reddit Gallery CCCXIX

Another excursion into the world of reddit Pictures. See: reddit Pics for sources.  Do yourself a favor and click on pictures to enlarge them.  Enjoy!

Antelope Canyon, Arizona

Father and Son

Unshorn for Six Years

Felix Unger's Closet

Kazakhstan Horse

Holy Meddler

Pope Francis is going to be addressing Congress on Sept. 24th and it is very likely that he will once again meddle in the internal affairs of the United States regarding our illegal immigration problem  ... see: Rollcall Article. This Pope continues to unveil his radical liberal views nurtured in that failed South American country, Argentina ... see: True Colors. To me, he seems more and more compelled to do something with his prominent facial appendage.

Maybe the United States should start telling this Pontiff about what he should be doing to revamp the Catholic Church? And also maybe the Vatican City should now house and feed a few hundred thousand illegal African immigrants who have been flooding into Italy?

FANG

The stock market is down almost 300 points today ... to continue a stock market slide that started a few months back. So far the Dow Jones Average is down over 9% and it looks like things are not yet done. A correction is -10%+ and a washout is usually around -20%. The stocks that I had previously cautioned you to watch out for are Facebook, Amazon, Netflix and Google (FANG) as precursors of a market correction... see: Timber!! ... are all down big ... about as bad as the overall market. Even though people love these stocks, they are being used as a source of funds for over-extended investors.

When will things turn around? If I knew this I would be a wealthy man (which I am not) ... maybe when the price of oil turns around? However, having sold a lot of my winners a while back to raise a cash reserve, I am starting to nibble on high-yield stocks and some defensive issues like gold and silver miners. Wish me luck ... and the same to you.

UN Inspections in Iran UPDATED

The analogies are obvious. Under heretofore secret codicils, the United Nations will let Iran use its own people to inspect and report on suspected site violations under the proposed Iran nuclear pact that the Obama/Kerry team has negotiated ... and is now trying to sell to Congress ... see: Associated Press Story for the disturbing details.

Although we are now fairly inured to its chicanery, can the Obama administration get even more duplicitous?

Afterward: Here is a link to the original text of the side agreement referred to in the Associated Press article ... Side Agreement. As Scott Johnson of the Powerline blog, who posted this link states, "The side deal shows President Obama and administration officials to be voluble liars on critically important matters inherent in the deal with Iran." If you want to go to the referenced Powerline post, here it is: Scott Johnson Posting.

Anchor Babies

You've heard the liberal talking points ... you can' deport 11-12 million illegal aliens ... it would cost trillions of dollars to do so ... how are you going to overturn the Constitution? (Not that we haven't done this in the past.) These shibboleths are just a bunch of hogwash. We can indeed fix our illegal immigration problem if we have the spine to do it.

Donald Trump was confronted with a reporter's hostile question at the Iowa State Fair Monday about the high cost of deporting all the illegal aliens. His answer was, as usual, right on point ... "What does it cost us not to deport them. We either have a nation or we don't have a nation." As it turns out there is a recent analysis on what it actually might cost to round up and deport some 11-12 million illegal aliens (CNBC calls them "undocumented workers" ... we should only hope that they all are working). The number arrived at was 5 to 15 billion dollars a year over a twenty year period ... see: a somewhat slanted  CNBC Article. To me 10 billion dollars a year is a mere pittance ... a rounding error in the United States' $3.8 trillion annual budget.

I further suggest that it is vital we start these deportations with the dangerous criminals ... and leave the ones with verifiable jobs and families to the latter years. In between here would be my rough priorities in terms of who gets booted out ... gang members and small-time criminals with multiple misdemeanors ... those granted amnesty fraudulently  ... illegals from terrorist nations ... aliens carrying false or multiple identities ... the mentally unstable ... people on welfare or who have come here to drop anchor babies ... and, finally, non-core family members of illegals. But I might make an exception for illegals who have served in our armed forces for two or more years and who have been honorably discharged.

And Donald Trump's (actually Jeff Session's) suggestion on how to pay for these deportations ... with a tax on the $123 billion of remittances that aliens send home every year ... makes enormous sense ... see: Business Insider Story.  A 5% tax should do it.

The Ideal Candidate

I've been musing over and over about who might be the best candidate for president in 2016 ... and I keep coming up with an amalgamation of the current field of aspirants. What would comprise such an ideal candidate?

