s answer was very informative. Actually, he said, it’s been cheap. If you look at our defense budget it hasn’t cost much. What do we get out of it? Well, if Ukraine wins then Russia is no longer a threat and this puts the Chinese on notice if they have any intentions toward Taiwan.

Lastly, for folks who have read the headlines about the layoffs at places like Amazon and think the economy is in trouble. It has been pointed out by economists that this is the fastest recovery in our nation’s history. Unemployment is low. Wages are up. And if you look at the job growth before and after Covid it is a steadfast increasing line. While the layoffs at some tech companies sounds like a lot, the over all numbers are good and growing.

And for those who think the help during Covid was a mistake or too much. One thing economists point to is the number of people defaulting on their credit card bills. It stayed steady. It didn’t go up. The economists’ analysis is that the government bailouts gave money to people and they were able to keep paying their bills because of it.

Finally, on another show there was a black Republican congressman. He seemed to have all the answers. Until you listened to them. He said that if we taxed the rich we’d collect less money. Figure that one out.

Okay. Back to work. As you were.

Monday, January 23, 2023

I was thinking this morning, trying to determine – when did it all go wrong? When did it start?

Was it with that woman in Florida who insisted on making the ballots in a heavily Democratic county in Florida prepunch so that when they ran through the vote machines they got hanging chads, which led to the ridiculous scenes afterwards of people trying to determine what the voter intended, which led to the Roger Stone led “riot”, which led to Gore losing votes in that heavily democratic county, which led to his losing Florida and the Presidency by 357 votes? 

Or did it start with Newt Gingrich and his scorched earth approach to dealing with the Democrats when he was Speaker of The House?

Did it start with Reagan and his denying the air traffic controllers their union, which led to the decline of the middle class? Or was it his deal with the Pope that led to the end of the Zero Population movement? Or was it his removing the solar panels off the White House?

Tip O’Neil pointed out that when he was in local government in Massachusetts the Republican speaker of the house was a nice guy who liked Tip, even liked Tip’s ideas, but he wouldn’t vote for them because Tip was a Democrat. forget reaching across the aisle.

Was it Joseph McCarthy and his House Unamerican Activities Committee? 

Was it Jim Crow?

Was it the Southern Baptist movement after the Civil War, which housed the racist agenda that was Jim Crow?

Was it the Civil War or what led up to it?

Was it the Constitution that declared negroes to be less than one person?

Were their local state movements like what happened in Virginia for decades where the Republican government used their power to suppress local jurisdictions and pressure the Federal government, all the while knowing that what they were doing was unpopular so they hid it behind legislation that sounded good but was actually sinister? “Right to Work “is an example. (That means a company has the right to fire you for any reason or no reason at all.)

Although these people decry socialism they love it when it applies to a hand out for them, not their voters – just them. Well, sometimes their voters get a bit – look at grain subsidies. Or look at how quickly any of these Republican congressmen will take credit for money flowing into their districts on a bill they voted against.

When did it all start? It’s seems it has always been there. It’s like trying to trace back the spot in the universe where the Big Bang originated. Any spot you choose can trace back to a spot, a different spot. I know, it makes no sense.Yet, that’s the best that can be shown to be the case. What can one conclude? Only that it’s always been there? ( What? The Universe. Which makes no sense given that it looks like the Universe is expanding and therefore had to start somewhere. )

Alexis de Tocqueville when touring America in the early 1800s said American was in a race between its vitality and it decadence. Nicely put. Hasn’t changed. However, it seems recently the rottenness has been winning out.

Most historians say democracies are periods of transition and last about two hundred years. If so our “Great Experiment” is near the end of its life. I think of the fall of the Roman Republic or Constantinople. Both fell because, in the case of Rome the citizenry assumed it would always be there, and in the case of Constantinople it had never fallen before so why now? Well, the “now” was an outside invading force, new technology in the form of a cannon, and the rest of their allies saying, “Hey, don’t worry. They’ll survive; they always have.”

