The Art of The Deal or Mykel Board's Post MRR Column no. 37

Mykel's

Post MRR Column no 37

One of the tenets behind a win-win negotiation is that all parties must be satisfied with the deal. It isn’t a win if someone feels he/she got the short end of stick, right? --Karrass.com

Mykel's ART OF THE DEAL

Trade ya!

Several years before his election, President Trump wrote (or put his name on) a book called The Art of The Deal. I've read it several times... Yeah right.

I never read it, but I can imagine its content. And what I imagine is that much of the book will be about trading. That is, if I have something you want, and you have something I want... we can trade. I'll take a loss for a bigger gain. You have different values, so you take a loss for what YOU think is more important. Finally, we reach some kind of equality... both sides feel happy after the deal. In business, they call it a win-win solution.

You're a mechanic. I'm a plumber. You take the ping out of my car engine. I'll make sure those monster beer turds will sail smoothly down the toilet. Win-win!

So, in my never-ending quest for beneficence, I propose some win-win deals that will make the world a better place for all sides.

First:

GIRLS! Here's your chance! I'm offering big trades. The feminist goals, just what you want. You only have to give up a few things and then: end the patriarchy!

Let's start with the 79¢. The cliché is that for every dollar a boy earns, a girl earns 79 cents. A closer look shows that this is the result of experience and time on the job, rather than vaginal possession. But for this deal, we'll pretend the gap is real. Girls earn 21 cents an hour less than boys... for the same job. Let's make a deal!

According the the CDC, Women in the US live, on average, to 81.2 years old. Men live to 76.4 years old. Do the math: women live 4.8 years longer than men.

Here's the deal: We'll trade! I'll give up 21¢ per hour. Take it!... the whole 21 cents. It's all yours. Go wild. Have a ball, do with it as you like. I'm donating 20% of my $20-an-hour job. It's on your plate. Buy Ms Magazine with it. Donate it to Hillary Clinton... anything.

In return? Just give me half your extra 4.8 years. We both live 78.8 years. Fair trade! Equal pay... isn't that what you've been wanting? You only need to trade for equal longevity. Win-win. Finally, equality! Do we have a deal?

And the government. There are 100 senators. 20 are women. That's a ratio of 1 to 5. Pretty unequal if you're counting genitalia. What can we do about that? Get some equality here.

Let's consider that in 2016 only 18 year old boys have to register for the draft. Women can stay home and complain about the nanny.

In Iraq and Afghanistan 130 women soldiers have died in the past 10 or so years. During those wars about 5700 men have died. That's a ratio of about 1 to 43. We need some equality! So here's the deal:

I'll give you 30 senate seats and you send four and a half thousand women to certain death in Hillary's next war. Plus... to even things out... girls will have to register for the draft. In case, for some reason, there's a sudden lack of people wanting to die in the Middle East.

Waddaya say? Fair trade?

Come on girls, this is equality I'm talking about.

And then there's abortion. Women have the right to choose whether to drop their puppies or throw them in the stem cell bin. That's how it should be. You've got and deserve that benefit. I'll defend to the death (fetal death, that is) your right to do that.

But why only women? Shouldn't men have that choice? If we've got a brat sprouted by the slip of a rubber, shouldn't we be able to say Dump It? If it takes two to tango, shouldn't it take two to untango? I'll be pro-choice, if you're pro-choice.

It's not men's bodies, you say. Women have to go through an ordeal for abortion. It costs money, and it hurts. Fair enough. So here's the deal. Women have absolute choice: pop one or cut it out. Men have secondary choice. If a man wants the little twerp and the woman wants to donate fetal organs... She wins. BUT, to make the deal: if a woman has a kid when the man say KILL IT, the man is not responsible. No child support. No lawsuits. No Daddying. If a woman decides to have a child over the father's objections... then the guy walks away clean. It's a trade. Fair enough?

More deals:

Hillary Clinton has never met a war she didn't like. She voted for the Iraqi war, has supported the Israeli massacre in Gaza, and the coups in Honduras and Ukraine. She wants to strengthen NATO and, like her buddy Obama, supports making new ISIS fighters by drone-ing innocents abroad.

Most Americans support these long distance wars. Many want even more of them. What's a drone here or there? They deserve it anyway, don't they?

The problem is: Americans don't know war. They don't know drones. They don't know mechanized death except on the giving end... and those rare times that some sympathetic guy with a machine gun unloads a “terrorist act.” Here's the deal.