Marco Rubio's integrity
Hillary Clinton's money
Donald Trump's immigration policy
Ben Carson's humility
Carly Fiorino's straight talk
Jeb Bush's looks
Bernie Sander's crowds
Scott Walker's leadership
Ted Cruz's love of Constitution
John Kasich's fiscal policy experience
Chris Christie's toughness
Bobby Jindal's patriotism
Mike Huckabee's populism
George Pataki's judgment
Rand Paul's outside-the-box thinking
Rick Santorum's doggedness
Lindsey Graham's foreign policy thinking

I've left a few out ... but maybe we can use them for kissing babies?

Amazon.com

Many people believe that CEO Jeff Bezos has created a monster ... while others feel that Amazon's dog-eat-dog culture is just what was needed to propel a small on-line bookseller into the most valuable retailer in the United States ... having just recently surpassed Walmart in its stock-market valuation.

Clearly, Amazon.com has taken the Darwinian corporate culling culture developed at General Electric a number of steps further ... to the point where it's high turnover rates (half of its employees last just one year and only 15% of its employees last five years) might eventually be its undoing. The New York Times has done a very long, fascinating and in-depth article on Amazon which exposes not just its many maniacal successes but also its disturbing ugly warts ... see: New York Times Story.

The older I get, the more I believe that capitalistic success is very often predicated on a Messianic vision on the part of corporate founders ... from John D. Rockefeller to Henry Ford to Thomas Watson to Steve Jobs to Jeff Bezos. And although there might be much personal employee suffering along the way, the end result is, for a time, an "insanely" transformative company. After you have digested the above article, see if you can't somehow forgive the tyranny that many of these corporate founders have engaged in to birth their visions. I may not like it, but I can forgive it ... such is "invisible hand" of capitalism.

Sifting the Candidates

Integrity, experience, judgment and leadership ... these are, to me, the four essential characteristics that one should look for when selecting our next Commander in Chief. To me most candidates who have thrown their hats in the ring so far ... from both of our parties ... lack one or more of these attributes ... Hillary Clinton comes up short on judgment and integrity ... Donald Trump, on integrity ... Bernie Sanders, on experience and judgment ... Jen Bush, on judgment and leadership ... Marco Rubio, on experience and judgment ... Mark O'Malley, on integrity and judgement ... Rick Santorum, on leadership and experience ... Rand Paul, on experience and judgment ... Ben Carson, on experience ... Ted Cruz, on experience and integrity ... Lindsey Graham, on experience and leadership ... Chris Christie, on judgment ... Bobby Jindal, on leadership ... Lincoln Chafee, on all four ... Rick Perry, on judgment ... Jim Webb, on experience ... Mike Huckabee, on leadership ... Jim Gilmore, on leadersihip ... and, if he runs, Joe Biden, on integrity and leadership.

The only candidates that I feel have all four traits are George Pataki, Scott Walker, Carly Fiorino, and John Kasich ... none of whom are currently leading in the polls. And Pataki also seems to lack a certain personal dynamism to propel him even later in his campaigns. So this leaves us, I think, with Kasich, Walker and Fiorino ... any of whom, by this sifting process, might have a real eventual shot at the presidency. People, you first heard it here ...

Afterward: Thinking objectively, our current president had or has none of these four characteristics ... so there must have be something else that was at work in 2008 and 2012.

reddit Gallery CCCXVIII

Another excursion into the world of reddit Pictures. See: reddit Pics for sources.  Do yourself a favor and click on pictures to enlarge them.  Enjoy!

A Classic Custom Car

Carpet Weavers in Iran

Another 80-Year Old Classic

Iridescent Rainbow Cloud in Himalaya

Camel Train in the Gobi Desert

Flag Ceremony

Secretary of State John Kerry traveled to Havana, Cuba today to mark the official opening of the United States Embassy there with a flag ceremony. He showed up in a Che Guevara tee shirt and cutaways. And, instead of hoisting the Stars and Stripes there for the first time in fifty-four years, he threw Old Glory over the embassy fence.

But before leaving to return to the United States, Kerry was rumored to be seeking to buy a large parcel of prime ocean-front property at a rock-bottom price. He also was thought to be buying a few cases of the best Cuban cigars.

Afterward: Since my wife didn't understand the reference of throwing the flag over the fence, I guess I need to explain. John Kerry, who once served in Viet Nam, became an anti-war activist (see above picture) and, in order to show his displeasure, threw his military medals over the White House fence. Years later someone visiting Senator Kerry's office saw his medals on the wall and ask where they came from. Kerry responded, "Oh, those were someone else's medals that I threw."

