First, a little joke!
As told by YouTube user Nurismatic Tales. Three contractors are bidding to fix a broken fence at the White House. One is from Chicago, another is from Tennessee, and the third is from Minnesota. All three go with a White House official to examine the fence. The Minnesota contractor takes out a tape measure and does some measuring, then works some figures with a pencil. "Well," he says, "I figure the job will run about $900. $400 for materials, $400 for my crew, and $100 profit for me." The Tennessee contractor also does some measuring and figuring, then says, "I can do this job for $700. $300 for materials, $300 for my crew, and $100 profit for me." The Chicago contractor doesn't measure or figure but leans over to the White House official and whispers, "$2,700." The official, incredulous, says, "You didn't even measure like the other guys! How did you come up with such a high figure?" The Chicago contractor whispers back, "$1000 for me, $1000 for you, and we hire the guy from Tennessee to fix the fence." "Done!" replies the government official. And that, my friends, is how the new stimulus plan will work. Amen brother! That is the 21st Century United States government. It has been a month since my last blog. Many things have happened since the last time I decided to write. Due to personal circumstances revolving around my career, educational status, these now completely ridiculous lockdowns and the impact it has had on my children’s schooling, and other factors, I had to walk away from writing this past month. This has led to two changes in my reality. First, what do you tell a man who has had four different careers by his mid-40s that have all slowly been replaced by automation or economic circumstances? You tell him like any heartless bureaucrat, “Your job is extinct. Go train yourself in something useful for the fifth time.” This is my current reality and part of the reason I jokingly called my personal website the Expert of Some. After Retail (1992 – 2001), I have been a live film and audio/visual production tech broken off into the subcategories of television master control, broadcasting technician, and telecommunication infrastructure splicer (All similar jobs in the same industry from 1998 – 2014), Linux Technician (2015 – 2018), and Technical Writing/Project Coordinator (2018 – 2021). As a subcategory of the latter two careers, add Engineering Designer to the list (2021 – Present). I will be able to add this into my list of expertise’s probably in the next year giving me even more career diversity. Since moving to San Diego in 2012, this Designer job is now my fourth different career in under a decade. But this career change has also made me aware of something about “working for the man.” The larger a company is, the more likely it is that I will not fit their culture. The problem has nothing to do with my technical skills, work ethic, or ‘emotional intelligence.’ I have succeeded and done well at each of these giant companies. My personality just does not fit inside the billion dollar, 21st Century mega-corporation. I have worked with Echostar Communications/Dish Network (2004 – 2012), AT & T (2013 – 2014), and now Sempra Energy as a Contractor (2018 – 2021). I can not get promoted past a team or shift leader inside of a corporate culture where the people with the most connections succeed over the ones with the most talent. These companies all led me along with false promises inside of sterilized, backstabbing and clique-like cultures. I actually succeed and thrive inside of a more open-minded, small-business culture where my skills are more appreciated even if my paycheck is smaller than what these large companies can provide. Verimatrix, Gulf California Broadcasting (Where I was an interim manager for a year), Roex, Inc., Swank Audio Visual (RIP), and now, Engineering Partners, have a much smaller employee count ranging from the 30s (In the case of Roex) to the mid-200s (In the case of Swank and Verimatrix). Plus, the career I am currently learning is something that is vital to the functioning of our society. I am becoming an engineering designer which combines the knowledge I have gained in telecom, Linux, and the electrical industries with Project Management as well as learning the Autodesk design program AutoCAD. Engineering is something that will always be needed in our culture and being the individual that helps initiate projects for field workers is something that will never become ‘obsolete.’ Second, I am finishing my Master’s in May which is likely to end with me pursuing a sixth career (Professorship) starting after graduation. Writing and research has always been a passion and the reason I got into Technical Writing at my last job in the first place. Once this degree is done, I am hopeful that my life can free up some time to pursue my researching goals. As of right now due to my designing career, teaching will be something I do on the side part time. Also because of my busy schedule, my book is currently On Hold until at least May (Six chapters and 115 pages have been written) while I decide what I am going to do with my website. Now that this ‘update’ is out of the way, let me fill you in on some interesting political and cultural things that have been occurring while I was distracted. Old senile Joe has basically confirmed every corrupt aspect of his personality after only one month in office. He has undertaken and begun the third Obama term. The one thing that was most appealing to me about Donald Trump had nothing to do with his actual accomplishments. Because now that we can look at his term through the historical lens, Trump was a mixed bag who did much more to protect the government and empire than his supporters believe. I liked Trump because our government could not pursue its increasingly authoritarian impulses under his reign. Now that they got ‘touchy, feely Joe’ in office via the #Resistance (Which is