A LEGISLATIVE ABOMINATION

 The bill preposterously labeled the “Inflation Reduction Act” concocted by the Democrats will do exactly the opposite, which is unsurprising given their inclination for redefining and labeling terms like inflation, recession, woman, etc. Among other things they are seeking to double the number of IRS agents in an effort to obtain more revenue so they can continue to profligately spend it. But the thing that really infuriates me is the disgustingly corrupt “green energy” boondoggled that has been sought and paid for by crony capitalists seeking to profit from it. This is clearly what this is all about whether it is good for the country or not. If it were any other industry they would be howling about it, but somehow because it is allegedly “green” it must be good so it is exempt from scrutiny. 

But it shouldn’t be. These are disgusting hypocrites who want to pretend they are serving the public interest when all they are serving is their own pockets or interests. It is  blatantly and profoundly offensive, yet shamelessly done out in the open because the corrupt media is not going to question it. So these “entrepreneurs” are lining their pockets at public expense. They are the ones pushing it most intensely, and trust me it is not out of civic-mindedness. They are less concerned about “climate” than profiting from it. It is getting close to passage because they were able to buy off Joe Manchin by promising projects in his state, never mind that the overall effect is detrimental to West Virginia.

We have already squandered half a trillion dollars on supposedly green energy projects with not much to show for it beyond enriching those able to cash in on it. Remember Solyndra? Multiply that several times over. Yet the result of all of this is that less than 5% of our energy comes from unreliable “renewable” sources. At the same time they are trying to ruin natural resource extraction industries that actually do work for people and that have uplifted the lives of countless millions around the world, and push them to electric cars they can’t afford, or for that matter easily charge. These “future” technologies are nothing of the sort and are simply not any where near ready for prime time. I guarantee you without question that many of them will be obsolete five or ten years from now and money will have pointlessly thrown away instead of being spent on things like education, medicine, basic research, defense, and real future technologies, or for that matter directly mitigating the consequences of climate change. 

This cabal includes many lunatics that also want to ban cow farts. You can’t take them seriously, yet the damage they are doing is very serious. None of this is meant to deny there are problems with changing climate but simply to highlight the massive amount of corruption involved in this particular approach. Nor does it mean that there may not be some good elements in the legislation, but this devious tactic of combining unrelated matters in bills has got to stop. Proposed projects must be able to stand and pass scrutiny on their own. In the end if this goes through inflation will get higher, the deficit will expand, and you personally will be that much poorer.

AN UNMITIGATED CATASTROPHE

 No one voted for Joe Biden; they voted against Donald Trump, who only lost the election due mostly to his lack of self-control and inability to keep his mouth shut, in spite of a record of considerable accomplishment. Like most people I was prepared to accept what promised to be a bland, gray, moderate administration. It was obvious he would be the dumbest president since Gerald Ford, but otherwise relatively harmless. So after many decades of struggle I looked forward to turning my attention to long-delayed more satisfying pursuits, leaving it to younger people to carry on. 

Instead we found ourselves in the unusual position of having a government to the left of all of our allies. From the outset  there has been an ever-accelerating disaster unfolding along with the loss of everything we fought for, everything we achieved over many decades of effort with a great loss of blood and treasure that I never dreamed would ever happen. 

-From day one Biden began his reign with a series of boxes to be filled by every conceivable minority regardless of merit, to the point where supposedly “under-represented” groups are now over-represented! He wanted to be able to announce as many irrelevant “firsts” as possible while implementing blatantly anti-white policies across the board, creating yet more division. The result has been most mediocre, incompetent cabinet in American history. 

-He empowered the radical left that hardly any one supports to run rampant across our institutions with offensive, insane “woke” policies. 

-With his blessing they knowingly and deliberately ruined our economy by sabotaging our oil and gas industries in the name of a phony “climate crisis” without any remotely feasible alternative. This was a precipitous attack on the lifeblood of the world economy and along with incredibly massive, unnecessary, and wasteful spending they  instigated the inflation that we are now experiencing, while spreading misery around the world due to their fanatical ideological blindness.

