Used to be that polite society shunned both actors and circus people. Today the clowns are no longer performing under the big top but rather holding office in Washington DC instead! As for actors the pendulum has swung completely the other way and everything these folks now poop out, is being viewed as smelling like Chanel #2. The biggest benefactor of all of this are the PT Barnum family of the 21st century; the Kardashian and Jenner clan. In today’s social media environment a sucker is now born every second!

Well past the time that the world take climate change seriously. Unfortunately recent rioting there over diesel fuel taxes will likely have the reverse political effect in France. All well and good to have 140 nations signing on to a voluntary climate change treaty but when the world’s number one carbon polluter exports coal burning technology to other countries it’s time to try something else! Frankly would rather have 40 countries signing on to a mandatory accord who then impose a carbon tax on the 100 countries who don’t sign on? But will the K cup generation be willing to pay more for their cellphones and video games?

The USA the world’s most successful capitalist country is moving to become the world largest socialistic country. China the world’s largest socialistic country is moving to become the world’s most successful capitalistic country. As Winston Churchill once said “Some people regard private enterprise as a predatory tiger to be shot. Others look on it as a cow they can milk. Not enough people see it as a healthy horse, pulling a sturdy wagon.” The Chinese are using their predatory capitalist tiger to fill their sturdy wagon in any way they can. In the USA we have chosen to milk our capitalist cow dry. The communist Chinese recognize what Churchill understood long ago “The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings. The inherent virtue of Socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.” In the West the Natives are becoming increasingly miserable!

After the Civil War, southern white male democrats began to practice wide spread voter suppression against black male voters. With the 1960’s civil rights legislation these white democrats would then move on to the Republican Party. Over the same period northern white male democrats controlled the big cities like New York and Chicago where they practiced wide spread voter fraud with their calls to vote early and often! These big city white guys are still democrats and still leading the Democratic Party but what can be seen from the democrat primaries of 2018 is that these white guy days of leading the democrat party are numbered! And rightly so! As for suppression and fraud expect them to be practiced by one or the other party. We need the Freedom card NOW!

SINCE ITS FOUNDING THIS COUNTRY HAS BEEN RUN BY OLD WHITE GUYS. SOME DID A GOOD JOB WHILE OTHERS NOT SO MUCH. BUT EVENTUALLY ABSOLUTE POWER CORRUPTS AND THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA HAS NOW BECOME A CESSPOOL OF LOBBYIST AND FILTHY LUCRE! VERY SOON THIS COUNTRY WILL HAVE MORE PEOPLE OF COLOR THAN WHITE FOLK. SO LETS BEGIN TO PASS THE TORCH TO ALL WOMEN AND MEN OF COLOR AND LET’S SEE WHAT THEY CAN DO WITH IT! BYE, BYE REPUBLICAN PARTY!

Hillary Rodham Clinton was only half correct when she stated that Europe has an immigration problem. The fact is the West has lost complete control over their borders! In the USA this all began with Ronnie Reagan granting amnesty to 3 million people who came to the USA illegally. After that anyone with half a brain understood that it was easier to become a US citizen by illegal means then legal ones! Politically, this is a very difficult problem to solve as the Democrats get 70% of their votes, while the Republicans get 70% of the campaign contributions from the folks who hire them to flip their burgers and mattresses. Sorry but no Trump Tower wall is going to fix this either!

Power corrupts and Absolute Power corrupts absolutely. FDR would allow Unions to monopolize industries. Overtime the UAW would use this absolute power to effectively drive the Big Three into what has now become the Little Three. Yes, the political General Managers of these companies helped to accelerate the decline of the American Auto industry as well but the industry was doomed by the absolute power of a Union monopoly. In the 1960’s JFK would allow government employees to join Unions and we now have a largest Union in the USA doing the very same to our public schools. If you don’t think so then take a look at how the US ranks against the rest of the world in math, science and reading!

The Nobel Prize Winning Economist Milton Friedman considered himself to be a liberal in the classical meaning of the word. He would understand that today’s so called liberal is in reality a Socialist. What then is a conservative? A conservative socialist. For career Politician’s there is little advantage to being label correctly! In fact the so called liberal progressives are actually Marxist. As Shakespeare says a rose by any other name still smells….

They say that the 3rd generation is born with a silver spoon in their mouth. In that case the first generation is the greatest generation, this is the generation that did a great job of killing both Germans and Japanese. They would come home from the war to spawn the 2nd generation currently known as the baby boomer generation. The Boomers gave birth to latch key kids who spent weekends visiting Dad’s house. No wonder then that this 3rd generation has become the Entitled Generation. Entitled to be on the honor roll and with trunk loads of trophies for coming in last place! What will we be calling the 4th generation? The burger and mattress flipper generation!

