Trump Wants the Panama Canal, Greenland, and Maybe Canada

 Trump Wants the Panama Canal, Greenland, and Maybe Canada

Speculation abounds as to why Donald Trump wants the Panama Canal. The simple answer may be that he wants to own the Santa Maria Golf and Country Club in Panama City. From there he plans to expand and build another club straddling the Panama Canal using it as a water hazard. Imagine a tee shot with you trying to clear the Culebra Cut (300ft) with a Maersk container ship moving through. Break out your 6-iron and keep your head down and arms straight. Bank shots off the Maersk bridge are possible but difficult to control.

The deadly Sharpie strikes again

As to Greenland, golf again is in the plans. The problem is that Mr. Trump made the same mistake many folks make in assuming Greenland is green and Iceland is covered in ice. Unless Artic Golf becomes a sport, Greenland would not be a great place to build a country club. On the other hand, golf is very popular in Iceland with 12% of its population playing on its 70 courses. Adding to Trump’s confusion is his assumption that Canada owns Greenland when it is an autonomous territory of Denmark.

Coincidentally, it is Denmark which is the headquarters of Maersk, the second largest container shipping company in the world and a regular user of the Panama Canal.

This brings us to Canada which Trump calls America’s 51st state. It has been speculated that Mr. Trump wants to follow in the footsteps of President William McKinley whose little 1898 dust-up was called the Spanish-American War and saw us eventually controlling the Philippines, Guam, and Puerto Rico. It was Puerto Rico where, in 2017, Trump demonstrated his athletic prowess by tossing out paper towels to hurricane victims.

Like Trump, McKinley was a big lover of tariffs and his “McKinley Tariff” raised the average duty on imports to 50%. As might have been predicted, the tariffs saw a steep increase in prices, the public got pissed, and Republicans lost their majority in the House, the Senate, and the Presidency. Trying to emulate President McKinley, Mr. Trump should be reminded that McKinley’s presidency didn’t end well. His second term was cut short by Leon Czolgosz who shot him.

Canada needs to be very concerned because President-elect Trump is a whiz with a Sharpie and a map. It wouldn’t take much for him to just circle Canada and Greenland and those two countries could be enjoying our healthcare system with its drug pricing set by greedy corporations and medical decisions made by insurance companies and not doctors. He could do it quicker than they could say, “Eh?”

Ebenezer Goes to Washington

 

Our Christmas celebration has just passed. I am reminded of one of the central characters of the many and varied stories of the holiday season. The one and only Ebenezer Scrooge. In the telling of A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens introduces us to this unhappy cold-hearted miser. The original story has been retold countless times in plays, movies, and animated features. It is a story of redemption where the miserly skinflint is shown the error of his ways by four ghosts, and he repents. Scrooge starts as a mean and despised individual but ends up making a transformation for the better. Such changes in real life are few and far between.

I am also reminded of another character that has been with us unchanged for decades. I see his name used with a certain derision in old episodes of Law and Order which is set in New York. He pops up in various film pieces like Ghosts Can’t Do It with Bo Derek and Anthony Quinn. In that movie, he is a businessman who has dealings with mob figures. Not much of a stretch there. He also had a cameo in Home Alone 2 where he gives Kevin directions to the lobby of The Plaza Hotel. He was mentioned in Devil’s Advocate where he could have easily played a more central role. He is even used in American Psycho as the idol of the main character, Patrick Bateman, a rapist and murderer. Talk about your typecasting.

The fictional Scrooge had a happy upbringing but, when push came to shove, he chose his lust for gold over the love of his life. With the Ghost of Christmas Past, when he looks back on his life and sees his fiancé, he regrets his decision. Our non-fictional Scrooge also chooses his lust for gold but still craves love and affection. He seeks to buy it like a commodity. He would never understand the Beatles' warning that money can’t buy love.

There have been over 130 “Scrooges” in film adaptations of the Christmas classic. The best of them was probably Alastair Sim (1951) and the second best, was George C. Scott (1984). If they ever make a true horror version of A Christmas Carol, their role of Scrooge could find none better than that guy from Palm Beach, Florida.

Dickens supposedly patterned Scrooge after a noted British eccentric and miser named John Elwes. Had Dickens lived in New York in the latter part of the 20th Century he might have had an even more despicable central character. The updated A Christmas Carol might be more horror-tragedy than inspirational. Our modern-day Scrooge would bulldoze the Cratchit home to erect a condo, take away Tiny Tim’s healthcare, and kick his crutch when he wasn’t looking.

When the Going Gets Tough...

 

There is nothing like a disaster to test the mettle of our leaders. I am reminded of a classic encounter between Mary Richards (Mary Tyler Moore) and Lou Grant (Ed Asner) on her show where Lou explains his survival in the tough world of television broadcasting. He claimed that his longevity was the result of learning how to “delegate blame.”