-They managed to ruin our standing in the world via weak fecklessness. Sadly the horribly bungled withdrawal from Afghanistan is fading in memory, even though he basically handed the country over to the Taliban, left them billions of prime military hardware, ignored our allies, and royally screwed a lot of people who had cooperated with us. 

-If not for Joe Biden the Russians would not have invaded Ukraine, which he blithely dismissed as just a small incursion initially, and effectively gave the go-ahead for that disaster. 

-The ascendance of the radical left has resulted in a sharp increase in crime in all of our large cities while undermining and demoralizing the police and allowing criminals to rampage with little fear of punishment.

-Worst of all he not only dismantled our southern border, but allowed, encouraged, and even provided to support for millions of people to flagrantly break our laws and illegally enter the country.  He has handed effective control of the border to Mexican cartels, who now profitably traffic in humans as well as narcotics, including the flood of Chinese produced fentanyl, resulting in the death of over 100,000 Americans in a single year.  

The deliberate failure to maintain our territorial integrity alone is clearly grounds for the impeachment of both Biden and Harris, and this is on the Democrats for failing to do so themselves, or invoking the 25th amendment.* They have been consistently wrong about everything. Now, most people know how incompetent this regime is, and the radical left cannot now distance themselves from the monstrous disaster they themselves have engineered. Biden only facilitated their power grab, but the suffering now being experienced is primarily due to their unbound ideological lunacy, and they must be held accountable and never be allowed anywhere near power again. 

All this without even getting into the politicizing of “justice,” Hunter Biden’s antics, or a host of other infractions. When a government is this incompetent, it no longer has any legitimacy. Nor should anyone feel sorry for Biden’s cognitive decline, because he has proven himself to be little more than a nasty old grouch without any redeeming qualities. Unfortunately we aren’t even half way through this term, and unless we find a way to mitigate this catastrophe, more, and probably worse, is yet to come. 

*Regarding removing a president via the 25th amendment, it has to be seriously reconsidered. I don’t think anyone anticipated a situation where the President, the Vice-President, and the third in line Speaker of the house would all be unsuitable. If at least the congress changes hands then we might stand a chance with Kevin McCarthy instead of Pelosi but that’s the best we could hope for. 

WRONG TIMING ON CHINA

There is a near-universal chorus shouting “We can’t back down now,” in the face of threats and aggression, but in the case of Nancy Pelosi’s planned trip to Taiwan it is lunacy to tempt fate with a conflict that we are currently ill-prepared for. Even the Pentagon knows this. We have a lamentable pattern in this country of stumbling into war without fully thinking out the consequences. We are ever prone to short-term thinking in long-term situations. 

The Chinese do not suffer this handicap. They pursue long-range strategies with careful consideration, while we tend to react precipitously. Thus the Chinese Communists have long planned to bypass the USA in terms of world power, and further, to undermine us at every possible opportunity, which we have yet to fully grasp. All this time, and especially since the rise of the current leadership in China, they have in fact been engaged in a subtle, low-intensity war against this country. They have penetrated and compromised many of our institutions, including universities, corporations, and and politicians themselves, the extent to which we still barely recognize. In fact, the next big scandal to erupt in this country’s likely to be “the great betrayal;” i.e. degree to which we have been seriously compromised by an inept, greedy, and rotten elite. 

The Chinese Communists know a lot more about us and our vulnerabilities than we do in reverse. This is a result of chronically short-sighted leadership across the board, and a near total inability to develop and maintain a long-term strategy about anything. This has been brought about by the ephemeral nature of our politics; ever shifting and always subordinate to the “issues of the day.” 

