Vin Crosbie's Personal Blog

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Politics

The ‘Threat’ of Chinese Auto Manufacturers

Vin

The last hútòng (胡同) I explored was in the year 2000, in the southern suburbs of Beijing. Many of its residents still wore drab green or grey uniform ‘Mao’ suits. A hútòng is a neighborhood of streets and narrow alleys separating blocks of one- or two-story traditional Chinese multi-family houses containing common courtyards. You’ll rarely find a hútòng in any populous city in China. During the past quarter century — yes, it’s been that long, most hútòngs have been razed and replaced by towering modern apartment blocks. Hundreds of thousands of hútòngs gone. During that time, China’s economy has advanced 600%; 850 million of China’s  1.4 billion people were lifted above the poverty line,  and by 2030 (only four years) it is predicted by Western analysts that 27% of Chinese adults with have college educations — that same percentage as Germans. Meanwhile, the U.S. economy has grown 310% since 2000, the number Americans living under the poverty line has increase from 12.2% to 15.9%, and literacy has dropped to 79% to 80% — meaning that one out of every five Americans struggles to read, 21% are functionally illiterate, and half of the population reads at no better than a sixth-grade level (an 11 to 12-year old level). These declines have demonstratively shifted American politics. In the nearly four decades 1988, only two Republicans have won the White House: George W. Bush and Donald Trump. Thoughtful, probative, and politically experienced Republican nominees as Robert Dole, John McCain, and Mitt Romney lost elections. Starting in 2008 to compensate, the Republican party largely stopped campaigning about policies that compete with those of Democrat candidates and began competing about what it calls ‘cultural’ ‘ issues: the Starbucks coffee chain no longer printing ‘Merry Christmas’ on its cups, Barack Obama wearing a brown suit, there being ‘transgendered’ athletes (perhaps hundreds of them within a nation of more than 300 million people!) competing in scholastic athletic games, about immigrants allegedly eating natives’ pets, wind turbines allegedly causing cancer, scientifically-proven human-caused climate change being a ‘hoax’, alleged Jewish ‘space lasers’ causing forest fires, about the 66% of Americans who are Christians allegedly being discriminated against by the majority of Americans, and other dingbat conspiracy theories and what I call ‘conservative twinkie’ issues that rile the gullible and illiterate among Americans into voting for whomever deceitfully utters such lies. Hence, a minority of American voters (i.e., slightly under […]

Stop Acting Like This is Normal

Vin

Four weeks after one-time convicted felon Adolph Hitler was inaugurated as German Chancellor and 92 years before the 34-times convicted felon Donald Trump‘s second inauguration as President of the United States, and four weeks after Adolph Hitler was inaugurated as German Chancellor, Dutch pyromaniac Marinus van der Lubbe, set afire the German Reichstag parliament building. Arriving at the scene in Berlin, Hitler called the fire a “sign from God” and during the following day triggered the German ‘Enabling Act‘, emergency legislation that suspended not only the homeless German legislature but also suspended freedoms of speech, assembly, and other civil rights throughout Germany. He alone became the absolute dictator of that nation. German freedoms and civil rights wouldn’t begin to be restored until a dozen years later when conquering Allied troops seized Berlin from the Nazis. Hitler, a felon who in 1923 fomented a violent, failed uprising for which he served prison time, had better initial luck than Trump, now a convicted American felon who four years ago fomented a violent, failed uprising for which he is unpunished and on the loose, seized the Reichstag fire as excuse to gain a dictatorship. So, Trump has concocted an ’emergency,’ claiming that a Venezuelan-based drug cartel has ‘invaded’ the U.S. He fraudulently (he is, after all, a convicted fraud) claims that this permits him to trigger the little-known Enemy Aliens Act of 1798, which permits a U.S. president to deport, without trial or judicial hearing, foreigners who he believes are a threat to the nation. The Enemy Aliens Act was controversial 227 years ago, nonetheless today. Although federal courts have now blocked Trump’s implementation of the Enemy Aliens Act, he nevertheless has used it as a lynchpin to seize more dictatorial control of the nation than any president during the past 80 years or more. In this 19-minute video podcast, American political commentator and journalist Ezra Klein compares American citizen’s slow reactions to Trump increasingly dictatorial seizure of power as akin to the metaphor of frogs who don’t yet realize that they are being fatally boiled because of how gradually the heat is being applied; how so accustomed they have become to the gradually increasing danger until the realization of dangers comes too late. He issues an alarm, an alarm call to America to stop acting as if MAGA politics is normal.