ISIS: you stop recruiting local killers. Quit the ad campaigns, the dead-baby sympathy pictures... all that. We'll do it ourselves. For every small city we bomb in Syria, we'll bomb one in Kansas. Every innocent person we slaughter in Kabul, we'll slaughter one in Omaha. It's win-win. And look at the benefits.

ISIS stays out of the US. The American government can use its own bombs and bullets... always profit makers... and we reach equality. Added bonus: Americans get to learn about what we do in other countries... first hand. Education through life (and death). So, do we have a deal?

`

OUR FINAL DEAL: One for the guys who are squeamish that some of their membered-members... disguised as women… will enter a ladies’ room and... I donno... look under the stall door? Peep in the make-up mirror? Steal cosmetics? I never quite figured out what they're afraid of. In any case, here's the deal.

If men-dressed-as-women use the ladies room, they will agree to restrict their actions to shitting, pissing, putting on make-up,.. in other words, doing THE SAME THING that ladies do in the ladies’ room. They will not be allowed to stand next to another room-user while pissing and say, “You don't buy beer. You rent it.” or “Nothin' like bleeding the snake, huh?” And they will always put the toilet seat DOWN after use... Do we have a deal?

Waddaya think?

ENDNOTES: [You can contact me by email at god@mykelboard.com. Through the post office: send those... er... private DVDs..or music or zines... or anything else (legal only!) to: Mykel Board, POB 137, New York, NY 10012-0003. If you like my writing, you can be notified when anything new is available by subscribing to the MYKEL'S READERS Yahoo group readmboard-subscribe@yahoogroups.com]

-->Uh Oh dept: Since I started writing this I found out that Trump's book was not about win-win at all. It's about how you should enjoy the GAME of negotiation and not care if you lose, because there's a bigger deal around the corner anyway. My apologies to Mr. Trump's ghostwriter for the misrepresentation. I hope he doesn't sue me.

-->I wrote much of this column on a bus from Copenhagen to Aarhus. I'm keeping a blog of this trip, whose ultimate destination is Greenland. My goals there:

1. Eat Seal

2. Rub noses with an Eskimo

3. Sleep in an igloo

4. Ride on a dog sled

You can read the travel blog at: mykelsdiary.blogspot.com and know if I've done those things-- or what else.

-->Tardcore: Wow! One of my Aarhus pals works in an institution that takes care of “Mentally Handicapped” people who were sentenced because of some crime. In a way that's typically Danish, these folks are separated from the general prison population and given special attention. Not only do they get “job training” and work experience (mostly gardening, but also woodwork, and plumbing) but the caretakers actually ask them What do YOU want? I bet that's a question never heard in the American penal system.

My pal Pedro, who works in the institution, also plays in THE CLEAN BOYS, a punkrock band. And he found that some of the inmates want to play music. They love it... or just love making noise. They mostly can't play their instruments... So what do you do? Start a punk band!!!

Here's a video of their first live show. You might recognize someone famous (not me) in the audience.

Since my first encounter... I've found that world-wide there are several other Tardcore bands in the world. They include one in Finland and the most famous (now disbanded, I hear) HEAVY LOAD in England. What could be punker? With so much shit going on in the world, this is inspiring!

Come on! Help me set up a US tour!

-->Third Thoughts Dept: Last month, I wrote about how Bernie Sanders supporters should vote for Donald Trump. Lately, Trump is looking more and more like a shill for Clinton. He fires and replaces people and derails “his party” more and more. I don't know if it's all part of the elect-Clinton plan, but if so, it would be sad.

I still think, there's never been a more punkrock presidential candidate than Donald Trump... ever! Even if it's all a show... it's a good one. Tardcore Rules!

But in the next election, I'm convinced it doesn't matter how you vote... or if you vote. Maybe it's best to cast your ballot for some minor party candidate... just to tell 'em FUCK YOU BOTH. I'm still going with Sid Yiddish.

--> Keeping the Pressure on Dept: I want to thank reader George Metesky for suggesting a continuing Bring Back Mykel effort directed at Maximum Rock'n'Roll for censoring me.

As their revolving editrixes move on to commercial ventures, each blames her predecessors for my demise... as if they had no control over the business... and couldn't simply invite me back.
(Note somebody told me they currently have a MALE editor. I'll believe it when I blow him.)

Send your comments to mrr@maximumrocknroll.com (or post on their facebook page) with the subject line: BRING BACK MYKEL! Let me know how they answer.