With regard to Taiwan we have put ourselves in an untenable position.  We have, all along maintained that it is part of China, which of course is the Chinese position, which puts us on shaky ground in any potential conflict. At the same time it is true that Taiwan has been democratically self-governing long enough to have developed into an advanced democracy, with an increasing identity of its own, just as Ukraine has developed over the space of a few decades a comparable identity, or sadly, the way Kabul had changed in Afghanistan before they were shamefully abandoned. 

Furthermore we are currently in a position where we and the western world are have become dependent on Taiwan for some advanced technology and can ill afford to see that gone before it has been relocated, duplicated, or otherwise secured. Furthermore the acquisition of Taiwan will certainly put China on top in short order as things currently stand. These are hard-core, amoral realpolitik concerns. At the same time there is the basic reality that an island this close to home is clearly much more in the core interests of the Chinese, and they will go after it in total while we will at best be half-hearted about a place on the other side of the globe. The smart move would have been to simply arm the Taiwanese to the point where they could act in their own self-defense; but not enough has been done.

The problem is that we are currently woefully  ill-prepared for any sort of military conflict with China. It is one thing to not “back down” when you have the advantage, and another to do so from a weakened position. That doing so would send a bad signal to allies is just short-sighted, because it would only be temporary and the wise thing is to step back until we are prepared and have the power to prevail and strike at the right time. They think that way and we don’t, and if we don’t become more Machiavellian, or even godfather-like in our strategies we will be in deep trouble. There are just too many things wrong at this time, namely:

1. Incompetent leadership. Does anyone want to get into a military conflict with Joe Biden as commander-in-chief? 

2. A military that has been badly damaged by idiotic “woke” policies and vaccine dismissals and is simply not ready for any kind of serious conflict at this point. 

3. In even entertaining any kind of conflict have we tightly coordinated with allies like Japan and Australia to have a joint strategy and preparation for conflict?  Unlikely. 

4. Can we enter a full-blown military conflict, which will rapidly supersede everything else, without serious damage at home? 

5. We have no clear idea of the extent to which the Chinese Communists have penetrated our society, taking advantage of our political divisions and disarray.

6. Have we done anything substantial enough to decouple from China without harming ourselves?

7. Do we even know who has managed to penetrate our defenseless, abandoned southern border?

8. Do we know what the Chinese are up to in buying up farmland near military bases?

9. Do we have any inkling of how many self-serving elites have been bought by China?

Changing Pelosi’s schedule is hardly “backing down.” In fact it removes any pretext for China to act under conditions that are currently favorable to them. That doesn’t mean we surrender or give up; it is a tactical move to enable us to finally begin to take this threat seriously and prepare, with the rest of our allies, for circumstances that will be more in our favor. Furthermore, short of that we haven’t even done anything to try and undercut Chinese influence around the world, in places like Africa, whose inhabitants are increasingly chafing under Chinese domination, or to respond in kind to continuous covert aggression against our country. We have allowed ourselves to be played. 

This is currently a country where a scoundrel like Eric Swallwell was found to be sleeping with a Chinese spy on his staff, but instead of being expelled from congress, Pelosi put him on the intelligence committee!  Yet we are supposed to not “back down” on behalf of Pelosi. We have been asleep at the switch, oblivious to the threat right in front of us while facing internal disintegration that leaves us ill-prepared for anything serious. It is vital we get our own house in order before adapting  a posture that is oblivious to our own sorry condition. It is time to get our act together before it is too late.

WEIRD WEATHER AND CLIMATE HUBRIS

While temperatures have risen to over 100^o  in areas west of here, in New York it has been unusually chilly. It is now June 19th and temperatures are currently still in the 50s. This has made for great gardening weather, but terrible swimming weather. Meanwhile late yesterday rains arrived which no one had predicted. 

If nothing else this shows us two things: first, weather is precarious and at best only partially predictable even now, and less and less accurate the further ahead we look. This only makes claims of certainty about “climate” many years from now simply ridiculous despite what the “experts” tell us. For the only certainty in life is uncertainty. It is just another instance of people claiming to know far more than they actually do know, and that is too often the source of much of the damage we do ourselves. Time and again things are grossly mismanaged and end in failure because of this sort of conceit. But because we are now a resolutely humane and ever-indulgent society, heads never role even after they have bungled everything.  What we really need is a big dose of humility, and a healthy skepticism about any claims of certainty. 

