Hand-wringing over Tariffs

It is amusing to watch the media's gyrations against tariffs and the looming trade wars. For years, the elite sat back and partied their butts off, enjoying getting rich off the backs of unemployed Americans. Meanwhile, working people in the U.S. suffered. Factories shuttered, towns got destroyed, whole cities like Detroit turned into hellholes, where homeowners were lucky to get any amount at all for their homes. Working people turned to the "gig economy," earning minimum wage or less with no benefits at all. The elite didn't care. They talked about "free trade," "the global economy," and gushed over the stock market's performance. Yeah, who cares about the working people? They can die, right? They should stop having babies, eh?

When I read that tariffs don't work and trade wars are all bad, I just don't believe it. I think that is a lie. The U.S. imports far more than it exports. We still have the biggest economy. So, any country having a trade war against us is going to lose financially. And, in the end, the U.S. does not need any international trade at all. We are an entirely self-sufficient country, with enough natural resources and people to produce whatever we need. Stop all trade, is a good idea, for several generations, and then automatically we will be a strong competitor again, producing anything and everything. Meanwhile, China can stockpile all the junk it produces and build a mountain with it and name it after their dictator.

Funny how otherwise liberal-minded folks cozy up to foreign dictators and think everything is just hunky-dory that we are letting them have so much wealth, while so many of our own people are just getting by working for Uber.

Asylum

The only folks that should seek asylum in the U.S. are those on our border. Canadians and Mexicans, logically, should have the right to seek asylum in the U.S. Maybe those in the Carribean, too, and that would include Cuba. Anyone else is just shopping for a better financial life. People in the Middle East need to look at the neighboring countries around that region. There is no need to fly all the way over to North America. That is a nonsensical stretch of logic and abuse of the asylum system. Anyone that comes here from outside of North America needs to be sent back to wherever they came from, if their only claim is based on asylum. Other countries are better prepared to assume immigrants. The U.S. suffers from unemployment and underemployment. When so many of our people do not even have basic medical insurance or retirement plans, then this is no time to take in more people.

Opinion Repository

This blog serves as a safe repository for my opinions. No one really wants to hear another person's opinions, so the best place for opinions is in a little-noticed blog that nobody reads (except bots). Loudmouths that share their opinions with others unasked aren't terribly popular. No one gives a crap about what other people think.

Now, I think that social media is stupid, by its very design. Place your personal opinions and personal information on a public venue where anybody can scan them to learn all about you. In the first place, people underestimate the number of hostile eyes. They don't realize, people have bad intentions for gathering information. By giving away information, one serves one's enemies.

The beginnings of social media stretch back far into the days of BBSes. Even back in the BBS world, there was danger, but now the danger is ten-fold, because social media encompasses the globe, and everyone is in on it. I have known people to get in trouble on their job because of what they wrote on social media. It is better not to write anything that is attached to a real name. Everything you write or post goes directly to your current and future employers, friends, lovers, foes, co-workers, and so on. It never ends.

Censorship on Facebook and Twitter is a gift. Everyone should be censored. No one should post anything. That is the perfect ideal. Anytime someone is censored, they should write a thank-you note to the censor and mail a check for a hundred dollars. The censor is your friend.

I've never understood why they call it social media. People are sitting at home, alone, in front of a computer screen. How social is that?

National Public Radio

Every time I turn on NPR, I hear whining. I have gotten so that I can't stand NPR. All it ever talks about is politics, the latest Trump brouhaha or how awful white people are. Where is the science, history and culture? I thought NPR was supposed to be educational. Instead, it is just the liberal propaganda machine. And it doesn't work very well at the intended purpose. If racism is such a huge problem that it deserves all the NPR coverage, even in 2018, then it will never get fixed. I think the constant pointing of the finger at whitey is the main problem. The only real racism we see today is against white people. White people are presumed guilty, by mere fact of being white, regardless of their political beliefs, and never permitted to demonstrate their innocence, under any circumstances. Meanwhile, take a look at what has happened over in Zimbabwe, for an example of a black-majority country.

I think that NPR should focus more on science and education, because there is a real hunger and need for that. Just pressing the enrage button constantly makes people miserable and dumbs people down. I wonder what good NPR is, if that is all it ever does.