-end-

Sanders Fans For Trump! or Mykel Board's Post MRR Column no. 36

[No punk rock, travel notes or scatology this month. It's an election special.]

Mykel's Post MRR Column #36

SIX REASONS BERNIE SANDERS' SUPPORTERS SHOULD VOTE FOR DONALD TRUMP

Election Special Blog

by Mykel Board

It's all over but the counting. The spectacles... the vote casting... the delegates. It's finished... over. The third act starts now, with the election (if you believe) in November. Each of the two big parties fought an internal war. Each party had an outsider and an insider compete for the nomination. One candidate was the choice of the machine. One was the choice of the disenfranchised... those who felt that they had no voice. In the Republican party, the machine lost. In the Democratic party, it won.

Both sides have called on the party faithful to close ranks... fight the horror that is the other guy... “Vote for me,” says Trump, “to stop the selling of America to the international corporatocracy.”

“Vote for me,” says Clinton. “I am not Trump.”

I like it that Ivanka Trump and Chelsea Clinton are best friends. Their parents have a long history together. I guess most parents of the super-rich have long histories together. I wouldn't know. Bernie Sanders wouldn't know either. But that doesn't affect November.

Me? I'll be voting for Sid Yiddish. I promised him my vote, and he'll get it. As for other Sanders supporters, I want to present the case for voting Trump:

1. Rage Against The Machine. Republican-boss-pick Ted Cruz complained about Trump's “yelling and screaming and a lot of whining.” Payback: Trump links Ted Cruz's father to Lee Harvey Oswald... Talk about balls! Trump's got a ton.
   
   Up and down Little Donny fought the party hacks when they tried to throw Fox News, Rubio, Kasich or even a colored guy, at him. All of the others were backed by the special interests and PACs. Donny went directly to the people on the street, the coal miners out of work, the car-builders who saw their livelihood disappear under the previous Clinton's trade deals.
   Trump opposed Obama's Clinton-style Trans Pacific Partnership (supported by more Republicans than Democrats.) The TPPers want international tribunals to be able to nullify US pollution or minimum wage laws, if they're “bad for business.” Sanders and Trump were both against the deal. They pushed Clinton to say she too opposed it, but do you see it in the Democrats' platform? Watch what happens when the Clintons move back to the White House: a magical thought “evolution.” Suddenly the deal is not so bad. You'll see.
   
   For almost all of his campaign, Trump took no party money and didn't use the heavy corporate financing machines to win the nomination. The Koch brothers don't like him. He can't be bought. That brings us to reason number 2.

2. Wall Street and The Banks Hate Him. In an article, Why Wall Street Loves Hillary, the website Politico shows that Wall Street-- and the big banks-- are putting their money on Clinton. They know she's good for (their) business. Trump forced a plank in the Republican platform that restores the Glass-Steagall Act. That law, originally passed in 1933, prevented the takeover of banks by investment companies. It protected average folk's money from the vagaries of the stock market. It also prevented huge monopolies in the financial sector. The idea was for small banks-- who knew the needs of their communities-- to flourish, while keeping big banks from becoming super big. Until this century, banks were locked into a region and could not expand nationally.
   
   After late last century, the regulations of that bill were canceled. Investment companies and banks merged and grew uncontrolled. Can you say J.P. MORGAN CHASE? Investment companies like TD America went on small bank buying sprees, destroying community-based banking. And, of course, there was the “banking” crisis of the last decade, where it all fell apart. Oh yeah, the president who destroyed the Glass-Steagall protections? The other Clinton.As for the current Clinton, her biggest supporters are the big banks and Wall Street. She's personally taken hundreds of thousands of dollars in “speaking fees” from the people she is supposed to be regulating. If she were subject to the same laws as the rest of us, that would be a crime... called bribery. But then again, the rest of us don't have husbands who can jump out of a plane and have a conference with the prosecutor the day before indictment.

3. Less War Let me get this straight. The US and its allies execute a coup d'etat in Ukraine, overthrowing the democratically elected leader and replacing him with a right-wing dictator. The ethnic Russians in the country fear reprisals from the new regime and ask Russia for help. Russia helps, bringing the Russian section of Ukraine back into Russia, and aiding other ethnic Russians who fear the new dictator. Clinton calls this Russian aid, aggression.

