OUT TO LUNCH
An exciting week beckons. As you read this column (depending on when it appears) America is either voting or will already have voted for the next President. I have to say that in a country the size of America, if the best you can do for Presidential candidates is a choice between Donald Trump or Kamala Harris then you deserve everything you are about to get. I have no great affection for either candidate but I have come down on the side of Donald Trump recently, to the great irritation of friends and acquaintances who probably are now fully convinced that I am a Neo-Nazi.
As I try as patiently as possible to explain to them, the alternative is too horrible to contemplate. A Twitter post recently mentioned that Kamala Harris is a successful (?) lawyer while Donald Trump has no qualifications at all. What entitles him to think he is suitable to win this election asked the lefty? I posted a swift reply “Well, he does have four years of previous job experience, unlike his opponent”. ___STEADY_PAYWALL___
The South African lefty media have been getting their collective knickers in a knot recently at the prospect of another Trump presidency. It’s been hilarious to observe and it’s going to be even more hilarious if Trump’s victory is announced next week. I predict a huge increase in prescriptions for anti-depressants and, in the case of our friends in the mainstream media, a sharp rise in the use of recreational narcotics.
Many people are unaware that our cost cutting newsrooms don’t exist on the sniff of an oil rag these days but on the sniff of a line of coke. When I was at the Sunday Times back in 2007 our premises at 4 Biermann Avenue became a virtual clearing house for street drugs. I had my one and only schnarf of cocaine off the back of a toilet seat in the Park Hyatt Hotel in Rosebank courtesy of one of my editors at the time who had impeccable Nigerian sources.
I was rather proud of myself because I had obviously watched enough movies to know what to do. So I got out my Standard Bank World Elite credit card to plough a straight furrow, rolled up a R100 note and snorted like someone from a Quentin Tarantino movie. I waited but nothing … zilch. I thought it might kick in when I got back to the table in the bar with my Sunday Times colleagues. Still nothing. So I put that down to the fact that I had spent most of the day in pursuit of the perfect dry martini for a magazine article with my good friend Michelle Garforth and was so pissed that no amount of Columbian marching powder could checkmate a heady mix (or maybe six of them) of Tanqueray and Noilly Prat vermouth.
I spent the following weekend, after I sobered up and with partial recollections of what had taken place, fearing a colossal nosebleed and possible permanent brain damage. Needless to say, I have never touched ‘recreational drugs’ ever again although I am told they are increasingly popular among the mainstream media as much of their writings would seem to suggest.
One of the best reasons for a Trump vote is that the sanctimonious Bono of U2 fame has said he will drive his car off a cliff if Trump wins. But that’s a purely personal point of view and there may well be many other reasons for a Trump victory. Possibly a whole bunch of Daily Maverick contributors won’t be able to carry on and there’s a load of Hollywood ‘celebs’ who have threatened to leave the US if the Donald gets back in. Just as long as they don’t come and live here, I’m happy.
But let’s get serious. Can you imagine the hoots of laughter in China, North Korea, Russia, Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan (to name but a few) if Kamala Harris gets elected as President of the US of A? This woman hasn’t even managed to stop millions of illegal immigrants getting into the USA in the past three and half years. How on earth is she proposing to prevent an escalation of the war in the Middle East other than appointing more DEI candidates to key positions. So be prepared for more Trans-Women military leaders. And a fashionably high LGBTQIA quota for serving military personnel. And prettier weapons obviously plus pink tanks displaying Pride flags should they ever have to roll into action.
Then there’s the economy…. or what is left of it after the latest Democratic rule. Kamala has proposed what she calls an ‘Opportunity Agenda’ of one million ‘forgivable loans’ of $20 000 to black men to help them start businesses. By ‘forgivable’ I assume she means that the loans don’t need to be paid back. In which case they are not loans at all but hand out bribes to vote for Harris/Walz. Whether $20 000 is enough to start a business is also open to question but my suspicion is that many of the one million ‘forgivable loans’ may well find themselves going towards other uses.
If Kamala Harris thinks this is the way to boost the US economy, then heaven help America. But like so many politicians around the world, she has never had to work in a job that contributes to a bottom line. In other words, one that has to make a profit for the employer.
It is a dull and dismal fact (much missed by the likes of COSATU and the EFF) that any commercial enterprise has to sell things at a higher price than the price for which it buys or makes them. This may apply equally to the retail industry or to the manufacturing industry. As far as the latter is concerned if the cost of the raw materials, the labour costs and the cost of the manufacture of those raw materials is higher than the selling price then it’s no deal. And that’s before you’ve even considered the interest payment on loans. Odd that this simple equation is so beyond many of our political leaders and lefty commentators. Even odder though that China gets it and we don’t.
Another gob-smackingly stupid reason to think that Harris is good for the USA is this key policy:
Harris “will break down unjust legal barriers that hold Black men and other Americans back by legalizing marijuana nationally, working with Congress to ensure that the safe cultivation, distribution, and possession of recreational marijuana is the law of the land,” according to a Harris campaign statement.
As the legendary Robert Zimmerman once sang, ‘Everybody must get stoned’ (This was written long before the popular way of dealing with mouthy women in Iran became well known). So, Harris’s recipe for the return of the greatness of America is to have a large percentage of the African American population staggering around with bloodshot eyes trying to spend the $20 000 she has gifted them to start new businesses.
There are those who suggest that South Africa and the world is equally stuffed whoever wins but a Trump vote would be a vote for marginally less stuffed in my opinion. Particularly if Bono drives a car off a cliff.
