Archives for January 2020

New Day 1106 He’s our president. Take him please.

January 31, 2020 by Rick Kinnaird Leave a Comment

New Day 1106 He’s our president. Take him please.

Friday January 28, 2020

277 Days until the 2020 election and 353 days to the Inauguration

As I was riding from the airport in Mumbai to my hotel my guide told me Mr. Trump was coming to India.

My first reaction was disgust.

Then Anger.

Then Fear.

(Are these the ‘three stages of “ something or other?” Grief. Loss. Alcohol denial. Alaska’s Denali? Something.)

Then … a question.

I posed it in the form of a statement.

“Keep him. Please!”

They laughed.

I’m serious. “Hey, Bubby. How much? … You keep him. No questions asked.”

They looked away.

PS Traditional local fare. (In any land. Well, in any land the Brits were in.)

If you would like to try this kind of food:

1. Go to a hotel,

2. Ask where the bar is, (Go to the bar)

3. Tell the waiter “I want a beer and a club sandwich.”

They may not understand a lot of what you said but “beer” and “club sandwich” seem to be universal.

PS Traditional Indian Food, (NOT! Fake out. Ha ha ha ha ha…)

277 Days until the 2020 election and 353 days to the Inauguration

India Field Report #1

January 31, 2020 by Rick Kinnaird 2 Comments

Dateline: January 29 or 30, 2020

India Field Report #1

I had to wake up at three in the morning to catch my first flight to India.

Many people have asked me if I’m worried.

All the people, the crime, the filth, the poverty …

Well yes, there is always an element of risk.

If one prepares both mentally and physically then one can lessen the potential of a problem.

I was worried, but only a little bit.

We flew in and the landing was smooth as could be expected.

The food was mediocre to terrible.

The “Farmer’s Breakfast” was luke warmed over potatoes and two microwaved “egg products.”

(A circular egg folded in half over some cheese and after being thawed was then microwaved to almost warm. But hey, what do you want for close to twenty bucks?)

Sure it was dangerous, but it’s Newark.

On my way to India now. Fourteen and a half hours and I’m there.

New Day 1103 The New Modernism

January 28, 2020 by Rick Kinnaird Leave a Comment

Tuesday January 28, 2020

280 Days until the 2020 election and 356 days to the Inauguration

I’ve been thinking a lot about the impeachment and dancing – specifically, dancers for singing acts. I think Sia started it. She had those dancers who did movements that had nothing to do with her song. It was bizarre. Now, everyone seems to be copying it. Of course, people are still copying Janet Jackson’s troop from Rhythm Nation. I guess I should have said troupe as in dance group, but I used troop as in army, because she was talking about a nation and hence it’s army. It made sense. Now? Do a bunch of people moving in unison for no particular reason make sense? And this brings me to art, as in institutional art, as in paintings and sculpture. It has been said that art imitates life, that it reflects the society within which it was made. If so, God help us. I was in the Pompidou Center a few years ago and couldn’t help but think they got sold a bunch of shlock by the same guys who sold the emperor no clothes. It took the wisdom of a child to point that out.

This brings me to a brief tableau of life that happened when my kids were quite young. We had gone church shopping and were at the local Catholic church. The service had just ended and it was early spring, just before Easter. A priest with a lovely Irish accent was recounting to the amusement of the adults that one of his pupils in Sunday school had fallen asleep while he was giving the lesson about Jesus and his crucifixion. The child awoke just as the priest got to the part about Jesus rising from the dead.

The kid said that no, you don’t rise from the dead. When you’re dead, you’re dead.

The priest and the adults all twittered in laughter. Poor child. But wait a second, who has the better sense?

I think about the 4,500 year history of Egypt. Of their burying their dead, and mummifying them, and all the other stuff. What evidence did they have that it worked? You would have thought that at some point someone would have held up their hand and said, “Hey, wait a second.”

Or the Maya, who did similar things with the idea that their dead would live among the stars.

Or – you name it. What religion that has a belief in the afterlife has any proof that it exists? Yet, they go on with their prayers, ceremonies and arguments.

Then I think about Greta and how one person I know referred to her as “a poor deluded child.” Really? She’s pissed off. The house is burning down and she’s screaming because she knows she’s going to be left with the mess and the adults are twittering around saying poor deluded child. She’s not the one deluded.

