On The Topic Of A Visa

 I sat this week, pondering over how I got my German wife her 'green-card'.  I was stationed in Panama at the time...on my 2nd year of marriage and the base guy laid out the various pieces and parts to this.

Paperwork-wise, it wasn't a big deal (maybe 10 pages of crap to fill out).

Cost factor?  They wouldn't let the base clinic do the physical.  This meant you had to pay some civilian doctor to do it and they kept wanting to lead me to some clinic which would charge in the $1,500 range for 'requirements'.  

Some guy who'd done this the year prior for his Panamanian wife....gave me a name of a cheap-ass Panama clinic...costing in the $500 range.  With everything figured out...I probably spent in the $800 range out of my pocket.

So I look at the modern way of people just crossing the border.  They 'catch' you (it's not really catching as far as I can figure).  They will assemble you at some border station...giving you a $10 sandwich, with a soda. 

Texas will put you a free-bus, and 36 hours later...you end up in NY City.  There?  Those kind NY City dopey folks will put you up in some 3-star hotel, giving you a VISA-gift card....probably loaded in the $3k range to buy stuff.  Monthly, they'd hand you $2,000 for 'stuff'.  Any paperwork for the visa?  They'd fill it out for you, and that stupid clinic stuff would be totally free.

Yeah, today....I'd just tell the German wife to skip all those regular steps, and just hike up to the Texas border, and 'get-caught'.  

Looking Forward Toward The 2024 Election

 1.  I just have this sense that Biden and the entire DNC crew are pretty sure that he (or his replacement Governor Newsom) cannot mount another campaign to get 81-million votes.

Just an odd feeling but they seem to figure things will not work in the 2020-fashion.

2.  Selling Bidenomics?  

Someone on the Biden-team  needs to hire some 2nd grade teacher, with the mentality and talk of Mister Rogers-fame....to spend ten minutes nationally explaining it.  So far, every attempt that President Biden or any of his 20-odd experts on finance....has ended in dismal failure.  

3.  At some point, it will be dragged out that Lincoln was denied on 10 southern state ballots in 1860.  Then it'll be mentioned that they were all Democratic-run states.  And then this Trump denial business on the ballot will hurt the Biden/Newsom campaign.

4.  On five-star damage...the whole thing with Hunter Biden has gone to the level that it makes 'dad' (Joe) look like an idiot.

5  Dumping Harris from the VP ballot position seems to be a high priority but I don't think they've told her that.

6.  Governor DeSantis is finished, and will not be able to ever restart his efforts....even for Senator.  I also don't think Trump will offer a position.....if Trump does win the election.

7.  Dragging Civil War history into the race?  Well....I think folks are desperate enough (stupid enough as well), that it makes perfect sense.  The fact that Latino folks have no ownership of the period, or the outcome?  It puts the Democratic Party in a crappy position in terms of getting them hyped-up.

8.  CNN almost unwatchable at this point?  I tried this past week to get in 60 minutes, but the mute-finger went into action several times.  I eventually gave up.

9.  It's pretty much guaranteed these days....if you have President Biden in some free moment (say two minutes)....he's likely to say a minimum of two things that the White House has to walk back later.  

10.  On soap opera theatrics....there's going to be plenty of stuff in politics to make up for the crappy TV season on NBC, CBS, and ABC.  

That Chinese Balloon Business

 This week, a piece or two of the 2023 Chinese balloon business (over the US) came out.

What the Pentagon came to admit?  Well....it was designed in a pretty simple way to connect to some US internet carrier on the ground....doing a data dump (I assume photos/imagery)....on a continual basis (meaning no satellite was necessary).

I pondered over this. 

Basically, it'd be like me turning to some 16-year old geeky kid and saying I want some imagery of a country....desiring to spend very little.  The kid would suggest some cheap connection deal.  He'd go down the list with Spectrum, Cox, Century Link, Horizon, and Xfinity.  He'd explain how crappy connectivity is with Xfinity, or how limited Horizon is in certain regions.  Then we'd go and sign up with the right carrier.

The engineer who designed this?  I would imagine he's been to a US college and knows some various ways to cut corners....doing thing cheaply.

The fact that you could have 500 of these balloons ready to go?  I would imagine there's a warehouse somewhere and probably just five or six guys running this whole operation.

One Aspect Of The Civil War Never Explained

 The American Civil War started on 12 April 1861....what would normally be planting season over the next month for cotton in the south.  Planting went as scheduled, and harvest (picking) came up in September/October.  

However, with the war in full swing....there were two brewing issues.

First, the primary customer for the cotton harvest were the knitting mills in the NE of the US.  With the war going on....no cotton moved to the customers there.  

