buying toasters together

Beagles is correct that there is a difference in tone between the two statements, but as far as import there is not so much.

If Beagles expects me to read his links he will have to preface them with how what they say backs up a particular statement he has made, but I am not going to read a whole article blind and guess what Beagles wants me to take away from it.  From the text of the links, I get the impression that they are garden variety news links from msn, and though I don't use that feed, I do read a variety of garden variety news links and I assume that the msn links are saying the same thing I read in mine.

And I do agree with Beagles that it is a problem, that is that the number of asylum seekers is overwhelming the people who are supposed to deal with them, though one wonders why the simple expedient of hiring more judges has not been done.  Beagles seems to mix immigration with asylum seekers which makes it hard to discuss, when is he talking about one, when is he talking about the other, they are not the same thing.  Nothing is being done about global warming or the national debt and I see both as far greater threats to the nation, so I don't get too worked up about this one.

Assimilation refers to the newcomers becoming like old-timers, not vice versa.  Survivors is an odd word to use.  it applies to people who live after a good many are killed.  It hardly applies to assimilation. I'm not sure if we have a word that refers directly to the effect the newcomers have on the old-timers, but I believe we used to call it the melting pot.  It's generally seen as a pretty cool thing, without the krauts we wouldn't have Christmas trees.  I don't know why Beagles is so against it.  I like salsa.


Beagles makes an interesting point about the mixed-race couples in tv commercials.  You see it happening but you don't see much in the media about it.  It's not a government mandate, but it's something businesses and advertising companies have taken up on their own,  When I first saw them there would be a person of one race talking and then a person of another race and of the opposite sex would appear and I wondered at first what are they doing there, and then there was some kind of show of affection and I realized wow, they are a couple.  What's kind of cool is they don't make some sort of statement about how there should be racial equality, they just agree to buy a toaster or car insurance like nothing special is going on here. 

It's great.

Mass Migrations

"I don't think he knew what he was talking about, and maybe he still doesn't.  

I don't see a lot of daylight between the former statement and the following:

 you have a stable genius, pardon me very stable genius running the country who loves raising the roof over this, and a senate majority that slobbers over each other to kiss his feet." 

I suppose I'm biased, but I think that a disinterested third party might say that the first statement expresses reasonable doubt, while the second one expresses bitter, sarcastic exaggeration. 

I have provided numerous links to my references on this issue, but Uncle Ken either refuses to read them or dismisses them as Trumpist propaganda.  While Trump may have a certain amount of control over the US Senate, I don't think he has taken over the major news media outlets, at least not yet.  Okay, there's FOX, but they were like that before Trump came along.

History is full of mass migrations that forever changed the nature of the populations into which they migrated.  The Huns, the Mongols, the Goths, and the Vikings immediately come to mind, but those were warrior cultures.  The current mass migrants are refugees, not warriors, so it's not exactly the same thing.  The first example that comes to my mind is the refugees from the Dust Bowl back in the 1930s.  Then there's the Irish Potato Famine refugees that flooded into the US during the 19th Century.  Our own ancestors were refugees from the poverty and war of Europe, mostly during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.  The whole US westward expansion from sea to shinning sea also qualifies as one of the largest mass migrations in history.  Then there's the movement of Blacks and Appalachians from the rural South to the urban North during our own lifetimes, although I understand that tide is currently ebbing back to its place of origin.  I don't know what rate of migration it takes to qualify as a mass migration, but I would be surprised if a hundred thousand a month wasn't in the ball park.

Every time one culture rapidly moves in on another culture, there is a certain amount of conflict, sometimes it's physically violent, and other times it involves discrimination and exclusion.  All of us who grew up in Chicago should be familiar with that, but I understand that a certain amount of memory loss is normal at our age.  I think we all know what assimilation means as well, it's when the conflict dies down to the point that we start marrying each others sisters.  The Blacks and Whites still have a way to go with that one but, if the commercials I've been seeing on TV lately are any indication, the tide is beginning to turn.

Social Media Part One

 I don't think he knew what he was talking about, and maybe he still doesn't.  

I don't see a lot of daylight between the former statement and the following:

 you have a stable genius, pardon me very stable genius running the country who loves raising the roof over this, and a senate majority that slobbers over each other to kiss his feet. 

except maybe for the addition of the Senate majority who are basically irrelevant to anything anyway.

Historically, mass migrations like this usually end up with the survivors assimilating each other after a period of conflict. 

What does this mean?  How can survivors (or anybody?)  assimilate each other?  What sort of conflict?  Whatever is Beagles talking about?

