Problems All Over

Everyone in Brazil stands in a line. Everyone. If there is not a line at the place that you frequent, well then there will be. Just you wait.

Such lines remind me of a failed state, such as that of the former Soviet Union. I call Brazil "The country of long lines."

Nothing works here. Nothing. Prices are high and the infrastructure is lacking. But the air, at least, is clean.

All Brazilians complain about their politicians. "Liar," one says. "Corrupt," another one cries. Yet another mentions the word for thief in Portuguese. "Ladrao," he says.

Sure, there is change, but it is bad change. Dilma Roussef lost the politicians' trust and now her vice president, Michel Temer, is in office. Some consider him worse than the woman he replaced.

Why can Brazil not do to most of the politicians what they did to Dilma, namely, vote them out of office?

I have some of the answers to such questions, but 500 words do not allow me the space to address such a complaint. Instead, the people choose to live with, and accept, the cabal of thieves and corrupt "politicians" that run the country.

There are corrupt, incompetent and insane politicians throughout the world. Park Geun-hye was getting her advice from a soothsayer, much like the last Russian queen was getting her advice from Rasputin, a mad monk.

In the USA Donald Trump, perhaps the most ignorant American man to ever hold public office, continues to run the USA as if it were a giant corporation. And as much as it tries to be, it is not.

Across the Atlantic on the shores of the eastern Mediterranean Erdogan's thugs deliver punishment to the press, while he conveniently avoids...