Archives for March 2019

Day 808 Monday March 25, 2019

588 Days to the 2020 election and 666 Days to Inauguration Day

I repeat:

The Mueller Report

The Mueller Report

The Mueller Report

OMG! 

Gag me with a spoon.

It has been reported that Robert Mueller handed in his report to the Attorney General. Great. Now what?

Well, let the speculation begin. 

The Speculation Beguneth:

Okay so we’ve learned three tidbits. Two are supposedly direct quotes from the report and the other is that Mueller has no more indictments sealed or otherwise. The other two points is that he found no collusion between Trump and Russia, and he stated that this does not “exonerate” Trump. That’s all we know. “Does not exonerate” is a curious phrase to use. 

So there are three lines of speculation: 

1) The Fox News/Trump line of “no collusion, witch hunt”,

2) The “We haven’t seen the actual report” and William Barr is a cagey lawyer has he cherry picked?,

3) The Silo argument

The first two I won’t deal with at this time as we will learn as more comes out.

The silo argument is the most interesting to me. That says that if you are a prosecutor you look at each piece of evidence and put it in a particular area of perhaps chargeable offense. ie you put it in a silo. When all the evidence is gathered you go over each pile of data and ask if you’ve got enough to charge someone for the particular offense. This may be what Mueller did. When he was all done he concluded there wasn’t enough evidence in anyone bucket to charge, but the “does not exonerate” seems to indicate a lot of slop is there.

It appears it will be up to Congress to try and figure out what happened.

It also is interesting how many folks are saying, “this is what I thought would happen”, and “remember I warned you about this some time ago.” To be clear, no – I don’t remember, and maybe you did, and maybe you didn’t, but I sure don’t remember anyone saying this in a big way.

The only person who seems to have kept their head thorough all this is Nancy Pelosi. For all the bullying by Trump and Fox, it was Pelosi who steadfastly said, “Wait.” 

It’s a lesson we could all learn from.

Hey, here’s a whacky idea. Maybe, we should see the Mueller report, and read it!

Meanwhile, all the criminal investigations continue. Maybe, the only evidence we have enough of is that Trump and the Kushners are petty crooks on a big scale. 

It’s hard to know who is more dangerous.

I want to understand how all we know doesn’t in some way cross over into the RICO laws. Maybe that’s where this ends up.

588 Days to the 2020 election and 666 Days to Inauguration Day

PS The Citizens’ Bank of Louisiana one hundred dollar note. The bank was set up  after the Louisiana Purchase to replace the Spanish money in circulation. This is not Confederate money! There is a more famous note from this bank. Their ten dollar note. Many of these notes had the amount written out in French on the backside of the note. The ten dollar note had the French word for ten on it, which is the word “DIX,” and the reason the south was referred to as “the land of Dixie.”

Day 806 Saturday March 23, 2019

590 Days to the 2020 election and 668 Days to Inauguration Day

The Mueller Report

The Mueller Report

The Mueller Report

OMG! 

Gag me with a spoon.

It has been reported that Robert Mueller handed in his report to the Attorney General. Great. Now what?

Well, let the speculation begin. 

However, there was another little tidbit that dropped off the edge of the news table that really got my attention. Trump has nominated Stephen Moore to the Federal Reserve. I had never heard the name before. But here’s a few little things to think about. He claims to be an economist. However, he seems to get all his facts wrong. It’s so bad that after one piece he wrote and was published in The Kansas City Star the editor refused to run anything else by him. Why? He got so much grief from people correcting what Moore had written. And that’s the good news. The bad? Well, he’s buds with Art Lafler of the famed Lafler curve. a bogus economic idea if ever there was one. And that’s not the really bad news. He and Lafler teamed up with Sam Brownback to put an economic plan in place that ran the economy of Kansas into the ground. And now Trump wants him to do the same for the whole U.S. economy. This guy isn’t just dangerous. He’s an idiot. A dangerous idiot. No wonder Trump likes him. 

Meanwhile Trump TV, formerly Fox News, is jumping up and down saying no collusion etc. etc. etc. They forgot about the 31 indictments and six people from the Trump campaign that have gone to jail. Also, we don’t know if there are sealed indictments. So, even though they say no more indictments, this doesn’t really tell the story. I am, of course, shocked that Fox News may not have gotten the story straight. Actually, I would have been shocked if they had gotten any of it correct.

In other news Virginia, the number one rated team in the NCAA basketball tournament was down to the #16 seed in their bracket and managed to come back and win. Thankfully for them, having lost last year to the #16 seed. A first in NCAA bracketology. 

