A Chinese vase and the decline of empires

There's big news now about a Chinese vase sold in England at auction:

"When the intricately painted 18th-century piece went on the block at Bainbridges, a small suburban London auction house, it sold for a record $83 million Thursday, scooped up by a Chinese buyer."

Family's old vase fetches $83 million

This reminded me of when the Yasuda Fire and Marine Insurance Company of Japan bought a Van Gogh back in 1987 for almost forty million U.S. dollars. All of the talk back then was about how Japan was eclipsing the U.S.A. The experts all said that soon, Japan would overtake the U.S.A. as the world's superpower. Japan was buying up real estate and businesses in the United States of America, and people were afraid that Japan would soon own the U.S.A. The purchase of the Van Gogh by the Japanese, which at that time was the most ever paid for a painting, was offered as proof that Japan was cooking America's goose.

What happened?

The real estate which Japan bought in the U.S.A. during a real estate bubble, went down in value, and Japan suffered a cash shortage. In just a very few years after the purchase of the Van Gogh, Japan went into a recession, from which they have never recovered to this day. And now they are suffering even more, along with the rest of the global economy. Plus, now they have been toppled from their number two spot in the global economic ladder by China.

Now China is being promoted as the next new superpower. China, they say, is eclipsing the U.S.A. and America is in decline. 

If you've ever read that novel by Pearl Buck called The Good Earth you might see that she makes the point that after people attain positions of power and wealth, they tend to get careless with their money, and waste it on frivolous things, like prostitutes and art work. They tend to forget, and especially the following generations tend to forget, how is was that they came about acquiring that wealth.

So, beware when someone creates a new record bid at an auction for a work of art. It's a sign of an empire in decline.

Nuclear waste train draws protests

Tens of thousands protest arrival of nuclear waste in Germany

What if the environmentalists knew what was really going on? What if the nuclear plants, so called, are really just places to dump excess electrical capacity? 

Coal burning plants are hard to control. So the engineers generally run them at full capacity all the time. But what if the power isn't needed? Just dump it into a load. Like a water boiler, let's say. Then run a steam turbine with it, and say it's generating power from a nuclear pile. 

What if people knew that a third or so of power generated by coal was dumped? They might protest that.

CBS News:Ex-Air Force Personnel: UFOs Deactivated Nukes

Malmstrom Air Force Base, Mont., June 27, 1966. The base's nuclear weapons appear to have attracted the attention of unidentified flying objects, according to several former Air Force personnel speaking Monday. 

Reports of Unexplained Lights in Sky Near Missile Sites Corresponded With Mysterious Shut-Downs of ICBMs

Another excuse as to why nuclear bombs don't work.

"No more of your funny stuff, Goldberg."

"Now, Goldberg, how often do we's need to explain this to you? The goods you sold us was bum. They're no good. We want our dough back. Do you understand?"

"Like, what was the problem, felwas? Maybe it's just some wittle thing you over wooked. Did you read the operator's manuals? Those things are compwicated, you know?"

"Look, Goldberg, we followed every word in them there Russian manuals you sold us, along with the bum nukes. And the things just didn't work. They're all bad"

"Russian? Oh, yeah, right, Russian. Well, you know, that's a hard wanguage to understand with a wot of intricacies. I tell you what, I have a cousin that's a wizz with Russian. He could transwate those Russian manuals for you, for a mere twenty grand."

"No more of your funny stuff, Goldberg."

"OK, OK, right. No more funny stuff. How about ten grand? But that's as low as I can go."

"Look, Goldberg, we have people that have spoken Russian since they were babies. We don't need your cousin. What we want is that ten million bucks back that you suckered us out of for these bum nukes. Now, make good, or you'll be sorry."

"Look, guys, I don't have the ten million. The brother of the husband of my niece invested it commodities. But, hey, wisten, I have second cousin whose stepdaughter has an uncle who works at Goldman Sachs, and i can get you in on some derivatives. Good stuff. You can't go wrong."

"How would you like to be wearing cement shoes in the Gulf of Hormuz, Goldberg?"

"Ooo, Ooo. I don't think I would wike that at all. Wook, fellas, just tell me one more time, what was wrong, exactwy?"

"OK, Goldberg, one more time: We took three of your nukes you sold us out into the dessert, and tried to set one off. It didn't work. We tried the next two. They didn't work. There all the same. They don't work. Now, we want our ten million back. Or else."

"Wait wait, guys, don't kill me. It wasn't my fault. I sold you good nukes. Honest I did. The finest nukes Russia had. It was my own dear aunt that works in the Kremwin that cued me into them. They were perfectly good nukes."

"Then why won't they work."

"Ah, ah, It's the awiens. Yeah, the space awiens. They did something to the nukes; something to make them not work. I don't know what, but, it's not my fault. Honest, guys, it's not my fault. Don't bwame me."

Cholera in Haiti

You have probably heard in the news that there is a cholera infestation in Haiti.

Cholera reaches Haiti capital

This isn't exactly true. Actually, there is a negro infestation of Haiti. It's these negros that are being infected with cholera. Why this cholera epidemic is seen as a problem, instead of as a possible solution to one, is bewildering, to say the least.

"I only use the 1611 King James Bible"

Hearing a preacher a day or so ago on the radio say, "I only use the sixteen eleven King James Bible. Everything after that has changed the word of God." , I have to make a comment on it.

First off, he isn't using the 1611 King James Bible. The Bible he, and all of the other '1611 King James only' preachers actually use is the 1769 version done by Dr. Benjamin Blaney of Oxford. It seems to me that 1769 came after 1611.

Now, this preacher, and all the other 'King James only' preachers are either:

1) Ignorant of this fact.

or 

2) Plain out lying.

In either case, why would anyone want to listen to such a preacher? He is either incompetent or untrustworthy. In most cases, I would say incompetent.

There was a book that came out in the seventies called The Peter Principle. It's an interesting book, which I have read about three times, but can't find my copy at the moment. The book describes how that people in a complex hierarchy rise to their level of incompetence, and then cover for their incompetence by various methods, examples of which are detailed in the book.

One of the examples in the book was of a high school math teacher who was incompetent at teaching math, so she spent her class time telling the students of how important that math was. 

This has a similarity to the preachers in that, the preachers who are incompetent teachers of what's in the Bible, spend their time talking about how the only Bible is that 'sixteen eleven King James Bible'. They continually repeat, over and over, this mantra, because, quite frankly, that's all they know about the Bible.

That this is illogical is evident. If the 1611 King James Bible is the only Bible, then everyone who died before 1611 went to hell because they didn't have the word of God. And all of the people in the world who can't read the English language will die and go to hell, because the 1611 King James Bible is an English  translation. 

Nuclear codes lost by Bill Clinton

(AFP) – 4 hours ago

WASHINGTON — Special codes that allow the US president to order a nuclear attack went missing "for months" during Bill Clinton's time at the White House, his former top military officer says in a memoir.

When he learned of the disaster, Shelton rushed to the offices of then-defense secretary William Cohen, saying: "you are not going to believe this."

Nuclear codes lost during Clinton presidency: Says ex-general

Did anyone ask the jewish Mossad operative, Monica Lewinsky, if she had seen the codes anywhere?

If the jews Lewinsky and Cohen knew the codes were missing, you can bet that the jews running Russia knew it. Why didn't Russia launch a nuclear attack during this time? The answer is: Because they can't. There are no nuclear weapons in the world.