Amazon

Look at what people do, not what they say. For years, Amazon's CEO has been hyped as this great liberal figure, but in reality, Amazon treats its employees like dogs, skimping on air conditioning, salaries and benefits, and underpays the U.S. Postal Service, and gets away without paying taxes in most sales. Admittedly, the U.S. Postal Service is run by fools, all of whom should be fired for undercharging Amazon all these years. The price to deliver packages needs to be increased not today, but ten years ago. Bribery is the most likely reason the USPS has given Amazon such a princely gift, worth billions. Someone in management is being paid off. As for Amazon not paying sales tax, it should be charged, not just for future sales, but for all the past sales that it failed to charge sales tax. That would solve the financial problems of most local and state governments. Perhaps Amazon's corporate management can sacrifice their personal home and wealth to pay off the back taxes.

So this is the real reason that Amazon's owner is hyped as this great big genius. In reality, he is just a selfish, cruel tycoon very willing to take advantage of anyone and everyone. He is farther right-wing than Trump. Trump is a liberal next to Amazon. The only reason Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post was to use it as a tool against Trump, because he feared that the U.S. government might act against Amazon's selfish interests. Well, it should. Congress should pass legislation to make sure that the Postal Service is paid, not just what it needs for current costs, but to ensure that Postal employees are getting the health benefits and retirement savings that they need long-term. Postal employees are temps with no benefits, work long hours and suffer long-term hearing loss from their dilapidated jeeps. Congress should see to it that Amazon pays its fair share to local and state governments, who have been short-changed for years. How is the government supposed to get funding, when people are buying everything from Amazon and not paying a dime of sales tax?

Trump was Right about Africa

Africa is composed of s-hole countries. Are there exceptions? No, can't name a one. The latest news from the one supposedly advanced country, Kenya, is that their high court ruled they won't conduct forced anal exams of gay men. Wow, big progress. Just a bunch of savages in Africa. The amount of immigration from the blighted continent should be zero or negative. The only thing Africa contributes to the world is a hand. A hand out, that is, and always asking for more.

But I'm sure it's all the fault of whitey.

Crapple Claims It Is Made in America

Crapple's CEO claims Crapple builds its junk in the U.S. If that were even half-true, then the Iphones would say "Made in U.S.A.," but they don't, they say "Made in China." A tariff on Crapple imports would be the right approach to making Crapple change its ways. It is a Chinese company, not an American one, and should be treated as Chinese. If a company does not hire American workers, then it is not an American company, and its products are imports.

Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke is such a good writer of science fiction. His prose is clean and concise, and he has proven prescient. It is a symptom of cultural decadence that our world leaders do not read from and quote him.

Trump is entirely unacquainted with either science or scientific thought, and to be fair, the same applies to many world leaders, who view science merely as a tool for military weapons or economic gain, if they think of it at all. Elevating the bullies of the world into positions of power has had a deleterious effect upon our future prospects. Putin, Trump, Xi--and then the nitwits of Iran, North Korea, and really most all of Africa. I think there is a great case to be made for pessimism over the future of H. Sapiens, given that many of these leaders have vast arsenals, including biological, chemical and/or nuclear weapons at their disposal. Probability will run its course, and there is a distinct probability one of these nitwits will miscalculate at some point in time and set off a most regrettable chain of events.

Therefore, what is an ethical person with sense to do? Enjoy life, I suppose, and try not to dwell upon the coming end of humanity, and try to secure little pockets of knowledge and culture into safe havens that can endure, perhaps, the coming nuclear/biological/chemical Apocalypse, when vast numbers of the human race will perish in suffering and death, slowly or mercifully quickly. It is well to stockpile cans of pinto beans and dried milk, as I know many folks that do, but also stockpile books and data, because much learning could be lost when the Internet is no more, and libraries have burned to the ground.

Give a care, not just to the immediate needs of current life, the avoidance of hunger and thirst and so forth, but also to the knowledge-base of the human race. Imagine having to discover all of our science and technology all over again. Imagine being without all our fiction and prose. We could well be sent back to the Stone Age, depending on the severity of the Apocalypse. It would be well to have many treasure-chests hidden around in various locations with a wealth of knowledge.

Perhaps if all is lost, and most all our species perish, there is yet hope, if not a hundred years after, then a thousand, or even ten thousand, or a hundred thousand. I imagine a secure and timeless repository like the Pyramids of Egypt, something that can endure, in a desert perhaps, or some remote place far from the beaten path, hidden from thieves and wild animals, safe even from rot and decay, microbes, humidity and solar radiation. It is a technical problem that demands a technical solution. It would be worthwhile to invest a million dollars in securing hidey-holes around the globe for future wanderers to uncover, that our civilization might be reborn in a future age, after the radiation has died down and open spaces are habitable by human beings again.