America Ranks Behind 20 Other Nations in its Citizens’ Inability to Pay for a Healthy Diet

Vin

So, why has the United States government, led by a convicted multiple felon, reduced the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the country’s largest nutrition assistance program? More than 42 million Americans use the SNAP program, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture data. According to that department , more than 62% of SNAP participants are in families with children, and more than 38% are in working families. The State of New Mexico has the largest share participating in SNAP, with some 21% of the population helped by the program. The program provides crucial support for families with low-paying jobs, low-income older adults, people with disabilities and others. The answer is Republican politicians’ evil disregard for struggling citizens. Lack of healthy nutrition for those citizens is an actual problem. Yet that problem isn’t as important as are continuing cuts to the wealthiest citizens’ taxes. It more important to Republican politicians that the small minority (i.e., fewer than 5 percent of the population) of citizens, who can easily afford adequate nutrition, pay ever smaller taxes, then are the actual struggles of a larger number of citizens in need of adequate nutrition. After all, didn’t doomed Queen Marie Antoinette say to her to struggling French families with low-paying jobs and low-income French senior citizens who couldn’t afford bread, “Let them eat cake!” Today’s MAGA Republican party would be proud of her!

These Next Four Years

Vin

If the choice in the 2024 U.S. election had been Harris versus Romney, or vs McCain, or vs Bob Dole, or vs George W. Bush, et. al., in other words, a political contest between two honorable candidates and respected policies, then I could accept the advice of the many MAGA supporters who now triumphantly cackle, “Accept the decision of the American people!” What an hypocritical irony that these same hypocrite MAGAts still refuse to acknowledge Joe Biden’s absolute and thoroughly proven 2020 victory over the now Convicted Felon. They now in 2024 claim that the Convicted Felon won a ‘massive mandate’, yet refuse to acknowledge at all that Biden won the 2020 popular vote by 7,059,422 votes, which is more than three-times the 2024 popular vote victory margin of the Convicted Felon’s paltry (2,289,255 votes) victory over Kamala Harris in 2024. Indeed, I have no reluctance at all acknowledging that the winner of the 2024 U.S. Presidential Election is a Convicted Felon. He who won popular vote by an even slimmer margin than Jimmy Carter did in 1976 (1.5% versus Carter’s 2.0%) and by one-tenth the popular vote margin that the 17% margin that hapless Republican Herbert Hoover won in 1928. As I mention in the ‘Massive Mandate’ fallacy section below, the Convicted Felon not only won fewer than half of all votes cast for president in in 2024 but also that more American voters in 2024 voted against the Convicted Felon than for him during the 2024 election (do see the incontrovertible simple arithmetic of that in the ‘Massive Mandate’ section below). What I do have trouble with is that a minority but plurality of American voters, like toddlers, willfully or ignorantly stuck their fingers into the political electrical socket in the dim hopes that their doing so will improve their lives. I’ve recently heard some MAGAts claim that the Convicted Felon’s election victory by a minority yet plurality of American votes casts ‘proves’ that he is the correct choice; that he is the righteousness one; and that any criticism now of the Convicted Felon indicates not that the people who voted for him were wrong but that any critics of him are. Such MAGAts delusionally forget that it was in a fair and free election during 1932 that a minority yet plurality of voters elected Adolph Hitler to lead Germany. History has long proven that a wrong choice, an […]