The people who support the Republican Party seem to have grievances and fears, but not solutions or ideas. Well, they have grand sweeping thoughts that when asked about or one tries to apply to a practical situation don’t work. Remember Obama going to the Republican meeting in Baltimore? Boehner was holding this thick document to his chest that Paul Ryan had written. At the time Ryan was being foisted off as the boy wonder. It was Ryan’s budget and implementation plan. Obama grabbed that thing, opened to a random page and read what was on it. He then said, “You can’t govern from that.” or words to that effect. And Ryan’s budget had no numbers in it, except for page numbers.

I mean it’s nice to say, “I hope one day all men will be free.” (And women – yes.) but that doesn’t get the job done. You need a plan and people who understand and are willing to implement the plan.

There’s always this undercurrent of grievance with these folks:

The U.S. will have its troops led by the U.N. 

They are coming for your guns.

The. IRS, FBI, CIA some organization in government is doing something terrible to you, or will soon.

Someone is taking your job, your way of life, or getting something for free or something they don’t deserve.

There’s nothing new here. It’s the same old drum beat. And it has never shown to be the case. But that doesn’t matter. It has been lies. Now with Fox News having to defend themselves from the evidence that they knowingly lied, repeatedly and for profit what will happen? 

How about that “They are coming for your gas stove!!!” thing. Turns out a Federal agency said if you use gas in your home and you are asthmatic it could effect your health and you might want to switch out your gas stove. That’s it. OMG! Run for the hills!

But if you live in rural parts of this country most of the media is controlled by a right wing media group and that’s the only stuff you get. I won’t call it news because it’s not. it’s propaganda masquerading as news. We could, I guess, debate whose propaganda. Right wing? The rich and powerful? Russian? Southern Baptist/evangelical/Christian? White supremacist? Nazi? Neo-nazi? Quanon?

And if all you are fed is this stuff, most will end up believing some part of it.

It is a fight for power, for control. They want to tell YOU what YOU CAN DO, and what you can’t.

What you are allowed to believe. Speaking of belief, I don’t care what you believe, until it effects me. 

It’s odd but the folks running around with “Don’t Tread on Me” license plates seem to be the folks that want to tell you what to do.

How about some other “Don’t” phrases, like:

Don’t tell me what to do. (Thank you Leslie Gore.)

Don’t tell me who to love.

Don’t tell me what I can do with my body.

Don’t tell me where to live, how to pray, what to believe.

or to put it positively:

Leave me alone.

Yet, the very people who cry and moan about this the most are the very people who want to inflict their beliefs on you.

In this country I’m afraid it will only get worse. I don’t see a way out of the situation. If you look at the population map of the U.S. you will see that it is concentrated in California, the southern border, and the New York area.

Or to put it another way the majority of the population of this country is located in 16 states. That means that 34 states have a minority of the population, but the majority of the senators and that controls what happens in this country. I have proposed before that we split up California into five or ten states, giving it 10 or 20 Senators depending how we split it. That would kind of even things out.

Consider the majority of Supreme Court Justices have been selected by presidents who won a minority of the popular vote and that six of those justices were put in place by one man working behind the scenes with a lot of money from dark places, what chance does democracy have to survive?

It’s not a hopeful picture. Now those dark forces are after our safety nets and our basic underlying things that have allowed us to survive as a democracy. They are attacking Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Veterans benefits, and they are trying to strangle public education. 

This is not a time to be complacent. This is a time to stand up and speak out.

Day 725

Thursday, January 12, 2023

When George Orwell wrote 1984 at about the same time Lord of the Flies came out as did Satre”s No Exit and Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett all were attempts to predict the future. The most successful so far is 1984. He predicted the behavior better than anyone. Actually, you can say he held a mirror up to the reality of what was going on in his time.

I generally wake up thinking about what I’d like to write and how I’d like to say it.

Today was an interesting pedagogical walk and I usually don’t do this, but today I thought I’d take you on that constitutional, because the original thought was so terrifying and I’d like to circumambulate a bit before getting there.

Let us start with some cliche phrases:

Les Jeux Sont Fait – is French for “The bets are placed.”

But that isn’t really what it says if you translate it literally. It says, “The games are made.”

