Archives for August 2023

Monday, August 28, 2023

I’ve alway thought of Mike Pence as sanctimonious and a phony. As I got to learn more about him while running on the 2016 ticket with Donald Trump I understood that he was both sneaky and conniving. That was as Governor of Indiana. A lot of sneaky people have come from that state. Once Trump won the office I saw Pence as fawning as well. So I have understood Mike Pence to be a sneaky, sanctimonious, fawning, phony for years. The first Republican debate gave even more evidence, which I will get to in a minute, but first let’s deal with an underlying premise of Mike’s and I’d venture to say whatever you want to call these folks who are now running and being elected as Republicans. They call themselves conservatives, but it is not the conservatism I grew up with. It’s really the right wing John Birch Society type of beliefs that have seeped into the conservative discourse and being. At the same time the John Birch Society was spreading their lies and poison William Buckley was going around spreading his. As a kid I remember watching and listening to it and thinking, “This is weird.” I didn’t quite understand why, but it seemed disingenuous. There was a phoniness to it that I couldn’t put my finger on. Maybe I could, but I didn’t know what to call it.

What Buckley would do is to have a guest on, and he’d make some slightly off center remark. He’d use a term or a word in a way that wasn’t the way most people would use the word. he guest would try to explain the misconception or inappropriateness. Buckley didn’t care. He’d keep at it until the guest would relent and use the term in the way Buckley had been using it, all in an attempt to try to get Buckley to understand. As soon as that happened Buckley would turn on the guest in an “ah-ha” kid of moment and skewer the guest. Buckley would then do his verbal equivalent on the church lady superiority dance and the guest would sit there pissed off. 

One thing Mike said was, “compromise is not leadership.” That explains a lot about him and the right wing movement. Like Buckley he is letting you know the second he gets the upper hand he’s going to use it to bash your head in. We’ve seen other governors and Republican legislatures doing it as well. Florida removing and banning books, banning abortions, and firing prosecutors. Arkansas too. All through the south they are banning books, abortions, and rights.

Why? Because they can. Compromise is not what they are about. They believe they are right and anything else is wrong so what’s to compromise over?

But let’s get to the debate. I have to thank Brandon R. Grafius and his excellent article in Salon linked here:

https://www.salon.com/2023/08/27/mike-pence-and-the-book-a-master-class-in-disingenuous-biblical-interpretation/

which I am going to use for the base of the rest of this screed.

In that first debate Pence quoted the Bible. Except it wasn’t one quote it was two. He pasted them together and made it seem like one. The first part was from Jeremiah and the second from Deuteronomy. 

The second part was written hundreds of years before the first. None of this had anything to do with abortion or the sanctity of life. 

The first part was God telling Jeremiah he was going to be a prophet. The second was God telling Moses that to choose idolatry was death.

Mike gets around this two quotes problem by saying he opened the Bible. 

The next slight of hand (or mouth) is that he said “he read” and “he knew.”

What Grafius points out is that between those two verbs is a giant leap, which is glossed over and that is “I interpreted.” Nice.

Okay, so let me choose my favorite Bible quote, “Thou shalt,” I continue,”commit adultery.”

What do you mean I left some stuff out? Oh. Okay. One word. Big deal. Mike left out whole chapters, verses and books. You think putting the word I missed might change the meaning? Yeah. Maybe.

I learned a big word from that article “hermeneutics” and a new to me term “proof texting.” The first means the study of interpretation. The second means force fitting your interpretation into some quote.

Lemme see, The Second Amendment has been proof texted to say any idiot can carry a weapon anywhere. Got it.

Now that some hermeneutics poop right there.

I think I need to work on my righteous sanctimoniousness.

Lastly, we ate at Chic & Ruth’s, an Annapolis institution. Anyone who is anyone in Maryland has their picture on the wall. They are known for a six pound milkshake called “The Colossal.” Drink that and eat a 1 1/2 pound sandwich in 60 minutes and you get your picture on the wall – and a t-shirt. (I think you don’t have to pay for the meal if you succeed.) The guy next to us tried. Three kids and their parents got one and managed to finish it. The kids were disappointed that they didn’t meet the challenge requirements.

We got the crab cake sandwich. It was okay, barely. A huge bunch of crab, breading and I’m not sure. What was off putting was the center was still soft and mushy. It was, I guess, barely cooked. The service was haphazard. She served us our crabcakes without cocktail sauce but no tartar, and disappeared until we were almost done. The place was grimy. Like years of grease and dirt on the walls. Floor was clean as were the table surfaces, but if you looked around – yikes.

