From The Reader Pile: Why I Won't Be Moving Next To Likud Agent Bronze Age Pervert Anytime Soon
He'd have me do something crazy like storm the cockpit--or the Capitol
I get a lot of email. But don’t we all? Oftentimes I reply in short bursts like I’m typing up a response on a telegraph. “Yes,” “No,” “Unsure,” and “Let me think on it” are my standard replies. I do a lot of chin stroking and I’ve got the beard for it.
Indeed part of the reason I’ve come to hate phones is that they encourage my more authoritarian tendencies. I hate being turned into a pen pal. I crave touch and in person — or I go full dictator. I don’t want to interact with people in this way but I have the commander mindset and oftentimes I’m asked to make a decision. OK, fine. We all have our flaws.
Which is why it’s such a joy to put on the kettle and reply to a friend about how I see the matters of the day. Here goes…
Dear Charles
Thank you for helping to make sense of the banking collapses.
We might be better off if a bunch of bankers had been executed in public in 2008. But alas.
Second time is the charm? I often think about how exactly Robin Williams nailed Wall Street.
We are house sitting in Newberg, 30 miles outside of Portland. My wife chatted with a former resident (who had to move to St Helens to find affordable housing) who told her how Airbnb has wrecked the property market in Newberg. The large number of buyups have been aided by a law in Oregon prohibiting a seller from asking the buyer the reasons for the purchase.
I think that I have mentioned that the real estate market in Amsterdam is at least 10% higher (probably more) due to the inflow of capital to buy properties for Airbnb.
I remember how the libertarian world shouted hallelujah about the coming of Airbnb and Uber. But are they willing to admit that the "negative externalities" might outweigh the "positive externalities"? That both offer rich opportunities for money laundering? And require regulatory correction?
When you understand that the end point of a lot of libertarianism is to turn us into gypsy cab drives or illegal hoteliers things become a lot clearer. If everyone is riding around in Ubers they aren’t noticing how messed up the subway is or demanding it be better. If their Uber driver doesn’t speak English so much the better.
I had my AirBnb moment was I was wrongly charged an addition $500 for a cleaning fee for a mess I didn’t make. I’m a little tired of being hustled by GenXers.
There was always something vaguely creepy about staying in someone else’s home. Say what you will about America’s hotel industry but at least the Marriotts give a certain corporate blandness that makes you long to be home. You’ve got to hand it to the Mormons whose ties to the Chinese are only now really coming into view. They did it honestly at least and didn’t pretend as Reid Hoffman does to be “one of the good ones” as Kara Swisher puts it.
Here’s The Associated Press:
Beijing’s success in Utah shows “how pervasive and persistent China has been in trying to influence America,” said Frank Montoya Jr., a retired FBI counterintelligence agent who lives in Utah.
“Utah is an important foothold,” he said. “If the Chinese can succeed in Salt Lake City, they can also make it in New York and elsewhere.”
Hmm…. makes you think.
It is now twenty years since the start of the Iraq invasion. I too went out to protest. A few "conservatives for peace" out there with the looney Left in DC that Saturday in March 2003. In the Fall of 2002, I had been a charter subscriber to the American Conservative. I also wrote a column for a small publication in my ecclesiastical circles making clear that this war would be a disaster. I took hell from the readers. Even if I had little impact, I had a clear conscience. A few years later, a long-time columnist of that publication admitted that I had been right. Oh well.
One of the major reasons I left journalism for investing is that there was no way to capture being right. I regret spending as much time in ideological circles. I was a sucker but I was attracted by abstraction, by “muh principles.” Like a lot of stupid smart people I wanted to be seen a certain way instead of actually being smart.
I think about this daily and how to avoid it.
Your column suggesting a neo con, Israeli, Chinese and Russian cabal to get us into the war is, I think, a little unbalanced.
The Chinese had every reason to want to help create a "strategic' diversion. The Russians had every reason to want to see higher oil prices.
But remember. Bill Clinton allowed oil prices to almost triple after 1999. That greatly aided the Russians. At our weekly dinner, several participants thought that Clinton's move was a pay off to the Russians. The Russians got the price increase without a war.
I don’t think this is exactly right. I note from Yahoo:
Memories can be faulty. Ronald recalls soaring gas prices under Bill Clinton in the 1990s. Yet among this group of eight presidents, pump prices were lowest under Clinton. The average price was $2.06 during Clinton’s first term and $2.04 during his second term. Trump was next lowest, at an average of $2.74.
Maybe the Chinese wanted a diversion. And maybe they were able to pay for some analysts to push for the Iraq war. But I suspect any Chinese Russian propaganda had about as much impact as the British full court press in 1940-41 on American public opinion. Not much. The pro interventionist sentiment rose a few points after June 41. But that is because the Communists switched sides. The US only intervened after Roosevelt provoked war with the Japanese.
I think that we both know that the decisive push for the Iraq war came from the well-known lobby which had been the drums since the 1980's. The Economist ran an article in the 1980's about a Likud goal of breaking up the Arab world into mini states controlled by Israel. The Iraq War came close to achieving that as it caused a cascade of chaos throughout the Middle East.
I suspect that the Israelis want to turn the entire Middle East into a bunch of bantusans who are easily managed. Ultimately we fix the condition of the Palestinians or Uighurs—or we end up living as they do.
It would be useful to know if Russian and Chinese sources funded the usual suspects in their advocacy of war.
But then that would only be leveraging the influence of people who were in a position to actually impact policy.
A major reason I didn’t take the vaccine was that some of the very same people who advocated for the Iraq War were also pushing the vaccine quite hard. You had AEI, which had received millions from the Sacklers, and from Pfizer.
There’s no punishment for being wrong, especially when you have an intelligence service egging you on.
One more thing regarding Mormons and BAP. I too would prefer to have Mormons as neighbors. But I would also love to have BAP hang out at my favorite coffee shop.
Provided, of course, that his harm was left to the coffee shop. As time as worn on I’ve become convinced that BAP, like Claremont, is about getting you to do something crazed and radical — like overthrowing the Republic under the guise of protecting it.
I don’t remember Churchill using his nation’s intelligence apparatus to shakedown billionaires and or get bribes paid to him but I guess they were both American. Oh you didn’t know Ben Nitay, or John Jay Sullivan, or Benjamin Netanyahu was an American citizen? Ask yourself why not.
Yeah, it’s time for the rollback.
We have had our disagreements in the past, but I have no money trail, and remained free of foreign influence for years. More things in common, at times, it seems. I think you've seen my research into Israeli influence through IDT Corporation.
First things first - a certain person should be stripped of US citizenship immediately.