See we have had this discussion before which chiefly consists of Beagles hysterically thinking somehow they are going to take over the country, and proposing a bunch of crackpot schemes where it is left up to me to correct his mistaken facts and basically do all the research, and I'm not going to do that anymore.


I have been a member of an improv group for about five years now, we have had a couple leaders in that time, but there is also a rough democracy,  The improvers are consulted for their opinions and sometimes they give them without being consulted, and this wastes a lot of time.  What one person says inspires someone else to say something, which inspires still another, and so on and so on, and meanwhile the boards lay before us untrodden.  I come to improv to trod them and not to listen to a bunch of yak yak.

I got to thinking we need to have some other sort of forum, one where people can discuss their ideas without taking up board time.  Well of course The Institute is the gold standard for forums, but I didn't see my fellow improvers as likely to write multi paragraphed posts, so I thought maybe I could interest them with something that encourages shorter responses and is pretty easy to use and I thought why not Facebook?

A multi paragraph post on the subject will follow but it will have to wait until tomorrow morning.

We're Doomed

Trump did not cause the current immigration crisis, it was going on before he took office.  It has gotten worse during his administration, but I don't think that's his fault.  He promised to fix it, but I don't think he knew what he was talking about, and maybe he still doesn't.  Nevertheless, if Trump resigned tomorrow, the problem would not go away.  What we need is a total overhaul of the immigration laws, and even that might be too little too late.  The ICE people and the Border Patrol people do not make the laws, it's their job to enforce the laws as they are currently written.  I think they are doing the best they can with what they've got to work with, but it's like trying to bail out the Titanic with a ten quart pail.  Historically, mass migrations like this usually end up with the survivors assimilating each other after a period of conflict.  Like I said before, it's not going to be pretty.

For most of our lifetimes, this country has been exporting jobs and importing people.  Although it's not a magic bullet, it might help if we bring the jobs to where the people are.  Stop all imports from Latin America and put the Latin American immigrants to work producing the same products that they did in their home countries.  We'll have to pay them more, but the labor costs should be offset by the reduced shipping expenses and the fact that they will be spending their paychecks here and recirculating the money back into the local economy.  If present trends continue, it won't be long before there is nobody left in Latin America to make this stuff for us anyway.  The only things we need from Latin America that can't be produced here are coffee and bananas, but our genetic engineers should be able to do something about that.  If they can make meat out of yeast, they ought to be able to make coffee and bananas out of something or other.

I'm sorry to say that Uncle Ken's Christmas lighting campaign is probably doomed as well.  The board seems to be giving him the old run around, nobody wants to help him, and he refuses to read any documents that might contain a loophole in his favor.  I wish it were not so but, as my grandmother used to say, "Wish in one hand, shit in the other, and see which one fills up first."

ketchup or salsa

As I mentioned early I would have loved to have more people join me in my cause.  I tried to get others to help me get signatures but I was not successful.  It's kind of work, and it's kind of embarrassing and people fear the board a little.  I didn't have much faith in getting people to email the board because I didn't think most people would follow through.  Some people will tell you anything to get rid of you and some people will just forget.  Also I would have no record of who had sent what, that would be in the hands of the board and they could say whatever about that.

As I've said previously, the 200 names would only have forced a consideration and my 100 names have already accomplished that.  I don't have the data to do this online.  In retrospect maybe I could have asked for the emails of those signing the petition, but I was afraid that would deter them from signing. 

I said earlier that I was thinking of sending an email to Laura, the committee chief who I thought was on my side, asking what is going on with this survey formulation.  I did send her one yesterday and this morning she has written me back that she has been circulating that around with the original members of the committee.  Naturally my blood is boiling.  I wrote her back that I thought i was going to be part of the formulation.  I was going to write back more but I am too angry at the moment.  I have to let myself cool down and let reason return.


The reason this border thing continues to fester is that you have a stable genius, pardon me very stable genius running the country who loves raising the roof over this, and a senate majority that slobbers over each other to kiss his feet.  What do you expect to happen?

There are a lot of refugee camps all over the world, there are Palestinian camps that are as old as the members of The Institute.  The refugees do the best they can but mostly these are sub par places.  The reasons these countries established the camps is that they didn't want the refugees mixing with their populace so the people cannot leave them,

There are a lot of small towns like in Iowa and Nebraska that as Beagles has described have been losing populations, but meatpacking plants have moved in and hired a lot of Mexican immigrants who live in the town and rent houses and pay taxes.  At first the local Gringos were appalled but when they saw their towns prospering again they changed their minds and did not mind salsa replacing the ketchup in their diners. Everything is fine until ICE moves in and hauls all the migrants away.