In Education, Bigger Isn't Better

One reason there are so many school shootings is schools are huge mini-cities nowadays. The only reason is people are cheap as hell and want to maximize their investment in education by herding kids into the biggest possible cattle farm. The kids don't know each other anymore and don't much care about each other, either. Every other kid is just another zombie in a video game shoot-em-up. It is a situation that was well-designed to create mass-murderers. When folks know one another by name and know what is really going on in a small school environment, that is when you nip these problems in the bud, rather than letting them fester.

Never Using Piriform's CCleaner Again

Ccleaner installed Avast Anti-Virus on a user's machine during a fresh install, even though I opted out. That resulted in a scenario where the user had two active anti-virus programs. What ensued was a 30 minute ordeal of trying to get Avast off the machine. A reboot was required, naturally. I will never use Ccleaner again and plan to blacklist it to prevent anyone from using it at all, under any circumstances. Ccleaner is malware. At one time last year, Ccleaner actually had a virus payload inserted into its code, by accident, or so Piriform claimed at the time. I rather think that Piriform has grown jealous of the wealth of other software companies and is doing anything at all to increase revenue, whether ethical (or legal) or not. The equation is simple. Ccleaner = Virus.

A good substitute for CCleaner is Bleachbit.

The Eternally Ungrateful E.U.

If the E.U. really retaliates on the steel and aluminum tariffs that Trump enacted for the sake of national security, we should begin preparations to withdraw all troops and military material from Europe. One hour after that announcement, any retaliation would disappear. Indeed, Europe should be paying for its own defense. American taxpayers have subsidized Europe's defense for decades, allowing Europeans to have a social safety net far better than U.S. citizens. Trump would be justified in exacting tribute from every European country, to the tune of many hundreds of billions per year. It is not right that the U.S. taxpayer pays only so that the European gets six weeks of vacation per year, free medical care from cradle to grave, early retirement and free education.

What Europe needs is another world war on their soil, to teach their people gratitude. They seem to have forgotten who pulled their delicate bits out of the fire.

European countries are arming fascist Turkey right now to crush the democratic, LGBT-friendly Kurds in Syria. European nations just don't have any scruples; they will do anything at all for money. They don't care that the U.S. protects them against annihilation, unless we start sounding serious about withdrawing that protection. That would be a wake-up call for the stupid Europeans, whose knee-jerk anti-Americanism is prevalent all throughout their public discourse. It is fashionable in Europe to dismiss the very people who protect Europe from annihilation. "Fat, stupid Americans," eh? Yeah, we're stupid, because we have been paying for their defense all these years, getting zero in return. And the U.S. has about the worst medical system in the entire developed world.

Guns Vs. Pot

It is amusing to contrast the police response to an active shooter situation at a Florida high school with that of a pot dealer. Tipped off that there's a large stash of pot, eager swarms of police bust in the doors of the pot dealer, looking to score cash, guns, and drugs, some of which can be siphoned off, but at any rate all opportunities for promotion, because the police department gets to keep the cash. Now, active shooter on a school campus? What's the hurry! We could get hurt, yo? No money in that, either.

It is a symptom of the collective schizophrenia in the world today that marijuana is perceived as a crime that must be answered with deadly force. China, Singapore and Malaysia, among other barbaric outposts, are known to execute those that traffic in large quantities of marijuana. For this reason, among others, an alien intelligence evaluating H. Sapiens would be wise to conclude that our species is not worthy of rescue, of enlightenment and education; that we should be left to our own devices, which means, to self-destruct in our own toxins and nuclear weapons. Rather than continue to contact us, they withdraw, leaving no trace.

Oh, No! A Professor Speaks Out

I read about Prof. Amy Wax's disparaging of black college students. In essence, she simply said that black students underperformed academically, but then she went on to point the finger at presumed causes--not genetic or racial, mind you, but cultural--rap music culture and the like. I think it is important to listen to what people are saying before jumping to conclusions about their ideology. Professors tend to carve out idiosyncratic world-views that borrow a bit of this, a bit of that, here and there. It is seldom correct to pigeon-hole them. But people are obsessed with labels, because they hate thinking.

There probably is merit to her observation, which was not denied, regarding underperformance among black students. Who benefits by her pointing out this discrepancy? Actually, if I were a black student, her words would serve as a spur to prove her wrong. Indeed, utter the inconvenient truth, say that the Emperor has no clothes. Truth is refreshing, liberating, and once truth is known, people can act based upon what they know. Prof. Amy Wax could potentially be the best friend of a high-performing black student. What she is demanding is better performance. She has not said that black students are incapable or biologically inferior at all, and they are not. She has said that rap music culture is brain-dead, and it is. Rap music prepares a mind to commit violent crime. Period. This is irrefutable, and there are tons of blacks in prison today, producing nothing, contributing nothing. A black student listening to Tchaikovsky, reading books, writing poetry, playing chess, and studying diligently--well, that would be a different kettle of fish, wouldn't it? I think that Prof. Amy Wax would be taken off her guard and might even write a recommendation letter for such a student.

