I’m Not The Only One

Silly Russians.

We’re nearing the end of 2010, and the United States still exists.  How could this have happened?

Since 1998, a whack job named Igor Panarin has made a name for himself (as well as some money from media appearances) predicting that the United States would dissolve and fracture into six territories.  By 2008 he finally announced that magical year would be 2010, giving his crackpot theory even more media attention, mostly from Russian state media.  Big surprise here, as the Russians are still no doubt sore from losing the Cold War and still brimming with anti-American sentiment.  I’d love to say this is some mentally ill transient sleeping on the sidewalks of Moscow, but he is actually the dean of the faculty of the Diplomatic Academy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia and a former KGB analyst as well as a self-proclaimed experts on U.S.-Russia relations. (more…)

Yes, it’s time again for the Olympics, the greatest sports event, next to the World Cup, that most Americans never bother to watch.

I’ll admit my bias here; I am not that into sports.  I rarely watch sports on television and when I do, my attention span barely allows me to tolerate it for more than 15 minutes.  Ironically, my first paying job in journalism was as a newspaper’s sports editor.  I understand the basic rules for football, soccer, baseball, boxing and other less complicated team sports.  I’m just not interested.  As you can guess, I’m even less interested in the Olympics. (more…)

North Korea got a taste of the NY Philharmonic this week, and have reportedly invited rock geezer Eric Clapton to play in Pyongyang. Kim Jong Il and his buddies love Western music and are itching to see more live performances, which means they may be more open to dialogues with the U.S. and its allies if they want to see such performances in the future.

Why didn’t anyone try music before as a way to improve relations with unfriendly countries? American music is the biggest export of American culture ever. Is there any country in the world whose people cannot name a single U.S. or British recording artist? And the U.S. is home to so many different genres of music, it’s hard for anyone to hear it and still see us as the enemy. Perhaps if Tony Blair had sent to Saddam’s palace the Clash to sing “Rock the Casbah” there wouldn’t be any U.S. troops in Iraq today and Saddam would be enjoying all sorts of musical performance in exchange for far more open relations with the U.S. and maybe even a discount on all his oil.

From a fiscal perspective, it is far cheaper for the U.S. to offer live performances of Western music to unfriendly nations than it is to execute expensive military ventures (not like we could afford to after Iraq!) as a means to thaw out some otherwise icy relations. (more…)

One of the reasons I haven’t had much time or energy to blog regularly (besides having the flu) is a job I got about three weeks ago as a seasonal employee for a toy retailer.  Because of a no-blogging agreement I signed as a condition of employment, I’m not going to reveal the name of this company.

My duties in this job is basically to maintain a particular section of the store and assist customers looking for toys within that section.  Unfortunately, I’ve had a lot of customers annoy me with their ignorant bullshit paranoia about toys from China.

Here’s a quick rundown of the goofy crapola I have to stomach on a daily basis: (more…)

The director of China’s State Food and Drug Administration has been charged with corruption and has been sentenced to death by the Chinese government. Apparently this political appointee was found accepting over US$1 million in bribes from Chinese manufacturers who wanted safety inspectors to look the other way while their below standard to potentially hazardous products reach American consumers.

It’s not often that I admire a communist country, but wouldn’t it be great if our government handed the death sentence to politicians and the heads of federal agencies who were found guilty of corruption, or at least gross negligence or incompetence?

That would keep politicians and their crony appointees on the straight and narrow and eliminate the monkey business that always seems to find a comfortable home in Washington.