Rising above ignorance one blog (vlog) at a time

Message to my readers from far and wide on the pristine shores of White Rock Lake, on this the fourth anniversary of the inception of Global Editorial.

Best way to start your day (besides a sneak peek at GE) is by taking in the scenery from one of the great museums of the world. Named after Ross Perot, a true Dallas pioneer, founding father of Silicon Prairie and former Presidential candidate.

Four years of Lone Star living by tweet

As our attention span grows ever smaller, I've been advised to shorten my rants to increase followers. Personally, I think the death of opinion is when we have to cram our views into 280 characters, but I'm here to prove the leader of the free world has nothing on my tweets, that's right, I have the ability to formulate sentences with proper grammar and spelling, which obviously disqualifies me from holding higher office.

The past 1461 days or as they say in the classics: wasting 10% of my life in God's country have been a beauty! My little nugget of wisdom (in tweet form) on this glorious day.

Today marks the start of my 2nd term as a Texan. Living among rednecks (Lone Star liberals included, as they make Canadian conservatives look progressive in comparison, apologies to America's 14th most liberal city, Austin) for the past four years has provided much comic relief.

If you can name all the famous points of interest without resorting to the internet (I'll allow you to use this mural as a guide) you will be bestowed honorary citizenship to the Republic of Texas.

PS. For those into short film, here's a 74 second clip from the heart of Texas. Warning: the following is rated ECT, as it contains Extreme Crime Talk.

Bursting the California and Texas Republic bubble

It’s only apt that on this the 243rd Birthday of these United States we check in on the state of the states, particularly the two chunks (California and Texas) that dominate the economic, political and social fabric of this vast land.

As a proud globalist I have no attachments to the place I reside in physically, so the following will offend my fellow Texans (last I checked, they firmly believe that they are the chosen ones). Every year the U.S. News & World Report unleash their Best States rankings, it largely dispels all the myths that the parochial crowd boast about, yes, Texas you’re a basket case.

Don’t get me wrong, 10% of my life has been spent in the Lone Star State and due to my skin tone I have had no issues that have negatively impacted my life. In fact, I have felt a lot safer here than anywhere else I’ve lived, but that cannot erase the fact that Texas has an abhorrent firearms slaughter rate of 12.1 per 100,000. Let me put it another way, Japan has a homicide rate of 0.28 per 100,000. Furthermore, here in Dallas we've already had some 110 murders in the first 6 months of 2019, whole nations in the advanced world won't see that number in years. However, I know all too well that as humans we must walk in the shoes of others, and that’s when the self-proclaimed Texas moniker of being god’s land is trampled on.

There’s much talk in these parts that California is a communist state and Texas is a paradise for freedom, well let’s just take a look at the rankings from key indicators on where the two states driving America stand. Reminder to folks at home, if both these states were separate countries they would rank in the top ten largest nations by GDP. In other words, we globalists must take note.

Crime & Corrections: CA 23/TX 33
Economy: CA 21/TX 34
Education: CA 4/TX 15
Fiscal Stability: CA 42/TX 12
Health: CA 7/TX 37
Infrastructure: CA 32/TX 33
Natural Environment: CA 5/TX 40
Opportunity: CA 49/TX 39

Now I get what you’re saying, how can those lefty Californians with 11 million more inhabitants trounce capitalist conservative Texans. Simple answer: one state actually cares for ts impoverished. I’ll count to three for the naysayers to use their go-to line: how come California has a huge homeless problem? That comes with the territory of allowing corporations to dominate, which defeats the California is anti business doctrine. Basically, where talking about America here, there is no such thing as real progressive thinking, everything is about money. Heck, look at Seattle, they love to bang on about their liberal hippie credentials, yet it gave birth to Amazon (openly bash unions), Microsoft and Starbucks hardly independent companies that stick up for the little guy.

Here are the overall rankings (Northerners, make sure to boast about these ranking when a Southerner laughs at you over long winters)

1. WA  2. NH  3. MN  4. UT  5. VT
6. MD  7. VA  8. MA  9. NE  10. CO
11. WI  12. NJ  13. FL  14. IA  15. ND
16. ID  17. GA  18. NC 19. CA  20. SD
21. CT  22. KS  23. DE  24. HI  25. NY
26. RI  27. OR  28. MO  29. MT  30. TN
31. WY  32. ME  33. MI  34. AZ  35. IL
36. IN  37. NV  38. TX 39. OH  40. KY
41. PA  42. SC  43. OK  44. AK  45. AR
46. NM  47. WV  48. MS  49. AL  50. LA

Leaders in each category (CA and TX are nowhere to be seen, so much for their arrogance)

Crime & Corrections: NH
Economy: CO
Education: MA
Fiscal Stability: TN
Health: HI
Infrastructure: OR
Natural Environment: RI
Opportunity: NH

Make sure you memorize this list, so when you encounter an ignorant resident of CA and TX you can quietly whisper: you ain’t no top 10 material. 