The world is undergoing another leadership change with power shifting from the West to the East. The better class of people in the West are moving to take control over their governments. The last time this happened you had the better class of the “peace in our time” crowd in UK and the American Firster folks in the USA. Had these two groups moved against Fascism and Herr Hitler sooner perhaps just 6 dead Nazi’s as opposed to 60 million dead. One hopes that the better class does a better job* this time around. As for the worser class they have no one to blame but themselves had they done a better job since the end of WWII maybe we would not have found ourselves in this kind of boat!

*If you’re looking for a more recent example, then look at how Obama handled Syria.

Besides building pyramids and piles of debt we are burying ourselves under tons of lawsuits! The fact is we are using the legal system in much the same way the French used the guillotine during their revolution. This isn’t to say that the first 200 Frenchman didn’t have it coming to them, it’s the next 20,000 “off with their heads” that the mob demanded that is more difficult to justify! With the emergence of the social media mob the legal environment in the USA will become increasingly more challenging. It is one thing to drink justice from a glass, something else to drink it from the bottom of the Potomac. Unfortunately as 40% of Congress are lawyers you should expect no help from this quarter anytime soon…

After World War II America’s track record in Asia was extremely problematic. For starters in China, the USA backed the wrong warlord. This would result in our “losing” China, which in turn would provoke our involvement in Korea, ending in a very bloody tie. JFK would then commit the USA to fighting in Vietnam by effectively “green lighting” the assassination of President Diem. Not to be outdone LBJ would then hamstring the military’s ability to fight ending in a humiliating defeat for the US. As China continues to emerge the reunification of its country will become an increasing pinch point for the West. To a lesser extent the reunification of Korea could minimize any potential pinch points in Asia as well.   

 

           

French President Macron is correct that the EU needs their own national military! Unfortunately for Macron the EU is up to their eyeballs in debt and withdrawing from their international military (NATO) would require a nationalistic political will that does not exist. The EU can do one or the other, it can’t do both. Eventually the USA will come to this same conclusion. America can either defend itself in the East or the West but not both. Over time the US will continue to move its increasingly limited military assets to the Pacific. Ironically the sooner the EU embraces military nationalism the safer it will make the world for Democracy!

 

                                             

In the 19^th Century, Europe lead by the British Empire was on first base. In the 20^th Century, America lead by the US was on first base. In the 21st Century, Asia lead by China will be on first base. As the USA moves to second base WHAT kind of global role it plays remains to be seen but one assumes that it will be increasingly a Pacific driven strategy. As for who will be on 3^RD base during the Chinese Century will it be the EU or will it be Russia?

                                                             I DON’T KNOW!

Any future economic collapse in the US will drive the usual guns versus butter political debate. Only this time around we will have a much higher percentage of our population (60%) who will be largely dependent on government largesse. For the military this debate is made even more challenging given its conversion from a citizen soldier to a professional soldier. This disconnection of the armed forces from the vast majority of Americans who did not serve will make it even more likely that any future political decision will favor passing the fat* over passing the ammo!      

*If the voter’s choice comes down to Grandma living on her own (butter) or Grandma living in their basement (guns) then bring on the cholesterol

Western style socialist democracies are using increasing quantities of debt to sustain their citizen’s standard of living. In the USA we are running a huge deficit with Medicare health costs and even the interest payments on our national debt* could outstrip Medicare debt. If the West fails to fix this you should expect a global economic collapse within the next decade. This will be a long term depression as the West will be unable to borrow its way out of it as it did with the Great Recession of 2008. Banks and others that were saved by TARP will fail this time around exacerbating and accelerating this crash. Asia lead by China will then become the Economic world leader and as they say “He who has the gold rules”.  

* The almost 3 trillion dollar Social Security surplus is being applied against the national debt and as that is paid out to retirees our debt will increase accordingly!

Beginning this year, Social Security will pay out more money from their trust fund than they will take in to the fund. Unless things change they will deplete this fund by 2034. What that means for people born after 1968 is that every single dollar YOU have put into Social Security for YOUR retirement will have been given to someone else*. Perhaps another reason why there is a pyramid on the US dollar….

* Assumes you are not disabled during this time period.

Just like the Pharaohs of Egypt we are building our version of the Pyramids. These Pyramids are getting larger and larger for Presidents who are accomplishing less and less. And we are literally burying our presidential pharaohs inside them as well. I can’t wait to see the Trump Tower Library!