When Gorbachev broke up the Soviet Union in 1991, then-President Bush (remember THAT one?)  promised that NATO would not expand to increase its threat to Russia. In 1999, the Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary joined NATO. In 2004, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Bulgaria, Romania and Slovakia joined. In 2009 it was Albania and Croatia. Russia was surrounded... NATO missiles lie on Russia's doorstep, in violation of the Reagan promise.

In the 60s, John Kennedy threatened to start World War III because Russia put missiles in Cuba... too close to America. So you tell me, what should Russia do?

Trump and Putin seem to have a strong relationship. They respect each other. They don't read ENEMY at every news story. Trump wants to turn down the tension in Europe. Weaken the NATO war machine. Make America less of a global cop. Clinton wants to make the war powers stronger. She's never met a war she didn't like... most notoriously voting for the Iraqi war as a NY Senator.

Every time the US kills innocent people, it makes new terrorists who want to avenge that killing. Every drone Obama has dropped on a Pakistani wedding has made someone mad enough to buy an AK-47. This is not a war, with a central point. There is no one you can assassinate to end it. Obama killed Bin Laden. Did it work?

Trump would not be kind enough, I'm afraid. But Clinton will be worse. She'll send in the troops. You can bet your assault rifle that home-grown terrorists will double under her rule.

4. Stop the Dynasty Listen to the Democrats and it's Hillary this or Hillary that. You don't hear them say Donald, for the other guy Why Hillary? Easy answer: they want you to forget she's a Clinton.

Since Reagan retired into full-senility, there has been a Clinton or Bush in (or near) the White House. A brief respite from BushClintonism came when Secretary of State Clinton quit to start her second run for the presidency. John Kerry took over for a very short time. Otherwise we've had Bush Sr, (4 years) Clinton (8 years), Bush Jr. (8 years) Obama w/Clinton as Secretary of State (4 years). That's about 3 decades of ClintonBushism. The USA has become a 2-family banana republic... with less political choice than REAL banana republics. 300,000,000 people ruled by two families... switching every eight years or so. This is a dynasty supreme. The only way to end it is, well, to end it. Neither a Clinton nor a Bush can do that.

5. Show the Democrats they can't count on the sheep. When Sanders first began his run, some of my friends called him “a sheepdog.” What they meant was that he was being used to shepherd lefties, dissatisfied youth, and other outsiders into the Democratic party-- converting outsiders to insiders. Then, goes the theory, when he loses to the mainstreamer, the sheep will be trapped. They pointed to Eugene McCarthy as an example of another shepherd.

But what happens when the sheep jump the pen? What happens when the party can't count on the converts staying converted? What happens when the party fat cats find that when they're ready to celebrate, the party-goers have left the party?

I like Sanders too much to think he intentionally joined this race to be a sheepdog. But between the superdelegates and the recently-revealed party leadership plan to slur him... he didn't have a chance. In order to run, he had to pledge his allegiance to his new party. It may turn out he was a sheepdog after all, but an unintentional one.

But what happens if the sheep refused to be shorn? Sheep-herding won't work if the sheep refuse to be herded. Nothing tells the party that the sheepdog strategy is a failure, like Sanders supporters voting for Trump.

6. He'll probably lose anyway Let's face it: the fix is in. Some people think Trump has been a shill from the get-go. They say the Democrats realized they had NOTHING in Clinton. Having no one to vote FOR, they promoted Trump so that people would have someone to vote AGAINST. Nothing motivates like fear.

So fear-mongering runs supreme... vote for Clinton or every colored person will be shot. Vote for Clinton... or the Supreme Court will make it illegal to sneeze without a God Bless You. Trump will start World War Three the minute they make fun of his haircut. (Though it's really more likely that Clinton will start World War Three-- without even a haircut's provocation.) 

Americans are suckers. “The dumbest people on earth,” to quote Michael Moore. “There's a sucker born every minute,” to quote P.T. Barnum. Even if Trump is not a shill, he still scares so many that non-WASPS shit at the thought of his inauguration. I can't imagine him coming close to winning.

Maybe I'm wrong. It's happened before. But even if Trump wins, it won't be THAT bad. In fact, it'll be better than another Clinton.

--end--

Reminder: I'll be voting for Sid Yiddish (alt website:

https://www.facebook.com/Sid-Yiddish-for-President-2016-832293733522278/?fref=ts ) Other choices include Jill Stein on the Green ticket or whoever is the socialist. But if you want to vote for Trump... it's not a bad choice.