Second, with naval blockades in place and freezing out the bulk of Europe cotton sales....cotton sat in ports for the most part.

As you might imagine....this left crap for the cotton commerce market, and the banks holding loans of the southern businessmen.  

The New England knitting mills (running with mostly women and children as employees)....for the most part....shut-down for 1861.

By the end of 1861, both Egypt and India realized that they had a massive market now open, and planting season for 1862 went into over-drive.  

By the end of 1862, England was importing around 90-percent of their cotton needs from India.  As you look at France, Netherlands, Spain, Italy and Germany....their market came mostly from Egypt.  

US farms trying to plant for spring 1862?  Yes, but there's simply no real cash flow, and banks are crapped out by this point.  So there's probably some cotton to be picked in the fall of 1862, but no consumers to buy their product.

The south, by spring of 1863....is economically dead.  Even when the war ends....9 April 1865....it'll be most of a decade when some cotton production starts to occur, and the limited market is mostly to the New England market.  Overseas market, a major part of their business plan?  It's dead....won't be coming back.

States like South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas and Louisiana?  It will be several decades before their economies start to go into a recovery path.

So here's the fascinating thing....by the end of 1861....you can zero out all value of plantations and slaves.  Just in one single year, Egypt and India have taken over the world market.  The slavery business?  It was totally finished....whether the war continued past 1862 or not.  

Why we never discuss this story?  Economics and agriculture are a bitter pill for teachers and historians to deal with and explain to 'kids'.  

Priorities of 2024 Election....Upside Down?

 Someone sat a political function last night (in NH of all places) and asked Nicki Halley....what was the cause/trigger of the Civil War...wanting her to just say something to the concept of slaves/slavery.   Halley paused for a minute.....avoided the phrase of slavery....saying something to the effect 'basically how the government was going to run'.  

She knows in states like NC, SC, and Georgia....one stupid phrase would cease her chances of an election.  

I paused over this.  I've spent probably 400 man-hours over the past decade reading through the period of 1800 to 1860....with 50-odd books. A good bit of this had to do with western trails to Oregon, life in the prairie region, and the spiral going on with relations between the south and north.

It is curious.....158 years have passed and the Civil War conflict has now emerged as a leading topic of the 2024 election.  Republican candidates (other than Trump) are stuck....they are a member of the party that devoted their entire existence in 1860 on ending slavery, but cannot feel a passion for the effort done....158 years later.

The problem in dragging this topic up?  Well....if you were a Democratic Party guy, you surely wouldn't want the public to figure out that you were the party in 1860 to proudly push continuation of slavery in America.

If you asked Biden or Harris over this....both would give you a deer-in-the-headlights look...like what the hell are you asking me over this for?

If you asked college students who participated in the war, or won the war, or was President during the war?  I would guess two-thirds of these college youth would not be able to answer.

Should the Civil War ending be a 2024 discussion topic?  If so....will we eventually go back to discuss the Revolutionary War and how it was wrong to leave the English kingdom business?  Will we go and discuss how winning WW I....simply led to creation of Hitler and WW II?  Will we go and admit that the steroid era of baseball destroyed the sport?  Will we go and admit that 1920 prohibition era was a total joke?  Will we finally sit down and admit that inches/feet should be shredded, and we should go metric?

Yeah, these are all crap-topics and worthless to engage in....but we've made ourselves so stupid....we can't seem to leave some paranoid schizophrenic stage of life.  

As for understanding how things existed in 1850?  You'd have to understand basic economics, the consequences of adding non-slave states to the union, the continual collapse of banks for the thirty years leading up to the Civil War, and downward spiral of agricultural enterprise in the south for the decades prior to the war.  I should also state....behavioral collapse and alcoholism in the capital was daily feature of life in DC.  

Five Humble Thoughts

 1.  If you have some associate or relative who've gone to the dark-side on pronouns and weird behavior....just treat them as if they were afflicted with schizophrenia.  Keep a 6-ft distance and avoid all conversation.   Just note in your mind....they can't rationally think or behave.....with the chatter mostly about imaginary things.

2.  It's not something that I've put a lot of thought into.  Years ago (prior to the 1990s) most all washing machines used a total of 40 gallons of water to conduct one single washing of clothes.  

At some point, that was considered excessive, and new standards occurred....where the washers were mostly designed to use 20-to-25 gallons of water.  

In the past decade, most all washers have gone to a newer standard....with top-load washers using 12-to-17 gallons.  Front-load?  Now in the range of 7-to-8 gallons.

Apparently, the Biden administration has decided to find a way to lessen number of gallons even more.  The day will come in approximately 20 years where you are told to wear the same underwear for 10 days straight....to save on washing.