 590 Days to the 2020 election and 668 Days to Inauguration Day

PS Say Bye Bye

Day 805 Friday March 22, 2019

591 Days to the 2020 election and 669 Days to Inauguration Day

Today I’m in New Orleans. It’s one of the few mythic places in this country. It has it’s own vibe. (I hate that word “vibe,” but here I am using it.) There’s something funky, decadent and magical about this place. You see it in the buildings, the people, the attitude.
It’s a fifteen hour drive or two days by train and airplane in this day and age, which makes it about the same either way.
At the first airport I had the opportunity to buy the book “Kushner, Inc.” subtitle: Greed. Ambition, Corruption. by Vicky Ward. She’s a New York times reporter and has written for The Huffington Post, and Vanity Fair. Corruption and greed is her beat.
There’s nothing really new in the book, just more detail. Jared and Ivanka are ambitious and know how to be in the right place at the right time. Unfortunately, neither one is very bright or intellectually curious. This means once they get in the room, command the attention, they got nothing.
The backstory on the Kushners was the most interesting part to me. Jews living in Poland before WWII. They were put in a ghetto by the Nazis. First the intellectuals were killed, then the children. They had heard there were Jews living in the forest and they decided to tunnel under the wall and run for the forest. The mother and her sister had already been killed. The brother got lost in the escape and was never seen again. They lived in the forest through the winter, The Soviets pushed the Nazis out. The Kushners had heard that in Italy you could get visas to go to America. They walked from Poland to Italy. They lived in a camp for three years and got visas, came to America, settled in New Jersey.
They built houses. Then they started owning apartments. They moved up. This was Jared’s grandparent’s generation. His father Charlie had made the journey and took over. He was gregarious and made contributions to local political campaigns, etc. Money was sloshed around between accounts. Not all of it legal.
Here’s where it gets interesting. If you’ve had the experience of the Holocaust you are wary of rules. The attitude is that they don’t apply to you. You do what you gotta do. By the time you get to Jared and Ivanka the rules don’t apply to you because you are entitled. It’s an interesting turning something on its head proposition, but regardless, you come out at the same place.

Jared got into Harvard the old fashion way. His dad gave them $2.5 million. Otherwise, he never would have made it. He didn’t seem to attend class or do much there and ended up finishing elsewhere. Ivanka, similar story. She left the glitzy Manhattan school for Rosemary Hall in Greenwich (now Choate Rosemary Hall.) A person who was there at the time said it was really weird when she came to look at the school. Big white limo, no one else, just her. She looked around all alone.
The Kushners were a tight knit family. Orthodox Jews. Everyone in the family business was Jewish and from their congregation. This meant most people were beholding to Jared’s dad, Charlie. When Charlie did illicit things they turned a blind eye. Chris Christie put him in jail. Jared made sure Christie was outed from the Trump administration.
Reading this book is like watching the play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. You’re watching the same drama, but told from a different viewpoint. The antics in the White House are only mentioned in passing, and only as they relate to Javanka – the term coined to describe the couple, because often it’s hard to know which one of the two did what, but regardless one of them did whatever it was.
The lack of moral and ethical restraint is not surprising. It’s just not there. It doesn’t play a role. Whatever deeply held beliefs are absent. Ivanka seemed to have some or pretend to have some, but they were always subservient to whatever else happened. Both of them are able to be there for the glory but absent for the blowback. Jared stays silent. Ivanka isn’t there.
The Kushners are orthodox Jews, which means from Friday at 5pm til Saturday a the same time you won’t hear from them. Unless, it’s really important, then of course. This colors everything they do.
Most of the book deals with the problem Jared’s dad created when he bought 666 Park Avenue. He paid an excessive amount. Was deeply in debt and many times on the brink of going under. Jared through his contacts in the Middle East was able to get money to bail them out. Jared almost started a war in the Middle East doing it, but hey you gotta do what you gotta do.
The Kushner family is close friends with Benjaomin Netanyahu. In fact he’s stayed at the Kushner home. Slept in Jared’s bed. Jared was sent to the basement.
Jared is also close friends with MBS, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, who had Jamal Kashoggi killed. In fact, I could make the case that it was Jared’s close relationship with MBS that made the dictator think he could get away with the murder. MBS and Jared have stayed up until 4am on several nights talking when Jared was in Riyadh. They continue to communicate via WhatsApp. The relationship does not seem to be mutual. Jared is referred to in Saudi Arabia as “the clown prince.” In one story about Jared and the Saudis they were aghast as to how transactional he was. I’m not sure exactly what transactional means but I think it means you are willing to throw your mother under the bus to get the deal.
The other thing startling, in some ways not, is the lack of knowledge they have about whatever they tackle. Very confident, but having nothing to offer is a dangerous mix. Jared delegates – everything, because he knows nothing. He apparently thinks (this is related in the book, not my idea) that he can solve the Middle East Peace problem after watching one YouTube video.
As John Kelly said of both of them, “They don’t do government, they play government.”

