Rick Kinnaird

Archives for August 2019

Day 964 Dyslexia, Early Education, and Criminals

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author and lady with leis

Tuesday August 27, 2019

435 Days until the 2020 election and 517 days until the Inauguration

Do you want to cut crime?

Easy.

It turns out that 20% of kids have dyslexia and have a hard to impossible time reading. The traditional ways of teaching reading do not work for them. If this is identified early and they are put in programs that address this, they can learn to read. Maybe not speed read, maybe not ferociously, but good enough to get by.

It turns out that the rate of dyslexia of criminals in prisons is over 50%.

Over fifty percent.

Many of the people who have become criminals can’t read!

It has been shown in study after study, and actual usage, that kids who go into kindergarten and pre-K programs are much better suited for school. They do better. These early education programs are the place to identify children who have problems with trying to read in the traditional way. If this was done, and they got the help they needed to learn to read, I’m guessing the rate of criminality would drop. 

Pre-K programs are cheaper than prisons. Pre-K programs would ensure we had a better educated population. Better education is the key to success.

Hillary Clinton was all for pre-K programs.

So naturally …

In other news, the world is breathing a sigh of relief because our president didn’t completely blow up the G-7 talks. Naturally, no one really wanted to talk to him.What’s the point? He’s an idiot. Then Macron in a F-U move that stuck it to Trump invited the Iranian foreign minister to show up.

Nice.

435 Days until the 2020 election and 517 days until the Inauguration

PS Getting leid at the airport.

Day 963 Trump is an Idiot

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Day 963 Trump is an Idiot

Monday August 26, 2019

436 Days until the 2020 election and 518 days until the Inauguration

For those of you who read my screeds on a regular basis you’re probably wondering about the title of this one. I mean it has been obvious from the outset that DT is not well balanced or that smart. He prefers his ignorance to learning. His behavior is childish and bullying. So why bring up what is obvious? That he is an idiot? 

Because we need to remind ourselves of this simple fact from time to time. 

Me and Mustika

There are those who do not watch real news. Who listen to lies and believe them and have no counter because they haven’t taken the time, or interest, to learn the facts. They don’t like the truth because it does not comport to their world view. 

Recently, I have been confronted with really ugly untrue things being said and relayed by people I know. It’s sad. I do point out, when I can, that the thing they are repeating is a lie. Not that they care, but it’s some little thing I can do.

No Beto did not say that.

Do you think making fun of someone who wears a different head gear than you who wear a baseball cap backwards is helpful?

No the president did not help disabled veterans by signing an executive order saying they didn’t have to pay their student debt. Obama signed a law in 2014 doing that.

Yes, Democrats voted not to give aid to veterans for their student loans because they needed to figure out how to pay for it first, which they did, and it was in New York State, not the Federal government.

But now we have had the G-7 and many are breathing a small sigh of relief that Trump didn’t do more damage than he did already. He has shown he is clueless on economics and tariffs. He has no real plan for confronting China. He abandons our allies and bolsters our adversaries. It seems he won’t say a bad word about Putin because it might still scotch his Moscow Tower deal. Don’t you like our president lying to us, and our allies, just so he can possibly make a buck in Russia?

Now the Agriculture Department Cabinet Secretary is reneging on promises to buyout scientists that they forced to either go to Kansas City where there was no where for them to work or to retire, who choose to retire. The little piece I was shown reported the “baffling” behavior of Secretary Perdue. What’s baffling? He’s a moron. He’s dismantling one of the premiere scientific agencies in the world because the alternate facts crowd doesn’t like the conclusions the scientists were coming to, and the president is a mean spirited nasty little punk. What’s baffling? If he can do something mean, nasty, and hurtful he will and his secretary will carry it out.

Meanwhile Melania continues to make headlines:

– there’s the meme of the lady in the long pink coat ignoring Trump and shaking Melania’s hand,

– there’s the picture of Melania in a yellow dress with two giant white circles with red streaks in them:  one on her shoulder and one on the opposite hip. The question was asked, “Who wore it better Ronald McDonald or her?”

