Archives for December 2019

Day 1178 The Crimes of Donald Trump

December 17, 2019 by Rick Kinnaird Leave a Comment

Day 1178 The Crimes of Donald Trump

Tuesday December 17, 2019

327 Days until the 2020 election and 408 days until the Inauguration

With impeachment looming there seems to be some question in some people’s minds if Donald Trump committed any crimes and even if he did is it enough for him to be impeached and removed from office.

Let me be clear, he committed crimes. He should be removed from office.

Some point to “the polls.” Yes, 50% of the country say he should be impeached and removed from office. His approval rating is at 42%. Clinton’s was at 67% on the day he was impeached. But this isn’t about polls. This is about “high crimes and misdemeanors.” Trump has committed both. He has also committed common crimes. He has also committed ethical violations and abuses. In fact, I can’t think of one thing that one could say about this guy in terms of breaking the law, breaking his oath of office, or violating the Constitution that he hasn’t done.

It is breath taking to me that anyone would stand up to defend him, especially Linsey Graham and Ted Cruz whom Trump savaged during the 2016 election. Yet, there they are saying they won’t vote to impeach him when they haven’t even heard the evidence. It’s astonishing. Especially, when there are clips that can be played of them during the Clinton impeachment where they are acting all high and mighty. Clinton was impeached for improper personal conduct, but he never stopped doing the job of President. Trump never started doing the job.

Let’s review:

– Donald Trump has been laundering money for Russians for decades.

– Donald Trump directed his personal lawyer Michael Cohen to make hush money payments to two women to cover up his affairs with them to buy their silence in the run up to the 2016 election. THESE ARE CRIMES.

– Donald Trump has been found guilty of running a phony university for which he had to pay twenty five million in settlement. He should have paid more, but he made a contribution to the Florida attorney general’s political campaign of $20,000 and she dropped the charges. The people of Florida who bought into his scam got screwed, but she got to move up to being one of his lawyers.

– Donald Trump has been found guilty of running a sham charity in New York and is not allowed to run one in that state again and had to pay millions of dollars in restitution.

– Donald Trump has been shown to have committed ten separate acts of Obstruction of Justice via the Mueller Report. There are three components needed to meet the charge of Obstruction of Justice and ta-dah! In ten separate instances Donnie met them all. Ten times! He committed a crime. These crimes have been verified with evidence in all ten cases!

– Then there are the “high crimes.” That being the phone call with the President of Ukraine. In that phone call the president of the Untied States asked for a personal political favor. He asked the President of the Ukraine to interfere in our national election by investigating a political opponent of Trump. THIS IS A CRIME. IT IS A HIGH CRIME. IT IS SPECIFICALLY MENTIONED IN THE CONSTITUTION. Not only that but Trump then used extortion by threatening to withhold aid to that country. Aid that had been approved by Congress. THIS IS A CRIME. He then withheld the aid. THIS IS A CRIME

– He then asked China to interfere in the upcoming election. THIS IS A CRIME

We could also look at the nepotism, the emoluments, the being a useful idiot to Russia, the disastrous foreign policies, the huge debt, the lack of any meaningful legislation including no health care, the huge sums paid to protect his children while they go around the world doing crappy deals for him, the amount paid to protect him while he plays golf, the money his children have been raking in due to being related to the president. The fact that his son-in-law gave intel to MBS about Khashoggi, which led to Khashoggi’s death. That Trump gave sensitive intel to the Russians. That he has had numerous conversations with Putin and no one knows what was said.

…

Yet, many Republican senators are supposedly going to not vote to impeach him and remove him from office.

Hopefully, some of them can be removed from office, but that too is in question as Republicans are working feverishly to cut down the voting roles to eliminate Democratic voters: 234,000 in Wisconsin, and 1.7 million in Georgia.

327 Days until the 2020 election and 408 days until the Inauguration

PS Now for the real news.

Day 1169 OMG! I leave the country for one week!

