Nothing will work right until we abolish legislation, election of public officials, and taxation. It's all well and good, I suppose, that most law school students are female, numerous courts have female judges, and welfare families with a female head of household can knock down $70,000 a year in benefits if she has three or more children, according to the Pennsylvania Secretary of State. It might be 20% more in Chicago and New York, with significantly higher housing and public school costs. Zoom out a little. Women are pushing men out of higher ed, the legal profession, and tens of millions of households. None of that would have happened without a show of hands, elected officials, and legislation. Capiche? If that's unclear, think about 18 years of folly in Afghanistan, 79,000 "wounded warriors" in Shrub's $2 trillion snipe hunt for WMD in Iraq, two million murdered in Vietnam by Johnson and Nixon. We're $25 trillion in debt, zero hope of reversing a dime of it, $200 trillion of unfunded entitlement promises without Bernie's plan to forgive student loans, free college, free Medicare For All, taxing gasoline, income, property, and savings out of existence for the public good.
A free society does not have "public" anything. All higher ed, law courts, and charities are private ventures supported voluntarily by people who want to support them. Ditto private border control, law enforcement, and national defense, which I've written and lectured about extensively. A necessary precondition for liberty is to shut down fascism. Duh.
Something I wrote 30 years ago: We're partying in the fading sunset of industrial power and privilege inherited from our grandparents and great grandparents, a vast shower of wealth soaked through to the weakest seed, you and me included.
Why anybody thinks that secession or civil war will be peaceful or rational escapes me. I just heard a book author on a morning radio show, cheerfully contemplating a negotiated fair division of the national debt, passport-free borders so that everyone can visit Disneyland, an expanded NAFTA confederation of states that despise each other. Maybe some of Virginia's counties could join West Virginia, and Northern California could divorce San Francisco.
Bullshit. Insurrections. Federal troops. A declaration of secession, then another. Millions of soccer moms terrified, schools closed, thousands of men killed, then rebellious troops versus Federal troops versus well-armed militias, neighbor against neighbor in race wars, collapse of the oil industry, no fuel in winter, no fuel to escape, WalMarts and gun shops looted.
Ludicrous to suppose that nothing will happen if Trump is re-elected. Absolutely certain that Milwaukee will explode if Bernie is shoved aside in a brokered convention. Paradoxically, a black socialist -- Blind Patrick or Malicious Michelle -- would pour snake oil over the Bernie bullshit and probably defeat Trump. Heads they win, tails we lose the future.
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Wednesday, February 19, 2020
Egoism
Officially, this is the doctrine of Objectivism, which has much to recommend it. Reality is real. The proper work of a rational being is to study logic, gather evidence, and think as clearly as possible. Yeah, well, fine. Life is more complicated than that, especially with regard to love and sexuality. In a perfect world of heroism, love is irresistible and permanent, an ideal mate for whom any sacrifice is worthwhile, however costly, provided that it doesn't tarnish one's integrity as a being of self-made soul or compromise one's career, which amounts to love at arm's length. I wasn't so circumspect. I was an emotional nitwit who chased women, dozens of them, married for heightened pleasure, privilege, and companionship. Not good policy.
That, however, is not what I wanted to speak of this morning. The interesting question is my "friendship" with other men. I had professional partners. I had mentors. I gushed admiration for gifted artists and encouraged simple souls in difficult straits. I was rescued and honored by benevolent giants, tolerated by skeptical neighbors, and occasionally admired by a few. I don't know for a fact that I deserved friendship, although many befriended me. Erik and Tom bestowed numerous gifts, partly out of pity because I was pitifully weak and needy, although creative enough to be vaguely respectable. Perhaps a better word is unusual.
I addressed friendship several times in my novels. Loyalties emerge in circumstances that test men's metal. Courage matters. Gallows humor, competition, and mutual daring greases the wheels. Perhaps if I was a better man, I could have kept lifelong pals. I disappointed and frustrated those who were drawn to side me. Women had the same problem with me -- too weak and self-absorbed to be a reasonably cheerful and reciprocal mate. I spent much of my life alone, remote, chain smoking at a keyboard or typewriter or editing bench, fussing with another project solo. I often forsook (is that a word?) the advantage of collaboration.
I like people, all sorts of people. I think I encountered thousands, certainly hundreds with whom I shared myself as completely as possible, saw the depth of their truth and honored each life as worthy of tenderness or amusement, as the case happened to be. I say "Thank you" easily when someone offers assistance, something as simple as accommodating an odd request and making change at a McDonald's, gratitude for a brief encounter. I often made life more difficult for others. Lost in thought, I forgot to put a fuel nozzle back on the pump and pulled away, disconnecting the hose, carried it into the gas station convenience store, said I was sorry. I must have said sorry ten or twenty thousand times as a distracted idiot. That was the limiting factor in forging friendships, too often lost in thought, cold hearted calculation, despair, a creative flush, or exaltation. Egoism is an internalized way of life.
Maybe I should take up religion, sit in a pew, experience something other than me, however pointless and irrational. My writing career is kaput, and my film career was kaput long ago. I don't have any desire to punish myself with television, and religion seems relatively benign. You know what's really stupid? (and often wonderful) -- I have an elderly, blind shihtzu who alternately conks out on my bed, demands to go outside, yips for attention, ignores whatever I want him to do, needs a lot of care. I speak to him daily, hourly, and he knows what I said, two dozen phrases we've shared for a decade. Shihtzus don't shed, have to be trimmed with a scissors every week or so. His weepy eyes have to be wiped each morning. I take him out at night with a flashlight so he can see where to walk. I haul his food from the country store, a variety of cans and packets of soft meaty noodles, because he lost most of his teeth. I doubt that I have time to attend church. He gets nervous if I go out in formal clothes and wingtips.
Not a friendship, more's the pity. An old dog who needs me.
