Author: photog

Ring Out the Old

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2023 has been a year of stumbling along through the wreckage.  In every direction, as far as the eye can see is nothing but ruin.  Everything is in a shambles.  The borders, the cities, the Congress, Biden and our foreign policy.  In fact, the Ukraine is a perfect metaphor for the state of our civilization.  Across fertile fields laced with landmines and once industrious cities reduced to rubble formerly kindred peoples are locked in a life and death struggle to destroy each other.

And to prove that things can always get worse, Hamas unleashed the Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse, Sadism.  Just when you think that nothing could be worse than the threat of all out nuclear war because of Ukraine, the Palestinians of that coastal hellhole; Gaza, send out squadrons of unhinged fighters to rape, maim, kill and dismember women, children and the elderly in an orgy of destruction and demonic madness.  The Israelis will earn the undying hatred of their neighbors in the surrounding Arab countries but after what was done to these Israeli non-combatants I won’t be surprised if they pursue the Hamas army to the last man even if it means killing tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians in order to reach them.  Anything less than the total destruction of Hamas will merely postpone the next round of attacks on Israel.  But the fallout from this war will be very ugly and Israel should reevaluate all of its strategic objectives and align them with the present war.  Because after it, goodwill for Israel in the Middle East will be non-existent.  Even the United States may shy away from pressing its Arab allies for support.

So, it’s really hard to find a silver lining to 2023.  Mike Johnson taking over as Speaker of the House after Kevin McCarthy was ejected by Republican right-wingers is a promising development.  Donald Trump’s growing support in the polls for the Republican primaries is also a bit of good news.  And his current lead in the polls versus Biden is likewise encouraging.  But after those three tidbits have been savored, you’re pretty much done with good news from Washington.

So, let’s turn the page on 2023 without too much introspection and analysis.  For those of you who overindulge on New Year’s Eve, you have the perfect excuse. Waking up on New Year’s Day with a hell of a hangover may be the most fitting end to a year that felt like a hangover.  Maybe we can use 2024 to start addressing problems on our own.  Obviously, we can’t undo the Biden agenda.  All the worst policies of his regime will continue for as long as the Democrats are able to bamboozle stupid or greedy people into buying special treatment for their votes.  But there is plenty you can do to minimize the impact of these dishonest policies on you and your family.  And that should be your resolution for the New Year.  Analyze what personal actions you are capable of accomplishing that have the highest impact on your life and make it your business to make them happen.

That’s resolution enough for anyone.

Mirror Image

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Recently, I had a short conversation with someone on the Left.  In New England, that’s hardly an unexpected situation.  But for me to discuss the political situation with people on the other side of the political divide is quite rare.  Basically, I don’t bother to debate the political issues with those on the Left.  It serves no useful purpose for me.  We would not be able to even agree on the definitions of the things about which we disagree.  There’s no point of contact between our world views.

But a funny thing happened.  Someone I met in town while waiting in a line asked me what I thought would happen after the November election.  We had been standing in line and we were talking about Christmas get togethers and then we mentioned the New Year and he reminded me it was an election year.  I said in a neutral way that it was going to be an ugly campaign.  He agreed but said he thought that it would provide closure.  Specifically, he asked whether I thought that things would go back to normal if Trump lost.

I answered his question with a question.  I asked, “Would things go back to normal if Trump won?”  He flinched and said, “No, of course not!”  I asked why and he said, “Because that would be intolerable.”  I replied, “You’ve just given the answer to your question.”  He seemed very surprised and then thoughtful.  He stopped talking to me and we stood in silence until his turn in the line was called.  I can’t be sure but I think I witnessed an epiphany.

The people on the Left, a lot of them anyway, think Trump is some kind of a hypnotist that has mesmerized otherwise normal people into saying and doing things that they would otherwise not do.  They think that Trump voters are acting against their own best interests and even against their own beliefs.  They figure if Trump is eliminated then Republicans will go back to voting for Mitt Romney, Jeb Bush and Liz Cheney.  We’ll cheer for illegal aliens sucking up all the federal government’s resources.  We’ll come around to accepting doctors castrating boys and neutering girls and allowing perverts to groom young children in grade school.

