Skip to main content

AOC & HILLARY, BREXIT, BOEING, AND BEING LIBERAL: MARCH 2019 RANT

AOC & HILLARY
They've got their knives out and they are coming after Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. She only has another forty years or so of savaging to endure before she can truly understand how Hillary feels.


BREXIT
Is Bercow a hero or a villain? In my estimation, he's the adult in the room. Even if you believe that he is interfering, that interference demonstrates a level of competence that I haven't seen from May or Corbyn or just about anyone else in Parliament.

BOEING
From what I have read, since a plane may stall if it climbs at too steep an angle, Boeing put sensors on the 737 Max to automatically nose the plane down if the sensors detect what the sensors consider a dangerous climb angle. It may be that a single malfunctioning sensor caused two recent crashes. I repeat...MAY be. My reading further indicates that sensors automatically nosing down planes at takeoff is a known phenomena. Pilots are actually trained in the override procedure.

That training MAY give Boeing cover to blame the pilots for their design flaw, if that flaw is found to be at fault. 

To quote Tom Hanks quoting Sully, "Can we get serious now?" (If you don't know the scene that I'm talking about, search that quote on YouTube.) If you have to train pilots to handle a common design flaw, the designers, the manufacturers, and the FAA are the responsible parties whether or not the pilots were properly trained.

BEING LIBERAL
I thought that I was a liberal. I believe that a woman should have control over her own body. I believe in equal pay for equal work. And that color makes a difference in paintings but not in people. And that if the state imprisons people, the state should run the prisons in addition to collecting the garbage and owning and operating the turnpikes.

I know that single-payer healthcare leads to better outcomes.

I thought all of that makes me a liberal. I have recently discovered that I'm not a liberal. I am a neo-liberal. Why? Because I haven't given up entirely on capitalism.

Progressives tell me that I'm dead wrong. Capitalism is bankrupt. I should embrace democratic socialism. But here's the rub. I live in France, a country that damn near invented democratic socialism, on a continent with several democratic socialist governments. And guess what. Capitalism is alive and well. Entrepreneurship thrives. There's even a profitable and competitive supplemental health insurance industry to go along with single-payer.

So call me a neo-liberal. Just don't call me late for supper.

BONUS
Newt  Gingrich should sue Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for plagiarism. Gingrich co-authored the Contract With America, a document that contained reforms that were both politically and economically unattainable. The object of the exercise was to move his political party farther away from the political center and toward the fringe that he and his cohorts represented.

He succeeded. It took more than two decades, but Republicans have embraced that fringe.

Now comes AOC and the Green New Deal, a politically and economically unattainable manifesto designed to move her political party farther away from the political center and towards the fringe that she and her cohorts represent.

Those who do not study history don't realize that we have been here before...




  

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

RESTAURANT TEN, UZES: RESTAURANT REVIEW

Ten sits just off the market square in Uzes, one of the prettiest villages in southern France. The newly renovated space is airy and comfortable with tables of sufficient size and sufficiently spaced to provide for a pleasant dining experience. Service was cheerful, fully bilingual, and attentive without being overbearing. The food presented well to both eye and tongue. And the rate of approximately 30 € per person for a party of five included starters, mains, a dessert or two, two bottles of local wine, and coffees at the finish. Reasonable if not cheap eats.  So why am I hesitant to give an unqualified thumbs up?  It took me a while to figure it out. Uzes is a quintessentially French village in a quintessentially French region of southern France. There are those who will say that the Languedoc is just as beautiful but less crowded and less expensive than its eastern neighbors. I know. I'm one of those people. But the fact remains that for many people, villages like Uzes are t

CONGRATULATIONS, DUNCAN AND FIONA: JUNE 1, 2019

We've known Duncan since he was about 5 and were honored to be invited to all of the festivities surrounding his wedding to Fiona. The wedding was held in a magazine converted to a military museum in Gosport. Duncan's dream...a wedding in a place where they used to blow things up. I've never been around so many uniforms. Live Long and Prosper! A kiss was the price to continue... That's Duncan's sister Clair arriving on the right. Grandparents...headed for 100 and sharp as tacks. Reception in an old magazine/museum. Mom baked the cake and made the ducks to order. Not from the wedding but seemed appropriate.

GRAND CAFE OCCITAN: RESTAURANT REVIEW

  We made our way to a new restaurant the other day, up toward the hills past La Liviniere in the small town of Felines-Minervois. None of our party had been there before, but a friend had visited and said that she'd enjoyed it. She's a vegetarian. First clue. Now don't get me wrong. I have no gripe with those who choose to go meatless. I understand the environmental concerns and I understand the horrors of factory farming. But I also understand that form follows function in the design of tools, in the design of appliances, and in the design of human teeth. Our incisors and canines did not develop over the course of hundreds of thousands of years to rend the flesh of a fresh-caught broccoli. We are omnivores by design, Darwinian design. And I enjoy eating omni. Enough preamble... I never went inside the Grand Cafe Occitan. A young lady who would be our server met us at the front door of the nicely pointed old stone house, leading us to a pebble-covered courtyard on the side