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| 10 years ago, when he could still see |
Foreign policy of Alaska
In The Executive Branch and an explanatory video, The Executive Power, I sketched the practical and intellectual dimensions of a free society, presented in the context of Alaskan nationhood under widely subscribed ratification of The Freeman's Constitution. For a fuller account of the historical, conceptual, logical, and personal elements that led me to a new constitution, there are lectures at Vimeo and paperbacks at Amazon and Lulu. My novels are just as important as my nonfiction books, all of which explore liberty and justice. It was my perceived duty to define those terms in plain language based on Anglo-American common law and equity. I did not re-invent law, but brought it into focus as an anarchist. I'll discuss anarchy a little later. I want to begin with the problem of foreign policy in a free society.
Let's assume that Alaska successfully secedes from the Lower 49, which is fictionalized in The Executive Branch saga and referenced elsewhere repeatedly. If any territory has a good shot at creating an independent and free society, it's Alaska, a naturally defined land mass loaded with natural resources, plenty of room for development and increased population, a magnet for freemen and aspirational women who want to see their values reflected in civil law and practical law enforcement, a realm I believe that women should govern. Men will be plenty busy providing national security and managing foreign policy.
I don't see Russia as a threat, but rather as a trading partner and strategic counterparty. It is necessary to arm Alaska with nuclear weapons as a deterrent to forcible "reunion" with the U.S. or aggression by other powers, including Russia. I believe it's possible to buy nuclear weapons from Russia in a comprehensive treaty accord that grants Russia fishing rights and commercial interests, provided that Russian fishing vessels, army, navy, aircraft, immigrants, and diplomats comport themselves in compliance with Alaska's constitutional order. This does not imply strategic alliance with Russia, more like a nonaggression pact with teeth, to accommodate a neighbor with few friends and much to gain from commercial trade with Alaska and its allies. I don't doubt that Canada, Japan, and Korea will find ample reason to reach tariff-free trade agreements with libertarian Alaska, to participate in its economic development. Japan and Korea are hungry for oil and gas. They have industrial products to trade. Cunucks are logical strategic and financial friends, privately and diplomatically.
Obviously, there will be bad blood with the former United States or its fractured remnant of contentious and militarily divided regions. It is a precondition of Alaskan independence that the Union will be shattered by civil strife, which seems likely, given the current tailspin into rival interests. California will be first to secede and divide itself in three or four mini-states, with a badly governed, violent No Man's Land in Southern California (El Norte), held by a socialist dictator in Washington who controls the East Coast from Maine to Florida and parts of the Rust Belt. He'll make a deal with Texas and its militarily weak oil patch dependents in Oklahoma and Louisiana to supply oil and gas, and reach accommodation on Gulf Coast and border security. New Mexico depises Texas passionately, will probably form an alliance with eastern Arizona, rural Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, and the Ozarks, as weak as a litter of kittens economically, but gritty and proud of their frontier heritage. The South will rise again to its peril. The Mountain States and Dakotas have a good shot at unified and unchallenged success, trading with Canada, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and rural Illinois. Chicago is doomed. Seattle has a long deep history as a vassal of the military, a strategic home port. Puget Sound will be Alaska's strategic foe, separated by a 500-mile DMZ patrolled by neutral Cananda. An Alaskan navy and air force are the only hope of effective national defense. How U.S. forces based in pre-revolutionary Alaska conceive their future as champions of independence will determine how quickly or how painfully Alaska wins its freedom as a new nation.
Impossible? Hah. All too likely. The Union was held by force and fraud and flag-waving ritual beyond its viability as a cohesive society. The United States of America is bankrupt. Our 2020 election will crack us into regional and racial tribes. Trump may be the last U.S. President, destined to preside over violent insurrections and economic collapse. Demobilized veterans of Afghanistan and the Gulf will return to families and neighbors armed with pitchforks and torches, colleges and universities shut by rock-throwing militants, burning cities, fistfights in the House of Representatives, and hysterical fusion of fear and fake news.
Earlier I promised to say something about anarchy. It has nothing to do with social disorder. Civil liberty, however you conceive it, however narrow or broad in a free society, is a degree of absolute anarchy, doing as you please, deciding who to marry, which job to take, etc. In a fully free society, social order evolves in the multiplicity of individual decisions, a defacto anarchy exhibited in the Gilded Age of Andrew Carnegie and Jay Gould, two of many paupers who rose to become fabulously rich in a free market that also lifted millions of paupers into miraculous prosperity. It really does matter, to study history. We were a free people at the dawn of the American Experiment, freed again by a long era of incompetent, easily bribed government bankrupted by a Civil War that cost fives times the GNP of 1860. Freedom from regulation bestowed astonishing industrial capital growth, skyscrapers, steel mills, power plants, railroads and threshers to gather harvests and feed millions of city dwellers.
That's what Alaska needs, a free society. To grasp what that implies, please read my portrait of an anarcho-capitalist Alaska, ably defended by a private Executive Branch. It's not hard to understand that banks, insurance companies, and wealthy private citizens would organize themselves voluntarily to fund Alaskan defense. There was a patriotic precedent in 1776, a conspiracy of bankers, merchants, and planters to launch the American Revolutionary War of Independence by privately contributing millions in gold to supply a Continental Army. Most of the patriots were immigrants and self-made men. There was a notable exception among the immigrants, however. Thomas Paine was a dirt poor writer, recruited and published by Benjamin Franklin. I feel drawn to visit Alaska while I'm healthy enough to travel.
.
Let's assume that Alaska successfully secedes from the Lower 49, which is fictionalized in The Executive Branch saga and referenced elsewhere repeatedly. If any territory has a good shot at creating an independent and free society, it's Alaska, a naturally defined land mass loaded with natural resources, plenty of room for development and increased population, a magnet for freemen and aspirational women who want to see their values reflected in civil law and practical law enforcement, a realm I believe that women should govern. Men will be plenty busy providing national security and managing foreign policy.