– there’s the picture of her meeting Justin Trudeau with Trump looking toward the ground. She seems rather interested. The photo has been made into a mock Harlequin Romance book cover.

Then there’s the burning of the Amazon. Seems once a hard right prejudiced politician got voted in to head up Brazil it was taken as a sign that they could burn down the rain forest, 77,000 fires so far. What isn’t being talked about is the same thing is going on in Africa.

The Amazon rainforest has been called the lungs of the Earth. I wonder what happens if we run out of air? I guess some savvy person will figure out a way to bottle and sell it. No problem.

436 Days until the 2020 election and 518 days until the Inauguration

PS Mustika and Me – My guide in Bali

Day 961 Don’t Reach Across the Aisle!

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Outside the Dachshund Museum

Saturday August 24, 2019

438 Days until the 2020 election and 520 days until the Inauguration

Polling numbers this week on the Democratic hopefuls for getting the nomination of their party came out. It looks like it’s coming down to a three way race with a slight possibility of one or two others lobbing into double digits, but probably not.

It’s : 

Biden at 29%

Sanders at 15%

Warren at 14%

(Or was it Warren at 15 and Sanders at 14?)

Everyone else is in single digits.

Kamala Harris had a big spike after confronting Biden but she’s slipped 12 points. She might come back. Booker could rise, but he, like so many of the hopefuls, hasn’t.

In fund raising from small donors Warren’s numbers are going up, like a hockey stick projection. Sanders has been high and remains so. Biden? He’s puddling along and way down in comparison to Sanders and Warren. Harris got a big spike, but it’s fallen off, way off.

A handful of candidates have 0%, and they are starting to drop out. Some have 2%, the highest is 5%.

Okay, so that’s where we are. Here’s my concern. Warren and Sanders are essentially appealing to the same sort of voter. If you combine their numbers they equal Biden’s percentage. I look at the other candidates who have any percentage and I ask myself if those candidates drop out where do their supporters go? One thing I can say to myself is that I doubt they go to Biden. That means they go to Warren or Sanders. This means that the majority of Democrats are in favor of someone other than Biden. 

Biden’s wife is trying to push the idea that he may not be your first choice but … But what? 

Another reason Biden gives is that he knows how to work across the aisle. I don’t doubt that. He has a record of doing so, but that was a different time. Remember Obama and health care? Barack kept working with the Republicans. Boehner kept stalling and asking for more concessions. Obama kept giving in. They kept moving the goal posts. When it came time to vote; the Republicans voted against. Reach across the aisle? If they extend a hand okay, but they have to reach across first, because they’ve shown no willingness to do so. In fact, many of them like to boast how they won’t. 

I don’t think we need a “reach across the aisle and work with the other side” kind of person because the other side has shown no willingness to work with the other side. In fact, they have reveled in, and run on – not doing that. Remember when Paul Ryan was Speaker of the House? He’d hold photo ops showing all the Republicans sitting at a table ready to get to work and exclaim there were no Democrats there. Well, yeah. You didn’t tell them about the photo op. Or remember Newt Gingrich and his scorched earth policy? 

Besides that, there are these underlying currents in Republican and conservative circles which don’t lend themselves to compromise, to wit:

– Grover Norquist and his mantra of no taxes. The idea is to shrink government to nothing.

– Another form of this is to spend so much money that the government will have no choice but to cut everything.

– The idea that the second coming of Christ is near, if only we can do stuff that is in Revelations …

There’s a number of other things like this, none of them are things you can compromise on.

Biden is a likable guy. He’s done a lot, but I don’t see that he has a clear idea of who he is or where he would want to take the country. I don’t think we need half measures right now. I think we need bold ideas put into action. Biden ain’t that person.

Warren is. Bernie? Eh. 

If everyone dropped out of the running except Biden and one other person I contend that Joe’s number would still be at about 29%. 