actually the same mainstream government and corporate movement that has destroyed the country over the previous five administrations), the push towards control over the American people has begun. It accelerated quickly in ways that Trump can only have wet dreams about. Online Big Tech censorship has exploded. It began before the election and has continued in an escalated form since. If you want to follow this issue closely, journalist Glenn Greenwald has done yeoman’s work on this topic at his Substack blog. So has Matt Taibbi. The leftwing Democrats are so empowered with their control of Congress, that they are demonizing and destroying all their political enemies. They are even trying to take down Fox News, their ideologically opposite news channel (As well as OANN and NewsMax). Conservative voices are being disappeared online as well as a few radical liberal ones. All of this is being cheered on by the mainstream media and the left-wing minions who believe these idiots are “progressive.” But if censorship were the only issue, that is something that can easily be defeated. But they are also fighting a culture war masquerading as “wokeness” and continually passing edicts and executive orders revolving around COVID-19 that are destroying our individual rights one by one. If you had told me during the Bush/Cheney years that the Democratic Party in 2020 would end up being the party with massive corporate support pursuing a rights destroying, war mongering agenda (More on this later) with the help of the technology companies, I would have told you to put down your marijuana pipe or heroin needle. But the new Biden presidency has enabled and escalated what eight years of the Barack Obama administration had helped create. Fighting a war of “Domestic terrorism” against the American people (Mostly from the right) is where Obama and Biden are inevitably going to lead us. They just had to delay implementation of this for four years due to the surprise election of Trump. This post is getting SUPER LONG. So here are a couple of other things that have piqued my interest over the past month. FOREIGN POLICY Starting with this episode of the Tom Woods podcast, anti-war writer Scott Horton who is promoting his new book about Ending the War on Terror, spent five consecutive podcasts with Woods discussing the last 40 years of foreign policy. The four hours of talks is absolutely fascinating. The history of our foreign policy behavior is something our collective country should be ashamed about as every intervention and action really had no constructive thought behind it. Here are a few things you will learn: Trump undid Obama’s two best foreign policy achievements: The Iran Nuke Deal and the revival of economic relations to Cuba. He also allowed the escalation of wars if foreign governments paid us (Saudi Arabia in Yemen) and Syria (Where our troops have been ‘stealing’ the oil. A practice that Biden is continuing with more “politically correct” language) as well as starting an economic trade war with China (Something that Biden is actually ESCALATING). Biden is also not returning to the Iran Nuke Deal, something that the “mainstream government” and his neo-liberal kook Antony Blinken seem perfectly pleased about. When it comes to geo-politics, sometimes “shitty” institutions and presidents do good things. As Scott Horton mentions in his podcast, did you know that: The CIA leaked the “Iran has no nuclear weapons” document in 2007 to save the Israel and neo-con dominated U.S. government of Bush/Cheney from going to war? Biden has done one good thing as President: He stopped the genocidal war going on in Yemen started by his old boss Obama and escalated by his predecessor Trump. Trump made legitimate efforts to end the Iraq and Afghanistan war with many of the leaders in the military openly defying him. Trump did make an effort to reduce the troops as much as the military would allow in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and Somalia. Obama moved the terrorists from Iraq to Syria and funded them to take down and destroy the Assad government. Trump’s claims that Obama was supporting ISIS are true. The United States is in the process of moving the military’s focus from the Middle East to China and Russia. Something that was begun under Obama and continued by Trump. REPUBLICAN CIVIL WAR As the media continues to ignore this issue, the Libertarian Republicans (At the state level) and America First Trumpists are starting to take over the Republican Party. For the first time in 20 years, a Libertarian has won office at the state level. A rebellion is occurring towards “freedom” on the right which was initiated by the Ron Paul led Tea Party movement back in 2007 that was co-opted by the “neo-conservatives” shortly after. But the movement has continued to grow and the neo-conservatives, who still have too much power in Congress, are starting to lose control. This is absolutely a GOOD thing. The Republicans need to go back to its Eisenhower and Barry Goldwater historical roots. Throw out the globalists and send them over to the corporate authoritarian Democrats. Censuring all the Republicans that voted for impeachment at the state level including the toxic Liz Cheney is a great sign. IDENTITY POLITICS This maybe the stupidest thing that any elected president has ever done. Our continued destruction of our culture accelerates again. Allowing biological males that transitioned to females to compete in professional sports as women is doing more to destroy female competitiveness and individual rights than anything the most ignorant chauvinist could have imagined. COVID-19 Well, let me save that one for later. I hope everyone is well. If I don’t write again in a month, I hope your March 2021 is better than last March 2020 when these lockdowns were initially begun.
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October 2024
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