When you have a friend of 25+ years arguing about politics or religion, the pain is significant. I won’t claim innocence; we both have a penchant for argument.
But I love him. I can’t say anything profound. It just hurts. Every word amplifies the pain.
Saw a different assessment about China timeline for attack by late September. Others have pushed it as far as 2025. The Taiwan strait is the most dangerous waterway in the world. I have faith in our men and women in uniform, our leadership not so much.
On a separate note, I’ve also seen the various edits of the Bible by the party. Today, the verses recounting Christ’s reaction to those who would have stoned the woman for adultery–he who is without sin cast the first stone–had added to them Jesus saying he too is a sinner and stoning her himself. Certainly strange and blasphemous.
The CCP is our and the world’s biggest worry.
I am just celebrating in my mind that the Trump era may theoretically be over. He has to go to jail/prison for at least a little while with so many counts.
There’s a certain amount of peace regarding this. I hope we stop rationalizing things.
Just finished Syd Field’s Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting. It was a good review of the most well-known screenwriter’s teaching.
Boiling it down:
Act I – The setup
–Plot point 1
Act II – Confrontation
–Plot point 2
Act III – Resolution
Each act has a beginning, middle and end.
Field uses real scripts, real movies and years of training to cover the discipline from concept to finished script.
It was actually my second read and I did absorb more.
I have had a couple of scripts in the works for ages now. I suffer from writer’s block often and Field speaks to that. He also covers collaboration, adaptation and copyrighting.
Just brilliant.
So we helped China develop a version of capitalism that works for them, they’ve stolen our best technology, and they’re aiming for Taiwan by 2025. This financial advisor is saying that manufacturing is moving back to the U.S. I hope he’s right. That China’s economy is hobbling right now and they have a per capita median income well below ours doesn’t matter. They’re a threat to us economically and militarily.
I have a friend who is convinced that the Asian economies are more advanced. With the theft of our secrets, which is angering enough, China is poised to pass us up. Japan has had a flagging economy for years now, Korea is strong, but will China overstretch itself?
This all makes me patriotic.
Working on a possible piece on world debt-to-GDP and highest GDP per capita.
The U.S. rates up there at number 12 in the running. We are not in august company, Venezuela and Japan being 1 and 2, respectively. The European countries in this group are Greece, Italy, and Portugal.
The problem comes when the debt is too great to finance. Even if a country can still pay, too much debt can cause a loss of confidence. The warnings about a move to another world reserve currency is something to have some alarm about, but U.S. treasuries are still the most reliable.
Top 12 Countries with the Highest Debt-to-GDP Ratios (%)
Venezuela — 350%
Japan — 266%
Sudan — 259%
Greece — 206%
Lebanon — 172%
Cabo Verde — 157%
Italy — 156%
Libya — 155%
Portugal — 134%
Singapore — 131%
Bahrain — 128%
United States — 128%
This legal explanation is thorough. I will admit that I have erred on the side of the Trumpies, but this pretty much seals the cases.
On the other hand, I think the Biden crime family should also be investigated. It’s clear that they manipulated the voters through the hiding of the laptop story, the collaboration with social media in crushing opposition speech, and the Russia investigation. Trump is right in his anger over these and other factors that could have swayed the election. Unfortunately, he thought that gave him a good excuse to break the law numerous times. His supporters are willingly forgiving him for his actions before they know the whole story.
Both sides are blind. There should be equal prosecution. Prediction: this will devolve into tit for tat. I just want what most citizens want: new options.
What is your report?
Tell me something faithful.
Politi-bored,
I go outside, but
The sun does not reach in.
The sentinel,
I cannot leave.
I have traveled,
The ruins of civilizations.
But the ruins are here.
Whether inside or out–
I sit outside,
My mind tanned.
This project is important:
“Today, most poor renting families spend at least half of their income on housing costs, with one in four of those families spending over 70 percent of their income just on rent and utilities. Incomes for Americans of modest means have flatlined while housing costs have soared. Only one in four families who qualifies for affordable housing programs gets any kind of help. Under those conditions, it has become harder for low-income families to keep up with rent and utility costs, and a growing number are living one misstep or emergency away from eviction.”
So I was in a situation of near-homelessness where my family had to come help. It was, however, a situation for which I was responsible.
When I was growing up, my family lived in HUD housing. I truly believed that most of the people there could have paid their own way, while some were not at fault. My family made it out of there miraculously–or rather through my mother’s determination to not stay on the dole. One-by-one we left that town and all became college and graduate school grads.
But I do have to keep aware that some people just cannot get out of a situation where they cannot afford the rent. The homeless many times are subject to things beyond their control, like mental illness and related substance control–but not all of them. I think the Eviction Lab’s point about the need for a “living wage” is important.
It’s just the mandating of that wage and denying the rights of landlords that are forgotten here. I have looked through the site (Google search “site:evictionlab.com landlord”) for any mention of help for landlords and business owners. I would like to see more on helping business owners pay their employees that wage and the landlords receiving the rent they need.
There’s a lot of things going on in the news. UFOs are a diversion.
As for what they are, I suggest some are weather balloons, but the fast ones? Military craft.
But according to Discover Magazine, “1,715 stars within 326 light-years are in the right position to have spotted life on a transiting Earth since early human civilization, with an additional 319 stars entering this special vantage point in the next 5,000 years… Exoplanet statistics suggest that at least 25 per cent of these stars will have rocky exoplanets. So there should be at least 508 rocky planets in this population with a good view of earth. ‘Restricting the selection to the distance radio waves from Earth have traveled- about 100 light-years – leads to an estimated 29 potentially habitable worlds that could have seen Earth transit and also detect radio waves from our planet.'”
Certainly, aliens would be a change in the subject. But pressing issues remain: corruption, homelessness, threats to world order, immorality, energy needs, hunger, disease, pandemics.
Out here on the edge of the internet, we see accouterments of what our culture is. All of us sending dispatches, present-day Kiplings and Twains.
We have overcome the old and started new. Euro festivals become praise in nondescript white-walled buildings, a core that is our culture.
But the continent has its own transformation: European cathedrals become apartments and Amazon shipping hubs.
Here or there. Are things changing for the better or?
I’ve already expressed my recognition of the goods of British healthcare. In conservative circles there is criticism of socialism, but not much investigation of “good” socialism. Clearly there’s a gulf between Venezuela/Cuba and Sweden/U.K?
This deserves more exposition.