Fait is an interesting word. It is a verb form of Faire which is translated “To do,” or “To make.”

“Il fait chaud’” is translated, “it is hot.” but the actual translation should be, “it makes hot.”

It seems to me that the word for make or do in French has some characteristics of our verb “to be.”

The French see situations we think “just are” as actually being created. Interesting.

“Alea iacta est” is Latin for “The die is cast,” and is attributed to Julius Caesar when he decided to cross the Rubicon River and march on Rome with his army. Sometimes we say, “Crossing the Rubicon,” to say we have reached the point of no return. 

Crossing the Rubicon was not taken lightly. Caesar thought about it for several days because there was a law against doing it. To cross that river meant he was in revolt against Rome. The Senate had thought he was growing too powerful and wanted to recall him and strip him of his power. Maybe, imprison or kill him. Interestingly, James Clavell wrote Shogun, which had a similar theme. But the general dithered until circumstances changed. Why hurry to your own beheading? In Hannibal’s case he asked Carthage for resupply and they thought he was too powerful, and they never liked his family for their wealth so they didn’t aid him. He ended up wandering around Italy and finally had to leave. Eventually, he committed suicide.

By the way, no one is sure which river is The Rubicon.

In the crash of the plane that killed many of The Manchester United Soccer team (sorry Football) the term “V1” was used to say, “you’ve reached a speed at which it is no longer safe to abort. The term “V2” usually follows to say you’ve reached the minimum speed at which to take off. They reached V1 but the V2 never came. Earlier the plane had a problem with an engine. It was running too rich and they had to dial back it’s revs until they got going faster, This meant it would take longer to get up to speed, and consequently use more of the runway. The last third of the runway had slush on it because planes weren’t using it, but this plane needed that extra runway. When the plane hit the slush its nose went down as it lost speed.  

No one knew that slush would slow down a plane. Really? Hadn’t anyone driven through a puddle at high speed? Guess not. Likewise another plane crashed with “just a little bit of ice on its wings,” when engineers did wind tunnel tests they were shocked to see that a little bit of ice can cause huge performance problems.

In both cases procedures were changed to try and eliminate these problems. What an idea! If you have a problem change what you are doing. Huh.

In some areas of life we are unwilling to do this. It would take education and restraint. In a country that finds wearing a mask inconvenient, then how are we to restrain ourselves?

Richard Malthus warned that people tend to use up all the resources. They keep expanding until there is a catastrophe. Then they are forced to stop. The only way to stop this using up of our resources is to limit population growth. This led to the Zero Population movement, which was making headway until Reagan and the Pope met and killed it. The Catholic idea that every life is precious no matter how miserable won out. In the 1970s the world’s population was 3.5 billion and it was thought we had reached the maximum number for sustainability for the planet. Our population is now at 8 billion, with four births and two deaths occurring every second.

I see ads every night for “Save the”: children, whales, animals, elephants, orphans, etc. Or it’s “Feed them.”

The price tag is always $19.00 a month or 63¢ a day. Doesn’t matter if it’s Shriner hospitals or Mercy ships.

At some point I got to wonder if perhaps the problem isn’t feeding, clothing, helping but rather limiting. This would require some tough choices and I don’t see the willingness to make those choices but a penchant by some to claim some sort of moral high ground by not doing so. Or there is often a motive to make money by ignoring the problem. “Hey, it’s not my problem. Let someone else deal with it.” Or a simple, “I don’t believe it” will suffice.

But here’s a problem, or a potential problem The U.S. has over 3500 nuclear missiles: Russia 4100, approximately. As James Taylor once said, “We have the capacity to shake the rubble seven times over.”

We also have an outdated launch system. Last time I heard we had 10” (or was it 16”?) floppy disk for downloading the launch instructions.

I got to wonder if we aren’t fighting the last war?

In WWI the generals didn’t believe the machine gun could wipe out a charging force, then they started calculating the attrition rate. Even though they had hard evidence from the Russian Japanese War earlier that this was the case. 

It wasn’t until Churchill got the tank onto the battlefield that things changed.