This does not mean denial of “climate change;” (which is a bit of an oxymoron), for the simple reason that if you have millions upon millions of more people coming online in a better standard of living based upon fossil fuels there are inevitably going to be consequences. The trouble is most of them are located on the other side of the world, and yet we have idiots insisting that we shoot ourselves in the foot  to correct something that is increasingly attributable to other places. There are things we can, should and will do to ameliorate all of this short of self-destruction, but they are more on the order of simple things, like planting trees, rather than dubious schemes telling us what to do and how we should live, or crash “crisis” programs towards this end that only cause other problems because they are fundamentally based upon ideological principles that vary sharply from reality.  The truth is that climate change is a constantly evolving process, with or without us, that is of an order of complexity far beyond our actual capabilities- again because we have people, who in Socrates terms, claim to know more than they actually do know.

The second thing to note is that given the great variations in weather, temperature, etc. just in this country, it is preposterous to seek to impose “one size fits all” policies on everyone that are out of touch with the realities on the ground that people actually  face. These conditions are inherently varied and complex, and cannot logically adhere to a single standard. Ye that is what we face with inept policy-makers seeking to impose uniform solutions on all of us in places where they simply do not apply. In the area where I live there is an abundance of water resources, while out west there are serious drought conditions. But the latter is the result of what few will yet admit, namely overdevelopment beyond what the region can sustain in terms of water resources, and ludicrous overdependence upon a single river across several states. Meanwhile in California where the consequences are going to be more severe, instead of investing in desalinization technology, or channeling water resources from the Pacific Northwest where they are abundant, they throw away money on mass transit boondoggles than no one is going to use. 

This is all a result of hubris on the part of an elite that is running out of credibility across the board, and rather than more prescriptions from them as to how we should go about things, what we really need is considerably more silence, restraint, and humility on their part. 

 

THINGS ARE GOING TO GET WORSE

Things are going to get worse before they get better. Over a year ago some of us were predicting we were headed towards the present economic meltdown, but unfortunately there is yet more trouble, hardship, and uncertainty ahead. We saw it in the 1970s, with sky high interest rates, gas lines, record oil prices, and soaring inflation, wage and price controls, etc but the underlying conditions this time around are even worse, given the way trillions of dollars we didn’t have were profligately tossed away with very little to show for it, along with the government-induced sabotage of the economy. 

None of this had to be. There were no trends, “underlying causes,” things beyond our control, etc. This is a totally man-made disaster created by the execrable  Biden administration, which for purely ideological reasons based on fantasies about energy, deliberately sabotaged our domestic oil and gas production, and continues to do so to this day despite all of the damage and the human cost, while at the same time going begging to dictators and enemies around the world to produce more oil that is far more polluting than anything we produce here. This along with other “progressive” policies which have completely failed across the board, continue to make things worse. 

They and their collaborators in the media and woke corporations must pay for the damage they have done, but even if and when there is a change in congress in the next election and the Republicans gain control, we will still have two more years of the most feckless, incompetent, and venal administration in our history.  They will continue to have control over the levers of power unless they are removed from office. There are ample grounds for impeachment already, and the Democrats have been doubly derelict in their duty by failing to act on their own on this. But unless there are enough sane ones left, without some Democratic votes this will be difficult to realize, so there can be little in the way of immediate relief. The only other possibility may be for the congress to in effect set up a sort of shadow government, and drive this rotten regime into irrelevance. 

But fixing this mess is going to take time, which means that you can look forward to higher inflation across the board with continuously rising prices and high interest rates, a stock market in further decline, and outright recession, and resulting  stagflation. Because they profligately threw away trillions on nothing there is also little leeway left for government to come to the rescue now because they already spent the money, which leaves only an even worse alternative, namely inflating the currency even more to the point where it becomes worthless. 