Warren is calling for big bold actions. Actions that in my mind need to be taken. I think she is energized and lighting the imaginations of people across the country. Bernie is more one note, maybe two.

I hope it comes down to Warren and Biden.

I hope Warren wins it.

Meanwhile, in other news, Susan Collins in Maine picked up an endorsement. Paul LaPage! Yeah. The former dumbass racist governor of Maine. Boy oh boy, if you want to stop black drug dealers from coming to Maine and impregnating white girls then Susan is your champ! Remember it was her vote that allowed beer drinking party boy Brett K to get on the Supreme Court.

In other news, early in the week our president started an arms race with Russia. He has now moved on with his tariff war in an effort to start a recession and it seems to be working! After multiple attacks on China they have finally taken the gloves off and instead of backing down they are now stepping up their game. Our president, not understanding econ 101, is cluelessly fumbling around. He will now go to the economic conference where most people will avoid him and he can sit arms across his chest and legs wide open with a sign saying, “Kick Me.” During that time he will get together with fellow idiot Boris Johnson (“BoJo”) and they will together plot how to ruin both of their economies some more.

The prez has also issued an order to companies in the U.S.of A. to not do business with China. Does this mean that Donnie’s ties will no longer be made in China? What about the MAGA hats? They are made in China. Will he stop having them made?

I’m sure CEOs across the land are going to their desks and flipping that switch that says, “China” to “No.”

Oh and David Koch died. So sad. He claimed to be libertarian or conservative or whatever, but in truth he wanted to be allowed to keep all his money, and dump all his garbage on others. Too bad he won’t be around to see President Warren go after that kind of bad behavior.

Oh and the fake memes have started up in earnest. There’s one about Beto saying he would throw out disabled vets and old people. Totally, made up. Not even a scintilla of truth. 

Then there’s the “taking credit for that which I had nothing to do with” award. That goes to DT for signing an executive order saying disabled vets student loans were forgiven. Wow. Great. Obama signed the legislation for that back in 2014. So Donald is trying to take credit, once again, for things Obama did. Now that the economy is headed down I wonder who he’s going to blame? The Clintons! Yeah, that’s the ticket. You can only ride Obama’s coattails for so long Donnie. Then people are going to figure it out.

438 Days until the 2020 election and 520 days until the Inauguration

PS Outside the Dachshund Museum, Passau, Germany.

Day 960 We are that polarized

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Day 960 We are that polarized

Friday August 23, 2019

439 Days until the 2020 election and 521 days until the Inauguration

I haven’t been posting as much as I usually do because other projects have been taking up my time. This will be more of a “Week in Review” than a blow by blow. Several themes are emerging:

– The president is mentally unstable and when confronted retreats into personal attacks,

– We are being placed by this man and Mitch McConnell and the sycophants, cowards, and power grubbers in very dangerous and weak positions around the world. To wit:

– – We are starting a new arms race with Russia and China

– – We are wasting our resources on wars and poor economic choices 

– – We are not addressing the real problems that face us as a nation, a people, or a world

Because of the above we have lost much, if not all, of our moral leadership while we see our status around the world reduced and other players with very different agendas are filling in the vacuum.

The inflection point for now will be the 2020 elections. The question I have is – Will the Republicans aided by the Russians and other actors be able to cheat enough to deny the will of the majority of the people? If so our republic will be in a much worse place than it is now.

There was an interview I saw with a woman who accurately predicted the 2018 elections. Her analysis of the upcoming elections was eye opening. She said this election will not be about policy. It will be about Trump. You won’t get much cross over because you either love him or hate him. Therefore, the election is about energizing your base, getting them to turn out. Trump’s weakness is with groups of folks who took a chance on him last time. Will they give him another chance? Doubtful. Therein hangs the election.

