The Long Road Out

Oxfam just published their annual report on wealth.   Stop for a second and reflect on the following statement before you proceed: In 2016, 61 billionaires controlled half of the world’s wealth, then in 2017 that number was 43, before becoming 26 in 2018. Think about it.   You could probably name a third of the people on this list without struggling very much. This was too much in 2016, and the acceleration is a blot on civilization.   Not just because policies that allow this kind of obscene profiteering should be embarrassing to the owners, but because the bottom half's income dropped 11% a year during this period.   Poor people are getting poor very. very quickly and they now include the mainstream.   Visit Paris on Saturday to see the Gilet jaune in all their anger and fear.   Why aren't you out there marching with them?   You've lost 11% in the last year too! Meanwhile, what's our plan?   Build a wall to keep out unemployed citizens f...

We've been abused by AirBnB several times recently, and we just locked in apartments for late fall 2019 (so we don't miss our favorites which are already largely booked for that period). This gives us some expertise on all the anti-renter policies. The worst one of course is the handling of cash.   If you rent now, AirBnB charges 100% of the rental and their fees.   You pay.   It doesn't matter when the term starts or ends.   Even IHG and Marriott and the rest of the bricks and mortar hospitality industry don't have the balls to do that! It puts AirBnB up there with only one similarly lousy group:   the airlines!   Now for the next injustice--penalties start immediately.   If, for instance, you've rented a place for a month, on day 2, the penalty is 30 days.   In other words, AirBnB took my money yesterday, claims 100% of it now, and I have to stay alive and healthy long enough to show up November 15, 2019 for a full month to benefit from ...

Send your suggestions...these are some of mine: To Kill a Mockingbird Catch-22-- Joseph Heller Cloudsplitter --Russell Banks--you think your father was strict?  Try living up to this one! Sometimes a Great Notion-- Ken Kesey A Prayer for Owen Meaney-- John Irving.   For pure humor in the face of dire pain, it's almost impossible to match Irving-- Garp still stands up there in the thin atmosphere of heroic laughter too) Sacred Hunger --Barry Unsworth Fall on Your Knees-- Ann-Marie MacDonald--you don't get multi-generational drama richer than this--even better than Sometimes a Great Notion) The Shipping News --Annie Proulx (and don't miss Wyoming Stories) Middlesex-- Jeffrey Eugenides Mother Night --Kurt Vonnegut Richard Ford--both the four novels of the Frank Bascombe series, and Rock Springs The Life Before Us-- Romain Gary (in translation from the French--also called "Madame Rosa" in literature and film) Corelli's Mandolin (1994) -- ‎ Louis de...

All in all, it's been a decent year for films, commercial or otherwise, though we suffered through unusually thin gruel for the first six months of 2015.   My favorite films of the year, in descending order... 1001 Grams --Bent Hamer, of Kitchen Stories  fame, does it again--a loving look at characters literally trying to find the weight and balance of life as they lose parents and partners.  Hamer should really be on the list of smartest directors--with Mark Duplass, Lars van Trier, and a handful of others who actually care about their stories and characters.   Your soul does, in fact, weigh 21 grams--and you'll value every dust particle after watching this one. Embrace of the Serpent-- this is actually a 2015 release but no one saw it in the US until 2016--when it lost the Best Foreign Film award.  It shouldn't have (no comments about the surprise that a  holocaust film won out over a true original gem with radical environmental and racial politics). ...

Bright-shiny-object of the second: Guiliani says truth is not truth.   Every since Rudy reemerged from the dustbins of celebrity, he's been short a few brain cells.  But, since he's a celebrity, he can't stop sharing his impairment. Recall that his first effort to ride on Trump's celebrity machine was his insipid and manic assertion that he represented Don in the Stormy Daniels' non-disclosure fee.  It's hard to know.   Trump had corrected Guiliani three times by tweet in the first 24 hours of Rudy's cool new client engagement (has the White House actually written any checks to Rudy?   Wow, that's pretty low value for taxpayer dollars.   He's senile!).  I've never loved the Guiliani brand.   Most people forget about his admirable U.S. Attorney career where he really did get some bad guys (remember the Pizza Connection RICO trial?   No one outside Guiliani's office ever used RICO as effectively since, as the Galahad's sword it was i...

Apparently, there are now millions of extortion emails circulating.   These are called crypto blackmail, and like other scams, they're bothersome but meaningless.  If you're receiving them (I started getting them every day on July 17)  Chris Hoffman at How-to Geek wrote a great article that should give you comfort.   What is CryptoBlackmail? As Hoffman says, "CryptoBlackmail is any sort of threat accompanied by a demand you pay money to a cryptocurrency address. Like traditional blackmail, it’s just a 'pay up or we’ll do something bad to you' threat." He offers these examples of CryptoBlackmail: Physical mail saying “ I know you cheated on your wife ,” and demanding the equivalent of $2000 in Bitcoin sent to an included Bitcoin address. Emails saying “ I’ve got an order to kill you ,” followed by a demand to pay $2800 in Bitcoin to call off the assassination. Emails claiming an attacker has placed malware on your computer and  recorded you watching ...

Colin Kaepernik's career was ruined because he sat down twice for the National Anthem two years ago. Trump joined in on the debate back then--if the mob has an idea, Trump will repeat it on Twitter. So, the NFL owners had a problem:  highly paid players they needed to get rid of.   Two years later, they decide on a policy to stop this.   As of today, every one must stand if they're on the field when the music starts. Kind of like a junior high school dance!  In a gracious bow to free speech, the NFL decided dissenters can avoid the embarrassment of participating in a silly ceremony they don't support by staying in the locker room. I love the thought of an empty playing field once the recorded bugles start to pound.  Build some bigger locker rooms, guys--it's gonna be CROWDED in there! Here's Roger Goodell, summing up the wisdom of two years of what must have been painfully stupid discussions among a whole lot of rich-ish white men: "We want people to ...