I don't see Russia as a threat, but rather as a trading partner and strategic counterparty. It is necessary to arm Alaska with nuclear weapons as a deterrent to forcible "reunion" with the U.S. or aggression by other powers, including Russia. I believe it's possible to buy nuclear weapons from Russia in a comprehensive treaty accord that grants Russia fishing rights and commercial interests, provided that Russian fishing vessels, army, navy, aircraft, immigrants, and diplomats comport themselves in compliance with Alaska's constitutional order. This does not imply strategic alliance with Russia, more like a nonaggression pact with teeth, to accommodate a neighbor with few friends and much to gain from commercial trade with Alaska and its allies. I don't doubt that Canada, Japan, and Korea will find ample reason to reach tariff-free trade agreements with libertarian Alaska, to participate in its economic development. Japan and Korea are hungry for oil and gas. They have industrial products to trade. Cunucks are logical strategic and financial friends, privately and diplomatically.
Obviously, there will be bad blood with the former United States or its fractured remnant of contentious and militarily divided regions. It is a precondition of Alaskan independence that the Union will be shattered by civil strife, which seems likely, given the current tailspin into rival interests. California will be first to secede and divide itself in three or four mini-states, with a badly governed, violent No Man's Land in Southern California (El Norte), held by a socialist dictator in Washington who controls the East Coast from Maine to Florida and parts of the Rust Belt. He'll make a deal with Texas and its militarily weak oil patch dependents in Oklahoma and Louisiana to supply oil and gas, and reach accommodation on Gulf Coast and border security. New Mexico depises Texas passionately, will probably form an alliance with eastern Arizona, rural Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, and the Ozarks, as weak as a litter of kittens economically, but gritty and proud of their frontier heritage. The South will rise again to its peril. The Mountain States and Dakotas have a good shot at unified and unchallenged success, trading with Canada, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and rural Illinois. Chicago is doomed. Seattle has a long deep history as a vassal of the military, a strategic home port. Puget Sound will be Alaska's strategic foe, separated by a 500-mile DMZ patrolled by neutral Cananda. An Alaskan navy and air force are the only hope of effective national defense. How U.S. forces based in pre-revolutionary Alaska conceive their future as champions of independence will determine how quickly or how painfully Alaska wins its freedom as a new nation.
Impossible? Hah. All too likely. The Union was held by force and fraud and flag-waving ritual beyond its viability as a cohesive society. The United States of America is bankrupt. Our 2020 election will crack us into regional and racial tribes. Trump may be the last U.S. President, destined to preside over violent insurrections and economic collapse. Demobilized veterans of Afghanistan and the Gulf will return to families and neighbors armed with pitchforks and torches, colleges and universities shut by rock-throwing militants, burning cities, fistfights in the House of Representatives, and hysterical fusion of fear and fake news.
Earlier I promised to say something about anarchy. It has nothing to do with social disorder. Civil liberty, however you conceive it, however narrow or broad in a free society, is a degree of absolute anarchy, doing as you please, deciding who to marry, which job to take, etc. In a fully free society, social order evolves in the multiplicity of individual decisions, a defacto anarchy exhibited in the Gilded Age of Andrew Carnegie and Jay Gould, two of many paupers who rose to become fabulously rich in a free market that also lifted millions of paupers into miraculous prosperity. It really does matter, to study history. We were a free people at the dawn of the American Experiment, freed again by a long era of incompetent, easily bribed government bankrupted by a Civil War that cost fives times the GNP of 1860. Freedom from regulation bestowed astonishing industrial capital growth, skyscrapers, steel mills, power plants, railroads and threshers to gather harvests and feed millions of city dwellers.
That's what Alaska needs, a free society. To grasp what that implies, please read my portrait of an anarcho-capitalist Alaska, ably defended by a private Executive Branch. It's not hard to understand that banks, insurance companies, and wealthy private citizens would organize themselves voluntarily to fund Alaskan defense. There was a patriotic precedent in 1776, a conspiracy of bankers, merchants, and planters to launch the American Revolutionary War of Independence by privately contributing millions in gold to supply a Continental Army. Most of the patriots were immigrants and self-made men. There was a notable exception among the immigrants, however. Thomas Paine was a dirt poor writer, recruited and published by Benjamin Franklin. I feel drawn to visit Alaska while I'm healthy enough to travel.
.
Happy 20th Anniversary
Twenty years ago, Lt. Janet DiMarco and her partner Sgt. Cynthia Rice debuted in The Good Walk Alone. They kicked ass and shot armed men if they had to. They bent the law and made life hell for Capt. Audrey Russell and Chief Forensic Scientist Julie Levine. City Police LLC was staffed exclusively by women, checked by skeptical female judges and a plutocratic female Supreme Court. I argued intellectually for female justice and law enforcement in a series of essays and videos. The Freeman's Constitution provides for female jurors in family law.
I'm having a celebratory cup of coffee. Janet DiMarco falls in love with the Chief Executive, a Cary Grant type with vast resources and enough courage for five or six men rolled together as hereditary monarch ordered by the Supreme Court to pick a woman, marry her, and produce a prince. He picked DiMarco. Romantic comedy ensues. Heroic men are not naturally willing to be completely docile or honest, sharing every micron of their privacy and power. I tried to illustrate male responsibility and discretion in a dozen novels. We naturally out-rank women in multiple respects. If it weren't for strong men, women would never experience love and willingly agree to create children by irresistible heart-pounding intimacy.