This does not mean that things are hopeless. They will eventually get better, but not as long as the people who caused all of this in the first place and who continue to make it worse with everything they try are anywhere near power. There are things the next congress can and will do to ameliorate the situation, but unless and until profligate spending ends, oil and gas production resumes at full throttle, and decisions are again based on reality, not “progressive”ideological fantasies, economic improvement will be slow in coming. 

Sadly, this is only one element of the disaster we find ourselves in. We still have to deal with a disintegrating society, perverted culture, rising crime, millions of illegals flooding our country (who have been encouraged to think they have some sort of right to violate our laws and have no real attachment to this country the way legal immigrants do), record drug overdose deaths from fentanyl crossing a border that has been handed over to Mexican drug cartels and deliberately supplied by the Chinese Communists, along with a rotten elite deeply in bed with the latter, which is still below the surface because so many of them are compromised, as well as precarious international relations caused by the base weakness of the regime, etc. etc. The next congress will have a very full plate to contend with, and the question now is whether any group of people can possibly possess enough civic virtue to clean up this mess.  

DIRTY DISNEY, MORALLY BANKRUPT HOLLYWOOD, AND THE ROTTEN CORPORATE ELITE

 Walt Disney, one of the greatest Americans that ever lived, is certainly rolling over in his grave due to what is being done in the name of his once great company. I had Disney stock, not because I purchased it, but because Fox sold their movie properties to them. I thought of organizing a shareholder revolt, but have too many irons in the fire already, so I dumped it, disgusted at what the company has been doing, and figuring it would eventually come back to pummel the stock. It’s happening now, and the brand may be tarnished for years to come thanks to the Hollywood leftists, who always hated Disney for its mainline wholesomeness, until they got control of it and began to ruin it.

This is a company where some of these scoundrels have made more in a year than Walt Disney made over his entire life from something he created. Yet they have done nothing on their own creatively for years. Instead they have bought up every other provider of youthful entertainment, i.e. Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars, etc. resulting in a quasi-monopoly on entertainment for the young. In addition they own ABC and other properties. 

Before the current controversy, they had already been implementing offensively anti-white policies, dismissing projects as “too white,” etc. and forcing their “wokeness” onto their employees, as well as infiltrating their content with messages. The wokeness then spilled over to fringe sexual matters, and they immediately bought into the hysterical, and warped reaction of the left to a Florida law on parental rights that said absolutely nothing about what the left claimed. It simply prevents teachers from discussing “gender issues” with kindergarten kids. Who can possibly be against that other than perverts, child molesters, deviants, and leftists? 

Fortunately Governor Ron DeSantis stood his ground, (unlike the corporate Republicans of the past, who always folded to any pressure from the left and their establishment organs like the NY Times) and told Disney where to go, and further, with the Florida legislature, began to strip away privileges Disney had obtained in the state. But that is only a first step.

Meanwhile millions have already begun to boycott the company. Parents can no longer trust anything from Disney apart from classics from the Walt era. They clearly have an agenda promoting sexual and racial propaganda aimed at children that most people will find offensive. But parents now clearly have to look at what is being inserted into “entertainment” aimed at their kids, just as they have with classroom curricula, and for now, definitely boycott Disney until Walt’s vision and company is restored.

This should be a no-brainer but some erstwhile conservatives of the establishment are objecting to what Florida has done, so that presumably we should continue to tolerate the intolerable and watch things continue to spiral downward in our culture. On the contrary, we should eventually go further and look at breaking Disney up to establish other strong sources of children’s entertainment, and force the spinoff of ABC. We must take the same approach to all of the big media companies. They, and the big social media companies are all legitimate targets for all the evil they have done, from bias, to suppressing the truth, suppressing the free exchange of ideas, silencing and even punishing dissenting voices while engaged in blatant propaganda. 

