Huawei Hoo-hah I rarely come up against a problem I cannot conclude on if not have a preferred solution for. As the expression goes, not always right, but never in doubt. I have just found one that completely confounds me. I know its a big deal, but I cannot for the life of me see an easy answer that doesn’t sound totally crazy. The problem is the building and recently ripened problem of what to…
The Kuomintang Candidate Richard was a young adventurer who wanted to see the world now that he had missed the greatest event of the century, World War II. He had been too young to enlist and then it ended with the flow of other young men returning with stories that he could never formulate based on his own lack of experiences. Richard wanted to be a writer. He was trying to form his own…
Blue Wave Blunders I have never registered for a political party in my life. I suspect what started as apathy has turned into resentment for the system at this point. I probably should try to help select the Democratic candidates (there is zero chance I would ever register Republican or even Libertarian). The truth is that I find most of the Democratic candidates (except perhaps Bill DeBlasio this time around) as somewhat acceptable and…
The Ego Spiral Sigmund Freud laid it out for us 120 years ago. He got his start at the task of educating the public in the popular aspects of psychoanalysis with his The Interpretation of Dreams, followed by The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious and eventually Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality and The Ego and the Id. The jokes that come to mind ranging from the…
A Low-IQ Individual It turns out that according to Donald Trump, Joe Biden is “a low-IQ individual”. He and Kim Jung Un are in agreement on this. Of course, Kim Jung Un called Trump a “mentally deranged U.S. dotard” last year. The word dotard, according to Merriam-Webster means a person in “a state or period of senile decay marked by decline of mental poise and alertness.” Using the thirty-five-year-old North Korean dictator as a benchmark…
The Warrior Cult Patrick was a loyal citizen from the time of his youth. He was born of the Roman Empire to a clerical family living in Western Britain (what we now think of as Wales). He was intended to study the classics and either take his place as a Roman orator and politician, like his father, or perhaps a priest like his grandfather. But his mother was a Celt and a Druid princess at…
Integrity Matters Merriam-Webster says this: Definition of integrity 1: Firm adherence to a code of especially moral or artistic values: INCORRUPTIBILITY 2: An unimpaired condition: SOUNDNESS 3: The quality or state of being complete or undivided: COMPLETENESS The supreme quality for leadership is unquestionably integrity. Without it, no real success is possible, no matter whether it is on a section gang, a football field, in an army, or in an office. Dwight D. Eisenhower…
Ala-fucking-bama I’m very upset with the entire state of Alabama. It is interfering with my marriage. My wife is so upset with the newly passed and signed abortion law that she is railing about men interfering with women’s rights to be in control of their own bodies. I have pointed out that it was a female legislator in Alabama that sponsored the bill and a female governor that signed the bill into unconstitutional law. I…
Pity Don Junior Supposedly, Donald Trump Jr. has now come to terms with the Senate Intelligence Committee. I feel bad for poor Don. My wife and I had the opportunity five years ago to be seated at an AON client event at the same table as Don Jr. My wife is the least likely person in the world to forgive and forget someone who prides themselves in photos taken of them out engaging in big…
American Sharia Fundamentalism is about unwavering attachment to irreducible beliefs. What is an irreducible belief? Whatever someone wants it to be to serve his purpose. And that purpose can be for the greater good or it can have a high coefficient of self-interest, usually cloaked in false righteousness. What would we define as American fundamentalism? Technically, it represents the views espoused by the Niagara Bible Conference in 1897 that tried desperately to build a wall…