Any problem is merely a PR thing to be handled.

591 Days to the 2020 election and 669 Days to Inauguration Day

PS Find Your Power (at Wal Mart)

Day 802 Tuesday March 19, 2019

594 Days to the 2020 election and 672 Days to Inauguration Day

Before we get to it let me take you on a little investor intrigue. I got an email today entitled “$109 Trillion Dollar Opportunity.”  I’ve learned (and this may surprise you) that such claims usually aren’t all they are cracked up to be. There’s a site called “stockgumshoe” that ferrets out such claims. Usually, the person making such a bold prediction wants you to buy their newsletter. Stock gumshoe tries to figure out, based on clues in their pitch, what the stock or idea they are pitching. They then go on to tell you when it was last pitched, and what they think of the idea. Being a paying member of stock gumshoe (I believe in supporting those who help me) I went there and looked up “$109 Trillion …” and didn’t get what I desired, I tried the guy’s name, “Tim Plaehn.” Oh Boy. A bunch of articles come up. Apparently old Tim runs a bunch of newsletters that tell you about stocks paying dividends. So I guess it you add up the value of all the companies or add up all their dividends they’ll be paying for the next century you can come up with $109 trillion. But what got me was the first comment by another subscriber, “Tim Plaehn is clueless when it comes to selecting dividend stocks! Stay away his picks are worthless….”

What else do you need to know? 

It reminds me of my dad’s favorite one panel cartoon. Outside a movie theater is a sandwich board proclaiming the merits of the current movie. “Outstanding!” The Times. “One of the year’s best!” The Tribune. etc. 

Scrawled in lipstick on the bottom of the board “It Stinks!” Tommy Smith.

And in the snow are the footprints leading to a young boy looking over his shoulder as he’s walking away.

Yup. Maybe, I’m being unfair to old Tim. Maybe, the comment was a plant by a competitor. Who knows? But it was enough to stop me, make me laugh, and think about that cartoon and my dad.

In the news is Deutsche Bank. I don’t know why this is news again, I guess it’s because they have someone who was on the inside who is going to talk to Congress. (I think it’s Congress. I forget.) DB has been involved in money laundering for Russian oligarchs, gotten caught and paid big fines. The news today is that DB lent money to Trump even when they knew he had lied about how much he was worth. Michael Cohen provided documents to Congress showing what Cohen claims were inflated values of Trump’s properties in order to convince DB to lend him money so he could buy The Buffalo Bills. He also did it on other deals. So what? Well, apparently lying to a bank is fraud. Who knew? It gets comical. Trump sued the bank for lending him money. Then turned around and asked another part of the bank for money and they gave it to him! The explanation floating around is the left hand didn’t know what the right was doing. 

Either Deutsche Bank is inept, corrupt, or both. Corrupt in the sense that if they loaned money to Trump knowing he lied was it because it wasn’t really their money? Were they just acting as a conduit for Putin and the Russian oligarchs? Or were they blinded by Trump’s notoriety? That is even though he lied they figured the publicity was good for them? God knows. 

Hopefully we will learn more in the coming weeks.

594 Days to the 2020 election and 672 Days to Inauguration Day

PS The kid stands alone. At Lamnai, Belize.

Day 801 Monday March 18, 2019

595 Days to the 2020 election and 673 Days to Inauguration Day

Lots of little disturbing things, little things, but disturbing none the less.

Fox News – yes, disturbing, but even more disturbing is 19% of people in this country get their news from Fox, which I wouldn’t mind if they were in the business of news, but they are not.

Fox leads the pack by a lot. NBC, CBS, MSNBC, CNN are all down in single digits, mid-range single digits. More disturbing than that is none of the Dems, except Eric Swalwell, go on Fox regularly. I’d like to see Omar and AOC go on there. I wonder if Tucker Carlson or Jeanine Pirro’s head would explode? You know when faced with facts and the women they’ve been lambasting and making insulting remarks about. It’s one thing to do it behind someone’s back; it’s another to do it to their face. As Trevor Noah said recently after going to an NBA game. He said he was used to yelling at the TV. He only did that once during the game and the ref turned to look at him with a “What did you say?” look. Yeah. It’s different. 

In other disturbing tidbits there was the mass shooting in New Zealand. Terrible. Amazingly, right after that shooting their PM got on the airwaves and said that their gun laws were going to change. What? One mass shooting and they conclude that the gun laws have to change? Also, in Newtown the parents are suing Remington and the trial is set to go forward. Even though W signed a bill saying you can’t sue gun manufacturers just because their product kills people. What’s next? Hold the Sanger family responsible for their creating the opioid crisis in this country? Or the big pharma company that helped distribute the drugs?