This brings me to the impeachment and art. After the High Renaissance of Italy came Mannerism. This was art that wasn’t trying to be picture perfect. The colors were slightly more garish, the limbs elongated. Things weren’t quite right in the sense that the pictures being painted didn’t reflect the reality that everyone saw. But put it another way, if you were an artist and you had seen Michelangelo’s work, I think you’d be tempted to ask yourself, “Who wants to follow that?”

So new directions were taken. This evolved into various kinds of art: landscape and portraiture became regimented. historical and Biblical scenes predictable. All that changed with the invention of the lead painting tube and artists could now go outside and paint because they were no longer constrained to their mixing bowls and therefore their studios. The plain air movement which became the Impressionist movement was born. Another invention changed the art world – the moving picture. By 1907, it was clear to the artists in Paris that they had to change because people could now watch reality in the form of movies. They didn’t need pictures like that. The split faced figures of Picasso were a direct result of his going to the museum in Paris that featured such masks from Africa. The idea of being a savage, of rejecting the old norms (while embracing the modern comforts) had become the new art struggle. This terminated in absurdity of the Dada movement, “It is art, because I say it is art,” can only go so far.

Yet, many artists today still are trying that. Most of it is crap and will be washed away with time.

So this brings me to the impeachment trial. I have to ask, “Is art imitating life or is it the other way around?”

There’s a third player in that question. There’s a new world out there. While movies show these futuristic worlds where war has wiped out once great civilizations and they have been replaced with sand swept ruins the reality to come is that we may be facing such a life intellectually and it may, in time, lead to a wind swept desert.

This new world is the world of alternate facts and gas lighted reality. “It is what I tell you it is. Don’t heed your senses. Don’t use reason. Don’t use logic. Listen to me! I know the truth!”

It is the world of propaganda and disinformation.

You can’t have a conversation with a religious fanatic, because they believe. Likewise, you can’t have a conversation with a political fanatic for the same reason. When the religious and political fanatics get together with the monied interests that want to hide their real motives and use these people for their own ends we end up with the world you see now. This wacky world that was on full display during the Republican defense of the president.

Where to begin? Jay Sekulow and his argument that the president was interested in corruption, which he is – but not in stopping it, and that Ukraine was in on the rigging of the U.S. 2016 election? (Which they weren’t.) I like the part where he said he could prove the Ukraine bit because their were papers in the White House with the word Ukraine on them.

Or what about Pam Bondi? The woman who was bought off by the twenty grand bribe to her election campaign, arguing all kinds of crap that the right has been dredging up from its own echo chamber, none of which is true.

Or that old time lawyer of Trump’s saying Obama should be impeached. I wonder if the Republicans would vote for that?

Or Alan Dershowitz arguing that the Constitution only provides for a few crimes as high crimes? I mean this guy takes on the most notorious of high crimes of famous and rich people and here he is again, spouting nonsense and contradicting his former arguments. This guy used to teach at Harvard Law.

OMG! This is where we are. In this weird twisted distorted and discolored world.

Reality. Who needs reality?

Meanwhile a virus is spreading throughout the world and no one seems to know what it is and how to stop it. There are a few places left in the world that can fight this sort of thing. A few places that the zombies haven’t broken into and eaten the brains of the people doing real work, but the bulwarks are thinning and the oceans are rising.

280 Days until the 2020 election and 356 days to the Inauguration

PS The Red Pyramid, The Bent Pyramid, a tunnel inside a pyramid leading down*, and the stairs taking you up to a tunnel to another chamber (once you walk up other stairs to this first chamber.)

*Imagine walking backwards, arms spread wide to grasp the hand rails, bent over. It’s like doing a backwards walking chest press. This is probably the entrance tunnel to The Bent Pyramid. Notice the Red Pyramid is build at the same angle as the top part of The Bent Pyramid. They weren’t going to screw up again!

New Day 1098 Stand With The President!

January 26, 2020 by Rick Kinnaird Leave a Comment

New Day 1098 Stand With The President!

Romance love cover of couple inane embrace — It’s Getting Hot in Here

Thursday January 23, 2020

285 Days until the 2020 election and 361 days to the Inauguration

It has now been revealed that the reason Rex Tillerson called Donald Trump a moron was because Trump insulted the military calling them “Losers” and “babies.”

Trump also demonstrated a lack of knowledge of geography, foreign policy, and diplomacy (among other topics.)

So, I say if you:

STAND WITH THE PRESIDENT

because our MILITARY are NOTHING BUT

LOSERS and BABIES.

Then please copy and repost the above.

This from the new book “A Stable Genius,” which is sold out everywhere.

