Random Stuff

     Sometimes I don’t understand.  We had a Ukrainian Criminia Surprise.  Just fix it.  Have the Ukes insert a Second Amendment and then every adult male between 18 and 45 get a gun.  We can supply ‘em. The United States has 89 guns for every 100 citizens, double the number of the number two country and about 10 times as many as Europeans.  Hitler told Albert Speer (“Inside the Third Reich”) that he won’t invade USA and wanted a truce after he had cleaned up on Europe because the Americans were armed to the teeth and independently minded, a horrid country to try to occupy or invade. Just have Homeland Security send Ukraine a billion dollars worth of rifles like the ones they have been buying in inexplicable numbers.  Forget Obama’s billion dollar loan guarantee.  Then send the NRA.  Classes start tomorrow morning.  Did you know 23% of Poles and Ukrainians live in an urban area compared to 55% of Americans.  They’re rednecks!  “Dudes! Have you seen Duck Dynasty?”

     Then a geologist friend tells me there is a massive gas shale beneath the Bohemian plateau.  Send a bunch of Okies over there.  “We are going to teach you guys how to frack.”

     And Putin can just deal with it.  By the way, if you know Soviet history, they often massacred hordes of natives in the surrounding states and moved squatter Russians into the homes and businesses.  That is what happened in Latvia and Estonia where half the population was either killed or displaced to Siberia.  Now Vlad the Impaler cries crocodile tears over these poor Russians left behind in border countries. Do not trust this guy one inch!

     Some things I don’t understand.  After 9-11 I figured that there would be a big public outcry about illegal immigration if some illegals were caught being terrorists.  The borders would surely be closed in panic, the student visas would be tracked, and we’d all be required ID cards.  Boy was I wrong!  We had the Boston Bombing by two Chechen illegals which killed 4 people and America yawned.  Well, I guess the Dozer-car guy goes on trial this week, but no one seems to notice.

     The other thing I don’t understand why we don’t fix/repeal affirmative action.  We had a mentor kid (from our local group home—system kid) who was of African extraction who confessed one day his friends had been making fun of him because his parents were ‘white’, meaning us.  At that point Marcus and I decided to stop using words like black and white and make note that all humans are some shade of brown.  With the rise of so many who are mixed race today, why don’t we dispense with Affirmative Action as a noble but useless and now irrelevant exercise.  If someone like Marco Rubio were to champion this, I believe he would strike a chord with voters.  Aff. Act.  only divides us by races.  Its help is dubious to the people it was supposed to help.  It stigmatizes them to boot.  Moreover, results of similar programs the world over have been bad. See S. Africa and India and Malaysia.

     Malaysia resembles a Jimmy Carter Malaisia economically.  Malays, the native population are known as bumiputra and they are a majority.  When the British empire ruled, the Brits let Indians and Chinese immigrate in large numbers and that is why Singapore is today a Chinese city-state.  Foreigners were enterprising and grew rich.  So when independence came, the wealthy foreigners were a sore point. Thus the state adopted a New Economic Policy or NEP which gave the native Malays preferences in university admissions, civil service jobs, and hiring in general (such as airline pilots).  Corporate Boards even had quotas for Malays.  What happened? Brain drain of Chinese and Indian populations citing ‘social injustice’.  Political parties are fearful of touching this Third Rail lest the bumiputras get mad.  The country has not grown  economically due to all the regulation of manpower.  Now the country is being skewered by the world news media for being lax or decietful with Flight 370.  But the real problem is Aff. Act. Malays talk about Ali-Baba companies.  That’s where a Malay lends his name (Ali) to a Chinese guy (Baba) to get an advantage in starting a company.

     Affirmative Action started out in USA to protect Afro-Americans, Hispanics and Native Americans, but everybody wants to be a privileged character and so it now includes people who descend from 33 different nationalities. But while college undergraduate enrollment of privileged minorities has doubled since the eighties, academic performance and number of graduates has not done much.  Maybe it is time we concentrate on the content of character rather than color of skin.  And judging by the 2012 election, where Barack Obama used vast scare tactics against Romney’s ‘whiteness’ to herd minorities to the polls, I don’t think it has helped us become a post-racial society at all.

    And then the latest insult people are feeling is “microagression” which is like when someone doesn’t understand your culture.  Man, if I had a dollar every time some urban kid called me “farm boy” when I attended St. John’s College, I’d be rich.  Half of ‘em thought brown cows give chocolate milk and cowboys were “mean” to carry a rope.  One guy was stunned to learn that a Big Mac cost half as much in Kansas as in New York City.  A friend of mine told about his Massachusetts relatives getting scared of an Indian attack when they drove across the Flint/Osage hills and maybe they would have a flat tire.  Get over it! Don’t let it affect you! Educate them!

     The NCAA will receive $800 million this year for March Madness.  Most major colleges make more money off sports and sports attire than they do off tuition.  So if Truth in Advertizing Law requires Sausage and Gravy to change the name to ‘Gravy With Sausage’ when the amount of Gravy is in the majority—then should colleges have to rename themselves Athletic Program with Auxillary School of Learning?  At least they ought to pay athletes a small stipend like they do graduate students who teach a lab class.  Say, $500 a month for a wrestler and $1000 for a football player.  If you don’t get paid and you make a fortune for your master and are required to participate in order to later earn your freedom—isn’t that the definition of slavery? 

     You know all that talk of Minimum Wage?  The way they usually rank Min Wage around the world is as a percent of the country’s median wage. USA doesn’t even rank in the top half.  Turkey, France and Slovenia are the highest with minimum wages around 60-70% of their median.  So would you rather be Turkey/France/Slovenia or USA?  Rather have a high minimum wage or a high median wage?