Archives for May 2021

Thursday May 6, 2021s

Since Monday when I wondered how the travesty of a voter recount in Arizona was going to end we are given a possible answer. But before we get to that let’s recap:

– Satan and his band of yes-people have claimed that the election has been stolen and that he is still president. There is no evidence to these claims. In Arizona the Republicans in the state capital have awarded $165,000 to a firm called Cyber Ninjas to recount the ballots in Maricopa County. It’s the largest county in the state and there are over two million ballots to count. The vote was recounted and audited and certified, so what exactly the Cyber Ninjas will find has been questionable from the start. They have ignored the advice from the Arizona Secretary of State and she has said that the minimum to keep the ballots secure has been violated. A reporter pointed out that the inspectors were walking around with blue pens, a big no-no, because they could be used to mark ballots. Cyber Ninjas have no experience inspecting ballots or certifying elections. They have operated in secret as much as possible. Reporters who have reported have been escorted from the building and banned. Some reporters were to be allowed in as long as they signed a non-disclosure agreement. This seemed problematic for reporters whose job it is to disclose. 

Okay, that brings us up to about yesterday, or the day before. The Cyber Ninjas were to be done on or before May 14^th, because the space was rented out after that to local high schools for their graduation ceremonies. However, the Ninjas said it would take them longer than that, because of all the inspecting they had to do to each ballot. 

Let’s detour for a moment to understand all the inspecting they are claiming to be doing. There’s the blue light inspection, which reveals watermarks and folds. There are no watermarks and what difference do folds make? See, you aren’t supposed to fold the ballot. Why? Not clear. Okay then there’s the bamboo. Yes, this was revealed yesterday. The ninjas have learned that 40,000 ballots were slipped into the ballot boxes by the Chinese and you can discover this because there will be bamboo in the paper. See, China has bamboo… Yeah, well, no one saw no Chinese slipping ballots into the boxes, but ya know “people are saying…”

Okay, so now the Justice Department is filing charges. Apparently, it is illegal to turn ballots from a Federal election over to a private company. 

If this was Texas where a woman is being sentenced to five years in jail for trying to vote and filing out a provisional ballot and her not being allowed to vote because of a felony conviction for which she served her time but didn’t go through all the procedures to get her voting rights back I’d say the legislators who voted to turn over those ballots and the Cyber Ninjas should get five years for each ballot. Lemme do a quick calculation 5 times 2 million equals ten million years. Yeah. That sounds about right.

Tuesday May 4, 2021

I was thinking of that scene from Ally McBeal where that guy who was in Numbers and 24 and Ally yelled out something in Spanish during a brief session when everyone was yelling something in Spanish. Then everyone stopped and looked at him. One person asked him, “Did you just say, ‘The goat ate my pants,’ ?” And he admitted he had. “Why?” someone asked. Because it’s the only phrase he remembered in Spanish. (Obviously, a hold over from high school language class.)  I’ve been there and I suspect we all have. Being caught up in the moment.

What a weird, funny, scary time. We are now in.

The Florida Republicans are in the midst of rushing through a voter suppression law. The idiot governor says he will sign it. Then someone stopped and said wait a minute, this will disenfranchise many Republican voters! They tried to change the legislation but it’s too late and the new wording wouldn’t work. Now they are faced with a possible law that will cut out and enrage many of their voters. What to do? Who knows? Hey, I have a wacky idea – don’t pass the legislation.

Speaking of not passing legislation – Mitch McConnell has once again promised that no Republicans in the Senate will vote for Biden’s latest legislation. This is a repeat of the last legislation Biden and the Dems passed last round.

This is a winning strategy?

Let see. As of yesterday 64% of voters in the U.S. like the direction the country is going in. That is an unheard of number. In March the country saw the largest increase in family income since they’ve been keeping records (1959) 21.4%. 

Yeah. Oh, and get this. The new bill Biden passed last round will be a bigger tax cut for the poor and middle class than anything the Republicans have passed. 

Yeah. You want lower taxes? Vote Democratic.

You want a strong economy? Vote Democratic.

You want more money in your pocket? Vote Democratic.

You want nothing to get done? Vote Republican.

You want to watch your country get torn apart by racists, Russians, conmen (and con-women)? Vote Republican.

We are now leading the world in vaccinations. Imagine if Satan was still in office? We be looking at those charts of death and new cases of infection.

Apparently, our rate of vaccination is going down. Why? We are getting through the people who understand that a vaccination means they get their life back. We are now into the “Oh gee, I don’t know” crowd.