For fun, it's also 33rd anniversary of my first fictional female cop, Lt. Laura Oak, awarded the Medal of Valor on Mars in 2157. She falls in love with an Earthman sent to do justice. Mars Shall Thunder was my first longform action adventure novel, to be topped decades later by a husband and wife team of private eye wildcats, Chris Cable and Mary Blount, Ph.D. It doesn't matter what other people write, or created in the long history of literature. I write about men and women, indestructibly bonded couples who form families and raise their children, tens of millions of moms and dads like my parents were, some of them uniquely tasked in life as heroes. Peaceful civilian life cannot exist without heroism by an elite minority of lovers. All the real life heroes I encountered were married men and women. Criminals were single and unlovable. It ain't rocket science. Strong, courageous folks are drawn to love and marriage.
We never do this perfectly. It's not perfection that men and women want from each other. If the standard of romance was perfection, it would never happen. Heroic people make more mistakes and face infinitely worse challenges than ordinary couples. That's the whole point of literature as I see it, to test the limits of what people can do in difficult circumstances. It was a specific failing of the noir genre, always a lonely p.i., destined to push away the babes, unable to love anyone, which I endeavored to fix. There's no drama without a loved one.
.
I'm having a celebratory cup of coffee. Janet DiMarco falls in love with the Chief Executive, a Cary Grant type with vast resources and enough courage for five or six men rolled together as hereditary monarch ordered by the Supreme Court to pick a woman, marry her, and produce a prince. He picked DiMarco. Romantic comedy ensues. Heroic men are not naturally willing to be completely docile or honest, sharing every micron of their privacy and power. I tried to illustrate male responsibility and discretion in a dozen novels. We naturally out-rank women in multiple respects. If it weren't for strong men, women would never experience love and willingly agree to create children by irresistible heart-pounding intimacy.
For fun, it's also 33rd anniversary of my first fictional female cop, Lt. Laura Oak, awarded the Medal of Valor on Mars in 2157. She falls in love with an Earthman sent to do justice. Mars Shall Thunder was my first longform action adventure novel, to be topped decades later by a husband and wife team of private eye wildcats, Chris Cable and Mary Blount, Ph.D. It doesn't matter what other people write, or created in the long history of literature. I write about men and women, indestructibly bonded couples who form families and raise their children, tens of millions of moms and dads like my parents were, some of them uniquely tasked in life as heroes. Peaceful civilian life cannot exist without heroism by an elite minority of lovers. All the real life heroes I encountered were married men and women. Criminals were single and unlovable. It ain't rocket science. Strong, courageous folks are drawn to love and marriage.
We never do this perfectly. It's not perfection that men and women want from each other. If the standard of romance was perfection, it would never happen. Heroic people make more mistakes and face infinitely worse challenges than ordinary couples. That's the whole point of literature as I see it, to test the limits of what people can do in difficult circumstances. It was a specific failing of the noir genre, always a lonely p.i., destined to push away the babes, unable to love anyone, which I endeavored to fix. There's no drama without a loved one.
.
No Talent
Subjects in which I'm a total ignoramus: algebra, trigonometry, calculus, chemistry, nuclear physics, solid state electronics, medicine, software coding, and auto repair. Very sketchy understanding of macro economics, portfolio theory, banking, and religion. As much as it pains me to admit it, I'm not very good with a gun, and I never learned an ounce of delayed gratification.
Recently, I made a list of all the jobs I've done. Its great length proved that I never held a job for more than a few months, and there were long stretches of self employment. Some of the work that I attempted was decidedly impossible. I flopped repeatedly. Fiction is like that, an impossible task for which I was ill prepared historically and too stupid to know when to quit. It finally dawned on me that poverty after a million words means something. I should have been a longshoreman. I did it one summer and liked it, no brain required.
Oh, crap. Eric Hoffer was a longshoreman. Baruch Spinoza lived hand to mouth by grinding eyeglass lenses. Gene Rhodes was a poker playing cowboy who drank too much and read books instead of riding herd. Jeez, it gets worse. F. Scott Fitzgerald was a terrible student, never made more than $50 in royalties for his masterpiece Tender Is The Night, and drank himself to death at age 44. Same thing happened to O. Henry, larcenist, fugitive, convict. He drank a quart of liquor daily, pickled his liver and fell over dead. Ray Chandler couldn't hold a job, fired for siphoning money from an oil company where he worked as a bookkeeper, and he hated Hollywood. So did I. Ten months in a cubicle at Disney killed all hope.
That's why I started writing, in 1997, feeling hopeless and useless. The only thing left to do was to write, because I was an untalented bum who no one wanted to employ. I interviewed and got shown the door. I had a mental crisis and needed therapy. An NHS shrink gave me strict orders to finish the fucking novel, as he put it. A couple years later, I received an email from him unsolicited, celebrating my authorship of The Freeman's Constitution. Those were heady days. I solved an old, intractable puzzle. I still believe it to be true, that history chose me to do something important. Thomas Paine was a penniless bum most of his life, too.
Logic is easy. Poverty is easy. Fiction isn't.
.
Recently, I made a list of all the jobs I've done. Its great length proved that I never held a job for more than a few months, and there were long stretches of self employment. Some of the work that I attempted was decidedly impossible. I flopped repeatedly. Fiction is like that, an impossible task for which I was ill prepared historically and too stupid to know when to quit. It finally dawned on me that poverty after a million words means something. I should have been a longshoreman. I did it one summer and liked it, no brain required.
Oh, crap. Eric Hoffer was a longshoreman. Baruch Spinoza lived hand to mouth by grinding eyeglass lenses. Gene Rhodes was a poker playing cowboy who drank too much and read books instead of riding herd. Jeez, it gets worse. F. Scott Fitzgerald was a terrible student, never made more than $50 in royalties for his masterpiece Tender Is The Night, and drank himself to death at age 44. Same thing happened to O. Henry, larcenist, fugitive, convict. He drank a quart of liquor daily, pickled his liver and fell over dead. Ray Chandler couldn't hold a job, fired for siphoning money from an oil company where he worked as a bookkeeper, and he hated Hollywood. So did I. Ten months in a cubicle at Disney killed all hope.
