Miscellaneous Rambling
Jack and Michael went to prom Saturday night. I went to watch the "Grand March," a community event where the kids walk through the gym while the adults and younger siblings clap. Two gay dudes came out together. That sucked. But of course a handful of people cheered for them. ESPN, Disney, Apple, and the NFL have told them applaud it, so of course, they do.
Good for Poland: "Law and Justice leader Jarosław Kaczyński also said that Poland would oppose European Commission proposals that would see EU member states having to pay EUR 250,000 per refugee if they refuse to accept their share of asylum-seekers." When I see the browbeating that Angela Merkel has dealt out to the rest of Europe, then think about Hitler and the many rude Germans, I begin to think there's something monstrously aggressive in the German DNA. This suspicion is further corroborated when I look in my own heart (I'm half German).
I can't figure out whether I like David Stockman. He was my district congressional representative. My Dad knew and liked him. And then he ran into troubles with the Reagan White House. These days, he's beating the drum that the economy is going to collapse tomorrow . . . and has been beating it for the past five+ years. No doubt he'll someday be right, but such poor timing is hardly consoling to those of us who largely eschewed conventional mutual fund investments these past five years (though my gold mining stocks are performing well so far this year). Anyway, he wrote a pretty good piece about the Trump triumph. It's worth reading. Excerpt: "It has very little to do with any patriotic impulse with respect to America's collective polity, and everything to do with voter perceptions that they personally are not winning economically anymore, either. What is winning is Washington, Wall Street and the bicoastal elites. The latter prosper off finance, the LA branch of entertainment (movies and TV), the SF/technology branch of entertainment (social media) and the great rackets of the Imperial City–including the military/industrial/surveillance complex, the health and education cartels, the plaintiffs and patent bar, the tax loophole farmers and the endless lesser K-Street racketeers."
