Monthly Archives: October 2019

10/14/19

Survivors

Several years ago, I was at a funeral with a friend with whom I had served in the Army a million years ago. We had all been lieutenants — me, my friend, and the decedent — full of piss and vinegar, deployed overseas, sure of ourselves, though no logical reason why.

I had gotten a company command before the other two, but they would also get companies. Being a combat engineer company commander is as close to being a feudal Chinese warlord as a man can get in this life.

This was me at that time, just before I got the company. I was inspecting a road we were blasting onto the top of a mountain. That’s North Korea in the background.

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10/13/19

Agritech — The Technology We Don’t See

In the world of technology, there is a lot of technology we see, because we come into constant contact with it, because it impacts all of us. One we don’t see much about is agritech.

Cell phones is a good example of such a field of technology. Every time Apple bakes a little more tech into their offerings, you see it, and you either embrace or reject it, but you don’t fail to see it.

There is a great amount of technology that we do not bump into on a regular basis and yet it is being developed at lightning speed.

One of those areas is in what is called “agritech.”

Last year more than $16.9B was invested in agritech startups, a 43% increase from 2017.

Can you name a single agritech startup? Have you felt a single shock wave of the agritech explosion?

I have not and I am particularly woke to tech. [Haha, no I’m not.]

Let me tell you of a couple of interesting new developments.

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10/13/19

Universal Service

In addition to UBI — Universal Basic Income, a monthly stipend of $1,000 per month — Dem candidate Andrew Yang has begun calling for something he calls “universal service.”

What I understand he is calling for is that each American set aside either two or three years for service to the country either after high school or after college.

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10/12/19

Founding Fathers – China v The United States

The other day China celebrated the 70th anniversary of the founding of the “modern” China meaning Communist China.

That made me think about the founding father of China — Mao Zedong.

It also made me think about the founding fathers of the United States. First amongst them was this guy:

Both of these guys were citizen-soldiers who had a hook into agriculture. Our two nations have a different character which I attribute to the difference in our founding stories and our founding fathers.

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10/11/19

Libra Foundation Crack Update

On Friday afternoon, four additional cracks appeared in the Libra Foundation when Visa, MasterCard, eBay, and Stripe joined the earlier refugee from Libra, PayPal, and announced they were going to take a pass on joining and funding the Libra Foundation, headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland.

What was odd was the revelation that Libra had been taking a lot of incoming from governments — United States, Germany, France — including a letter from Senator Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and Senator Brian Schatz (D-Hi).

They had written directly to Visa, Mastercard, and Stripe discouraging their participation as well as warning of a “high level of scrutiny from regulators not only on Libra-related payment activities, but on all payment activities.”

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10/11/19

Tootsie Roll — A Curious Story

Comes now the curious story of Tootsie Roll. I love Tootsie Rolls. My local Wells Fargo Bank used to have free Tootsie Rolls.

The Tootsie Roll was invented and manufactured for the first time in 1907 (this date is in dispute). Yesterday, and every day for the last few years, they made 64,000,000 Tootsie Rolls at the Tootsie Roll Industries plant in Chicago.

64,000,000 Tootsie Rolls per day

The Tootsie Roll was named after the daughter of the inventor, who died in a tragic suicide when his candy company failed.

The company is public and has been a damn good performer. Look at this chart. [We need a better chart, Big Red Car. This one is a little fuzzy. Shut up.]

In addition, the company has paid a dividend that has increased for the last fifty years. Hello, America!

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10/11/19

The Best Exit Strategies Entail An Actual Exit

The situation in Syria has been FUBAR (fucked up beyond all recognition) since its inception during the Obama admin when we armed parties whose primary merit was that they opposed the evil, cruel, murderous regime of Bashar al-Assad, a second generation murderer who has used poison gas against his own people.

This is the “the enemy of my enemy is my friend, even if they are a little suspect” theory of foreign relations. This is the kind of thinking you get when the leadership has slept through history class and made “D’s” in summer school when they had to take it a second time.

This clown on the right, with the ringmaster from Russia (ever notice what a little shit Putin is), is Bahar al-Assad, who is an eye doctor educated in England. Couple of first rate assholes. [Pardon my profanity.]

You may recall that President Obama courageously “red-lined” Bashar, threatened to retaliate against him if he used chemical weapons. Then President Obama, famously, punked out and did nothing, thereby emboldening Bashar.

Shit, shit, shit, shit. Pardon me. I hate stupid. I hate bullshitters. Shit. I hate poseurs as much as I hate fakirs. Sorry, I’m over it now.

President Trump came into office and did the same thing — threatened Bashar with massive retaliation if he used chemical weapons. President Trump, however, kept his promised threat and struck Syria twice — the first time knocking out an airfield and twenty percent of Syria’s air force, and the second time destroying the headquarters and infrastructure of the Syrian chemical effort.

Well played, President Trump. I like a guy who keeps his promises.

This settled things down a little in Syria. But, we are no longer in the regime change mode.

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10/10/19

The Deep State — Hidden In Plain Sight

There is some controversy swirling about in Washington, the District of Columbia, pertaining to the President — this fellow Trump, Donald J Trump, guy who unexpectedly won the election back in 2016 — and the Congress. I think — check me on this — that the Democrats in Congress want to remove the President from office.

Odd sort of thing. We’re a year from an election. Why not let the ballot box do that?

Oh, well. But, I did stumble on something so unusual that I thought I needed to bring it to your attention.

It pertains to the Deep State and the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community, this guy — Michael Atkinson.

 

WTF is the Deep State, Big Red Car?

The Deep State is an imaginary — maybe no? — layer of folks who have wiggled deeply into the corpus and organs of our government, fastened themselves thereto like barnacles, and pride themselves on outlasting any elected administration.

The President may serve for eight years, but the Deep State lasts forever. In this fashion, they pay lip service to the admin all the while executing on their own peculiar vision of how things ought to be.

Some say up to removing a President who threatens to wrest their power from them. It is true in all branches of the government.

So, one is forced to ask — Who is the Deep State? Where do they reside? Are they even real?

So, I bring to you the story of the Intelligence Community Inspector General, Michael Atkinson.

By all accounts, Mike is considered a great guy by his peers. More about that later.

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