But it’s not enough to beat Trump. Republicans must be defeated in the Senate for any real change to happen. Currently, Mitch McConnell is blocking 142 bills from coming to the floor for a vote. For a vote! What’s the purpose of this group other than to stall and obstruct? When you realize that the Russians have bought Kentucky, using well known tactics that have been documented by our intelligence communities and shown to have been used in Europe, then it becomes clear that his influence must be marginalized.

The problem with Kentucky and Tennessee is that there aren’t enough votes there to defeat the Republicans. We are stuck with Mitch, but if we win the Senate then things like gun reform, desired by 89% of the population could be discussed. Health care could be discussed. Student loans, infrastructure … the list goes on and on. I have to wonder, “what’s in it for McConnell to block all this?” I have to ask, “Who is he working for?” Certainly, not the American people or the people of Kentucky. 

Between his wife funneling road projects directly to his state and Putin’s right hand man investing $200 million in the state the only thing I see that he is doing is trying to outright buy his re-election by bribing the voters of his state. While this is going on the Russians are being allowed to do various sleazy deals because McConnell won’t bring to a vote or try to stop any of their shenanigans, including trying to harden our election machinery to prevent Russian tampering. 

Meanwhile Trump has ruined thousands of farmers, put us deeper in debt, weakened our economy to the point that we are either in a recession or on the verge of one, pissed off our allies, while supporting dictators around the world, made a fool of himself over trying to buy Greenland and wanting Russia back in the G7. 

Now Brazil has elected a racist like Trump and lo and behold the Amazon is burning. Only 77,000 fires and Brazil says they can’t stop them. Once that guy was elected the people wanting to destroy the rain forest thought they had a green light. 

On our southern border the Trump administration is trying to change the rules so they can hold kids indefinitely and deny lawyers access to the facilities. Don’t worry, they’ll police themselves. Recently, the Trump administration lost in court the argument that they had to give migrant kids soap and toothbrushes. Police themselves? These folks have no sense of decency. I can’t imagine what would happen if they were left without any oversight, and they have damn little of it as it is.

I don’t know when this will happen but I predict that Donald Trump will call the AG of NY a nasty woman. “Nasty” is something he reserves for women who stand up to him. He just call the Prime Minister of Denmark nasty for refusing to discuss selling him Greenland. The lady in New York who is the Attorney General now has 17 different law suits against Trump and the administration. So far every legal maneuver he has tried has failed. This woman believes in this really strange idea. One that the conservatives embraced so heartily when Bill Clinton was in office. The concept of “No One is Above the Law.” Nasty. She also believes that if there are credible allegations of wrong doing that her office has a duty to investigate. Double nasty.

Some of my right wing friends post slanted memes and articles that obstruct the truth or pick up minor points. I’ve confronted them with this crazy thing called “facts.” It’s amazing that they haven’t even known the facts. It’s one thing to slant an argument in your favor by using the most glowing terms for your side and ignore those things that don’t support your issue, but to not even know the reality? That’s dangerous. I suggest they do as president Trump does every morning. He starts by reading the New York Times. 

Ignore the Trump voters, work on the people who want to return this country to traditional values and normalcy. I’d like to see an America where kids going to school aren’t worried about being shot, where people make enough money to live, where you can get a good education without going broke, where you can see a doctor when you need to and you can get the medical treatment you need without losing your home. These are things that Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump have opposed. It’s time to get people in power who care about us and not themselves.

439 Days until the 2020 election and 521 days until the Inauguration

The singer Pink with the word "Party"
Rave On

PS Party!

Day 956 – Please let reality interrupt your fantasy

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Obama and other prominent African Americans featured in a redone painting of the Night Watch
The Night Watch
Updated

Monday August 19, 2019

443 Days until the 2020 election and 525 days until the Inauguration

I am preparing a talk on Richard Halliburton. He was a childhood hero of mine. He travelled the world in the 1920s and 30s and wrote about it. He did crazy things. He swam the Panama Canal. He flew an airplane to Timbuktu. He hid from guards at the Taj Mahal so he could swim in the pool at night. He died sailing a Chinese junk from Hong Kong to San Francisco in 1939. Or so I thought.