That's why I started writing, in 1997, feeling hopeless and useless. The only thing left to do was to write, because I was an untalented bum who no one wanted to employ. I interviewed and got shown the door. I had a mental crisis and needed therapy. An NHS shrink gave me strict orders to finish the fucking novel, as he put it. A couple years later, I received an email from him unsolicited, celebrating my authorship of The Freeman's Constitution. Those were heady days. I solved an old, intractable puzzle. I still believe it to be true, that history chose me to do something important. Thomas Paine was a penniless bum most of his life, too.
Logic is easy. Poverty is easy. Fiction isn't.
.
The Case of The Burglarized Bakery
Funny things happened on the beach. There was a Guarda Rurale shack next door to the post office in the Tico village, two dopes in uniform with a motorbike that moved once a month. I got curious and followed them on one of their monthly outings. They putt putt putted at 10 miles an hour up a winding gravel road to the private swingers club at the top of a hill to pick up an envelope. Aside from collecting graft, I never saw them do anything else, except rope off the liquor shelves at restaurants and bars on election day. Real cops, Judicial Police from Nicoya, were three hours away on a single track dirt road. When they were summoned to investigate a break-in at the hardware store, they borrowed talcum powder and Scotch tape to lift fingerprints. No one was ever interrogated or arrested for stealing a couple thousand dollars of power tools and screwdrivers.
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So, Danny and me were the guys people called to do something about burglary, armed hold-ups, nasty characters hassling chicks on the beach, and suspicious deaths. A middle aged man was found face down in six inches of water on Guiones Beach, which seemed odd enough to warrant a glance before he was hauled into an ambulance. Sure enough, there was an ugly lump on the back of his head. Onlookers remarked that he was a heavy drinker, probably passed out and hit his head on a rock. Guiones had a couple rocks, none near the body. He was rich, gay, single, and co-owner of a little bakery near the condos, operated by a husband and wife team. Good bread, sandwiches, scrambled egg breakfasts, big smiles and prompt service. They were struggling to make money in the off season, had a happy kid about 8 years old, and the family lived at the bakery, a small building with a big kitchen and commercial baking equipment, a comfortable bedroom, pokey sitting room, and bath. I drove there to observe how they took the news that their business partner was dead. They snarled that he was a lazy asshole, and that somebody broke into the bakery and stole their corporation books in the middle of the night while they were asleep, woke up this morning sick and groggy. The intruder must have pumped knock-out gas through their open bedroom window and then entered through a window in the kitchen. The burglar drank a beer and emptied their cash box. I had a pro powder kit, didn't dust the beer bottle, knew it didn't matter.
The baker showed me a ripped screen where the burglar entered the kitchen. No footprints in the flower bed under the window. No footprints or dirt on a stainless steel table inside, under the window. A tiny hole in the bedroom window screen, where preposterous knock-out gas poisoned the sleeping victims. Barefoot burglars don't steal corporation books or use hypothetical gas canisters. They don't attack an occupied residence, unless it's a single babe's mansion in a remote section of the highlands, somebody that they can frighten into opening a safe. I took a few photos, didn't ask any questions. Alibis are always incredibly dumb.
I traced the dead man's movements before he ended up face down in the surf. He had dinner at a resort, as usual, laughed and had a couple drinks, wasn't falling down drunk when he left to walk home. He walked about half a mile before he allegedly stumbled and fell. Private investigators aren't cops. I thought about the 8 year old kid. His mom was a material witness. She kept silent while her husband bellowed a pack of incredibly stupid lies about a burglar equipped with knock-out gas. Corporation books are the sole legal evidence of a business partnership in Costa Rica, handwritten in ink. A cop would have tossed the joint and found them hidden under a mattress or on the top shelf of a closet, then bullied the overwrought baker for making false statements, forced an emotional crack-up and confession by telling him that there was a Tico witness who saw him on the beach at midnight.
I let them sell the bakery and move to another province that had a sawmill I visited, because I had a big order for teak recliners and straight chairs that I designed and sold to resorts. I saw them on a village street and said hello. The kid was a year older, happy and intelligent, the former baker and his wife cheerful. They bought a house 50 miles from the white sand beach where an idle, laughing asshole that nobody mourned was found face down in the surf, his legs on dry sand, undoubtedly stalked, clubbed unconscious, and drowned.
When Danny quit and went back to Kansas, I inherited his Sig Sauer. A lot of people left that year. Steve gave me his carbine and another .45 to add to my collection. I carried a little .22 magnum single action revolver, never had to fire it, and there was a long barrel .38 in case of emergency. Boris offered a Kalashnikov that I declined. All the firepower and handcuffs and cameras were useless, if I let people get away with murder. I decided to spend more time drinking and playing poker at the Beatle Bar, something I knew how to do, filling ashtrays with cigarette butts and bluffing four other beach bums who had more money than brains.
Relevant constitutional law: Article IV. THE POLICE POWER
The right to keep and bear arms and to use reasonable force in defense of one's life and innocent liberty, or the life and liberty of another, describes the police power generally. Every person signatory to this Constitution is lawfully empowered to arrest and detain a perpetrator or willing accessory apprehended during the commission of a crime... All felony prosecutions shall be conducted on behalf of a living natural person whose enjoyment of life, liberty, or settled claim to property are alleged to have been impaired...
If someone had stepped forward to complain and retained Danny and me to investigate on their behalf, I would have handled it differently. But no one did. The dead man's next of kin were not unhappy he died. They emptied his brokerage account and bank account and sold his condo property. The $40,000 that he invested or loaned to the bakery (unclear which) was small potatoes, not worth the risk of litigating in Costa Rica's unpredictable Napoleanic Law courts that might expose them to a criminal probe of their Panamanian proxy tax laundry.
