Some Things I Learned on Vacation

So…what have we learned after 17 days from Nice to Amsterdam?

        Most recently we learned that much of Europe cannot stand any prolonged high temperatures, since A/C isn’t nearly as common as in the United States. We have a friend who lives at 3,000 ft elevation in Switzerland. Temperatures soared above 100. In France, people have died. Not specifically ascribing all this to global warming, but it is troubling.

        While in Amsterdam, just as the heat wave started, we went to a site with several working windmills. Along the way there were sheep who would normally be grazing in a small field along the path. They were trembling and panting in the heat. Again, because this is so strange, there was no fresh water available and the small canal running through the field was green. I would be willing to bet that several have since died.

        Our first boat had a passenger list with many Aussies, New Zealanders, Canadians, and some Americans, but Americans were in the minority. I learned than the current resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue has very few friends in the rest of the world. This includes China, and Taiwan as well. We had numerous common interests and wonderful conversations with many people from essentially all the nationalities on board. It was a sort of odd feeling, sensing that they were unsure of our political leanings, and they seemed relieved to find that our nausea with the current administration mirrored their own, as caution turned to sympathy.

        I reaffirmed something I already was fairly sure of, that being that the fact that simply because someone has held a fairly high military rank carries no guarantee of reasoning ability. Neither of us, nor most people in fact, would even think to broach a politically sensitive subject at dinner, especially with people one has just met. We had, by day three, met and frequently dined with several couples, Canadian, Taiwanese living in the Philippines and New Zealanders.  One evening at a table for eight, another couple we had met and opted not to be any closer to dined with us. He – a retired Army colonel, she a proudly proclaimed 30-year DOD employee with “seventeen broken bones in my back.”  You can see this coming, huh?

        Sometime and for no reason I can recall, the conversation turned to real estate prices in various areas.  Think it was the Canadian man who mentioned the housing bubble collapse as having less impact in Canada than in the US. Out of the blue, "the Colonel" said something like, “Well it was Obama telling poor people they should be able to buy houses they couldn’t afford.”

       You’d have been proud of me because I didn’t stand up and point out to the moron that the housing bubble collapse, beginning in late 2006 and coming to fruition in early 2008 happened before Barack Obama was even inaugurated, or that it was Texas Republican Senator Phil Gramm, called by some economists “the father of the collapse”  who pushed two pieces of legislation very much responsible for the free for all that ensued. I didn’t tell him that the both the legislation to allow commercial banks to merge with invest banks, coupled with the legalization of adjustable rate mortgages were Phil Gramm initiatives aimed at undermining the post Great Depression restrictions on bank shenanigans imposed by the Glass-Steagall Act. While these things coursed through my mind, I think I settled for “It’s not that simple.” Not content to let it go, the wife proceeded to blame Obama for the Clinton era legislation of ten years earlier, regarding forcing banks to stop “red-lining” (simply refusing to provide mortgage loans based on color and neighborhood vice ability to pay). Our Canadian and New Zealand friends were non-plussed. From that night on, Katerina, the Slovak wife of the New Zealand anesthesiologist, made sure we had a table for six and filled it up.      

        I mention this because it stands in such stark contrast to the river cruise of several years ago during which strangers would broach the subject of their admiration for Barack Obama. French, Brits, Aussies, no matter. All admired the man.

        I also reinforced my opinion that Australians and New Zealanders really know how to vacation! I could walk into the lounge and quietly say Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, and immediately hear Oy, Oy, Oy in return. It’s a silly thing, but it’s fun. The couple from the Philippines, Nancy (Han Chinese) and Lawrence (Taiwanese) were charming and just as disgusted with Der Trumpf. Successful co-owners of a financial services company, they were just as sickened as we are by the lack of civility in the man. If dumping a passenger overboard weren’t a crime…….