The Los Angeles fires are just another example of how shallow some of our leaders can be. While the good ones are looking for both immediate and long-term solutions to the complex wildfire problem in a drought-savaged environment, others are looking for political advantage with outstretched fingers pointing to delegate blame.

Enter our “Blamer in Chief” (NY Times description) to seize the day and place the entire event at the feet of California Governor Gavin Newsom. Yes, the president-elect-convicted-felon Donald Trump went so far as to break out his eight-page-with-Stormy-Daniels-centerfold dictionary, to come up with a derogatory term, twisting the governor’s last name to “Newscum.” Yes, the PECF soon-to-be PCF (President-Convicted-Felon) slithered to the cameras to once again try to distract from his own clown-car pile-up of a life to deride a political opponent instead of offering sage advice. I’m guessing that sage isn’t on his spice rack.

Of course, PCF Trump would have been prepared for such an event if he were in charge. That statement might have some validity if we just forget about hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria where, 5 months into his presidency he had failed to appoint administrators at FEMA or NOAA and had frozen 216 positions at the National Weather Service. We do have to credit then President Trump (he had not yet earned his coveted CF, convicted felon title) who, in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, personally tossed Puerto Ricans rolls of paper towels to mop up their own mess. We can also ignore the failed federal response while he was president that resulted in almost 3,000 unnecessary deaths in that 2017 disaster.

Certainly, there is a time for reflection, analysis, and Monday morning quarterbacking, but while raging fires are still destroying homes and placing lives at risk, now is not the time to score political points. If you can’t use your hands to help the situation, keep your hands and pointing fingers in your pocket.

Hmmm!

Hmmm

I recently saw a post that gave reference to a 1982 discovery of a highly preserved body of a human over 7,000 years old, in Florida. Now, Florida is not known for such artifacts so my curiosity was peaked. It turns out the remains of over 168 humans were found in a pond bog in an area southwest of St. Augustine, near Titusville, and west of the Indian River. Many of the bodies had been intentionally buried and wrapped in cloth by someone. These Native Americans lived in Florida 2,000 years before the pyramids were built in Egypt.

This group is called the Windover People and DNA analysis shows they had ancient Asian marker similarities. They fished, hunted, and gathered food. They fought with other humans as some of the remains revealed they had been killed by spearpoints. The burial process was deliberate as the bodies were covered in cloth that was secured in the bog with stakes below the water line.

We’ve been around a long time. We are all part of a lifeform continuum that has existed for over 200,000 years, and our hominin human relatives were around as far back as 7 million B.C.E. When I was born, the world population was 2.3 billion. By the time I reached high school, that number was up to 3 billion. Today, it stands at around 8 billion. We have been stumbling over the surface of the earth for just around 0.01% of its history.

Spain, France, Great Britain, and the United States have claimed the area now called Florida. I will intentionally ignore the Confederate Flag as the CSA was never considered a nation by any foreign government. So, we have an ancient civilization in Florida of Asian descent and other Native Americans who were here before any Europeans dared venture to this Florida corner of the world. This raises the question, “Who are the immigrants again?”

Democracy

Democracy is that flawed unattainable objective that we strive and die for. It is a concept that can’t be seen but we know when it is threatened. In its simplest form, with just two people, it can function but still doesn’t always work. Add more people and the problems expand exponentially.

A marriage between two people can be democratic. If successful, a marriage works when two people work together toward common goals in a symbiotic relationship that exists on compromise. A husband wants the thermostat set at 76 degrees, but his wife wants it set to 72 degrees. The solution is simple, you set the temperature at 72 degrees and the husband puts on a sweater. There you have a working democracy.

When we add more people to this democracy, we find it can become unmanageable. The solution in the United States was to set up a representative democracy where our elected representatives make decisions for us with the goal of benefiting the constituency. It may look good on paper, but the reality is that it fails to factor in greed, corruption, naïve emotional voters who may be easily swayed by empty promises, and any number of external forces that work against the democratic objective.

While it remains to be seen what awaits us after January 20, 2025, we have been here before. Our new president could issue an order to round up and deport all Chihuahuas because they are Mexicans without proof of citizenship. While such a scenario is totally ludicrous, he would find support from some in Congress, if it happened. That is the current insane state of our democracy.

Project 2025 is a blueprint for the dismantling of democracy to be replaced by a Frankenstein-like creation that is large and powerful but impossible to control. This pseudo-democracy would be nothing more than a dictatorship managed by a powerful wealthy class of oligarchs. If you understand anything about the “democracy” of Russia, you can see where this is headed. By admission, this new president admires the power of Vladimir Putin, Viktor Orbán, Kim Jong Un, and others of their ilk. He has learned the lessons of Hitler and Mussolini and thinks they had it right but only lacked the right environment for success. When I say “he has learned” I mean that others who are his influencers learned as he is too busy to be burdened with history or facts.

