Merry Christmas!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

British landslide!

The Tories swept to an overwhelming victory in the 2019 British general election, romping through everything south of Hadrian's Wall.

The issue was Brexit, voted on in 2016 by the people in a referendum that seemed to catch the European Union and its proponents off guard. Three years of footdragging and it happened again.

The vote was in June 2016 and it took Parliament until March 2017 to activate the exit clause, giving the EU and Britain two years to work out an amiable deal.  Despite some gloomy predictions, no economic damage occurred and life went on...except for Parliament, who has been trying to undermine the will of the people with constant extensions of deadlines so that by 2019, nothing has been accomplished on the Brexit front.  The Labour Party was even emboldened enough to back away from its pledge to uphold the Brexit vote even if the party was not happy with it.  Plus a couple of lawsuits were filed to try and stop Brexit.  It came down to another election between pro-EU Labour and Brexit leaning Tories.  The Tories won big and new Prime Minister Boris Johnson has pledged to leave the increasingly dictatorial EU.

I am not sure where the contempt for democracy comes from, but this kind of behavior always leads to collapse.  The 21st Century version of the Soviet Union--the European Union--is run by an undemocratic elite that is often not accountable to decisions they try to inflict on the entire continent.  The rise of populism in Poland, Italy, and Britain seems to have surprised them and active combat in the streets of Paris, which the media tries to squelch, as well as rising Euroskeptic parties in Germany leads to one conclusion----->Go back to the Common Market.

Thanksgiving football!

I thought this uploaded last week, but I guess it did not, so here we go again! :-)

The Haas Thanksgiving Weekend was missing the Grey Cup, but since the Sasktachewan Roughriders were not in it, it did not matter a lot.  The fact Winnipeg won the Cup made it worse. 

The Backyard Brawl between Pitt and West Virginia used to be on the Friday after Thanksgiving but with both teams in different conferences now, that is not happening for a while.

Pitt went into battle against Boston College and lost and my East Carolina Pirates were obliterated by Tulsa 49-29.

At least the Steelers beat Cleveland, a rivalry that became relevant after Myles Garret hit Mason Rudolph in the head with a helmet!

Usually one out of three is not the best percentage, but a win against the Browns counts double!

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!!

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!!

Revolutions everywhere!

Spring is usually when you see protest, but they are exploding everywhere.  The Yellow Vests are been rioting for a year in Paris, Hong Kong is in the new everyday, protests are spreading in Iraq, and now Czechoslovakia has 200,000 people demanding their corrupt Prime Minister resign.  Everwhere, citizens are upset with their governments and, in the case of Brexit where the British government appears to be trying to reverse the vote, voting the bums out seems to not be an option.

If you make peaceful change impossible, violent revolution becomes inevitable.   The stage in between is made up of mass protests.  Here is the chance for the undemocratic European Union and China to back off and actually win people over to their side.  If they try to squelch protests, it will be like trying to grab water.  The tighter you try to control the people, the more will show up to basically give the government the finger. 

Anyone who thought we had reached "the end of history" clearly cannot read.

As long as their are people, there is history.

The Twenty-first century is about to become a lot more interesting.

Happy Veteran's Day!

Hong Kong--Berlin 2.0?

I am looking at the protests in Hong Kong and I also see China contemplating cutting it off from the rest of the country.  I don't know if Beijing is thinking about a physical boundry, but if they are, what are the odds of it turning into a 21st Century Berlin Wall?

The British took Hong Kong away from China in 1842 and held on to it (with a Japanese interlude from 1942-1945) until giving in back in 1997.  China allowed Hong Kong to keep its economy and legal system largely intact and soon China ran down the capitalist path itself.  Politically though, China and Hong Kong are different animals.  Capitalist economy and Communist government in China and a bit more freewheeling in Hong Kong.  Frankly, I am surprised this did not happen sooner.

How it will play out is anyone's guess.  Tienanmen Square comes to mind, though I hope it does not come to that.  Also, the world is different than it was in 1989.  Thirty years later, they will say the same about 2019.   Still, China is China and it will do whatever it feels it needs to do.  PR firms will find calls to Beijing are not going to be returned.

Hopefully, there is some sort of compromise out there, much like the original 1997 agreement that brought Hong Kong into China.

The lesson here, as one can see from the American flags flying in the middle of the Hong Kong airport concourse, is that you cannot hold the people down.

Especially if it spreads to the other 1.3 billion.