The Defector (Book Review), Big and Beautiful Tax Bill, No Azure for Apartheid
Book Review: The Defector
The aftershocks from my Prague trip continue, and now I am here with a review of the book I bought in the airport on my way to Prague. “The Defector” (Kindle) by Chris Hadfield is a spy thriller that takes place during the Cold War. It involves a Russian test pilot who defects to America through Israel at the beginning of the Yom Kippur War and an American test pilot who is assigned as his detail while vacationing with his girlfriend in Israel. I can’t say much more without spoiling the book, so I’ll head right into what I thought of it.
First of all, I thought it was really cool that a good portion of the book took place in my home country, Israel, and during a pivotal point in its history. Hadfield claims that many parts of the book are true, though he declines to elaborate which points exactly are historical and which ones are fiction. The rest of the book takes place on Area 51, which I know a lot about because I grew up watching cable television on Sunday afternoons, and there is no shortage of Area 51 specials on the History Channel at this time of the week. I also took out a ton of books about extraterrestrial life from the library as a kid. My love for non-fiction goes way back. But I digress.
Assuming that the parts of the book that were connected to national historical timelines were true, then I learned a lot about two events I didn’t know happened, the main one for me being that there was a space mission called Apollo 18, which involved American and Russian spacecraft docking together in space as a prelude to the Mir spacestation and other joint projects. In terms of the story that started the book, I had never heard of there being a Russian defector to Israel during the Yom Kippur War, but it certainly is within the realm of possibility.
This happens to be Hadfield’s second novel (The Apollo Murders - Kindle - was his first, and there is also a third), though I haven’t read his other one. What I did read was his book about being an astronaut and I found that book to be excellent. He was entertaining and gave a great front-row seat perspective to the job every kid dreams of. That being said, I wish I could say the same about his fiction writing. At times I felt that the book moved along too slow (though I had no trouble tracking the characters, which was really nice), and for sure he got way too technical at times to the point that I feel he could have lost more casual, less-mechanical readers. I guess it is a classic case of “stay in your lane”, but I get that the ease and allure of getting published after being published once is hard to resist.
One other thing that was missing from the story was that there was no secondary storyline. Hadfield tries a little bit with Kaz’s (the main character’s) girlfriend, but we ultimately don’t learn much about her, and she isn’t even mentioned in the epilogue, now that I think about it. Elaborating here could really round out the character development, especially for the story’s protagonist.
Overall, I liked this book, and if you’re looking for a fun, easy read on a vacation, then it fits the bill perfectly. If you liked 11/22/63 (Kindle) by Stephen King, then it would fit well in this genre, though the level of writing of 11/22/63 is in a different part of the atmosphere (though I’m sure King would write a terrible astronaut autobiography). I’ll be putting the book in my local bus stop library in the coming days, so go pick it up from there, or go order it from Amazon.
The Big and Beautiful Tax Bill
While catching up on the news yesterday, I read an article that summarized the major points of the upcoming tax bill. You can read those on your own, but I have a few problems with it that I want to point out:
Process: these changes are being passed through reconciliation, which is way easier than getting an actual bill passed. This is frustrating to me and is in my eyes a corruption of the legislative process established by the founders of the country. I know both parties are guilty of this, and that neither party is willing or ready to hash out the hard parts that can be somewhat bipartisan. The first party that chooses to actually pass a real bill will probably signal the beginning of the good times. Let’s pass bills like the used to be and meet in the middle. This is how good economic progress is achieved.
Child credit: America has a problem, and it is called “not-enough-kids”. Now this was a problem to be dealt with about 20-30 years ago, but late is better than never. At least someone is starting to acknowledge that there is a problem and starting to take some steps in the right direction. The problem is that the credit just doesn’t go far enough to solve this problem. Giving American families one month of free daycare a year isn’t going to convince anyone to have more babies than they planned on having. I don’t have any good ideas here that don’t borderline on socialism, but the truth is that pro-family programs see success in socialist-leaning countries, and some of those countries even have thriving right-wing politics. So it isn’t necessarily contradictory and may even be something that provides a basis for this in the least-socialist of the two parties.
Medicaid: Don’t take away healthcare from poor people. Perhaps there needs to be better social work around double-checking eligibility (I recently listened to a podcast that outlined someone who took Medicaid for tons of money by signing false care papers). All of this is obviously a poor excuse for the fact that there is still no solution in America for everyone to get healthcare, which while again is quite socialist, is probably the best way to control costs and outcomes.
Cost: A bill that is predicted to add $3.6 trillion to the Federal deficit is not a step in the right direction for the country, which already has over $30 trillion in debt. Immigrants, missile-defense, rogue states, while all threats, will be small potatoes if the country defaults on its debt. A trade deficit with China means nothing if China (which holds an insane amount of US debt) repossesses the United States (though don’t worry, they bought the debt with their own currency, which is propped up by lies). I remember the headlines (see previous posts on how I was stuck with the non-sports sections of the newspaper) when during the Clinton administration the government was running a surplus, and debts started to decline.
Infrastructure: A couple of bucks to fix some air traffic issue doesn’t go nearly far enough. I know the administration hates electric cars (though making them pay gas tax is brilliant), but big issues still remain, mostly the electrical grid, which is inadequate for powering lots of electric cars, and also heavy investment in high-speed rail, which can solve so many issues in so many different areas (including air traffic).
Approaching 40: Career
Where I speak about how I got stuck with the non-sports sections of the newspaper.
No Azure for Apartheid
There was an article recently on MSN that describes many of the protests that are taking place against Microsoft because they are the cloud-computing solution for the Israel Defense Forces. Foremost among them are a group calling themselves “No Azure for Apartheid”. What bugs me most about this is that high-tech is generally correlated with smart, intelligent people. Intelligent people know that there is no apartheid here (ask me for examples of how there is sometimes apartheid against the Jews here, or just go shopping in my local supermarket). Intelligent people know that there is no genocide taking place in Gaza (at least not by the Israelis; Hamas against their own people and against the Jews is a different thing).
Fortunately, so far, these people are getting their just desserts. They have all been fired, and not only that, are barred from even working with third parties that Microsoft works with (kind of sounds like they can’t get any job that runs Microsoft software, which is mind-boggling). I wonder what makes them so dedicated to this false cause that they are willing to implode their careers for it. These people are blacklisted from the highest paying professions after doctors and lawyers. I’m sure there are a ton of environmentalists working for Microsoft, yet none of them are getting themselves fired by protesting and interrupting their annual conference because AI is quickly becoming one of the world’s largest polluters. How has this movement so deeply deceived so many people, bringing them to do such stupid things?
My daughter highly recommends the Stanley Quencher Tumbler. “It can hold a lot of water!” she says. Or just shop on Amazon.