Over a million Americans have died in service to our country with over half of those deaths in combat. Countless more have been maimed or so badly damaged as to be considered additional casualties in our fight for democracy. It would be a shame to see their sacrifice be for naught as monied interests with corrupt intent squander those lost lives in exchange for more gold in their pockets.

Warning, The Surgeon General has found that politicians are bad for your health.

Americans have made poor elective choices before and survived. We seem to be in a lather-rinse-repeat cycle where we keep electing charlatans, eventually see that nothing improves, and wait for the next bastard to come along with more outlandish promises. As consumers, we regularly fall for the spiel of “new and improved” only to find that our clothes are no cleaner, our teeth are not brighter, and that this brand of cigarettes is not safer because it is the choice of nine out of ten doctors.

I don’t envy our youth who spend much of their time with their heads buried in “the cloud” that is our new world structure. Artificial intelligence has the ability to help humanity but only if real human intelligence doesn’t get burned in the process. I can only hope that our youth look up from their devices long enough to see what is happening around them in time to salvage this democratic ideal before the monster takes a bride. The monster's offspring will not be pretty, even if they wear expensive clothes and long red ties. I could go on but I feel a chill and I need to go find my sweater.

Surprise! Surprise! Surprise!

 

While that was a comical expression often voiced by Gomer Pyle, it is now on the lips of many red-capped MAGA folks. They are asking how they could have been deceived by the man who tells no lies. By most accounts, the number one pre-election issue in MAGA World was immigration. Now a billionaire born in South Africa and a first-generation billionaire son of Indian parentage will be “advising” Donald J. Trump on how he should revise the tax structure, which programs to cut to reduce spending, and even immigration solutions.

Jim Neighbors as USMC Pvt. Gomer Pyle

Musk is the richest man on earth and Ramaswamy is a newly minted billionaire who made his money as a Wall Street speculator famous for “pump-and-dump” schemes. Neither has taken office but they will be heading the newest government oxymoron, DOGE which stands for Department Of Government Efficiency. They will be doing this out of the kindness of their little black hearts, trust them. Laura Looney’s (sp?) head just exploded in Matt Gaetz’ lap.

MAGA hardliners are against all immigration as they equate the influx of “not-us” humans from “those other places” as not worthy of American jobs. Why should foreigners get all those good slaughterhouse slots or the privilege of working in the great outdoors to pick our nuts, fruits, and vegetables? If anyone is to pick our nuts, shouldn’t it be our president? He is exceptionally qualified and selects only the finest and richest nuts available.

It would appear that the “immigration problem” is more nuanced than they let on. If immigrants are pretty, they may qualify to be trophy wives for some wealthy men who can afford good prenups. Trump is working on his third wife and is possibly thinking toward a future fourth. One wife was American born, one was from Czechoslovakia, and the current one was born in Slovenia.

To further complicate this simple immigration problem is the ever-popular (among the wealthy) Department of Labor H-1B program. Trump has used it to hire cheap labor for his businesses although he is willing to cut corners when hiring landscaping and trades workers for his properties. Those positions are harder to justify under DOL rules. It is much easier to hire undocumented workers for peanuts if you bother to pay them at all.

Musk and Ramaswamy both think America has a shortage of excellent engineering talent. This is particularly true when you want that talent to work cheaply so the bosses might be able to keep more of that cash. I’m sure that both of these patriotic Americans would pass on those salary efficiencies by lowering the costs on any government contracts they might have. Musk’s Tesla electric car company got 724 of the coveted H-1B visas that are extendable for three-year periods, can be renewed, or the holders can apply for green cards.

Taking the H-1B incentive even further, Ramaswamy believes that, not only will they work cheaper, they would be replacing Americans who lack culture. His quote, “Our American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long. That doesn’t start in college, it starts YOUNG.” He claims that we have revered adequacy over excellence, placing a greater value on the football jock and prom queen over the math Olympiad champ.

Such comments brought on projectile vomiting, head spinning, and bed levitation from the likes of Laura (is it Looney or Loomer, I can never get that straight). She is a firm believer in Great Replacement theory. As any straight-shooting white nationalist knows, white European and French-descended Americans are being replaced by non-white people. Laura went so far as to spread false rumors about Haitian immigrants eating the pets of their Ohio neighbors, and now she gets no love from Trump. On December 28, 2024, Trump announced that he was changing his stance and is now fully behind the H-1B immigration visas.

Hell, Ramaswamy and Musk were not supporters in either of Trump’s primary runs and now they have seats at the big boy table. Musk was formerly a Democrat and Ramaswami claims he is not a party Republican but only using the GOP to advance his personal agenda. Social justice and environmental issues will be likely targets for spending cuts as WOKE is a four-letter word. While the MAGA faithful hate all immigrants equally, these two believe that some immigrants are more equal than others.