Vietnam we fought like we did WWII. Didn’t work so well. Now we have a navy with aircraft carriers. The Chinese have this humongous rocket that can knock out an aircraft carrier. Our admirals say they aren’t worried, but none the less they pulled the carriers out of range. We have 28 knot navy. We could of had a 100, or at least 96 knot navy, but no. We turned that down. (Long story, another time.)

I just finished reading about the B-21 bomber. It’s the follow on to the B-2. It sure looks cool. They say they have overcome problems they had with the B-2. It’s smaller. It doesn’t have to stay in an air conditioned hanger. The wiring on the wings can be accessed by pop up panels. The B-2 you had to peel off the radar paint and coverings. etc. etc. etc.

Great. The B-2 was supposed to cost $500 million. The air force wanted 132 of them. They got 21 at $2 billion each.

The B-21 is supposed to cost $692 million and they want -well we don’t know, that’s classified. We do know that it will cost $203 billion to maintain 100 of them over the next 30 years. These estimates are all the public facing numbers. The real costs are hidden in “black” slush funds.

But if we look at the track record for these programs it ain’t good. The F-35 – production problems and cost overruns for 21 years. Costs doubled to $428 billion for 2,470 planes. Not sure how many they got. The earlier F-22 was $149 million each.. They wanted 648. They got 188 at $400 million each.

And are workhorse plane is still the B-52, which is an awesome plane to see coming at you.

I gotta wonder if some tactic is going to come along that will make th the B-21 not live up to its PR’d potential.

Remember the smaller F-117 that was shot down in Yugoslavia? As I remember it, the panes were taking off from Italy. Someone was watching them and contacted forces across the Adriatic Sea by cell phone. By estimating speed and distance they knew about when the plane would be in range. They used radar to pick up a blip and ten fired several missiles. One of them hit. I thought the missile put up shrapnel, not sure.

Of course, every time we hear about a new plane we are told “This will be different,” and “We learned our lessons from the last time.” It reminds me of my relatives talking about the upcoming football season, “This might be the year!” Then they lose a game they should have won to a third tier team and then there’s silence followed by “Guess not.” followed by, “Did you hear we got a five star recruit coming next year…”

Call me skeptical abut price, performance and delivery. Look, I love this cool tech stuff, but is it what we need? Yeah, probably. But…but, is it fighting the last war?

I’ll give you my doomsday scenario, and this is what I really wanted to write about. Just took me awhile to get around to it. (Arlo Gutherie’s famous quote in the middle of “Alice’s Restaurant” is “Just waiting for it to come around on the guitar again” comes to mind.)

Okay, in economics they talk about “black swan events.” Something that comes out of nowhere and upsets the apple cart. (Naturally, there is always someone who says, “I told you so.” The one I love is the promo pitch that says, “He predicted the last three recessions!” Yeah, well, that’s not hard if what you are doing is always predicting recession. Broken clock right twice a day and all that.)

What about a black swan war event, or catastrophic event? I’ll give you two:

1. We continue to increase in population. We use up all our resources and we plunge into world wide catastrophes of hunger, disease and systems break down. Then all those prepper scenarios come to mind.

2 – A bunch of well armed idiots (I mean god fearing patriots) break into a nuclear silo and launch a rocket. This results in retaliation and the world as we know it is destroyed.

Either one or both are possible. How likely seems to me to increase in probability every day.

We need to return to facts, science and truth. However, there are many who believe in something. Something that they can’t prove, or show evidence that it is true or could become true. For example, how do you run a child porn sex ring out of a pizza parlor basement when there is no basement?

Once in awhile these folks get caught up in their lies and confronted and then they try the old, “Well shucks” defense. “Did you really think I meant that?” Or the “Ya gotta believe!” Like the idea that there will be this moment of truth where Christ defends and lifts us up. It’s called The Rapture. Some folks want to create the conditions for this to happen sooner than later. That’s why Trump moved the capital of Israel to Jerusalem. To bring on the moment. Please, he might get cut down my Muhammed on his winged horse.

I gotta go.