Denmark falls short of the progressive trifecta

The $64,000 question leading up to the June 5th Danish general election was if the Kongeriget Danmark (Kingdom of Denmark) would get back to maintaining an egalitarian society proud of it's safety net or continue down the anti-immigrant nativist influence that began in 2014 when the far right Danish People's Party (DPP) won the European Parliament election in Denmark by securing 27% vote. If that was a shock, it then won 21% of the vote in the 2015 general election, becoming the second largest party in the Folketing (Parliament for those struggling with Danish).

The results are in...I can confirm that the land of Lego has still somewhat upheld Europe's love affair with racism, thus giving the likes of Viktor Orbán some relief. The surge in 1939 types holding European governments to ransom is still alive in Denmark, albeit in bizarre circumstances. You'd think the far right made gains in the election, however, the two main parties both went to the polls on an anti immigrant platform as a means to snuff out extremists, which ended up working, but it just ensured that the main parties would continue a more acceptable form of racism, the incremental variety (change a law here and there to make life harder on foreigners without all the Nazi salute baggage).

Seeing as immigration was not a cause for contention, the election was a referendum on which party would maintain the cherished Danish welfare model. The Social Democrats squeaked home (taking 91 of 179 seats in Parliament), ensuring their leader Mette Frederiksen becomes the youngest Prime Minister in Danish history at 41. The center-right Liberal party (having led for 14 of the past 18 years) takes home 80 seats.

The second positive from the vote was the Danes support of climate change, 57% of voters want the new government to make this a priority. It's a rarity in Europe these days to have a positive election outcome without some caveat, and so Denmark sis its part to live up to this pattern. You could say: two out of three ain't bad. Denmark still leads the world in ensuring a safety net for all and is understand climate change is a reality, yet for all that they still condone passive aggressive racism, sounds very Scandinavian to me.

For now, I urge all my readers to place a total ban on playing with lego (if you're above the age of 10 this should be a given, apologies to adults with lego fetishes), until such time the Danes give the middle finger to racism. The ban also applies to pastries, so no apple danish for you with your morning coffee.

España jumps aboard the bigotry express

It feels like every second day we awake to yet another European country making an attempt to teleport to 1939, you know, a time when bigotry was the in-thing. Spain, a country that last saw far-right fanaticism during the civil war has sadly taken a turn for the worst. In Sunday's general election, the political party Vox (mission statement: hatred towards feminism, multiculturalism and migration) gained 10.3% of the vote, good for 24 seats. This led to them becoming the first far-right party since 1975 to enter parliament. On the flip-side there was a shining light to balance the hatred, Luc André Diouf (fluent in six languages) became the first person of Senegalese decent to be elected. The Socialists held on to win their third election in four years, although not enough to govern outright as per European tradition. Current Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez will most probably end up cobbling together another coalition.

In 2019 there are way too many European nations giving voice to ideals that should have been cleansed from European souls at the end of WWII. Just one seat in parliament for a party promoting hared is one too many. This is an epidemic infecting even the more open-minded parts of Europe, from Sweden's decent into darkness (see 9/1/18 post) recent elections that saw True Finns (aka diversity is a disease) coming second in Finland and EKRE (nationalist Estonian party) being part of the ruling coalition. Spain is the recent inductee into this sad club, long known as being the most immigrant friendly of the southern Europeans is now trying to undo its reputation.

The irony of this situation is that whenever Islam is mention these European bigots are the first to denounce the backward views that they believe Islam impresses on their followers, yet they themselves advertise their xenophobic credentials to appease voters. Yo all my European readers, next time you enter a voting booth make sure you vote against hypocrisy, do you really want to vote for parties that spew hatred towards the LGBT community, then in the next breath they harp on about Islam being not allowing freedom of expression.

Spain has always been a diverse nation, 17 relatively autonomous regions all united by a Kingdom. My apologies to Catalonia and Basque Country, I understand the monarchy is an utter disgrace and the nation should be broken up to represent the distinct regions. It's because of this that Spaniards as a whole have been more open to difference than many other Europeans, let's hope Spain gets back to be known as a bastion for openness to go with their other claim to fame (no, not great weather and olive oil), life expectancy for both sexes among the highest in the world.

Europeans are making a mess of being an inclusive society, in other words, they're making Americans look good. To my fellow earthlings of the European variety: stop losing sleep over U.S. politics and start opening your minds to your continent taking a deep dive into medieval times, and I'm not referring to architecture.