To talk about “freedom of the press” as a bulwark is ludicrous given that it is the press itself that is corrupt, suppressing freedom of expression while disseminating a false picture of reality in this country. The day they stopped being objective from favored corporate positions  and became partisan political actors they forfeited any legitimate claim to exemption from the consequences. 

All the woke corporations must similarly be held to account, and Republicans will be fools if they fail to do everything possible within the law to make their lives miserable. There is not a single institution left in this country that has not lost legitimacy in the eyes of the people. Now is the time to act. The rotten elite across the board that has sold out to the left must be shaken to the core, followed by a process of reconstruction and renewal if they ever again are to regain the trust of the people. 

SHORT TAKES AFTER AN ABSENCE

INFLATION: I am so sorry that I turned out to be right about inflation, (https://www.georgesarant.com/2021/12/funny-money.html) which will only get worse before it gets better, for the simple reason that it is now on everyone’s mind and incorporated into selling and purchasing decisions going forward. When I first wrote about it there was little sense of its imminent presence, and we were told that it was “transitory” by the “experts.” But now that we are all fully conscious of it, the effects are compounded, and it will build on itself the way it did in the 70s.  The damage that has been done by bad policies cannot be undone overnight, and we will likely face another recession before things level out. Mind you this is an entirely man-made phenomenon due to an incompetent administration that has been wrong about everything and is fully responsible for engendering it from a rock-solid, stable period created by the previous administration; and no, it’s not Putin’s fault.

UKRAINE: I still believe what I wrote regarding the ultimate demise of the Putin regime (https://www.georgesarant.com/2022/02/how-tough-guys-fall.html) which will ultimately come to pass, due to the disastrous invasion of Ukraine. That is the bright side; the dark side is the possibility that he may become totally unhinged, say the hell with everything, and take the whole world down with him in a nuclear catastrophe. We would then be reliant on the good sense and decency of Russians tasked with implementing this to disobey.  But otherwise we are witnessing the self-destruction of the geographically largest country in the world, a culmination of chronic bad government. 

Our eyes have clearly been opened by exposure to the Ukrainian reality. Beforehand I think many of us had a vague picture of some sort of drab, post Soviet region, along with Chernobyl, etc. Instead what we now see is a beautiful city, and a heroic people, many of whom speak English better than many Americans these days. Again, tragically, this too could have been avoided if we had a different administration. 

INDIVIDUALS AND HISTORY; It should be clear now that it is individuals that matter in life, from the uniqueness of each and every one of us, to those at the pinnacle of power. If someone with the humane instincts of a Gorbachev had been in charge of Russia instead of Putin, how different things would have been. Instead one malevolent actor holds the whole world hostage. Or, suppose the Ukrainian leader was someone who, in the face of danger, absconded, in a pattern going back to the Byzantine Emperor facing the Fourth Crusade up to the last President of Afghanistan, resulting in the collapse of the government? Fortunately for the Ukranians, Zalinsky was the man who instead held things together. 

There are no grand “causes,” no “laws,” no great “theories” governing history. There are only events and individuals, and how they respond to them. There are endless “if only-s” throughout history that would have resulted in completely different outcomes given different players. We need only think of the virtually miraculous accomplishments of Washington, without whom this country would not exist. Or our present sorry state under a grossly incompetent administration of old radicals going off the rails. 

THE ROTTEN LEFT: It should be crystal clear now the extent to which we have been subject to a morally bankrupt Left, that across the board destroys everything it touches. Think simply of any interest group online, and how often they ruin things by injecting politics into subjects that have no connection with it, or how our media have been corrupted, education system destroyed, biological facts rejected, endless racializing of everything, language itself purloined, etc. because they view all aspects of life as political, while the rest of us live in the real world. Look tellingly, at the reaction to Musk buying Twitter and restoring free speech, which they cannot abide, in keeping with their ongoing censorship because they cannot bear to hear anything that conflicts with their warped world view. This repressive reign must end and true freedom be restored to all our institutions or we are doomed. 