Case closed. Wait a minute, lemme see that. Bonnie! A new deck! These are getting too easy to read. You ought to be ashamed of yourselves, you rats. Thank you. Ante up, gentlemen.
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So, Danny and me were the guys people called to do something about burglary, armed hold-ups, nasty characters hassling chicks on the beach, and suspicious deaths. A middle aged man was found face down in six inches of water on Guiones Beach, which seemed odd enough to warrant a glance before he was hauled into an ambulance. Sure enough, there was an ugly lump on the back of his head. Onlookers remarked that he was a heavy drinker, probably passed out and hit his head on a rock. Guiones had a couple rocks, none near the body. He was rich, gay, single, and co-owner of a little bakery near the condos, operated by a husband and wife team. Good bread, sandwiches, scrambled egg breakfasts, big smiles and prompt service. They were struggling to make money in the off season, had a happy kid about 8 years old, and the family lived at the bakery, a small building with a big kitchen and commercial baking equipment, a comfortable bedroom, pokey sitting room, and bath. I drove there to observe how they took the news that their business partner was dead. They snarled that he was a lazy asshole, and that somebody broke into the bakery and stole their corporation books in the middle of the night while they were asleep, woke up this morning sick and groggy. The intruder must have pumped knock-out gas through their open bedroom window and then entered through a window in the kitchen. The burglar drank a beer and emptied their cash box. I had a pro powder kit, didn't dust the beer bottle, knew it didn't matter.The baker showed me a ripped screen where the burglar entered the kitchen. No footprints in the flower bed under the window. No footprints or dirt on a stainless steel table inside, under the window. A tiny hole in the bedroom window screen, where preposterous knock-out gas poisoned the sleeping victims. Barefoot burglars don't steal corporation books or use hypothetical gas canisters. They don't attack an occupied residence, unless it's a single babe's mansion in a remote section of the highlands, somebody that they can frighten into opening a safe. I took a few photos, didn't ask any questions. Alibis are always incredibly dumb.
I traced the dead man's movements before he ended up face down in the surf. He had dinner at a resort, as usual, laughed and had a couple drinks, wasn't falling down drunk when he left to walk home. He walked about half a mile before he allegedly stumbled and fell. Private investigators aren't cops. I thought about the 8 year old kid. His mom was a material witness. She kept silent while her husband bellowed a pack of incredibly stupid lies about a burglar equipped with knock-out gas. Corporation books are the sole legal evidence of a business partnership in Costa Rica, handwritten in ink. A cop would have tossed the joint and found them hidden under a mattress or on the top shelf of a closet, then bullied the overwrought baker for making false statements, forced an emotional crack-up and confession by telling him that there was a Tico witness who saw him on the beach at midnight.
I let them sell the bakery and move to another province that had a sawmill I visited, because I had a big order for teak recliners and straight chairs that I designed and sold to resorts. I saw them on a village street and said hello. The kid was a year older, happy and intelligent, the former baker and his wife cheerful. They bought a house 50 miles from the white sand beach where an idle, laughing asshole that nobody mourned was found face down in the surf, his legs on dry sand, undoubtedly stalked, clubbed unconscious, and drowned.
When Danny quit and went back to Kansas, I inherited his Sig Sauer. A lot of people left that year. Steve gave me his carbine and another .45 to add to my collection. I carried a little .22 magnum single action revolver, never had to fire it, and there was a long barrel .38 in case of emergency. Boris offered a Kalashnikov that I declined. All the firepower and handcuffs and cameras were useless, if I let people get away with murder. I decided to spend more time drinking and playing poker at the Beatle Bar, something I knew how to do, filling ashtrays with cigarette butts and bluffing four other beach bums who had more money than brains.
Relevant constitutional law: Article IV. THE POLICE POWER
The right to keep and bear arms and to use reasonable force in defense of one's life and innocent liberty, or the life and liberty of another, describes the police power generally. Every person signatory to this Constitution is lawfully empowered to arrest and detain a perpetrator or willing accessory apprehended during the commission of a crime... All felony prosecutions shall be conducted on behalf of a living natural person whose enjoyment of life, liberty, or settled claim to property are alleged to have been impaired...
If someone had stepped forward to complain and retained Danny and me to investigate on their behalf, I would have handled it differently. But no one did. The dead man's next of kin were not unhappy he died. They emptied his brokerage account and bank account and sold his condo property. The $40,000 that he invested or loaned to the bakery (unclear which) was small potatoes, not worth the risk of litigating in Costa Rica's unpredictable Napoleanic Law courts that might expose them to a criminal probe of their Panamanian proxy tax laundry.
Case closed. Wait a minute, lemme see that. Bonnie! A new deck! These are getting too easy to read. You ought to be ashamed of yourselves, you rats. Thank you. Ante up, gentlemen.
The evil machine
I play solitaire on my laptop, plenty of experience, 20 years or so, and I play the Vegas rules. You buy a deal for $52 and get paid $5 for every card on the win line, only get to turn cards one at a time from the blind pile once. Yesterday, I became curious about my solitaire chops and poked an option to display whether I was winning or losing hypothetical cash. Presto! Down $1000 in half an hour of play. I began to resent an obviously rigged game, constantly dealing bad hands. Seriously bad, often scoring only one or two aces, rarely able to break even (11 cards on the win line). Casinos have better payouts on slot machines.
Why would Microsoft design a Solitaire game that was hopelessly rigged? Worse, every cell phone reports every call and constantly broadcasts your location. I did an article recently on digital police gear, gunshot locators, etc. The Feds and local cops can dial up your cell phone and locate you and listen whether your phone is turned on or not. Spy evidence is admissible in court, and Google knows every keystroke on your keyboard, every click.