Uncle Ken Needs Help

The more I think about it, I think that Uncle Ken needs to get more people involved in this effort.  I previously said something about a hundred people showing up at a meeting but, as Uncle Ken pointed out, that's probably an unrealistic expectation.  Any number of people, though, would be more effective than one.  Those who don't want to attend meetings could write letters or emails to the board members.  I have heard that individual messages like that have more impact than names on a petition.  Not that the petition was a bad idea, but it didn't go far enough.  Didn't one of the board members say that they would have taken it more seriously if it had 200 names on it?  That's also something the new recruits could help with, circulating additional petitions.  This whole thing could be organized on line, like the "Clean Slate" campaign was.

Meanwhile, back at the border:  I wouldn't object to letting more immigrants, or even all of them, into the country if there was some kind of plan.  I think the asylum system is beyond redemption and should be scrapped and replaced with something that has a snowball's chance in hell of working.  The reason that hasn't been done yet is there is no clear consensus about either letting them in or keeping them out.  The people who want to keep them out will never agree to anything that lets them in more efficiently, and the people who want to let them in won't agree to anything that keeps them out more efficiently.  I don't know how to fix that, I'm just trying to identify the problem.

Some time ago, there was an article in National Geographic about a refugee camp in Africa that has evolved into a permanent settlement.  It has streets, wells, shops, and schools.  Last I heard, somebody was surveying and mapping it so that the growth could be more deliberate.  I don't remember how much government involvement there is, I think the refugees have mostly done it themselves.  There are regions in the US that have been losing population for years and would likely welcome a development like this in their neighborhood.  Somebody should do a study about that.

Ken and the Kondo Board Part Seven and Last

I wanted to discuss three matters before I let go of the subject.  One was the difference between rules and the rulers, or as Beagles calls it on paper vs the real world, another was my personal reaction to all this, and the third is the mysterious character of the board.  Looking back I think that I have already discussed the the first point plenty so I will move on to the other two.

I don't know what I expected when I first faced the board.  I think I just expected to shoot my mouth off and then have the board go on about its business.  As the date approached I got more and more sure of my cause and developed a whole set of arguments, imagined myself standing up before the board and declaiming my cause like Mr Smith gone to Washington, but then I had to keep telling myself to calm down so I didn't look like some raving crank

The big surprise for me at that meeting was that the board was divided on the matter, so suddenly there was some hope.  I was sorely disappointed by their refusal to do a survey, and I think that was when the idea of the petition first came to me.  I wasn't sure if it was even legal by board rules but when I brought it up the board shrugged.  Still I had trepidations.  I thought about it.  That meeting was on a Thursday and I didn't get into the hallway until Tuesday.  I half expected some condo board thug to come out and tell me to stop that right away if I knew what was good for me.  But nobody interfered with me and the people I pressed with my petition where mostly favorable.  In my own eyes I had become their champion, fighting for their rights.  A few pressed me about replacing those awful rugs in the elevators, but I remained a single issue man.

But there was a problem of mission creep.  When the Clean Slate took over one of their issues was transparency.  When we vote on new board members they each submit a campaign page and they almost always stress transparency, but there is mostly just the appearance of transparency, everything is mired with boring gobbledegook, and nobody outside the board knows what is going on.  If Beagles were in the condo I guess he would pore over that crap, but we don't have many like Beagles.  I would like us to have some kind of interactive website where unit owners and board members could interact.  But again I am not going to push for that until this Christmas lights thing is over.

The other matter is the mysterious nature of the board.  Who is on it because they love Marina City and the residents?  Who is in it because they are natural social climbers and they aim to get to the top?  Who is in it because they want to control what is going on to make more money on their investment?  What are the the cliques and blocs among them?  I can see where some of these ex-congressmen and senators who become lobbyists would come in handy for some lobby.  If you want to press your cause you need to know where the chutes and ladders are.


My cornbread was successful enough.  My sister gave me some tins for Christmas so my muffins came out looking like proper mini muffins rather than something dredged out of the catbox.  I made some plain because some people like vanilla ice cream.  I did add some canned corn which I had previously resisted and it gave them a nice crunch and moistness.  The black olives did not overwhelm the olive jalapeno muffins.  I used the jalapeno  slices in the jar and added some of the oil they were pickled and that gave the muffins a pleasant hotness, not the hotness that burns your lips as you bite into it, bu the hotness that you don't notice so much until you have already had a few bites and then it comes from the back of your throat.