December 10, 2019 by Rick Kinnaird Leave a Comment

Day 1169 OMG! I leave the country for one week!

Tuesday December 10, 2019

330 Days until the 2020 election and 415 days until the Inauguration

OMG! I leave the country for one week, and this is what happened? WTF?

The president of the United States is having the EPA investigate toilets that have to be flushed ten to fifteen times. He said that a lot of states have a lot of water and that it is coming from the clouds and it’s called “rain.” Who knew?

Meanwhile, Republicans in Congress are being surprised by reporters when they, the Republicans, are being informed that there is no Democratic server in Ukraine, and that Ukraine did not interfere in the 2016 election. I’ll call this “Shock and Awe.” The Attorney General of the United States isn’t sure about this, because he “hasn’t looked into it.” Really? There are seventeen agencies that get the same information he gets and they’ve all said it was Russia not Ukraine, but Mr. Barr says there are “serious allegations that have to be looked into.” Hey Bunky, They’ve been looked into. Guess what? Hey, I got an idea, why not call up your FBI Director and ask him for a briefing?

Meanwhile, Jim Comey was due to appear on Fox and Friends this morning. They cancelled him. Wonder why? Lemme guess. The Inspector General issued a big report yesterday and it said the FBI acted appropriately with regard to investigating the Trump campaign, that they did not tap Trump’s phones, or send in spies to the Trump campaign. Andrew McCabe has been vindicated, because he acted appropriately.

Lisa Paige is suing the FBI and the DOJ for illegally releasing her emails.

Rick Gates it has been suggested receive no jail time because of his co-operation in the many investigations.

Mike Flynn is stalling but not cooperating and has a crack team of Fox news analysts and lawyers making remarkable and bizarre arguments.

And that’s just this week!

What did Trump do? He refused to have anything to do with the impeachment inquiry and on the day that formal charges of impeachment were issued by the House he invited the Russians into the White House, again.

That makes 16 meetings and there are no notes.

Hum. These same Republicans were outraged that Hillary Clinton didn’t know a “c” on a pro-forma release about a visiting head of state meant “classified” but seem to have no problem with their boy doing all this?

Meanwhile the Republican lawyer for the impeachment inquiry didn’t seem to know what was and was not in their report. Ya know, like leaving out critical information about things that might make the president look bad?

It will be a most interesting vote in the House.

Ya gotta decide. Stand with a liar, crook, and Russian tool or stand with the Constitution, the country and America.

330 Days until the 2020 election and 415 days until the Inauguration

PS Rudy has gone to the Ukraine to talk to the former prosecutor, whom anyone investigating the guy can find out he’s dirty in ten minutes, to find dirt on Biden. Or is it to find the missing server? The one that doesn’t exist. I can imagine the conversation now, (“Hello my friend. You want dirt on Biden? Sure, I give you dirt. You want server? I get you server. No problem. Yes, it’s IBM 286 – very old and dusty. Am I sure it’s Democratic server? Yes. Look at tape on top? It’s says ‘DEMOCRATIC SERVER.’ Tape looks new? Of course, (I wrote it myself last night. Ha ha.) What? Yes son? No, I don’t know where that old computer is. What do you mean this is computer from our basement? No it Democratic server. Go to bed! Yes, Rudy. I have server. Here it is. For a price, of course. …”

PPS Me and De Landa. This is the Franciscan who burned all the Mayan books. Somehow it seems fitting for today’s screed to show him.

Yucatan Field Report #1

December 8, 2019 by Rick Kinnaird 1 Comment

Yucatan Field Report #1

December 1, 2019

We are staying at the Hacienda Chichen. The very place many archaeologists lived while carrying out their investigations of the site of Chichen Itza. In fact, a man named Edward Thompson bought the Hacienda and the ruins. He was known as the man who bought the eight wonder of the world. An old 1930s News Reel recently surfaced of Sylvanus Morley, famed Chichen archaeologist, showing the site as it appeared in the early 1930s. What I was not prepared for was the nasally tone of his voice.