Infinitely worse, Barack Obama shoveled $3 billion to Black Lives Matter, fines levied on big banks. EEOC and hate speech hooey populated DoD and research universities with Chinese graduate students and Islamic jihadis. Remember the massacre at Fort Hood? Small pototoes compared to wholesale looting of American rocket science and nuclear secrets. Apple was one of the worst commercial traitors, shipping state of the art processors and circuit layouts to China, banking tax free profits in Ireland. Think Tesla is cool? Elon Musk is a subsidy whore who couldn't produce a skateboard without Federal and California taxpayer loot.
If you've been paying attention, you know that the U.S. government is bankrupt, $25 trillion in debt and losing another trillion every year, two-thirds of all spending for "entitlements" paid to people who were taxed $1 for Social Security and Medicare and get $3 in benefits, a ponzi pyramid with $200 trillion in unfunded payola liabilities, no legal or political exit. The Federal Reserve balance sheet looks like an unfunny joke. Total household debt is booked as bank assets, and the whole American finance system depends on higher and higher housing prices, which more and more young people are unable to afford. The drug epidemic takes 70,000 lives a year, enriching gangsters. Education has been dumbed down to push gender neutral silence. NBA and NFL scout high schools with the worst academic scores, and college is a playpen for negro athletes who are exempt from studing math, history, or English.
I don't even want to discuss the news and entertainment industry. Disney and Comcast own most of it, including ESPN. Small business is dominated by bars and convenience stores that sell beer and cigarettes. The oil and gas industry is shrinking, barely able to make a profit on exploration and production. Horizontal frackers are $120 billion in the red, "high yield" debt that they'll never be able to repay. The coal industry has been shut, hammering our power utilities. Where do you suppose electric cars get recharged? Wind and solar are impossible without capital subsidies, currently supply 2% of our energy needs. An electric bulldozer or battery powered 18-wheeler, farm tractor, or jet airliner are physically impossible.
The Democrats don't care. Their platform is evil, to loot as much as possible, destroying our future as a semi-free society. You will be told where to work, which waiting list to join for a medical or dental procedure by an incompetent government doctor who doesn't care what the outcome is, because he can't be sued for malpractice and all competition was abolished, except for politicians and bureaucrats with private care, private jets, and bodyguards. They will grudgingly and cynically wave the American flag, no longer a symbol of freedom, part of an evil machine rigged to bankrupt you, to defeat the aspirations of children and indoctrinate them to recite insane bullshit about global warming and oppressed transgender people of color using the girls' restrooms and locker rooms in unionized government schools.
.
Why would Microsoft design a Solitaire game that was hopelessly rigged? Worse, every cell phone reports every call and constantly broadcasts your location. I did an article recently on digital police gear, gunshot locators, etc. The Feds and local cops can dial up your cell phone and locate you and listen whether your phone is turned on or not. Spy evidence is admissible in court, and Google knows every keystroke on your keyboard, every click.
Infinitely worse, Barack Obama shoveled $3 billion to Black Lives Matter, fines levied on big banks. EEOC and hate speech hooey populated DoD and research universities with Chinese graduate students and Islamic jihadis. Remember the massacre at Fort Hood? Small pototoes compared to wholesale looting of American rocket science and nuclear secrets. Apple was one of the worst commercial traitors, shipping state of the art processors and circuit layouts to China, banking tax free profits in Ireland. Think Tesla is cool? Elon Musk is a subsidy whore who couldn't produce a skateboard without Federal and California taxpayer loot.
If you've been paying attention, you know that the U.S. government is bankrupt, $25 trillion in debt and losing another trillion every year, two-thirds of all spending for "entitlements" paid to people who were taxed $1 for Social Security and Medicare and get $3 in benefits, a ponzi pyramid with $200 trillion in unfunded payola liabilities, no legal or political exit. The Federal Reserve balance sheet looks like an unfunny joke. Total household debt is booked as bank assets, and the whole American finance system depends on higher and higher housing prices, which more and more young people are unable to afford. The drug epidemic takes 70,000 lives a year, enriching gangsters. Education has been dumbed down to push gender neutral silence. NBA and NFL scout high schools with the worst academic scores, and college is a playpen for negro athletes who are exempt from studing math, history, or English.
I don't even want to discuss the news and entertainment industry. Disney and Comcast own most of it, including ESPN. Small business is dominated by bars and convenience stores that sell beer and cigarettes. The oil and gas industry is shrinking, barely able to make a profit on exploration and production. Horizontal frackers are $120 billion in the red, "high yield" debt that they'll never be able to repay. The coal industry has been shut, hammering our power utilities. Where do you suppose electric cars get recharged? Wind and solar are impossible without capital subsidies, currently supply 2% of our energy needs. An electric bulldozer or battery powered 18-wheeler, farm tractor, or jet airliner are physically impossible.
The Democrats don't care. Their platform is evil, to loot as much as possible, destroying our future as a semi-free society. You will be told where to work, which waiting list to join for a medical or dental procedure by an incompetent government doctor who doesn't care what the outcome is, because he can't be sued for malpractice and all competition was abolished, except for politicians and bureaucrats with private care, private jets, and bodyguards. They will grudgingly and cynically wave the American flag, no longer a symbol of freedom, part of an evil machine rigged to bankrupt you, to defeat the aspirations of children and indoctrinate them to recite insane bullshit about global warming and oppressed transgender people of color using the girls' restrooms and locker rooms in unionized government schools.
.
Things I miss
Old, infirm, and considerably disfigured, it's evident that some things are hopelessly lost in life's rear view mirror. I'll never twirl and take a girl tightly in my arms again while we dance, which I did brilliantly in bars and supper clubs, my partner and I applauded by other guests. I miss dancing. Some days I find it difficult to walk without using a cane.
I miss sexual prowess, svengali-like magnetism, and almost infinite endurance at age 32. It was all downhill after a brief season of masculine magic. Seems unfair that peak enjoyment only persists a year or so, took a very long time to achieve and sagged so abruptly. Later in life, sex became mechanical and complicated, then a dry echo of manhood, lost forever.
