The Wicked Witch of the West is in Beijing

• The Ex-President's Wife is in Beijing. She has got herself a new gig as U.S. Secretary of State. I wonder if she can lie as good to the Chinese as she has to everyone in America. I also wonder if she will buy some fake Gucci pant suits while she is there.
• If you told me twenty years ago that I would be riding public transportation in China reading a sex scene in an Ayn Rand novel, I probably would have said "you just never know." Anyway, that is what I did today. In a country that seems sexless in spite of the fact that it has so many people, I think they would try to imitate the sterility of a Ayn Rand love scene.
• Don't get me wrong. I like reading Ayn Rand. She writes an entertaining novel. She is bang on about Socialist and their mindset. But she has her blind spots. She writes like an socially awkward person. She is all wrong all the nature of the human spirit. I always want to emulate her characters even though I know it is an infantile urge to do so. If there isn't a God, her characters like Dagny Traggart are how we should be.
• Incidentally, Ayn Rand is following me on Twitter.
• Looking down a long straight street from the bus this morning, I saw the staff of a hair salon dancing on the street in front of their shop before starting their shift. It is a management technique that wouldn't fly in North America. Mind you, here they dance with a sense of listlessness, but never a sense of embarrassment that would happen if any North American manager tried to do that to their staff.
• I saw a car with an image of Che Guevera on its door. I have seen cars with Snoopy and Hello Kitty designs but never Che, till today. The irony is that no one in Cuba drives a car that is as nice as the Che car I saw today.
• I haven't seen an image of Che since I heard about President Oprah's campaign offices having one.
• I bought a new DVD today for my son. But, Tony was not at all interested in Walt Disney's Fantasia. I found I had to fast forward through parts. The Wizard of Oz is still Tony's favorite. The wife thinks I bought Fantasia for myself - I did'nt.
• I thought I was seeing things when I read that President Oprah had nixed a plan to tax motorists based on the miles they drive instead of the gas they used. But it is true. Such an idea is so stupid and draconian that one has to wonder how such an idea would even come so close to the President for consideration. To monitor people's mileage would be such an onerous task that even the most rabid big government types would have to adopt some common sense and reject the idea out of hand. I suspect that Obama was trying to provide a lame sop for Republicans in his naive belief that he can transcend partisanship. I could even see him saying "I no totalitarian. I nixed the mileage tax idea."