Halliburton was a contemporary of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Hemingway. He was ridiculed by Hemingway and rather ignored by his fellow Princetonian Fitzgerald. Yes, Halliburton’s writing was flowery and dreamy and over the top, but to a young boy? It was the stuff of dreams. Halliburton fired the imagination with thoughts and stories. Tales of what it must have been like in ancient times. How could you not be enthralled? His first book was called “Royal Road to Romance.” In it he spoke of being at Princeton and his chums were studying to be chemists and accountants. How? he asked, could they be chaining themselves to that sort of life when there was this whole world to explore? This world of romance? He used the term “romance” to mean adventure and the mystery of exploring.

Did he embellish his stories? Yeah. Apparently.

Hunter S. Thompson once admitted that if he had done all the drugs he claimed to have done in his books he would have been dead. So…

But then we come to Halliburton and “The Sea Dragon.” The name of his junk. It was 1939, Hong Kong. The Japanese Navy was carrying out war like naval exercises just outside of the Hong Kong harbor. There were delays in building the boat. like three months. They went out on a sea trial and nearly capsized in moderate seas. Many of the original crew decided they had had enough and left. The captain seemed ill equipped. His biggest skill was annoying everyone onboard. When the junk did leave the harbor few noticed. They were on the edge of war. Then halfway to Midway they ran into a typhoon, a monster storm with 40 to 50 foot waves. Admiral “Bull” Halsey was out with his fleet and reported not being able to tell where the air was from the water. Planes broke loose below decks. Several of his ships were in irons and at the mercy of the storm. His fleet was supposed to pass the Sea Dragon the next day. They saw nothing. A ship reported seeing what might have been part of the Sea Dragon’s rudder. That was all that was ever seen or known as to what happened. 

Years later an expert on building Chinese junks was asked if he would like to recreate the Sea Dragon and try to repeat the voyage. He scoffed. Why? The Sea Dragon did not look like a junk to him, but rather a prop for a movie set. It certainly wasn’t the type of junk that had been used to cross the ocean.

But Halliburton had reported in glowing terms the beauty and magic of the trial sailing of the Sea Dragon. The reality was much different, of course. Like Gauguin, who came to Tahiti, and not finding what he had supposed painted the world he imagined, Halliburton had written in romantic terms about his adventure; and why not? It had worked for him before. He’d figure it out. Someone or something would come to the rescue. 

There’s no rescue from fifty foot waves in the middle of a typhoon in the middle of the Pacific.

Reality can be a bitter place.

I have worked for large corporations. I have seen incompetent managers ignore facts, make stupid decisions and blithely say, “So and so will write some code and bail us out.”

We see this in government too. Currently, all the practices and institutions we have carefully built and crafted are under assault both from within and without. We will be lucky if the only thing destroyed are those things we have created.

The other day our government tested a short range cruise missile. A few days before that Russia had a nuclear powered missile blow up. Reagan and Gorbachev signed a missile treaty banning such weapons. Trump has torn up that treaty as well as many others. We are now embarking on an arms race with Russia. We have left Iran to do the same. This is dangerous stuff. 

Bluster and tweeting and alternate facts don’t replace half lifes and e = mc squared. 

I remember reading a piece years ago that said no one should be allowed to negotiate a nuclear treaty that hasn’t seen the effects of a nuclear bomb first hand. That they should have to put their forearm over their eyes and see their bones as the X-Rays coarse through them. Then and only then should they be allowed to negotiate.

There’s the analogy about a frog being put in cool water and then slowly turning up the heat. It will stay in the water and be boiled to death. But if you throw the frog into boiling water it will do everything it can to get out. Climate change is the slow boil. Nuclear is the boiling water. Unfortunately, with nuclear war there is nowhere to jump out to safety. There is no one to write some code afterwards to save us.

443 Days until the 2020 election and 525 days until the Inauguration

PS An updated Night Watch