HOW TOUGH GUYS FALL

 The history of the last century reveals a pattern that goes as far back as Ancient Greece. The surest way to end a tyrannical regime is to start a war, which more often than not backfires spectacularly. In the case of Greece it wasn’t just in ancient times but in the modern world as well. When the Greek junta in conjunction with Cypriot allies overthrew the government of Archbishop Makarios in an attempt at unification, the results were disastrous. It gave the Turks a pretext to invade which in turn led to the collapse of the junta. When the Argentine military regime decided to seize the Falkland Islands it resulted in a war with Britain that also resulted in the end of that junta. Then there was the Serbian regime that met its demise in the Kosovo war. 

But those are just the smaller examples. Catastrophe resulted in World War II when Germany, Japan, and Italy invaded their neighbors ending the government of all three. Prior to that the whole world changed in World War I, when every empire on the European continent collapsed. Clearly when tough guys start a war the results are usually completely unexpected. Thus the question today is whether history might repeat itself in the case of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. 

First it must be noted that there is a considerable difference between an authoritarian regime like Putin’s and a totalitarian regime like the Communists. In the former you can pretty much do what you want as long as you stay out of politics. In the latter the state controls all aspects of life. In an authoritarian regime power is less systematized, and usually there is not much of a binding ideology. This makes the levers of power more tenuous.

Second, on the surface Putin’s goals may not seem completely unreasonable given that Russia itself essentially began in Kiev until you realize just how strongly the Ukrainians actually feel. They have inspired leadership and a far more cohesive sense of national identity than we have been led to believe and they clearly intend to resist heroically to the last man.  The problem for Putin is that contemporary Ukrainians clearly want to be free of Russia, which in turn may result in a prolonged occupation, which, given historical precedent, potentially could lead to the collapse of his government. The historical odds are not in his favor  unless he cuts his losses and leaves quickly. There is virtually universal condemnation of the invasion and it appears that Putin has seriously miscalculated the consequences. 

His cronies will be far less reliable once they start losing money, the public, because they do have access to information outside of state propaganda are not supportive, and the cooperation of an increasingly demoralized military cannot be guaranteed. The danger is that a man who seems to be increasingly unhinged and out of touch with reality has his finger on a nuclear button and we can only pray that in a worst case scenario cooler head prevail in the Kremlin. 

It is heartbreaking to see the disruption of life for ordinary Ukrainians but at the same time inspiring to see the heroic resolve of these people in the face of such a daunting challenge. Against long odds my sense is that they will eventually triumph and that the fall of the Putin regime has begun. It will not be immediate but when it does happen it clearly will be traceable back to this ill-conceived invasion and the historical pattern will again be repeated. 

RUSSIA, UKRAINE AND THE WEST

It is beyond the realm of possibilities that a senile Joe Biden could have outfoxed Vladimir Putin. But the results appear as though he has. Putin initially engaged in saber-rattling with Ukraine in the hopes of exacting some concessions from the West. One concern in particular was not unreasonable, namely a guarantee that Ukraine would not be brought into NATO, given the idea of a perceived national threat directly on their border. The appropriate thing would be to allay this concern over time. 

However when Biden didn't bite and essentially said go ahead and invade (on a limited scale), it pulled the rug out from under Putin. Any invasion, even if ultimately successful, would clearly be costly for the Russians. Putin had probably hoped that he would gain some concessions, and then back down without losing face. Now he is stuck in a situation where he has little choice but to make good on his  threats. 

But if he goes forward it will be costly for the Russians, in terms of lives lost, as well as resulting further sanctions from the West. This will not sit well domestically with the Russian people which may in turn further undermine the popularity of his government. As a result Putin has gone from a relatively low-cost winning proposition to a no-win situation, perhaps leaving little choice but to go ahead with a limited invasion, as helpfully suggested by Biden, who, given pronouncements regarding Americans leaving Ukraine, may in fact have a heads up. This makes the whole situation comical, were it not for the tragedy, even a “limited” tragedy that is likely to occur for the hapless troops on the ground. 