I have a simple solution – leper colonies.

If you aren’t vaccinated you are banned from society. Simple.

Or I’ve got another fab idea. This for those who liked The Hunger Games and all those dystopian fantasies – roving gangs of vaccinators. If you can’t prove you are vaccinated (“Show me your papers!”) you get jabbed on the spot. No questions asked.

Oh let’s see, there was the guy who took to the stand to defend himself, because, well his dad was a judge and he had worked in the courts so he knew what he was doing. Apparently, he admitted on the stand to saying, “kill the juice.” And that was “code” for “kill the jews.” Who knew? So clever. He said it was a bad joke, in poor taste and that there were a lot of Hitler memes running around the internet. Hey, guess what? Guilty. Not funny. Think about it in jail.

Oh then there’s the Arizona recount. They were going to be  done way before May 14 when all the high schools have their graduations there. Now, they are not so sure they’ll be done. In fact, they won’t. This ain’t stunning news according to the few reporters who have been watching the operation. In fact, anyone who looks at a picture of the operation can attest to this. On the left side of the screen are pallets of ballots (quick say that three times fast!) On the right is an empty area where I am told there are a few boxes of the processed ballots. I didn’t see any boxes over there but okay, there are some boxes over there with done inspected ballots. They’ve been at this – how many weeks or days? I’d say they’ll be done by 2080.

In between the left and the right are a bunch of folks that look like they are dressed for a green screen taping. Some are in blue, some green, some yellow – I think. There are round tables with lazy Sussans on them and what look like micro-fiche machines. I think they are the ultraviolet light machines which are checking for watermarks and folds. 

I think that what we need is a show where the people in charge, the Cyber Ninja folks, are brought on to give us – “Important Updates.” I think Al Franken should host it with special Zoom guest – Donald Trump. “You know Al a lot of people are saying…”, “Really? Who?”, “Lots of people Al, and you’d be surprised what they are finding.”, “I would be? Like what?”, “Lots of stuff Al. Lots of stuff.”

The Arizona recount thing has gotten to the point where people are asking what will happen when they present their findings?

Okay, here’s my take on it. They won’t present. They will dribble on and on, until someone kills it and they can protest that they were so close to The Truth! (If only they had been given more time and money.) The reality is there is no fraud and they are now in charge of proving there is and there isn’t. All they can do is wander around that arena when no one else is using it and play with those micro-fiche blue light machines.

Let’s not forget that the guy who is the tech wizard for the Cyber Ninjas has to his names an invention that is considered one of the top 20 worst inventions ever. Has written books on hidden treasure for every state in the union and many foreign countries. Is a big time Trump supporter, and big guy, as is evidenced by a picture of him towering over and squeezing the crap out of a diminutive smiling terrified Rudy Giuliani.

But it gets better than that. A reporter took a picture of a fellow at the site who is working there, inspecting ballots. Who is this fellow? Why he’s a guy whose name is on the ballot, and who lost his election. Not only that but he has been button holed by the sheriff’s organization as a cheater. The reporter posted the picture and then said something like, “Oh, look who’s here.” The reporter was escorted from the building.

In other stuff, Kevin McCarthy, minority Speaker of the House, has now sent out a message telling his voters that “help is on the way.” Yeah, you go Kevin! That bill? The one you called socialism? The one you actively lobbied your caucus to vote against? Yeah, that bill. You are now taking credit for. Nice.

A better message to send your voters would be, “Despite my best efforts. Despite my actively working against this bill and rallying my fellow Republicans it was to no avail. Therefore, the bill became law and it will help you tremendously. Please vote for me so I can continue to work against you.”

Up in the Senate Mitch McConnell has said that no Republican Senator will vote for the infrastructure bill no matter what is in it. This may be a bit of a problem for old Mitch. See there’s a bridge between Ohio and Kentucky that really needs fixing. In the bill Biden has proposed there is money specifically to fix that bridge. Yeah, I bet some of the folks in Kentucky are going to be asking themselves, “WTF? Mitch. WTF?”

And lastly four of the families that had their kids ripped from them by Stephen Miller and the rest of that Sadistic gang are being reunited after four years. I hope and pray that the kids are alright (Hey, that could be a song!) and I hope that somehow charges are brought against Miller and he spends the rest of his life in solitary confinement.

Monday May 3, 2021

Finding Rhythm 

We were watching the Ken Burns’ PBS show on Hemingway. Both Shelby and I found it inspiring.

