Need to tame the wildlands

Wildlands are places lacking effective government, where terrorists like the late Osama Bin Laden can set up shop, and pull off a 9/11.  We, the United States, cannot permit wildlands to exist.  If you don't believe this, I can show you a couple big holes in the ground in Manhattan.  And 3000 American dead, worse than Pearl Harbor.
   Any government that  cannot control who operates on their territory needs something done.  Sometimes assistance, arms, helicopters, advisers, or money is enough.  Sometimes regime change is in order.  For example Al Quada, ISIS, and the Taliban are hostile, they live to destroy us, no amount of diplomacy or bribery is going to change that, they need to be destroyed, ASAP.
   Once we get into a place and do regime change, Syria for example, we gotta carry it thru.  We need to find some decent locals to hold office, we have to back them up with US armed forces, we need to get their economies working and growing.  In a lot of places we need to do land reform, break up the big plantations and give out forty acre plots to the tenant farmers and sharecroppers.  Most terrorists start out being unemployed, then they get radicalized 'cause they got nothing better to do.  Make the local economy grow, create jobs, and potential ISIS recruits will stay on their jobs rather than sign up with ISIS.
   The new regimes we establish don't have to be very democratic.  They need to gain effective control of their national territory.  For which they need a decent rapport with their citizens, other wise they loose effective control.  The citizens have to be reasonably happy with the new regime.  Otherwise it won't work.  If a new regime doesn't work out, we have to be prepared to depose it, and put in a better one.   
   All this can take time, years, especially in uncivilized places like Syria and Afghanistan.  But it is essential work that must be done, or we will have more big craters in our cities.
   The democrats, and some Republicans on the weird wing dispute this.  They call it "nation building", expensive and unnecessary.  They want the United States to pull back, retreat, to North America and let the rest of the world go down the tubes.  They don't seem to realize, even after 9/11, that terrorists operating out of wildlands can do us enormous harm.  They will have nukes next time. 

What is "Democratic Socialism"?

It's Bernie Sanders ideology, I guess.  Used to be, socialism and communism wanted to run the entire economy by owning all the "means of production" to use Marx's phrase.  With a benevolent government running everything, the workers would get better wages and the evil capitalists would get fleeced.  There wasn't much difference between socialism and communism, except socialists felt they could come to power thru the ballot box, communists wanted to come to power via a violent revolution.  Once in power, there wasn't much to choose from.
  The Russians had a communist revolution take power in 1917 and it lasted about 70 years before the Russians dumped it.  The Germans and the Italians tried socialism in the 1930's and it only lasted until overthrown by force of arms in 1945.  There is nothing in historical socialism to recommend it.
   So, here comes Bernie, touting his "democratic socialism".  He isn't talking about a government takeover of the "means of production" because that won't fly in America, and advocating it would make him sound like a nutcase.  What he might do if elected is unknown. 
  What he does talk about is putting in a bunch of soak-the-rich taxes.  Is there any more to Bernie?

Let's cut a deal

Democrats want to hike the debt ceiling, so they can keep on spending.  Republicans want to do some cuts.
Here's the deal.  We pass proper appropriation bills for each executive department.  AFTER, all the appropriations are passed, AND signed by the president,  THEN we will hike the debt ceiling just enough to get thru the next fiscal year.
    With proper appropriation bills, we can have some control, we can cut wasteful pork, and beef up programs that actually help the economy.  Right now the government is running on a "continuing resolution" a bill which says, "OK, you bureaucrats can keep on spending like you spent last year."  All the waste keeps on pouring down the drain.
   We want that open check book closed, and no money spent except by lawful appropriations. 

Dawn over Marblehead

President Obama has finally figured out that withdrawing US troops from Afghanistan amounts to handing the place over to the Taliban. Just like the US withdrawal from Iraq handed the place over to ISIS.  He will leave 10,000 troops in country to the end of this year and 5,000 troops for next year.  Did anyone catch Giuliani's comment on this?  Giuliani pointed out that he had 35,000 cops in New York City, and you would think you would need more to keep order in an entire country, a country inhabited by less law abiding and more warlike people than the New Yorkers.
   Took long enough for common sense to penetrate to the oval office.

Karate Kid, the remake

It's a bit old, 2010, and I cannot remember just how Netflix got it to my mailbox.  I had expected the 1984 original, and was mildly surprised to learn that there even was a remake.  It told the same story as the original, with some updates.  Young Dre Carter and his mother, who are black, pick up stakes from Detroit, rather than New Jersey, and go farther than California, all the way to China. There are a lot of picturesque shots of Chinese scenery, the Great Wall, swoopy roofed buildings, and so on. Jackie Chan plays the apartment complex handyman who teaches young Dre Carter Kung Fu.  The school bullies, the rival dojo's, and the tournament follow  just like in the original.
    It wasn't til the middle of the movie, reading the English subtitles for the Chinese language dialogue that I figured out that Dre Carter was a boy rather than a girl.  Dre, played by Jadeen Smith, son of William Smith, wears a long shaggy dreadlocks haircut,  is a young skinny kid, and kind of cute looking.  It's a boy who waves goodbye to him in Detroit, and the first kid he meets in China is a blonde boy, who looks cute but fades out of the story pretty quickly. 
    I never did hear about this movie back in 2010 when it was released.  Chalk that up to miserable studio publicity efforts.  I don't remember any comment on the blogs and websites I cruise regularly. 
    The remake ain't nearly as good as the original.  Jackie Chan didn't play his part nearly as well as Pat Morita did 25 years ago.  He didn't have the good punch lines in his dialogue, and he didn't do the inscrutable Oriental bit as well as Pat Morita did.  Jadeen Smith didn't develop the warm father-son relationship with Mr Hung (Jackie Chan) that Ralph Macchio did with Mr. Miyagi in the original.  My other complaint, is Jadeen Smith's opponent in the tournament was a lot bigger, taller, and heavier than Jadeen, to the point where the "willing suspension of disbelief" became unwilling.  I'm watching the match saying to myself, "No way does a kid that skinny, and that short, has a chance to beat that much bigger, taller, heavier kid."  The climax fight scene would have been more exciting to watch had the opponents been more evenly matched.
   Hollywood does a lot of remakes.  Some of them come out pretty good, The Prisoner of Zenda in the 1950's was better than it's predecessor from the 1930's.  The True Grit remake was pretty good, especially going up again John Wayne's version which many call the Duke's best movie.  The suits in Hollywood and New York like remakes, they figure all the people who liked the original will come to see the remake.  Doing a new movie from the ground up (new characters, new story, new sets) is always risky, the audience may not like the movie, and it looses money.  This remake did make serious money, although the original made somewhat more. 

Words of the Weasel Part 48

"a temporary glitch" is what Fox News called the failure of the TSA computer system.  I'd call that a crash myself.  And a program that is buggy enough to crash probably has other bugs that cause it to give the wrong answers.

The Parties should not let TV people control the debates.

The Republican and Democrat parties should control who gets into the debate, who is the moderator[s], when and where the debates are held, and what the questions will be.  They should not allow the TV newsies to control any thing of importance. 
   The newsies are hugely partisan, and they rig things to help their candidates and hurt the other sides candidates.  I see no reason why such poorly educated, biased, and  ignorant people should be allowed to influence the elections. 
  The parties could easily say to the candidates, "You won't appear on any debates that we, the party, do not approve of.  Anyone who steps out of line will be denied the nomination."