Saturday, January 25, 2020

Tarantino's Hong Kong Love

“There, amidst all the ginseng root and spices, there’d be a little video section. I’d be the only white guy in the place. And I became voracious about it. I don’t think I realised how many rules American cinema had until I saw Hong Kong cinema break them.”

Monday, January 20, 2020

Why Trump Ought To Be Impeached



I would like to leave the nuances of Ukraine to the elected politicians on Capitol Hill -- they get paid well enough -- and at some level I recognize that the Kentuckian McConnell -- and to think I spent five and a half years in Kentucky -- will manage to repeat the partisanship exhibited by his party in the lower chamber where Nancy Pelosi single-handedly architected the process, but I still harbor the fantasy that Trump might get impeached for reasons bigger than Ukraine, and even Russia.

The president should be elected democratically, which means one person one vote. He was never elected. In the majority of countries, if you can collect three million votes, you can become president. He was way short.

The low unemployment numbers widely advertised are a sham. The actual numbers are at least twice as large. Post-2008 America has seen an epidemic of lower-paying jobs.

The stock markets are another sham. Companies are buying their own stocks. That is company money paying for the rise in share price to the benefit of the top share-owning executives. Productive investments are not being made. Buying your own stocks is eating potato chips.

Donald Trump rightly pointed out the massive loss of manufacturing jobs, but he did not have a solution then, he does not have a solution now. The losses are structural. This is more like the loss of agricultural jobs at the onset of the first and second industrial revolutions powered by steam and electricity. Universal health, universal education, and universal basic income will build the foundation for real solutions to create the knowledge and service jobs of tomorrow. Here is looking at you Bernie and Andrew Yang.

The guy is everything you feared old white men were: racist and sexist. And he lies like nobody in the public sphere. He is a post-truther who needs to be ditched.

But the number one reason in the climate. The clock is ticking. Four more years of the leading villain country behind climate change doing nothing is 12 years minus four years left to fight climate catastrophe. There is a cliff ahead. Send him to Australia for some education. He is fit to study abroad.

There is also World War III. We don't want World War III.

His getting impeached will open up the possibility of someone like Ted Cruz grabbing the Republican nomination. I have plenty of policy disagreements with Ted Cruz. But at least he is not foul-mouthed. He has basic decency. He is textbook conservative. Legitimate disagreements become possible. Genuine conservatives are not fact-free. And when you face facts, you move from climate denial to offering conservative solutions to climate change, which might rely more on tech entrepreneurs delivering faster on cleantech advances. I can live with that.

And America does not need more dynasties. America does not need to get triggered.

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