Listen, if you believe in capitalism you gotta let a person make a buck. That’s tantamount, and – dare I say it? Trumps (get it? “Trumps”? Ha ha ha, I’m a riot.) everything else. I mean if you let government interfere that would be socialism wouldn’t it? and that’s bad. Right? Am I right? No one should have the right to tell me I can’t take pills, carry a gun and shoot people. That would be interfering with my right fuck people up.

And speaking with interfering with people’s rights, how about that guy, who is a government official, who is forcing children who have been raped to have their rapist’s babies? Who elected him god? God’s will? No, his will.

Hopefully, Australia will ban eggs. That after a kid, now known as “Egg Boy”, smacked one on the head of some idiot right wing Aussie politician trying to side with the shooter in New Zealand. He joins the hallowed halls of video fame along with “Wouldn’t You Like to Know Weather Boy,” and “I like turtles.” (cut and paste those lines in google and watch the vids.)

Hey, a big shout out to Donald Trump for promoting world wide white nationalist terrorism. Good job Donald. Yes, the shooter in NZ credited the Donald. Naturally, Donald being the shy retiring guy he is didn’t take credit. In a ploy of reverse psychology he said it was “terrible” and “very sad.” The shooter said he had acted to stop the “invaders” from coming into his country. Right after Donald made his remarks about the shooter he picked up a pen and signed a document which he said would help stop “invaders” from coming to our country. Hey, I see a similarity in the words that Donald used and the NZ shooter used, and what the right wing politicians in Europe use and the neo-Nazis use, and the right wing talk show hosts, like Tucker Carlson use.

I wonder, “Is there a connection?” Well shucks I dunno, according to David Brock who wrote this when Kavanaugh was getting confirmed:

Call it Kavanaugh’s cabal: There was his colleague on the Starr investigation, Alex Azar, now the Secretary of Health and Human Services. Mark Paoletta is now chief counsel to Vice President Mike Pence; House anti-Clinton gumshoe Barbara Comstock is now a Republican member of Congress. Future Fox News personalities Laura Ingraham and Tucker Carlson were there with Ann Coulter, now a best-selling author, and internet provocateur Matt Drudge.

From and article found in its entirety here:

https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/i-knew-brett-kavanaugh-during-his-years-republican-operative-don-ncna907391

So gee, all these right wing types know each other, have known each other for decades, and partied together. How does Brock, the founder of Media Matters know this? They partied at his DC row house.

David Duke and the head of the big Nazi website call Carlson their guy. Carlson has been saying racist stuff for decades. In fact, it got him kicked off two channels so far.

I’m not sure but I think Fox has had to apologize for his comments. I know they apologized for Pirro’s comments about Omar. Somehow, linking Omar to terrorists because she wears a hijab was a bridge too far for Fox. 

The there is the uproar over Omar, and after hearing what she said I’m surprised that anyone took any action for this woman as a Congressional representative doing her job. Oh? What? She thought speaking her mind – like Carlson and Pirro do regularly – was part of her job as a Congressional representative? That actually bringing up issues that need to be discussed and voters should be aware of was important? I mean what would a refugee from Ethiopia know about the problems in the Middle East? Maybe give us a fresh perspective, or remind us of an old one that we had forgotten? Naw. Jeanine and Tucker know best. 19% of the country listens to their blatant racist, misogynistic, religious bigotry every day and we’ve got one guy who is going over to say, “hold on a second.”

What’s wrong with that picture?

So in really really important news Sofia Vergara’s husband told the story of how he knew “she was the one.”

If you don’t know who Sofia Vergara is – nevermind.

Joe Manganiello, Sofia’s husband, had been on the cover of People magazine as the world’s most eligible bachelor. (I guess he’s good looking, rich, and famous. I don’t know. Never heard of him.) He’s on his second date with SV. He knows she just got out of a long term relationship. He brings her the mag and says, Hey, I know you just got out of a long term relationship so if you don’t want to get too serious right away, I understand but I thought you might want to see this.

He hands her the magazine. She sees he’s on the cover – most eligible bachelor – she flips past his article. He asks what are you doing? You skipped over my article. 

She replied, “I wanted to see who else was on the list.”

Meanwhile, I have to go to my niece’s wedding in New Orleans this Saturday and there’s a problem. I don’t get to say this often. (Well, I might say it often but never truthfully – until NOW!) 

My jet is in the shop.

Yup. It’s true. All set to go and South West texted to say our flight was cancelled. Some quick noodling around revealed they fly the grounded jet. We were able to rebook. Now it only take nine and a half hours to fly back from NOLA to DC (via Texas and Colorado.) If you want to run out to the airport and wave let me know.

595 Days to the 2020 election and 673 Days to Inauguration Day

PS After a sess rock climbing I take the nephew to Hooters for green beer and wings on St. Patty’s day. No green beer! The manager forgot to buy the food coloring. What is this world coming to?