Then there’s Lev Parnas. His interview showed that “everyone was in the loop.” He also showed that his actions were directed and in concert with Trump and Giuliani. He also made clear that Trump was not interested in corruption in the Ukraine but rather that Trumo was concerned about Biden.

Now, on to the impeachment trial, Adam Schiff and the other Democratic managers made a clear and compelling case that Trump obstructed and committed crimes. This without a majority of the evidence that normally would be available in a trial. But they can’t get the normal evidence and witnesses because the president and Moscow Mitch are blocking those witnesses, documents, and evidence. Claire McCaskill summed up the possible outcomes very well. She said in any trial there are three outcomes:

1) You admit you’re guilty and ask for mercy,

2) The evidence shows you are guilty,

3) You argue that the process is unfair.

No one believes Trump would admit guilt. The evidence is clear; Trump committed the crimes. That leaves option 3. The Republican lawyers have argued that the process is unfair and that the prosecutors don’t have any evidence. Of course, most of the really damning stuff is being withheld by the president, which he has freely admitted that he is doing, and by the Senate Republicans who aren’t asking for it.

So there we are.

In an interesting piece of history, Jon Meacham brought up former U.S. Senator Margaret Chase Smith of Maine who stood up to Joe McCarthy. When she did only six other senators stood with her. She was labeled Snow White and the Six Dwarfs. Several years later McCarthy was called out for his unethical behavior by the Senate. So the question Meacham posed was, “Who’s side do you want to be on Joe McCarthy of Margaret Chase Smith?”

So far it looks like the Republican Senators are happy to sell their reputations, their morals, their ethics, and their souls for a man they know is a cheater, a liar, and a criminal.

In a new low Marsha Blackburn besmirched Col. Vindman’s name. She didn’t have to do it. She went out of her way to do so. I think she is the dumbest Senator. The most naive being Susan Collins and the dumbest woman in Congress is still Virginia Foxx, but Blackburn is giving her a run for her money.

And if you haven’t heard Adam Schiff’s closing remarks I urge you to do so.

285 Days until the 2020 election and 361 days to the Inauguration

PS Time for some hot steamy romance!

New Day 1087 Here We Are Again (only worse)

January 12, 2020 by Rick Kinnaird Leave a Comment

New Day 1087 Here We Are Again (only worse)

Sunday January 12, 2020

296 Days until the 2020 election and 372 days to the Inauguration

Wow, what a weird week. The president took out the #2 guy in Iran. The Iranians shot missiles at our bases in Iraq and then shot down a passenger by mistake and we seem to be right back where we were, except worse off. In fact, that seems to be the mark of this president. Make a mess, claim victory, then try to get back to where we started. Except he can’t get back; he can only re-establish at a lower level and a worse level for us as a nation than before he started whatever mess he created. The best thing we can hope for is he stays on the golf course.

Hey, remember how he said he wasn’t big into vacations? He’s right. He’s HUGE into vacations.

He’s spent something like one day in five at his golf courses and resorts, and that has been a HUGE expense for us tax payers.

Okay, let’s review the U.S. relationship with Iran. Well, let’s go back a bit further. The Greeks fought them. Darius was setting out to invade Greece. That’s where the movie The 300 came from and the Marathon race, because the Greeks were resisting the Persians (Pro-tip – Persia is the old name for Iran!!!) It was Alexander who finally defeated the Persians in an epic battle but not before some pretty nasty stuff on both sides went on. Xerxes was emperor of Persia when he made the last push to conquer Greece. The problem was he had too much stuff that he sent over to do the job and he clogged the roadways. One of his top generals had five sons, four were in the army. The general asked his emperor if his youngest son could be spared from military service. “Sure, no problem.” Xerxes had the young son ripped in half and mounted on spikes on either side of the road his men had to pass through. Nice guy.

(By the way, I get the names confused as to the names of the Persian emperors, so don’t take the names as gospel.)

The Persians also came up with a neat thing that if you’re a Christian you may have heard of. It’s called cruxifixction. Yeah, turns out that after several days the only way you can breath is to lift yourself up with your feet to pump air into your lungs. That’s why in the Bible they talk about someone taking pity on Jesus and breaking his legs so he can’t breath anymore and finally die. It’s pretty horrible. I guess that’s why the Saudis like it so much.

One last little fact about Persia and that is they are not Arab. Many people here think they are, but they aren’t. They have their own rich culture, history, and traditions, Aladdin and all that.