        I also learned that France is gorgeous but has no corner on the ability to produce good wines. We went to four separate tastings in Châteauneuf du pape, Beaujolais, Burgundy, and Alsace. Of the 13 wines we were offered, one at more than 35 Euros/bottle (about $40 US), none were so good that I couldn’t do better at my local wine vendor. That means better wine at a better price. We sort of knew this several decades ago when American wines began winning international gold medals, but I have seen first-hand now. Again, the dirty little secret is that almost all French vines were replanted after phylloxera all but wiped out grapes in France. What were they replanted on? American rootstock. Nearly all French wine, including expensive French wine, comes from vines grafted onto American roots.”  

I learned a lot more but that’s enough for now.

News musings, June 5th, 2019

Thoughts on the news, 6/5/2019

As I watch the continued unfolding of the traveling circus that  the Trump British trip has become, I can’t  help but reflect, especially on this day, of another American leader and future Republican president facing a real crisis rather than one of his own design on this same date, 75 years ago. Rather than insults and poorly fitting clothes, Dwight D. Eisenhower was concerned with the possibility that, regardless of all the planning, materiel preparations and deception, the next day’s landings on the French coast might well fail and the allies be repulsed.

        As a real leader does and few are willing to do today, especially not President Bone Spur, Ike drafted a letter on the evening of the 5^th of June. 1944, taking full responsibility for such failure in case it should it occur. The text is as follows: "Our landings in the Cherbourg-Havre area have failed to gain a satisfactory foothold and I have withdrawn the troops. My decision to attack at this time and place was based upon the best information available. The troops, the air and the Navy did all that Bravery and devotion to duty could do. If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt it is mine alone."  Sort of makes you wonder what happened to that sort of ethical leadership, doesn’t it?

        Today is Kenny “G”’s birthday. Who gives a shit?

        In a tragedy locally, a young man and well-respected athlete who had just graduated high school a week earlier, was a passenger and was fatally injured in what the paper initially described only as a “single car accident”, but which, on reading further, mentioned the vehicle leaving the road, striking a tree and killing both the driver and the young man in question. Any one besides me think just maybe alcohol was involved?  In instances like this, there seems to be some sort of sense of, “Let’s not sully the kid’s name by mentioning the  (drugs, booze, whatever)”  What gets missed here is that examples that strike close to home are often the most effective deterrents to peers. We may never know why the young man died, or whether he or the driver were even drinking, but if alcohol was a factor, other teens need to know that.  

        The Trump administration has issued an edict, immediately praised by Florida senator and sugar whore, Marco Rubio, banning any further travel to Cuba by cruise ships departing US ports.  This, of course, is Trumpism at its “Undo everything Obama did”, worst. In fact, the first four months of Obama era relaxed tensions brought almost 150,000 tourists to Cuba and last year saw a 300% increase over that figure. This also resulted in tourist dollars stimulating a hurting Cuban economy.

        Trump Administration hawk in residence, John Bolton, refers to the Troika of Tyranny (Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela) as if they were one cabal plotting the overthrow of the US, although in the case of Venezuela and Cuba, having difficulties just feeding their people. Apparently, the lesson of Vietnam and China has blown right past Bolton, who is, make no mistake about it, since he has the ear of an imbecile, a real threat to hemispheric stability.  

        Millions died in Southeast Asia because, in 1947, Harry Truman was unable, largely due to Congressional Republican driven pressure, to just leave Ho Chi Minh to run Vietnam as the election results would have dictated. Instead, Truman gave the French everything short of troops in their 8 years' failed effort to subjugate a people who only wanted to be self governing.  Dwight Eisenhower later said that, had we allowed the (Geneva convention mandated) nationwide election to take place without US interference, Ho would have garnered 80% of the vote. Alas, the US, bastion of freedom and self determination that we profess ourselves to be, overturned the election and accelerated a war which would result in millions of deaths, civilian and military. 