The show concentrated on his writing. Other writers described passages from his work and why it was so good. Hemingway seems simple in his sentence construction, yet it is compelling. There is a rhythm to it. A repetition. Then it stops. One beat short. And that is what makes it so compelling.

Kerouac worked on his rhythm. He wanted to capture the jazz of the time in which he wrote. It had to be hot. Cool. Mad. Sweaty, rub your belly, shake your head from side to side. Madness.

Hunter S. Thompson had a vibe that described being on the edge of drug madness. His description in the Curse of Lono of driving on the road in Maui between the two volcanoes; the road that rental car companies forbid you from driving on, in a Ferrari with the owner of the car in the passenger seat white knuckled, screaming, but Thompson can’t hear him because of the wind and his concentration. “There’s a reason why they make cars  that can hold the track at one hundred miles an hour in a hairpin turn in the rain” or some such line. Classic.

Bolano who wrote “2066” had a style that made it easy to go from one sentence to the next. So did Clavell.

Finding the rhythm. That’s what they did. They found their rhythm. In that there is great beauty.

Friday April 29, 2021

When I first got into computers I saw an entry for Yet Another Compiler Compiler (ie YACC), The author asked how many do you need? This in the vein of “If you seen one, you’ve seen them all” or something like that. A compiler is computer code that translates from one computer language to another. Originally, the idea of a compiler was to allow people to write in a way that was closer to what they understood, say mathematical equations, than what a computer understood which would be registers, memory, and functional units. One of the early compilers was FORTRAN. It allowed scientists and engineers to work in formulae and equations. For every new fangled machine you would need to write the code for FORTRAN to run on that machine. The idea of a compiler compiler was to automatically generate code for the new machine or the new computer language. This is not a new idea. It’s been around since the earliest days of computers. 

The same could be said for economics or politics. Doesn’t seem that there are any new ideas, just the same old stuff being repackaged and regurgitated. 

But then we get to today and the face of the New Republican Party! I put the “N” in capital to emphasis it. Is what we are seeing new and different or is it YACC or perhaps SOS (Same Old Stuff)? 

Ah grasshopper, here is where art and knowledge of art can be a guide. What? Let’s take a very quick tour of art from the dark ages onward through and past the Renaissance. If you remember at first we got flat lifeless block like figures in the early Renaissance. Then we got depth and perspective and shading and very lifelike figures. Fabulous stuff., Michelangelo and all that. Then what happened? All of a sudden the figures became elongated and the colors were not quite right. They were slightly more garish. What happened? It was called Mannerism. The explanation by art historians was that the artists had taken the realism thing as far as it would go. 

In other words, either they got bored with it or they couldn’t sell it (ie find a sponsor) so they moved on to something else.

I contend, or at least I’m willing to ask the question, “Is that what has happened to the republican party?” Have people gotten bored with reality? 

Is there a new reality? A phony “as seen on TV” reality? Is that what has overtaken the republican party? 

Most people who seem to know and follow politics deeply say that effectively running a government is boring work by and large. Hey? Why not spice it up? Why not elect a no-nothing and watch him do stupid things? 

I see that as one explanation. I also see it as a smokescreen for the powerful to manipulate the political scene to their economic advantage. 

Why not just pass laws that work in your favor? So what if they screw over most of the people? 

We have seen in literature and Hollywood a particular strain of thinking which is “let it collapse and then we’ll come in and fix it” or “we’ll hide out in our little corner of the world where everything is terrific and let the rest of the world go to hell” or “oh snikey, we let the rest of the world go to hell and now it came to visit upon us and we are in a sand swept wasteland fighting for our lives against a bunch of mutants.”

If you think about it Ayn Rand wrote about this. Paul Ryan made his staff read her stuff, which I gotta say is pretty inspiring stuff. Until you realize some of the backstory. She was really writing about Soviet Russia. Her hero was based on real life psychopath who lured the local banker’s daughter out of school, dismembered her, got a ransom, reassembled the girl to do so (like holding her eyelids open with wires) all so he could have enough money to enroll in a Christian school in California. (No, I didn’t make that up.)

The theme of hiding out is also the backstory of Black Panther. There was what appeared to be a remote backward African nation, but in reality they were light years ahead of the rest of the world.

Rand’s folks were hiding out in the Rockies waiting for the world to collapse. 

Some folks have asked, “What’s the answer?”

Well, I say, “We don’t know.”

