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Monday, May 25, 2015

The establishment, holy host or drunken greeks

Wasted about half an hour this morning trying to figure out how to make that font darker.  Why the fuck would they make the font grey when they could have just as easily made it  black?  A lot of the trouble in this world of ours is caused by people making something less clear and simple than it should be, in favor of making it more obscure just because somebody (probably the boss's son in law) thinks it would look cooler that way. 

All I could figure out in my half hour search was that it probably can be fixed, but it won't be easy.  And you know those computer things, sometimes you can spend all day on it and get nothing accomplished, that is if you are lucky, most likely you will just make everything worse.  I am done fooling with it for the moment.


I didn't know that thing about the Indians came to be running casinos, and I assume it is the same thing that allows them to peddle cigarettes without all that state tax on them, maybe booze too? 

But they can't peddle pot because the federal law is against it, even when the state law is for it.  I was thinking about that because on this week's trip me and a couple friends visited a pot dispensary in Colorado.  What an experience.  Normally you have to skulk about to  get your pot but here we just asked the concierge about where is the nearest dispensary, and she called on one of the younger employees who had all the information, but said this is just what she heard, she had never been there herself, which nobody believed.

So let's see, you have to present an ID, and you have to be older than 18 or 21, and that's enough to get you into the inner room where dope flowers (all anybody smokes anymore is the flowers) are displayed in cases with a little tag which indicates their THC content, and some information about their healing properties which I don't think anybody reads, and you pick your dope and they wrap it up and you pay them.  Technically you can only smoke it yourself, and only at home, but as long as you sneak around a bit and aren't too bold nobody minds.  What a world we live in.


I've heard that story about Nixon opening up to China because no liberal could have gotten away with it, but I don't think there was any establishment guiding his hand, I think he was doing it as a personal coup.  Actually I think we would probably have done it at any time, except maybe not when a democrat was in power, as you pointed out.  And the whole point was not so much that the Chinese were now our pals, but both of us wanted to stick it to the Russkies.  I don't remember that there was much of a fuss about it at the time.  Maybe on the far right.  Do you remember a kerfuffle on the part of your ilk at the time.

I think both parties are equally warlike.  The Republicans are more vocal than the dems (witness how currently they are all calling for stronger action against ISIS, but when asked specifically about boots on the ground they begin to mumble).  After Vietnam it took about thirty years for us to catch war fever again, and it will probably take thirty or more years for us to get it back again, and right now almost nobody wants boots on the ground.  I wonder how Rand Paul's dovish stance will help him in the primaries.  I say that if he does gain traction with that, you will see some of the other republican candidates changing their tune.

We've talked about the establishment before.  I think our differing opinions on that are that you see them as some kind of secret council that meets and makes decisions that they all follow, whereas I see them as kind of an unruly mob fighting each other for whatever they want at the time.  Perhaps we could compare your establishment to God and his angels, and mine would be more like the Greek gods who we were always fooling around with each other, and dragging us mortals into their fight.

Perhaps I quibble, but I don't think Chicago deserves the murder capital name.  Overall, because our per capita rate is higher than New York of LA we probably have the highest total, but per capita I think we are about tenth in nation.

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