The Trump about-face on limited aspects of the immigration issue should be no surprise. His wife is a prime example of how money and privilege are exceptions to the party's hardline on immigration. In 1996, Melania Knauss worked in New York as a model and was paid for ten modeling jobs with a tourist visa but without a green card that would permit her to perform paid work in the US.

In 2000 she was dating Donald Trump and applied for an “Einstein Visa” called the EB-1. This visa is reserved for exceptional or extraordinary individuals from other countries. Examples cited would include Pulitzer, Oscar, and Olympic medal winners. It could also include respected academic researchers and multinational executives. Melania Knauss got her Einstein Visa in 2001. The paperwork is secret so we will never know what “extraordinary ability” she claimed. We can only guess.

So, now the MAGA faithful feel that they have been deceived just to get their votes. They are surprised, surprised, surprised to find that billionaire Trump would rather listen to fellow billionaires than to the “folks who brought him to the dance.” He no longer needs them. He can’t run for office again. He could try to not vacate but I don’t want to be the one that gets that in his head. Yeah, like he reads my posts. I guess I’m safe.

Actually, I agree with Musk and Ramaswami on the expansion of H-1B programs. I also think our entire immigration system is broken and in need of a serious overhaul. We should expand other programs like the H-2A for temporary and seasonal workers. We need immigrants, but not just in the hi-tech field. Honest and hard-working people from all walks of life should be allowed to apply through proper channels, get a prompt processing of applications, and, if accepted, a reasonable path to citizenship. My only problem with Trump's change of position is the hypocrisy of his pre-election campaign stance. Was I surprised? Nope.

Kilroy Was Here

If you are of a certain age, you might have seen the title phrase scrawled on a bathroom stall years ago. The phrase and accompanying cartoon of a bald man peering over a wall with clutched fingers became popular in WWII. Origin stories vary but one that is widely accepted is that the original Kilroy was James J. Kilroy, a shipyard inspector who validated the work of riveters with the now famous “tag.” He used it when inspecting rivet work on the hulls of many ships, especially those used for troop transport overseas.

GI’s saw the graffiti on their transport ships and it spread. Kilroy was the “super GI” who was always the first to arrive. Hitler saw the phrase on captured American equipment and decided that Kilroy was a high-level spy. A special outhouse was built for Truman, Stalin, and Churchill at the Potsdam conference. The first person to use it was Stalin who emerged and asked, “Who is Kilroy?”

Whatever the origin, “Kilroy was here” developed a life of its own even beyond the war. Kilroy was perhaps the first official American “emoji.” Today we have a wide variety of graphical emoticons to convey a writer’s mood or thought. The “happy face” and “thumbs-up” are popular having replaced the much earlier :-) [colon, dash, right parenthesis-now forces a graphic on some screens] that was possible before computer screens and printers could render images.

In Kilroy’s time, life was simple and the graffiti of the Kilroy character peering at you over his wall was amusing. Personal interactions back then were most often face-to-face with only occasional phone calls or letters to fill in the communication voids. Look around a room today and you are likely to see faces buried in ever-larger handheld screens communicating with other electronically linked souls. Some of those souls might even be in the same room.

Studies are all over the map as to the advantages and disadvantages of this shift to electronic communication and away from interpersonal dialogue. On the downside is the loss of nonverbal communication skills where much of the information resides.

One researcher, Albert Mehrabian, broke down communication as 55-38-7 where those percentages represented nonverbal-vocal-words. While those percentages can certainly be debated, and they are, expressions, body language, and inflection go a long way to conveying a message in a language where words alone can have varied interpretations.

The flip side that favors technology holds that it benefits those who might otherwise lack the ability to interact with others due to shyness, physical limitations, distance, or other reasons. Others posit that the Internet provides a platform for self-disclosure that might not happen without the thin veil of computer confidence which is similar to beer bravery and whiskey courage.

As someone who made a living through technology, I see it as an overall positive with a downside that we need to address. This holds especially true for developing minds. Young people should be forced while in school to develop face-to-face skills and taught the proper place and use of technology.

While Kilroy may have been replaced with a smiley-face emoji, we need to continue to expand and develop our interpersonal communication skills. An emoticon will not replace actual human expression, at least not soon. I can imagine a future where a camera mounted on your communication device of choice reads your body language and facial expressions and, using Artificial Intelligence, changes the inflection and tone of your comments and punctuates them with a realistic 3-D holographic emoticon.

I’ll leave you with my favorite Kilroy sighting. It was on a bathroom wall where it had been written, “I can yell, and jump for joy, ‘cause I was here before Kilroy.” Beneath that was scrawled, “Sorry to spoil, your little joke, I was here before, but my pencil broke, Kilroy.”