I can look at various things that have worked to some degree, but nothing that we’ve come up with is perfect. Some things are better than others. We can also identify trends and predict where things are going because we’ve seen it before.

Bill Maher did a piece recently that said just because it’s an idea that you’ve just thought of doesn’t make it a good idea.

The “Oh gee, let’s try this” is not necessarily a great way to go. Especially, if you’ve seen the movie before. In economics I was having a Facebook discussion with someone about bits of this. The conversation was about the minimum wage. There are two sides to this: 1 – everyone has to cut their own deal. If you don’t like the deal, move on. 2 – There are jobs that don’t require a great deal of skill or knowledge that need to be done for a society to function. If left to their own devices employers in those areas will pay as little as possible and those people will live in poverty.

Do we want to permit that? As a society? 

What’s the answer? 

If you hone to 1 above then you say those people should move on and find another deal. 

Great. How many times can a person do that in their lifetime? If you read “The Grapes of Wrath” remember the scenes about the people who read handbills saying their were good paying jobs somewhere else? They’d go there to find the market was flooded with people who were willing to work for less and less, because they had to eat. There’s a fancy economic term for this, but the reality is that the people who needed the pickers generated those handbills and distributed them so they’d be able to pay as little as possible. Is there any difference now with what WalMart does? Or Burger King? Or any of those places?

What if everyone who could work there decided not to? Boom. Bye bye Walmart. But that isn’t how the world works is it? It’s like saying that a gas could be released into an enclosed room and all the molecules could huddle in the corner, but that’s not what happens. 

In order for workers to get a better wage they have to act as a group. There are lots of ways that this can be done. In Germany, the autoworkers approached all the German carmakers and asked, “How can we help you make better cars so you can sell more and we can make more money?” This is the idea of you want a slice of the pie and you want to make the pie bigger, and get a large slice too perhaps.

This has worked well for German autoworkers, However, there are other workers left out. What about them? Maybe there’s a way to help others in that economy. So far that hasn’t happened.

The idea of the $15 an hour minimum wage is being treated by some like it’s a radical idea. Socialism, or something like that. I think we ought to get some really smart economists together and have them come up with some sort of economic model that automatically adjusts the minimum wage so people don’t live in poverty.

I can tell you this. Leaving it to politicians doesn’t work. Politicians have shown over and over again that they are “too little, too late.” In fact, I have seen numerous articles that argue that politicians tend to add to economic woes more than help them in an economic cycle because they act so slowly they add fuel at just the wrong time and vice versa, thus exacerbating the economic cycle woes, not helping it. Thus the argument can be made that regulations in place that kick in automatically are better.

There is the argument that “we don’t need no stinkin’ regulations.” Yeah, I’ve heard that one. No regulations is regulation. The strongest will get stronger and the weak will whither. Which is great if you are the bloated 800 pound gorilla. But you aren’t. And we’re back to Ayn Rand. This is exactly what she wrote about. The fat bloated industries will influence government to give them a break. 

We’ve seen it before. Let’s change the dance.

YACC

PS And yesterday I said it was time to hear from Matt Gaetz again. Whew. Boy Howdy. More on that later.

Thursday April 28, 2021

How can a man so betray his own conscience, so often? It seems that Tim Scott has swallowed the party line hook, line and sinker, yet others say no. He was just repeating the party line last night, but in private conversation he’s not like that. Is this the Republican behavior now and forevermore? Didn’t we see this with Obama? We certainly are seeing it now with Biden. Look at how quickly elected Republicans try to grab credit for things they voted against. Tip O’Neil wrote about this behavior when he was in the state legislature in Massachusetts. This is nothing new, but do we have to keep putting up with it?

I mean telling us the Georgia voting law was to protect voting rights? Come on man!

So was he gas lighting or has he been gas lit? 

In other news Rudy got his cell one taken by the Feds. You know, the one he held up on Fox News and said it’s all right there? Yeah, that one. 

The question is will justice be served and if so how high are they willing to go? With Merrick Garland at the helm I feel they’ll go pretty high. I wonder about whether we’ll see Senators cuffed and taken off the floor for sedition? I’d like to see that Supreme Court case. I mean this is a court that said I child could be put away for life without parole. 

Speaking of that, I wonder how Justice Kavenaugh would rule in a case where two teenage boys were playing a drinking game that involved a girl. Where said girl was bent over … oh. Boys will be boys, right Brett? Yeah. 

Ah me. What’s happened to Matt Gaetz? Time for him to resurface.