Immigrants

The federal government has just published some startling numbers on the number of immigrants in the United States ... see: Washington Examiner Story. This U.S. Census Bureau report does not break out the difference between legal and illegal immigrants, but it does indicate that the totals of the two grew by 1.7 million just in 2014 and 4.1 million from the second quarter of 2011 to the second quarter of 2015. As can be seen, this is obviously far more than the norm for this number. The reason for this clearly-planned surge is twofold ... the Democrats' desire for new liberal voters and U.S. farmers, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's and Silicone Valley's desire for more cheap labor ... independent of what it might be doing to this country.

The "official" total number of immigrants is 42.1 million (see my previous blog: Verklempt) and the number of Mexican immigrants in the United States now (at the end of the second quarter of 2015) totals 12.1 million. The total population of Mexico is 123.8 million which says that the United States now harbors roughly 1/10 of their people ... who, in turn, send back to Mexico about $23 billion a year ... see: Daily Mail Story ... which is approximately $1900 per immigrant. This (not including United States transfer payments) represents 1.2% of Mexico's GNP of $1.97 trillion. Perhaps Mexico is incented to allow these emigrants to come here?

Obviously these numbers indicate that Americans are feeling the pressure of this flood of immigrants in loss of job opportunities, increased terrorists' risks and in our burgeoning crime statistics. No wonder Donald Trump seems to have struck a chord with his stand on immigration. By the bye, since I am sure that our government has a pretty good handle on the number of legal immigrants there are in this country ... the number of illegal immigrants can easily be obtained from subtracting this figure from 42.1 million. I strongly suspect that it it far more than 11 or 12 million.

Total Recall

Do-good legislators all too often get ahead of the applied science ... possibly for personal financial gain? The bureaucratic bozos here in Massachusetts have recently decreed that any new home or re-construction requires a house-full of hard-wired interconnected smoke/carbon monoxide alarms. This means that if one goes off ... for whatever reason ... they all go off. Now I don't know if many of you have been woken up in the middle of the night with an ear-splitting FIRE! FIRE!, but our household has experienced it twice in the last three months ... and once during the day about five months ago. Of course the fire department is called and they find nothing irregular ... and you ... feeling like a real put-upon doofus ... have to remove all the suspected smoke detectors until you can figure out what really went wrong.

In our case the manufacturer, Kidde, first sent us two replacement detectors free of charge ... one of which then was the culprit in our most recent bout of sleeplessness. We now are awaiting the second round of free fixes. This replacement cycle also means that you are substantially without full fire-alarm coverage for some period of time ... unnerving to say the least.

Searching for solutions on the Internet, it appears our situation is not uncommon and is equally frustrating for quite a few new-construction homeowners. Talking to Kidde's customer service today, I was asked a number of questions by a skeptical agent and was then required to insert the battery so that she could hear the alarm go off. I was also told that small spiders or dust could upset the delicate mechanisms inside the detectors (made in China) and that they should be vacuumed or blown-out at least once a month. This is quite an inconvenience for a house with over ten smoke alarms. And what happens to those poor schlubs that have some detectors twenty feet up on vaulted ceilings? I think that a justified remedy would be for our Massachusetts state legislators to be assigned the task of doing this for us ... because they passed this silly law without any idea of the true consequences.

One last point, I have talked to our local fire department and they are, at the moment, unwilling to take the lead in fixing this issue ... either through technology, education, or pressure on the legislators and/or manufacturers. To me, this is feeling more and more like that famous General Motors ignition-switch recall that never happened ... until much serious damage and gnashing of teeth had already occurred. I think Kidde ... and possibly other makers ... need to step up and fix this problem before their liabilities soar out of sight.

Verklempt

I am verklempt ... how can the United States' national debt remain at slightly more than $18.1 trillion for 150 days? ... see: CNS News Story ... just under the official debt limit as established by Congress? And how can our treasury secretary, Jack Lew, say that it will remain so until the end of October? This assertion by the Obama administration that our official national debt has not increased for five months is beyond credibility.

This is clearly financial skulduggery. As such then how can we trust any of the "official" numbers that this Washington bunch of bunco bozos publishes ... unemployment rates, number of illegal immigrants, tax receipts, number of Ebola victims, Obama's vacation costs, etc.? I guess we need seriously to reassess our reliance on all the statistics that our government publishes ... an unnerving revelation.

Does anyone believe that the United States is not spending substantially more than it is taking in? Of course not. So how are these illusory numbers being manipulated at our Treasury Department? I herein offer the prize of a bagel with a schmear of chived cream cheese for the first person to unravel the smarmy secret behind this government financial slight of hand.