       Where would that have left us? Well, about where we are today, actually, trading with a nominally Communist nation where our dollars and tourism are welcome. The Vietnamese are a remarkably forgiving people, unlike us. If we truly believe in the superiority of our economic system, then its advantages must be self-evident to struggling Communist/Socialist nations, but only if they are able to interact with our economy and our people. There’s a reason North Korea keeps most Americans out, and it isn’t really fear of espionage, but fear of their own system being exposed by contrast and personal interaction.    

        Cuba is much the same. Castro succeeded because a US supported corrupt dictator (the Batista regime) propped up by Big Sugar interests, had a stranglehold on the economy and the population. As the situation eased, and had continued to ease with Fidel gone, poor Cubans were generally better off than under Batista. While Marco Rubio professes to hate Cuba as it is, it cannot possibly be from personal experience, since he was born in Miami, 12 years after Castro toppled the corrupt Cuban government in what was a people’s revolution. He cannot possibly speak first-hand about the situation, since he was a grade schooler in Miami when it happened.

       So, just how wonderful was Cuba pre-Castro? In truth it was wonderful only for the moneyed classes.  Grabbing power and receiving significant financial, military, and logistical support from the United States government, Fulgencio Batista suspended the 1940 Constitution and revoked most political liberties, including the right to strike. He then aligned with the wealthiest landowners who owned the largest sugar plantations and presided over a stagnating economy that widened the gap between rich and poor Cubans. (does this sentiment sound strangely familiar?) In fact, many of Cuba’s poor who labored for pennies a day in sugar fields were as bad off as their grandparents had been under Spanish rule.

        Eventually it reached the point where most of the sugar industry was in U.S. hands, and foreigners owned 70% of the arable land. Think about the implication of that for Cuba’s underclasses! Batista's repressive government then began to systematically profit from the exploitation of Cuba's commercial interests, by negotiating lucrative relationships with both the American Mafia, who controlled the drug, gambling, and prostitution businesses in Havana, and with large U.S.-based multinational companies who were awarded lucrative contracts. 

         So, any notion that an average Cubano would have been better off during the “good old days” (pre-Castro) is ludicrous. US anti-Cuban sentiments among ex-Cubans have been fanned by those who lost their ill-gotten financial gain under Batista. They continue now, by feeding lies to the offspring of Cuban emigres (like Marco Rubio) who have no real idea whereof they speak.

         Now here’s the odd part: Little Marco’s parents were Cubans who immigrated to the United States in 1956, prior to the rise of Fidel Castro in January 1959. They weren’t fleeing Castro but fleeing a shitty economy (under a US supported dictatorship) and seeking work in the US. His mother made at least four return trips to Cuba after Castro's takeover, including a month-long trip in 1961. His maternal grandfather, Pedro Victor Garcia, immigrated to the U.S. legally in 1956, but returned to Cuba to find work in 1959. Understand this, Grandpa went back after Castro was in power to find work.  

       So why does Rubio hate Cuba? Probably the same reason as millions of ignorant Americans with no sense of either History or Economics – they’ve been told to. (And because it gets votes in South Florida)  Since the McCarthy era we’d been fed a steady diet of propaganda – not just that Communism was “bad,” but that the best way to deal with it was to make enemies of people who were either by choice, chance or subjugation, living under Communist governments.

        After a reasoned overture to Cuba by The Obama administration which has been beneficial to Americans and Cubans alike, Bolton and his Pillsbury Doughboy have reset the clock to the early 1960s. How long until the Russians get involved?  

        And on a final, lighter, but equally scary note: Taylor Forte and her fiancé had planned an intimate picnic at Lake Alice, near Gainesville, Fl, and things were going swimmingly until the picnic crasher arrived. The guest, an alligator, sprinted up from the water’s edge, scarfed a bowl full of guacamole (including the bowl) after consuming a block of cheese, salami, half a watermelon and a pound of grapes. It then waddled back to the water, apparently to sleep of the spoils of its gluttony. What, no big Mac?