They're at it again....

The Arab world is rioting again.  Well, as they're always pissed off about something, I guess this isn't really breaking news.  

Now things seem to be boiling over in Egypt, a "strategic American ally".  Really?  How so?  They hate us.  Except on the day our $1.5B foreign aid check arrives in the mail.  Then we're big buds.  But then the check clears and they go back to hating our guts again.

Even more ridiculous is the $3.5B we give to Pakistan every year.  Are there varying degrees of how much you can hate America?  If so, the Pakistanis would be at the top of that bar chart.  Except on the day our foreign aid check arrives in the mail.  Then we're big buds.

We also give $3.1B a year to Israel, but at least they share with us some of the world-class R&D they're doing.  Considering how much we shovel their way you'd think Pakistan and Egypt would share, too, since they're world leaders in....ummm....ahhhh.....somebody help me out here.  (Rock chucking doesn't count.)

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Early this morning a UPS Airbus A300 cargo jet crashed on its approach into Birmingham, Alabama, killing the two crew members.  Tragic.  :(

This somehow brings to mind something I've wondered about for a long time:  Why do commercial pilots make so much money? *  (Smooth segue, huh?  Yes, my mind works in strange ways.)

Don't get me wrong, I don't want some slovenly bus driver up there hauling me and my family all over the sky.  It's a tough job, with terrible pay and long hours for newbies, but they eventually cash in big a few years later, while there are (or at least there used to be) hundreds of very competent high-hour pilots leaving the military every year who are turned away by the airlines.  (Many are now being soaked up by new foreign air carriers, but this is a fairly recent phenomenon.)  

What happened to supply and demand?  I always thought a shortage of a particular job skill = higher pay for those who had it, while an overabundance moderated wages. Apparently not so for commercial pilots.

Pilots I've asked about this say the public can't imagine the huge responsibility they have to care for the 200...300...400 or more passengers strapped to their back.  OK, fair enough.  But why then does a senior FedEx pilot make MORE than a senior Delta, American, or United Captain?  All they have strapped to their back are letters and packages.

*I wish someone would pay me for thinking of weird stuff like this.  I'd be rich!*

Oh well.  Just another of life's mysteries.  Have a great day everyone.  :)

S

* Why does a Boeing 747 have that big bulge on top of the fuselage at the front of the plane?  So the pilot can sit on his wallet.  :)

I'm hoping today will be a "slow news day"

How sucky was yesterday?  First thing I heard was that a Dallas fireman was killed while fighting a 6-alarm condo fire.  DFD rescued 5 people from those burning units.  I don't throw around the term "hero" as freely as most do these days, but I think that deceased firefighter deserves that title.

Then there was the absolute disaster in Oklahoma.  OMG!  From what I saw on TV this one was in a class by itself.  I remember driving through Moore, OK about a month after their killer tornado in 1999 and seeing all the devastation yet to be cleaned up.  It was soul crushing.  Now this.  

I woke up in the middle of the night, my mind mentally designing a retrofittable (did I just invent a new word?) steel shelter that could be bolted to a concrete foundation.  I mean with J-bolts that would absolutely NOT pull out, and with steel walls that could withstand the flying projectiles that are the real killers of a tornado, and of course the debris that would come down on top of it.

Surely someone has already thought of this.  My alma mater (Texas Tech) is the world leader in tornado research;  I think I need to check out their website and see what they've come up with.  If such a thing is possible and affordable (most of what's available now are expensive and difficult to install), it should IMO be mandated in tornado zones.  

If my idea is better than whatever is out there now, I'll patent it (I actually know a patent attorney) and make the plans available free to the public.  Honestly though, there are bound to be smarter people than me working in this same direction.

Here's an idea....why not dispense with foreign aid (to countries that hate us anyway) and spend the equivalent on American aid?  Like storm shelters?

S

The world's most dysfunctional people!

I'm so sick and tired....have been for years....of opening the paper every morning and reading about one crisis after another in the Middle East.  If they're not killing each other, they're blowing something up.  I swear, those people could fuck up a one car funeral procession!

I understand the hazards of drilling for more oil domestically, and building more wind farms on the prairie, and producing more energy via nuclear plants, etc, but damn, we REALLY need to do whatever it takes to be energy self-sufficient so we can cut ties with the Middle East.  

I know that developing their oil industry a century ago seemed like a good idea at the time, but I don't think we understood what ignorant barbarians we were dealing with.  This has turned out to be yet another example of unintended consequences.  Ours has proven to be a marriage made in hell!

There are many parts of the world that we barely recognize....we send them old reruns of Dallas and The Three Stooges, and they send us produce and flowers.  Honestly, if the Middle East didn't have oil, would we give them the time of day?  We need to make them one of "those parts of the world".

It seems like half our diplomatic corps is engaged one way or another in trying to arrange peace between Israel, the Palestinians, the Shiites, the Sunnis, and all the rest of those obscure rock-chuckin' tribes.  They've been at each other's throats for centuries.  I doubt they're gonna sit down now and happily break bread together just because we ask them to.

I say we need to conserve as much as we can and to rely on ourselves and our dependable allies for our energy needs. Then we can tell the Middle East to go play grenade-toss with each other.  We, and our checkbook, are outta here!

S

I'd make a lousy diplomat

Doesn't anything newsworthy ever happen in Australia, or Denmark, or Chile?  Every morning I pull up the news and find the same thing day after day:  Iran this, Pakistan that, Iraq...Egypt...Afghanistan...Syria...Libya...etc. I'm sorry, but I flat don't give a rats ass what happens over there.  That part of the world is just a giant hell hole as far as I'm concerned.  It's almost as if blowing stuff up is their idea of having a good time.  And let's face it....if there wasn't oil in that general area, the rest of the world would write it off, too.  


Yes, I believe we should share our food and humanitarian supplies with people who are hurting wherever they are, but that generally isn't the way our foreign aid policy works.  Most of our generosity goes to governments, who promptly split it up among the top politicians and generals, the people be damned.   Last time I looked we had people right here at home who had bare pantries, and we had bridges and roads right here that were crumbling.  And unemployed people right here who would love a job building / repairing those crumbling bridges and roads.  And broke taxpayers right here who are tired of trying to buy friends all over the world.  What is it Dr. Phil says?  "....and how's that workin' out for ya?"  


I doubt I'll get many comments to this post because, honestly, this is about as un-PC as you're gonna get.  I don't care.  This is my vehicle to vent.  Venting complete.


S