Infastructure Spending

The Keystone XL pipeline (blocked by President Obama) and the Kinder Morgan natural gas pipeline into Massachusetts (blocked by Senator Elizabeth Warren) ... are these not both infrastructure projects that are also said to be so badly needed by the Democrats? Perhaps it is because their spending is privately funded as opposed to government projects?

Artificial Invagination

We are obviously in a race to embrace any and all possible hook-ups as a tribute to our worship of diversity. You know the drill ... same sex, multiple partners, siblings, transgenders, children, animals ... and now robots are or should eventually be considered to be valid candidates for holy matrimony ... see: Slate Story. Here we are not talking about blow-up bed mates ... but full service A.I. spouses capable of all the Kama Sutra positions (reread this blog's title).

When this does eventually happen ... and I' m sure it will ... will all the complications of married life also follow ... divorces, spousal batteries, trial separations, child custody battles, etc.? Speaking of children, I can see robot husbands producing issue with female humans, but will female automaton spouses also be full-functioning reproductive partners?

At that point in time, I can imagine that  the only act that might be considered illegal and a crime against nature would be the marriage of two robots.

Summer Haiku

Evening's blue shadows
Welcome the summer zephyrs
Banishing the heat

Outrage

Perhaps it's the explosive growth of social media that is causing a surge in outrageous comments made by the famous and the famous wanna-bes, but clearly we are in the midst of a frenetic fibrillation of popular discourse. We see outrage after outrage elbowing each other out of the way in order to garner the next day's headlines on the Drudge Report or the Daily Show. The old filters of what was acceptable behavior have virtually disappeared ... so a presidential candidate can dis a news anchor about her menstruation and get away with it. And the president of the United States, with impunity, can compare congressional leaders opposing his Iran nuclear treaty with those Muslim fanatics chanting, "Death to America."

Not long ago there was a cable television populist, Howard Stern, who pretty much started this death spiral into media banality. He felt he could say or do just about anything uncensored ... and thus achieved unprecedented popularity with millennials and the X-generation. Fortunately he is now relegated to satellite radio and as a judge on America's Got Talent. But now we are experiencing this sewage seeping into our political process with very few filters on what some candidates are willing to say or do. I sometimes feel that this country is in a race to the bottom propagated by a ratings war between the old-line media outlets and our newer means of communicating.

Apropos to this growing outrage, there is the poem, "If," written by Rudyard Kipling that should be required reading by anyone (including media anchors) who might be on the center stage in this upcoming election season:

If you can keep your head when all about you
    Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
    But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
    Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
    And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
    If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
    And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
    Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
    And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools: 

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
    And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
    And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
    To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
    Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’ 

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
    Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
    If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
    With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
    And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

Or a Woman!

Wouldn't a return to cultural comity be a nice surprise?

Perhaps ...

... the way to counterbalance the existential threats posed by Iran's out-of-control and possibly certifiable leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, would be to elect an equally conniving egomaniacal tyrant as our new president here in the United States? Take your pick ... Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton.

The Candidates

In order to sift through the many candidates for President in 2016, I have been trying to reduce each of these aspirants to a few words. I realize that not all of you will agree, but then some might. Here goes:

Republicans
Donald Trump -- vainglorious

Jeb Bush -- establishmentarian

John Kasich -- Eagle Scout

Chris Christie -- straight shooter
Ted Cruz -- automaton

Rand Paul -- anger management issues

Rick Santorum -- goody two-shoes

Bobby Jindal -- right reason

Scott Walker -- proven by fire
Marco Rubio -- some questionable judgments

Carly Fiorina -- crisp communicator

Rick Perry -- Mr. Sincerity
Mike Huckabee -- bizarro Bill Clinton
George Pataki -- past his prime
Lindsey Graham -- chicken hawk
Ben Carson -- soft-spoken genius
Jim Gillmore -- forgettable

Democrats

Jim Webb -- caustic commentator

Hillary Clinton -- Queen Cruella
Bernie Sanders -- unrepentant hippie
Martin O'Malley -- typical pol

Lincoln Chafee -- soporific
(If announced) Joe Biden -- unfiltered thoughts

reddit Gallery CCCXVII

Another excursion into the world of reddit Pictures. See: reddit Pics for sources.  Do yourself a favor and click on pictures to enlarge them.  Enjoy!

Japanese Paradise Flycatcher and Baby

Clothespin Statue

The Edge of the World

Night Sky

Woman in a Field