I miss driving a powerful car, confidently and effortlessly. Over a year ago I sold the Dodge, partly because I could no longer afford it, but also because I no longer trusted myself behind the wheel at highway speed or in competitive city traffic. My favorite car was Clare's white Monte Carlo, flying over curvy river roads, age 28. Second favorite was a thundering Volvo roadster, driving on the wrong side of the road in Australia, age 31.
I miss directing pro crews and talented cast. Ten years was too little. I miss multitrack mixing and cutting visual poetry, behind the beat, around the beat, a gasp of surprise. I miss Mizars and Redheads, C-stands and spun diffusion, the smell of hot black barndoors on a 2K fresnel, the thrill of sharply dimensional three-point light in a tight close-up.
Soon I will miss writing.
.
I miss sexual prowess, svengali-like magnetism, and almost infinite endurance at age 32. It was all downhill after a brief season of masculine magic. Seems unfair that peak enjoyment only persists a year or so, took a very long time to achieve and sagged so abruptly. Later in life, sex became mechanical and complicated, then a dry echo of manhood, lost forever.
I miss driving a powerful car, confidently and effortlessly. Over a year ago I sold the Dodge, partly because I could no longer afford it, but also because I no longer trusted myself behind the wheel at highway speed or in competitive city traffic. My favorite car was Clare's white Monte Carlo, flying over curvy river roads, age 28. Second favorite was a thundering Volvo roadster, driving on the wrong side of the road in Australia, age 31.
I miss directing pro crews and talented cast. Ten years was too little. I miss multitrack mixing and cutting visual poetry, behind the beat, around the beat, a gasp of surprise. I miss Mizars and Redheads, C-stands and spun diffusion, the smell of hot black barndoors on a 2K fresnel, the thrill of sharply dimensional three-point light in a tight close-up.
Soon I will miss writing.
.
Sunday, February 2, 2020
Trump
Obama appointees and career civil servants at the National Security Council, CIA, and State Department have done everything in their power to sabotage and oust President Trump. The national news media, particularly the New York Times, Washington Post, NPR, and CNN have promoted every leak and every scathing Democrat attack into another indictment of Trump and his "base" of 63 million supporters, who are mocked as easily-led rubes. We've been told repeatedly that Trump cheated in 2016, and he will collude with foreign adversaries to cheat in 2020. Trump has been compared to Adolph Hitler and accused of lining his pockets with taxpayer money, obstructing Congress, and telling thousands of lies.
A few items are less well known. Antifa and black rioters will disrupt the Democrat National Convention in Milwaukee. Tens of thousands of Bernie supporters pray daily that Trump will die. It may not be possible to conduct an orderly general election in November. Re-election of President Trump will be decried as electoral fraud. We are on the cusp of civil war.
A few items are less well known. Antifa and black rioters will disrupt the Democrat National Convention in Milwaukee. Tens of thousands of Bernie supporters pray daily that Trump will die. It may not be possible to conduct an orderly general election in November. Re-election of President Trump will be decried as electoral fraud. We are on the cusp of civil war.
The Ballad of Wolf and Rex
There must be some kind of way out of here
said the Joker to the Thief
There's too much confusion
I can't get no relief
Businessmen they drink my wine
plowmen dig my earth
Every one along the line
nobody of it is worth
No reason to get excited
the Thief he kindly spoke
There are many here among us
who feel that life is but a joke
But you and I we've been through that
and this is not our fate
So let us not talk falsely now
the hour's getting late
Honored by his friendship, exasperated by his manipulation, grateful in a thousand ways that Rex tolerated and defended me, admired and published my work, he flew me to Costa Rica and gave me a status unequaled in the Gulch that Rex built at enormous personal risk.
He gave his life to advance the cause of liberty, totally deaf to the rule of law. Paradoxically, it could have saved him. Among hundreds of crystal clear recollections, none was as sharp as Rex firing from the hip, one two three rounds in the compound after dark. Lord knows what the neighbors thought. Our next door neighbor was the concrete-walled Russian Consulate. The baroque Belgian Embassy across the street probably went on high alert. We had a tighter perimeter than they did. Gunfire in the diplomatic quarter was frequent, usually something disagreeable and dangerous. Rex handed me the gun and I held it at arm's length like a duelist, plugged a tree to feel what the trigger and recoil were like, swept my jacket aside and stuck it behind my back.
If you have occasion to fire a Makarov, it pulls to the left.
.
said the Joker to the Thief
There's too much confusion
I can't get no relief
Businessmen they drink my wine
plowmen dig my earth
Every one along the line
nobody of it is worth
No reason to get excited
the Thief he kindly spoke
There are many here among us
who feel that life is but a joke
But you and I we've been through that
and this is not our fate
So let us not talk falsely now
the hour's getting late
Honored by his friendship, exasperated by his manipulation, grateful in a thousand ways that Rex tolerated and defended me, admired and published my work, he flew me to Costa Rica and gave me a status unequaled in the Gulch that Rex built at enormous personal risk.
He gave his life to advance the cause of liberty, totally deaf to the rule of law. Paradoxically, it could have saved him. Among hundreds of crystal clear recollections, none was as sharp as Rex firing from the hip, one two three rounds in the compound after dark. Lord knows what the neighbors thought. Our next door neighbor was the concrete-walled Russian Consulate. The baroque Belgian Embassy across the street probably went on high alert. We had a tighter perimeter than they did. Gunfire in the diplomatic quarter was frequent, usually something disagreeable and dangerous. Rex handed me the gun and I held it at arm's length like a duelist, plugged a tree to feel what the trigger and recoil were like, swept my jacket aside and stuck it behind my back.
If you have occasion to fire a Makarov, it pulls to the left.
.
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