Category Archives: America

02/12/20

Hacked

The hackers got me and I was down for the most part of a day. In one night we had more than 24,000 attempts to log in. Nobody got in, but they tried. The next night it was 12,000. Most of seemed to come from France and China.

Somehow they got into the database, but the damage was easily fixed. It took a day to figure out where it was.

In that interim time, you may not have received the following blog posts — if you are an email subscriber.

The American Civil War II Now Underway

The Future is Here

President Trump’s Black Support

Thank you to the number of people who alerted me to the problem.

Be well.

 

02/9/20

The Future Is Here

So, I’m overhearing a conversation between two hip Millennials (ages 23-38 in 2019) at the brand new Counter Cafe — shout out to the best blueberry pancakes in ATX, trip worthy — at the end of 29th Street close to Guadalupe (The Drag).

I’m having a late breakfast with a pal, also addicted to the blueberry pancakes. Like you could resist these babies? No way.

Pancakes so big, you cut and fold them. Spicy sausage patty. You cut the sweetness with an Arnold Palmer and you know you are living the High Life in Austin By God Texas. And, you are grateful. Counter Cafe — 3 locations in the ATX.

So, M #1 says, “I moved out of my Mom’s home.”

“No way,” says M #2.

Continue reading →

02/6/20

President Trump’s Black Support

It is a shibboleth of liberal politics that the African American community is a monolith whose support is a bedrock element of the Democrat Party. Said another way, the Dems think they own the black vote in America. Some may criticize that the Dems take it for granted.

This is supported by the historic support of Dems by the black community — Candidate Trump received 8% of black support while Candidate Mittens received 6%.

Now, President Trump has put the black vote in America into play by going after it and asking for the order.

Already, there has been an ugly rumor of increased support for President Donald J Trump from the black community.

Many Dems have taken to ignoring these reports as unfounded, but there are three reputable reports from early December 2019 that show north of 30% black support for President Trump: Emerson College Polls, Marist Institute for Public Opinion, and Rassmussen Reports. This is NOT chopped liver.

Which brings me to the BIG QUESTION: Why would the black vote be swinging to President Trump?

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02/4/20

Super Bowl — Pay To Play

Interesting factoid I find in the interwebs — how much does a winning/losing Super Bowl player get paid?

Hey, dude, how much are we getting paid for this game?

First, most contracts for big time players have some kind of post season incentive, so there is that. But if you are a run of the mill player with a paltry $12,000,000 annual contract, it does not award you additional money for the post season games. You would get approximately $700,000 per game during the seventeen week regular season.

The players do get paid for post season games. Both the Chiefs and the 49ers had received a total of $87,000 — $31,000 for their divisional championship win, and $56,000 for their conference championship — before they arrived at the Super Bowl site.

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02/3/20

The Chinese Curse of Interesting Times

There is a mythological Chinese curse that dooms a man/woman to live in “interesting times.”

Think of “interesting times” as being times fraught with chaos, peril — thereby being interesting. Juxtapose that notion against “uninteresting times” suggesting peace, tranquility, prosperity.

[Note to self: Go with the “uninteresting times” if you can.]

In fact, the curse/blessing is not really Chinese, but is often attributed to Sir Austen Chamberlain, brother of former English Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain.

Old Neville is famous for his declaration of “peace for our time” — spoken in 1938 after a seance in Munich  with Herr Hitler who assured the naive Neville that he, Hitler, had no more European territorial ambitions now that he had gobbled up the Saar Basin, the Federal State of Austria, and the Sudetenland of the Czech Republic — all with a pen.

Hitler would tear up the Munich Agreement (signed by Germany, England, France, Italy) and invade Poland a year later plunging the world into a massive war that would kill hundreds of millions in a decades long cycle of violence.

BTW, in the Munich Agreement, the English, French, Italians gave the Sudetenland of Czechoslobakia to Germany without the Czechs even present at the table.

That following decade was an interesting time.

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01/31/20

The United States of Impeachment

It is Friday, a bit before 4:00 PM CST. Senator Murkowski of Alaska has announced she is opposed to seeking more witnesses in the Impeachment Trial of President Donald J Trump.

In this Senator Murkowski joins Senator Lamar Alexander, thereby leaving Cocaine Mitch and the Republicans with a worst case scenario of 51-49 which embraces the notion that Senator Mitt Romney and Senator Susan Collins (both nominally Republicans, though the disguise is no longer believable, just switch parties and get over it) will vote to seek additional witnesses.

That 51-49 total does not make any allowance for the votes of Senator Joe Manchin, Senator Doug Jones, or Senator Krysten Sinema — all Democrats thought to be considering jumping ship from their party and voting to disavow witnesses. [I predict they do not jump ship.]

While the vote is about “witnesses,” it is really a proxy for the dismissal of all charges against President Donald J Trump, thereby leaving him in office until the end of this term and on the ballot to be re-elected in November 2020.

Thus ends the impeachment and trial of President Trump. Much ado about nothing.

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01/31/20

Corona Virus — A Bad Feeling

My Spider Sense (which is stronger than 100 acres of garlic) is tingling as the world deals with the Corona Virus. Here is a depiction of the culprit. Ugly bug, no?

There is no evidence that the Corona Virus is spread by Corona Beer, though considerable research continues on this logical connection. If I were not so spooked by Mexico these days, I would take a sabbatical to study it myself.

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01/11/20

Kickstarter Union — Woke Or A Joke?

It was 79F yesterday in the ATX and 46F this morning. We’ll see 60F by the afternoon. Winter is brutal in Austin By God Texas, y’all. Brutal.

So, I have been reading up on efforts to create unions at tech firms — talking to you Kickstarter, Uber, Google. While I used “Kickstarter” as the click bait title, there has been a lot of such activity in the tech world.

I am a huge fan of Kickstarter and the entire crowdfunding industry. It was an industry that was invented from the whole cloth and I love it, but as a company, their ham handed response to an effort to unionize their 160 person workforce has been a study in how not to do things.

Buzzfeed is another example of a company who saw the writing on the wall, read it, translated it, and acted upon it.

This union formation effort happens and is happening for a number of reasons:

 1. First, we are at full employment. When you arrive at full employment, the power at the negotiating table swings to the employee side. READ THIS AGAIN

This is the most basic, fundamental change in the market. If you ignore this simple fact, then you are hopelessly lost. Anybody who is resisting the creation of unions has to face up to this reality.

 2. Unionized employees get higher pay, better benefits, and better understanding of the employee-employer relationship.

When companies like We Work — and a slew of other SoftBank funded goliaths — layoff thousands of employees in a single day, workers are going to look for a port in that storm. When they arrive, they will be wet and pissed off. That pissed offness will generate energy.

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