Why to Unfriend and Alienate Some People

Vin

I avidly and sincerely plan to lose some social media Friend’s and acquaintances this month: I expect that perhaps 30 or 40 of my current 944 Facebook ‘Friend’s and maybe another 50 or so on X (‘Twitter’), Instagram, Threads, and other social media platforms, will ‘Unfriend’ or ‘Block’ me Most of these people will be upset by me or, at best, feel alienated. Some of these are people who I have known since my childhood. I don’t mind political differences and discussions about contentious issues. I grew up with a father who was a Boston Democrat and a mother who was from a Connecticut Republican family. Each of their votes cancelled out the other’s. Moreover, they owned and operated a 140-year-old daily newspaper whose editorial pages [had] to take stands on issues of public controversies. And a fundamental factor was that anything their daily newspaper printed had to be verifiably true lest someone sue them for libel and, if such a lawsuit were successful, my parents lose their business and livelihood. That legal requirement to be truthful is a factor that the average person doesn’t face when expressing his opinion about controversial issues. But it shaped me. Why in the world would I endeavor to lose friends, angering or alienating anyone? So, why should I endeavor to lose any social media ‘Friend’ or follower? Because people who intentionally or knowingly lie recklessly or evilly erode their communities, be it a physical or an online community. In other words, I have a fundamental problem with three categories of deceivers: Why do I endeavor to lose social media ‘Friend’s and acquaintances who are racists? I’ve no difficulty answering that. Racists are liars because they condemn entire races or religions or nationalities, despite knowing what anyone who has walked more than a thousand paces beyond their crib learns: that there are good people, as well as bad people, among every race, religion, or nation and that the good significantly, often extraordinarily, outnumber the bad. A particularly evil dynamic of racism, in person or online, is that the most prolific racists are otherwise affable, rather than irascible, people. That’s because irascible or cranky people make few friends, yet affable racists tend to make many more friends (particularly at times when they aren’t being racist) than irascible racists do. Why do I endeavor to lose social media ‘Friend’s and acquaintances who knowingly lie or knowingly […]

Sunday, October 18, 2020

vcrosbie

After thirty years of thumb-sucking, nose picking, and other inactivity by the GOP about human-caused Climate Change. After more than 30 years of conservative politicians sucking their thumbs when asked about human-caused Climate Change, it is finally real. Scientific American magazines explains how to tell the difference between a real or a false conspiracy. You know what a skyscraper is. Yet what about a groundscaper? I know the Frankfurt one (pictured) due to its excellent and soundproof Hilton Hotel. Every see a CAT scanner with its cover off? You’ll realize why it’s covered. Did dinosaurs walk up walls 68 million years ago? It might appear so in this 300-foot high wall in Bolivia, long before tectonic pressure turned a muddy plain into a vertical wall. Bali won’t be accepting tourists until 2021. Think you know how to sit while driving? Guess again. Jaguar Land Rover Chief Medical Officer Dr. Steve Iley shows you how in a two-minute video.  This graphic, showing the relative scale of small things just at the limit or slightly beyond human site, shows the remarkable size of a human white blood cell. Here is a video of a new Amtrak Avelia train (disguised with Acela markings) test-running empty between Providence and New York City. Amtrak has order 36 of these ($2.4 billion) to run between Boston, Massachusetts, and Washington, D,C, starting in 2021. These new trains, like the Acelas, are manufactured by the French company Alstrom, with final assembly in upstate New York. Each Avelia carries 25% more passengers than current Amtrak Acela trains, has high safety and crash standards (as well as WiFi, USB and power plugs at each seat, etc.), and is 30% lighter (more miles to the kilowatt) than the Acelas. Although capable of cruising at 185 mph (300 kph), they are currently being test run at up to 165 mph (265 kph), a speed which they can reach only on the long straight section of track between Boston and Providence, Rhode Island. Unfortunately, the winding, century-old rail lines between Boston and Washington, D.C. would have to be completely rebuilt to permit true highspeed train service. The original Acela trains, which began carrying passengers on these routes back in the year 2000, will be retired. #