Thursday, February 27, 2014

Bitter Cold, Low Blood, and the Beating of Drums

I’ve fallen behind in posting, so I’m throwing together a variety of subjects into this one to save time. Surviving winter has become a priority thanks to another bitter cold snap dubbed a “polar vortex” by the know nothing media. –35 below wind chills along with wood pellet supplies being depleted locally led us to purchasing corn to burn in the pellet stove. Figuring out the rate to feed the kernels to the fire pot has been difficult, but at least we have supplemental heat to offset the incredibly expensive LP gas during this latest cold snap.

Speaking of temperatures, Dad is doing well with the chemotherapy, but his white blood cell count is down so he’s having to monitor his temperature in case of fever. If he runs a high temperature he is to head straight for the emergency room. Other than that, he’s still running me ragged.

While domestic issues have chief priority in the household, it is hard to ignore what’s going on in the outside world. Last Saturday, we attended the county Republicans convention to show support for congressional candidate Jim Hagedorn and the new chairman, Frank Ludwig. Little did I know that Dad would volunteer to be temporary secretary for the county organization. That led to my volunteering to take the vacant vice chair position when everyone there had that classic look on their faces. You know, that look that says it is somebody else’s problem.

Sigh. Politics is like the mafia, once your in they never really let you leave.

It could be worse though. Watching the uprisings in Venezuela and Ukraine shows how the socialist dictatorships are being rejected only after hardship and privation of the populace goes on for many years. The apparent success in Kiev is tempered by the growing threat from Moscow now that the Winter Olympics are over. With Putin ordering emergency “readiness” alerts it is clear that war looms on the horizon.

Will he stop with taking full control of Crimea (which really is Russian territory) or will the temptation to go further manifest into something much larger? That’s the question of the day. Given the weakness and incompetency of the Obama administration, the urge to take all of Ukraine by force must be mighty indeed for the classical Russian strong man.

That could lead to a massive war in Europe, because I don’t think the Poles or Germans will feel safe enough to stand idly by.

Over in Asia things are escalating more slowly, yet with greater force I believe. China has seized islands from the Philippines, threatened Malaysian control zones, and is steadily beating the drums of war against Japan. Every other day seems to bring a new attack on Japan from the state run media with the latest being an announcement about making national holidays for the rape of Nanjing and victory over Japan in World War II.

PM Abe needs to build some nuclear weapons pronto if the island nation is to survive. Yes, I just called for nuclear proliferation.

Why? Because the United States can no longer be counted on to defend our allies. Plans have been announced to reduce the military to pre WWII levels, which is an open invitation to aggressive nations to start seizing territory. Combine that with the growing isolationist attitude spread throughout the political spectrum and the Pax Americana is dead. Like the Roman collapse, it will lead to phenomenal instability.

No nation has attacked a nuclear armed nation and that’s a simple, if grim, fact. Even India and Pakistan haven’t gone to war since both armed that way. So it is in the best interest of countries threatened by large neighbors to get nukes as fast as possible. I firmly believe wars are more about opportunity and perceived weakness than ideology. In other words, greed is the prime motivator, though grievances can’t be discounted. Revenge for ancient slights always makes for a good pretext to go loot your neighbor.

China is demonstrating all these tendencies and has ceased to be anything close to subtle about it. They’ve made territorial claims on land and waters belonging to Vietnam, India, South Korea, Malaysia, the Philippines, and of course Taiwan. It’s all very familiar to students of the Pacific part of the last world war. Ironic that they are repeating the mistakes of the country they are most aggressively going after, Japan.

At least on the home front I can do something about the problems afflicting my father and me. I’ve introduced Dad to alcohol based hand cleaning gels which he’s never used. Getting deep into dishwashers and washing machines with him has shown me how much bacteria bearing crud they house. A couple of cheap bottles of the stuff with one left in the car have been gotten.

Computer refurbishment has also taken up my attention in the past week. There’s still life in six year old computers, but not fourteen year old laptops I’ve discovered. Two dead laptops included the fun of plugging in an Apple Powerbook made in 2000 to hear a loud pop, smell plastic burning, and see smoke rising out of it for a full assault on the senses.

However, an old Dell Optiplex 360 shows promise of being turned into a media center with a new low profile video card. The owner has given the green light on that. A mystery PC from the same store turned out to have been used with a cash register and be of more recent vintage. It can’t be upgraded, but is overspec for the job it had so it will make a great all around PC as long as no gaming is involved. Updating the software right now and will clean the hard drive of unwanted data as soon as I get the go ahead on that.

I still need to finish screen captures for the next movie review. With all that’s been going on, it has been hard to find motivation for writing.

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