The knee-jerk reactions of people in academia are insipid and do cause a reaction from the right. In the end, there is noise and little light.

Now, someone may say, but Igor! What if you were a college student that had to deal with a homophobic professor! Wouldn't you want him / her fired? Well, that did happen to me. I took two courses in microbiology from a very politically active, Republican (of course), right-wing, rabidly homophobic professor who equated homosexuals with pedophiles. She occasionally used the classroom as a platform for her views, although she was limited in this regard, because we had so much microbiology to cover that we had little time for extras. She had to contend with hundreds of pages, and it was a terrible confinement upon her clear and powerful desire to drone on and on about socially conservative politics, against the Godless liberals that wanted to normalize sexual perversion. Nevertheless, I liked microbiology and found her explanations of it tolerable and performed at the top of her class. I even gave a presentation on a disease that was quite well-received by the class and her comments and A+ led me to conclude she liked me. It is often thus with politics; people do not relate the solid and visible of everyday life with the invisible abstract, the boogieman homosexual that she conjures up in her fevered thinking about politics and public policy. Thus people persist in misguided views and generalizations based upon little but jokes, fancies or rumors they heard long ago.

It is possible to "prove 'em wrong" and there is a satisfaction in doing so. Yes, people begin by believing such and such, but they are mistaken, and if you are right, you must demonstrate to them, by your actions, they are wrong, and must revise their opinions, that is, if they want to be true. Not everyone wants to be true, but a great many people do, and upon descending into their world with clear and tangible evidence of a contradiction, one delivers a challenge to change.

Death Dream

I dreamed I was twenty again and driving my father into a deserted parking lot behind a closed shopping mall late at night. There was something work-related I had to check, a malfunctioning outdoor gadget of some kind, and I parked the car beside it. Another car pulled up. I shined my flashlight at the occupants. They got out, two men, armed with pistols. I was face down on the ground, begging for my life, and one thug smiled at my pleas, then put a bullet through my brain, which ended my life. What happened to my father, I don't know, but likely the motive of the attack was robbery, and the callous killers could brook no witnesses. It is deplorable, the tiny amounts of lucre that people are willing to kill other human beings for. It is not like I drive an expensive car or wear gold jewelry.

Upon awakening, I observed that the dream bore little relation to my current life, as I have no mortal enemies and have not been a victim of violent crime, at least recently. Perhaps I was visited by a traveling spirit that had seen the scenario. Or perhaps it was a memory of a television show. Television displays murders often. I guess it gets peoples' attention.

Of course, I will die in a certain amount of years, and that fate is unstoppable, even if I manage to elude the bullets that zip by in mad, modern-day America, where every hothead ends his life while taking out ten or twenty others.

So, what of it? I will not have any worries after I die. I will rejoin the earth, become one with it, and give up this individual identity known as self. The constituent atoms will reform into something else. And eventually, the earth will die, along with the universe itself.

I do not believe the self is so precious that it must be preserved forever. I believe the self is disposable rather, a base thing, prone to selfishness, driven by needs such as hunger and greed, and not really that fine. The dissolution of self could almost be regarded as a liberation of sorts. We cling to self and to life out of nostalgia and familiarity. One comes to realize that what we think of as the uniqueness of our self is actually replicated in many other people, who have the same drives, the same motives and desires. We are not really that different in the end. And the world keeps on spinning even after we are gone.

Pelosi on RuPaul

I have always admired Nancy Pelosi. That she is on one of my favorite shows, RuPaul, is something for me to look forward to. Pelosi functions as the conscience of a Congress that has problems mustering up compassion for the working poor, the sick and the vulnerable among our population. Congress spends too much time figuring out ways to help the rich get richer without any effort The rich must be awfully stupid, if they need so much help from the Federal Government to get even more billions on top of what they already have.

Checked Out Wal-Mart's Web Site...

...And, it looks like old WallyMart hasn't learned zip in ten years about how to design the web site. The whole thing looks like it is designed to sell paper cups and toilet paper, nothing more than that. It may be that they are just not intelligent enough to understand the digital age. Too many fossils up at the top of that company.