Okay so let’s move up to the near present day, the 2016 Republican debates. All those goofs were yelling and screaming about what a terrible deal the Iranian Nuclear Deal was. Why if anyone of them had been in charge they would have punched a mullah right in the face and made him eat dirt, or something like that. The truth is that none of them had ever negotiated squat. They had no idea what they were talking about. Well, I’m being unfair. Carly Fiorina had managed to take HP into the dumpster by her terrific management. Jeb had actually done some good things as a governor. But come on. That’s about it. Obama and Hillary had gotten the Chinese, the Russians, and all the European allies to work together to get the Iranians to the negotiating table and then two MIT graduates with degrees in physics worked out the details. Our guy had a Nobel prize for god sake. We could only get a deal and not a treaty because the Republicans in the Senate refused to help, which is typical. Ask yourself this, “When has a Republican Senator done anything to help you or this country?” Let me ask that a different way, “How is it that Mitch McConnell has managed to make $2.4 million every year he’s been in office?” Or “Why are the Russians helping out the poor people of Kentucky and not their Senator?”

Okay, so with no treaty it’s left to the president to keep the deal going. Trump pulled out of it. Why? No reason. He was going to get a better deal – remember? Just like the Republicans were going to give us better health care – remember?

So where are we on those two issues? On health care the president backed by the Republicans have come up with a way to threaten the health care coverage of 134,000,000 Americans and they hav no plans to replace what we have with anything. This is nothing new in the last 35 years they have never proposed an kind of health care. So if you like your existing health care but just want less at a higher price than the Republicans are your ticket.

Moving on to the Iranian nuclear deal. Trump keeps saying we are close to bringing the Iranians to the table to renegotiate the nuclear deal. No we aren’t. They like the deal they have. We liked the deal we and our allies had. Was it as tough as all those Republican presidential wannabes said they wanted? No. But remember most of those folk had never negotiated anything of any significance and President Obama did it with a pack of whining Republican Senators obstructing him every step of the way. What has Trump done to get a deal? Sanctions. How has that worked out? Well, it’s made the life of the average Iranian much tougher, pissed off the politicians and clerics who run that country, but otherwise – it hasn’t done much.

Somehow the thinking, if we can call it that, inside this administration is to squeeze the life out of Iran’s economy and they’ll come to the table, give up their government, and do what we say. Lemme ask, “How’s that working out?” Hum, hum, I see. Not to well, eh? What? A bunch of fanatical religious folk aren’t willing to say to another country, “Okay, you win.” Imagine that? Remember, until Trump came along John Bolton was considered a pretty out there kind of guy. Now? He seems to have been the voice of reason. Of course, given the other advisors close to the president this is understandable. We’ve got a white nationalist running immigration, We have golfing pals running the VA. We’ve got a guy who’s been publishing books saying China is the big threat (which is true) and what we need to do is to impose sanctions (Yeah, that’s worked out well. How much has that cost us Americans? $135B so far, I think was the last number I saw. this doesn’t count the farmers and dairymen that have been wiped out due to Trump’s policies. But hey, take comfort in the words of Senator Tom Cotton – You should be happy to take a bullet for Trump.)

Then there’s NAFTA. Tore it up. What do we have as a replacement? NAFTA – only worse.

I’m tired of winning. I’d like to see someone come in and really do something. Hey, Elizabeth Warren has been doing the talk show circuit. Remember how the right and the center Dems keep saying her stuff is expensive and will cost too much? And how she hasn’t said how she’ll pay for it? Despite her telling folks how she’ll pay for it? Yeah, well, she made it pretty straight forward last week. See if you can follow this:

Companies file tax forms (They don’t pay any taxes, but they have to file.),

There is a line that says how much profit they made.

Warren says take 7% of that as a tax.

Complicated right?

It’s as hard as figuring out the tip at a restaurant. Why is Mike Bloomberg in the race? He’s afraid Warren might get the nomination and he might have to pay taxes.

Well, at least he has a record of accomplishment. Too bad he didn’t throw his money behind another candidate instead of himself. Too bad billionaires can buy their way into our political arena.

I look forward to a day when our judiciary and our Senate reflects more what our country really looks like.

Meanwhile, Australia burns.

296 Days until the 2020 election and 372 days to the Inauguration

Author with Egyptian security man with nightstick at author's throat (joking around) — What? Argggh.

PS Crazy American tourist being restrained by nice Egyptian security man. ( Egyptians are kind of like Iranians, right? Am I right? I mean they both are over there and not here. )