I have had thoughts of Alexander Botts and Joe E. Brown mashed up with that News Reel. For those of you unfamiliar with Botts and Brown – a quick update. Alexander Botts was the protagonist in a series of short stories written at the beginning of the Twentieth Century. He was a salesman for the Earthworm Tractor Company and the stories were in the form of reports sent back to the home office. As you read the stories it becomes clear that problems arose and they were all of Botts making. Not that he ever saw it that way. He reported the facts and then arrived at an opportunity that had come about due to the aforementioned problems he had created.

The actor Joe E. Brown played Botts in the movies. Brown was known for his large facile mouth and malleable plastic facial expressions. He was the Jim Carrey of his day.

My alter ego, Bryce Holliwell, who does things I would only dream of doing, and is a Walter Middy-esque figure is giving my first field report. For those of you unfamiliar, look up The Secret Life of Walter Middy by James Thurber. It’s a short two page story published in The New Yorker in 1939. It’s a classic and my mother’s favorite.

Without further adieu, I present Bryce Holliwell reporting in Alexander Botts like style channeling the voice of Sylvanus Morley.

“Ladies and Gentlemen I am here in Chichen It-zaaa. The ancient capital of a the Maya. The most advanced civilization in the Americas until the arrival of the white man. We are staying at the Hacienda Chichen. The very place where famed archaeologist Sylvanus Morley lived while working here. The site and hacienda had been purchased by a one Edward Thomson earlier in the century, and thus became a man to own one of the wonders of the world. But I digress…

I was in my room last night preparing for bed when I spent a considerable amount of time contemplating the sink. It had a silver disc as a stopper. I could determine no way to let water out because I saw no mechanical means to move the stopper. Finally, I poked at one edge of the disc and noted that it pivoted on two pins placed opposite each other, on a line passing through the center of the disc. The disc was thus turned on end and water could flow out. I was also curious as I noticed the bathroom sink had no discernible overflow return.

This did not concern me until the morning. When I began my morning ablutions by opening the hot water tap and letting it run. While I waited for it to get hot, I commenced to prepare the floor in my bedroom for my morning floor exercises. I had just spread a towel upon the floor when I noted a pool of water near the entrance to the bathroom. This it turned out was caused by the sink overflowing its lip and thus the water spilled onto the floor. By the time I arrived at the sink and commenced to turn off the hot water tap, which was the source of the overflow, the pool of water had turned into a stream and run out of the sink onto the bathroom floor, into the bedroom, past the closet, under the refrigerator until it reached the waste basket in the far corner of the room.

I quickly surmised that the best course of action at this point in time was to turn off the hot water spigot and then to open the stopper to let the remaining water in the sink escape via the drain pipe.

The water at this point was much to hot to be able to put my hand in, However, by use of the blunt end of my toothbrush I was able to poke at the disc, open it, and thus relieve the water in the sink.

With water on the floor I decided to abandon my seated floor exercises and opted for a standing set of exercise, which I modified for the conditions. I found by placing both feet upon the towel and moving my feet too and fro I was able to not only have a good exercise, but also to mop up the water that had spilled. I moved about the room thusly and wrung out the towel into the sink as required. I can now report that at least half the bedroom floor is in a remarkable state of cleanliness. Not only that but because the water flowed under the mini-bar refrigerator a spider was flushed from its den and I was able to dispatch it to its everlasting rest with the ball of sole of my left loafer, applied with a loud flat smack upon the floor.

As an additional benefit, the tile floor had been warmed, thus making my entrance into my morning shower quite pleasant.

Bryce Holliwell reporting.

PS Before leaving home I removed the patio umbrella from the glass tabletop. It did not want to come free from the circular glass opening, but by an exertion of great upward force I was able to free it. The umbrella is safely stowed in the shed for the winter. I have suggested to my wife that we should obtain another patio table, as this one appears to have reached the end of its life, and end of summer prices would be advantageous for purchase.

B.H. reporting from Chiche It-zaaah. O-O.