We Probably Do Need a Trade War

Trump's certainly correct that a trade war would be in U.S. interests, until the rest of the world stops exacting high taxes and barriers to American products. The reason so many of our people remain unemployed or underemployed in poorly paid, part-time jobs with few or no benefits and no retirement plans is that the rest of the world has been crucifying the U.S. on trade. Free trade is a great concept, but only the U.S. has been playing by the rules. The other countries block American goods at the border. This is why cities like Detroit are crime-ridden hell-holes. China is probably the worst offender, but the other countries certainly have problems as well. I think that Europe needs to start doing some soul-searching and stop raping the U.S. on trade. The U.S. can't foot the bill for everything for ever. Just because Europe is completely to blame for WW2, and the U.S. pulled their feet out of the fire and nursed their economies back to health, doesn't mean the U.S. is now the permanent nurse of Europe and has to give, give, give and never take. Trade needs to be equal, or else there does not need to be trade at all. I am sure that Europe has plenty of farmland to grow food, or else they can turn to Russia and ask for food, and maybe while they're at it, negotiate with the Russians as to surrender terms, and how many of their citizens need to be transported to slave camps in Siberia. Europe needs to think first of all about what they can do for the U.S., rather than imaginary obligations that the U.S. has to their ungrateful, bickering, backstabbing and freeloading societies. If the E.U. can't even keep calm, cool U.K. in the fold, it is not worth the paper their treaty is printed on.

AMD

AMD may be a cpu worth considering for Windows gamers, but no one else. AMD doesn't care about Linux. Never has, never will. So for me, it's Intel all the way. And the same goes for the hundreds of folks I buy PC's for. I don't even look at or consider AMD products, ever, under any circumstances, and for all of us, INTEL is worth a sizable premium. In fact, there is only INTEL, and they can charge whatever they want.

Republicans and Corruption Go Hand in Glove

It is amusing that Ben Carson, respectable Black Republican, talks against welfare for the poor, but greedily grasps welfare for himself. He is not O.K. with a $5000 budget to redecorate his office. He needs $31,000, or an ordinary person's entire salary, in order to buy a fancy gold-plated chair, diamond-studded desk and so on. What a hypocrite, grabbing bread from a child's mouth to sell it off so that he can put a feather in his cap. Stealing from the government is the Republican way. They talk against welfare for working people, then they take welfare for themselves.

It seems every member of Trump's team has indulged themselves, enriching themselves and their families at the public expense. Indeed, why work? Just mouth a bunch of lies and make people believe, and you can make a killing just hanging on the coattails of the Liar-in-Chief. I imagine Ben Carson finds taking handouts from the government easier than difficult, risky neurology ever was. In fact, the same motive is behind all of Trump's henchmen.

What we need is a good Democrat to go in and drain the swamp! Sell off the gold-plated chairs and expose all the excesses and theft of the entire Trump Administration.

Is the U.S. Doomed?

The United States will one day be one great big desert, with slave camps for all its people, who will be used as body bags by foreign conquerors--fresh organs, blood, tissue. One reason is other countries take science seriously, like Japan with its new cure for flu. How come the U.S. did not come up with that miracle drug? What's the reason?

All that Trump wants to do is buy bullets and bombs to blast the ragheads in the Middle East from afar, just like every Republican since 1988. Other than that, no medical care for the poor, no science, no space exploration, no infrastructure. The U.S. decays from within, while the Republicans have a jolly good time running up the deficit in a race to see how fast they can bankrupt Treasury and deplete our Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

The number of young people interested in pursuing a career in actual hard science (not just computers and nursing) is abysmal and paints a picture of the slave camps that will stretch from California to Florida. Sex slaves and organ bags are what our defeated people will become, to whichever nation or group of nations takes science seriously enough to gather up the secrets to future tech. China has already stolen a great portion of our technology, due to our leaders being asleep at the switch. No one in Washington, D.C. cares about or even really understands cybersecurity or science. All they care about is bombing ragheads, looking tough, standing tall, and partying all night in their drunken reveries of arrogance over their temporary power in this world. They will be forgotten, just like the old Weimar politicians.

Time is not on our side. I wish the Republicans would think for one second how many Ph.D.'s are graduating in China as opposed to the U.S., and how many new discoveries are being made, not in the U.S., but in competitor nations. It is not just because of resolve or toughness that the U.S. won WW2. It is because of what? Because of science. Without science, there would have been no radar, no breaking Enigma, no advanced bombers, no nukes.

Instead of a stupid border wall, which is a great big admission of defeat in the failed war on drugs, the Chinese are building dams, internet, highways, universities. Instead of invading worthless cesspool countries, the Chinese are investing in factories.

Who is going to rule the world in the future? It won't be the U.S., twenty trillion in debt. Our economy collapses the moment investors wake up and realize the debt is never going to be repaid. Inflation will turn into hyperinflation, and no one will have any retirement savings.