They blame Trump for the revolt that he spearheaded.  They either believe or pretend to believe that all the stuff like Russia-gate and the suppression of Hunter’s laptop and COVID lab leak are just rightwing conspiracy theories.  So, they either believe or just hope that once Trump leaves the scene more reasonable Republicans will take control of the party and steer us back into the calmer days of George W Bush, or better still, Mitt Romney.  Mitt is every Democrat’s favorite Republican; technically competent, ethically spineless and willing to take any amount of abuse without uttering a single word in his own defense.

But I think I impinged on this one Democrat’s reassuring bubble.  I think I revealed to him that there is a mirror image to his world view.  And that it rules out the old status quo.  The old world where Democrats and Republicans were two ends of a single spectrum of American voters is completely gone.  It’s been replaced by a landscape where close to half the population feels like they’re living through an occupation complete with gestapo and fake elections.  They may be afraid to revolt against the army of occupation but that doesn’t mean they feel any kinship with their occupiers.

I think I convinced him that November isn’t going to end anything.  It’s just the beginning of the next phase, one way or the other.

So Where Are All the Reparations?

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New York is jumping on California’s reparations bandwagon.  I expect there will be a bumper crop of twenty something white kids kissing the shoes of black people in New York City.  And I imagine all the fun mischief that could be extracted with the help of some makeup and various shoe contaminants.  But what really interests me is where are all the reparations?

I mean, if I’m a black Californian, I must be thinking where are my millions of dollars?  This thing has been kicking around for a long time but no money has been forthcoming.  So, what the hell is going on?  I have to assume that California is made up of at least 51% anti-black racists.  And that’s odd.  Because California is less than 50% white.  That seems to imply that there are non-white racists which I’ve been told is impossible according to the prevailing definition of racism.

So how does this get resolved?  My hope was that the Silicon Valley billionaires pool their capital and provide the reparations out of pocket.  So, I googled a few numbers and did some back of the envelope calculations (you know, engineers, right?)  And I found out some stuff.

Black population of California 2,000,000
Resources of ultra rich Californians $688,000,000,000
Cost of Reparations (per person) $10,000,000
Total cost of Reparations $20,000,000,000,000
Reparation deficit $19,312,000,000,000

Now I ballparked reparations to be what I would want if someone was going to give me a crazy lump sum.  I mean, who is going to argue he “needs” more than ten million bucks?  Well, not believably.  I defined ultra rich as having a net worth of a billion dollars or more.

But it turns out these billionaires aren’t all that rich after all.  Between the bunch of them they have less than 5% of the twenty trillion dollars needed.  They couldn’t even crack a single trillion by pooling all their wealth.  Losers!

So, California is in a sort of pickle.  They’ve yakked and yakked about these reparations but truth be told, they don’t have the cash in hand.  You know, maybe they can borrow the twenty trillion from Uncle Sam.  He’s a sucker for a sob story.  I mean he hands out trillions like they were going out of style.  I think the national debt is something north of thirty-seven trillion so twenty trillion is at least heard of.  And the Biden administration is a big fan of California.  He’s copying their energy policy.  So maybe he’ll give them a loan, that they’ll never pay back.  But then the rest of the states will want the same deal.  And based on my similarly back of the envelope calculations Washington will have to print up about $600,000,000,000,000 (six hundred trillion dollars).  Whoa!

Now I don’t think anyone has much experience with that kind of deficit spending but I’m gonna guess that wheel barrels of hundred-dollar bills wouldn’t begin to describe what kind of hyperinflation we’d be looking at.  Even Zimbabwe would be impressed at that kind of fiscal insanity.

Someone might say, well, maybe we can cut it down to one million dollars apiece.  That would cut the whole thing down to 60 trillion dollars.  Sure, we’d still be relegating the United States to banditry and possibly cannibalism just to stay alive.  But how can someone in California survive on a one-time cash settlement of one million dollars?  It’s laughably insufficient.  In four or five years many of these folks would be looking for another reparation.  And then where would we be?

No, it’s six hundred trillion or nothing as far as I can tell.  So, I hope they get their act together in California and get this show on the road.  They only know for a fact that Biden will be in office for another year and so he’ll need that pen of his to write the executive order to authorize the $600,000,000,000,000 check he’ll have to cut for this worthy project.

Come on Joe.  Better hurry up.  Printing all those bills is gonna take a while.  November is almost here.