Our whole approach towards Russia since the fall of communism has been short-sighted and insensitive. Putin has some legitimate concerns regarding the Russians “stranded” in bordering countries following the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the shaky geographical result in some regions. We should have been making some attempt to assuage such concerns, as well as ameliorating the overall situation by bringing Russia back into the West, instead of pushing them into the arms of China, which is the greatest external threat we face today. If we do not change course on this we will indeed be facing a perilous situation going forward. 

 

HOW THE INTERNET CAUGHT COVID!

Everything went down at our city house for five days: no Internet, no phone, no TV, no anything, due to a broken FIOS box at our house. Our home network was still operational, but not much useful could be done with it. Alexa didn’t work, Ring doorbells were out, thermostats weren’t transmitting, etc. etc. Then it really hit me. Why the hell are we so dependent on the Internet for all this stuff? Why can’t it work locally and give us  control over what is functional in our own homes?

The lame excuse is that using the web enables you to control things outside of the home, but which would you rather have- personal local control or the convenience of turning up your thermostat remotely from your car? I’m not going to speculate about motives as to why things are the way they are, but right now it clearly gives large companies a huge amount of access to your information, how you live, what you do, etc.  and, more disturbingly, they can control things the same way you do. There is no reason why things should be this way. 

Before all these protocols became established I thought of rigging my house up with a character named Max, who spoke like Arnold Schwarzenegger. He would have resided in the home and would have taken care of things locally like a sort of virtual valet. Then Alexa came along and I became an early user. But at this pont  I would rather have my Max processing my information than Amazon.  It should be possible for all of these devices to work locally, independent of the Internet. There is absolutely no reason why you at least can’t have both options.

More ominously, suppose that the big boys started sharing the information in concert, or even worse, with the government. As things stand all of them are currently on the same page in sweet harmony (with the potential exception of Apple) and it is not unreasonable to be concerned about the possibilities without getting paranoid. Whatever the case this kind of power concentration ought to be unacceptable, and the time has come to liberate Americans from this electronic yoke. 

*   *   *

Anyway we were still able to do some things via our cell phones by establishing a Hotspot, so we could, to some extent, access the Internet, but none of the other stuff since it is on a different network. Now the fun part arose when we contacted Verizon for service. They responded right away and scheduled a repairman within a reasonable length of time. But at the appointed hour no one showed up, so I called to find out why. The response was that we hadn’t answered a Covid question properly and they wouldn’t send a repairman unless we answered a couple of questions confirming that we weren’t Covid positive and agreed to wear a mask in our own home! 

Now unbeknownst to me my wife had actually spoken to someone at tech support and had answered all the questions appropriately, so that should have sufficed. But somehow they decided to cancel because someone supposedly responded “Yes” instead of “No” to a text message with the same stupid questions. Neither of us ever got it, and although I don’t pay much attention to text since my phone is constantly flooded with Trump messages ever since the NRCC gave it out to everyone. I certainly never answered “Yes” to anything, so it is possible the boys just wanted to goof off. In any case they came two days later after we carefully answered the questions; twice, and yet again just before they would enter the house. So we compliantly masked up when they finally came and quickly replaced some sort of broken doodad. 

Things have really gone completely jabberwocky over Covid. It is the height of absurdity to make an urgent repair dependent on answering a couple of text messages, (and text messages only) confirming that no one in the house has a disease and that everyone is masked. This is just the pinnacle of paranoia in a city where you have to carry a card confirming you’ve been vaccinated just to eat in a restaurant, which is yet another burden on an industry that already has been decimated by government regulations. If all of this isn’t overkill I don’t know what is. Our lives are being run by screwballs and if we don’t revolt soon we are going to be transformed into corporate state run automatons.