3. It is amazing to me....President Biden works at a 20-hour-a-week part-time job....yet still requires almost sixty days of vacation per year.

4.   You could ask who participated in the Civil war....who won the Civil War, and ask who was the President during the period...to find that more than two-thirds of college students have no idea to the answers.

So why even bring up Civil War history on CNN?

5.  If you have behavioral issues as an adult, and seem to be acting like a 8-year old kid....then you aren't an adult.  General respect from me to you....won't exist.  

Evolution of News

 I grew up in a rural area in the 1960s/1970s.  For decades prior to that period....you got your news via the local newspaper, maybe an occasional Nashville paper, and the regional AM stations.  Total content?  In a full day....maybe 30 minutes of value.

For my era?  You had three network news groups (ABC, NBC, and CBS).  We were mostly a NBC-user.  Besides the local radio station....on a good night, you could get Nashville and St Louis radio news.  Time, Newsweek, and a couple of oddball news magazines...would drift occasionally into the house.  Total content?  Maybe between 30 and 60 minutes.  

As I left for the real world....I had two sources of news in my first two years of military life in Germany....AFN-TV/Radio  and Stars and Stripes.  The S/S crew gave you just enough material to read through in 20 minutes.  

1990s?  Things evolved.  You now had talk-radio, NPR, CNN and by 2000.....you had various internet sources trying to cut into the TV news pattern.

Since 2010....more evolution.

If I measured things today?   Via Fox, CNN or the TV empire folks....there's probably less than 20 minutes of a week that I give them.  I watch various TV news from the UK and Germany.  

Podcasts?  I can add up a typical week and admit that I watch information pieces or hear conversational discussions....adding up to 20 hours a week now.  

Me engaging into muting?  Yeah, there's various talks or topics that once I hear who the guest is, or the path of the 'talk'....I'll hit mute without much thought. 

If you asked where things are going?  I'd question how the NY Times, WaPo, Newsweek, Time or CNN folks survive in the next five years.  Local TV news?  If the Chevy/Ford/Toyota/GM folks sink because of slowing sales....the primary folks who pay for the local nightly news will go away.

My skeptical views?  It's double what it was a decade ago.  There's forty-politicians (from both parties) that I mute on a regular basis.  I don't really want to hear their message or BS.  There are governors now....that I have zero respect for and mute without much discussion.

Just news alone?  No....sports reviews/news have fallen into the same spiral.  

Twitter having caused some of this evolution?  Oh, there was tons of contributing factors way before Twitter came along.  

The odd thing to really consider....the evolution was fairly slow and moderate through each decade.  In the past five years?  I'd now say that evolution of news is at  pace where we will see AI creating/writing half of the news within five years.  If you wanted a particular brand/message or theme....you will be able to sign up for some service where you get the right voice, the right words, and the type of news you would accept.

Paul Harvey-2030 brand is likely to be re-created, compliments of AI.

I'm not saying things will be better....just more evolution. 

Note: My top twenty-odd podcasts?

- Danny Jones (lot of crazy interviews, some science stuff)

- Soft White Underbelly (interviews with people who've fallen into the dark pits of life)

- I Allegedly (lot of economic, banking and commerce news)

- Girl With The Dogs (for some reason, I like watching her wash/groom dogs)

- Royal Rogue (mostly anti-Prince Harry stuff)

- Robert Sepehr (history stuff)

- Valuetainment Clips (lot of commerce, business chatter)

- Metal Leo (does walks around SF and shows decline)

- Joe Blogs (economic analysis)

- A Word on Westerns (Cowboy movie talks)

- Sepentza (blunt China discussions)

- Godfrey Bloom Official (business chatter over UK)

- Zeihan on Geopolitics (business and stability analyst)

- Uneducated Economist (talks a good bit over US economy)

- Matt Walsh

- Trigonometry (two Brit comedians who take on serious topics)

- The Randall Carlson (science stuff, collapse of civilization)

- Voice of North Korea (Yeonomi Park, 1st class analysis of events there)

- Conservative Twins (two black guys who have a mix of humor and politics)

- 1420 (Russian university student who asks questions on the streets of Russia)

- Peter Boghossian (master of debate and reason)

- Lex Clips (Lex Fridman, science stuff)

- Sabbatical (guy on a long journey)

- Brent Pella (California comedian, does a 4-star imitaion of Gov Newsom)

- News for Reasonable People (real estate expert, talks over the decline on the west coast)

- Doctor John Campbell (medical stuff for the normal human being)

- Darkhorse (science, political chatter from a husband-wife duo....very insightful)

- Joe Rogan