There was a picture of a brunette on the wall. I couldn’t figure out who she was. Probably, in her early forties, string of pearls – tasteful. Looked of Italian heritage. As we were leaving we looked – Connie Morella, former Republican Congresswoman representing Bethesda, Maryland. She looked old when I saw her in the Giant supermarket thirty years ago. She’s now 92. Like Amanda Chase who posts the young blond picture of herself when running for office in Virginia, not the Trump-In-Heels worn out aggrieved look she now sports.

Below is what Mike said at the debate and in 2016:

“‘Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you, and see, I set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life.'” 

*********

Here’s the breakdown:

First Part: Jeremiah 1:5

“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,
    before you were born I set you apart;
    I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.”

Here’s the context:

The words of Jeremiah son of Hilkiah, one of the priests at Anathoth in the territory of Benjamin. 2 The word of the Lord came to him in the thirteenth year of the reign of Josiah son of Amon king of Judah, 3 and through the reign of Jehoiakim son of Josiah king of Judah, down to the fifth month of the eleventh year of Zedekiah son of Josiah king of Judah, when the people of Jerusalem went into exile.

The Call of Jeremiah

4 The word of the Lord came to me, saying,

5 

“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,    before you were born I set you apart;
    I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.”

6 “Alas, Sovereign Lord,” I said, “I do not know how to speak; I am too young.”

7 But the Lord said to me, “Do not say, ‘I am too young.’ You must go to everyone I send you to and say whatever I command you. 8 Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you and will rescue you,” declares the Lord.

Second Part: Deuteronomy: 30:19 

Here’s the context:

17 But if your heart turns away and you are not obedient, and if you are drawn away to bow down to other gods and worship them, 18 I declare to you this day that you will certainly be destroyed. You will not live long in the land you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess.

19 This day I call the heavens and the earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live 20 and that you may love the Lord your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him. For the Lord is your life, and he will give you many years in the land he swore to give to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

PS – when we left the guy was slowing down. He had finished the sandwich, but the shake? Eh. Less than halfway and slowing to a stop.

Saturday, August 26, 2023

Okay, in my last screed I guessed his weight. I even threw in a range that had to include his weight and I got screwed – cheated – lied to, and I’m pissed off, but not surprised. In fact, I’m kind of – well, not pleased – but, well, What did I expect? Of course, he lied. He always lies. and he managed to lie while being booked. That takes a special kind of lying. I mean, really? 

I’ve lost respect for the sheriff in Fulton County (not Fani Willis, she’s amazing), but the sheriff? Come on. You could have said, “215? Uh huh. Just to be sure, step on this scale (you fat load).” Then we should have known the truth! But no, he wimped out. “215. Okay. Same weight as Muhammad Ali in his prime, that’s amazing. If we can get a picture. Thank you, sir.” Pussy. 

In other news, Taylor Swift is in line to be the biggest musical tour ever. Like 2.2 billion dollars in ticket sales alone. And another five billion in ancillary stuff like hotel rooms and restaurants. Three or four countries have invited her to come to their country. She is a phenomena that we’ve never seen before. A guy sent her an email and asked if she’d come serenade his fiancé and his friends at a party. She showed up with an acoustic guitar. Can you imagine? Maybe, I should ask her to write a song that implies we were lovers and broke up. That way I have a shot at the cover of Rolling Stone (“Who is the man in Taylor’s ‘Lost Love’ song?”) and I could parlay that into hosting SNL. These are my twin dreams. (no, not dreams of twins – perverts.) Where was I?

Yesterday, we drove up to Annapolis, Maryland via route 301. After crossing the Potomac we turned left to Captain Billy’s and had a fabulous seafood meal while looking out at the seagulls sitting atop pier pilings on the river. Life slowed. Everything became calm. My only regret was there wasn’t a place to stay the week so I could come back and continue eating the whole menu. 

When we got to Annapolis we ate at the rooftop of The Metropolitan, an upscale five star kind of place. It was okay, but the buzz was better than the food, which was okay. I had the fig goat cheese focaccia and Shelby had the cheese board. I had a glass of red wine that I think was warmed in the waters off Miami. And Shelby had slightly dried deli ham that they called Prosciutto. My dish was fine. Nothing to say, “Oh my god, we must come back,” but okay.

They had a band called “The Leftovers,” and that about summed it up. The best part of them was the very pretty Asian woman who sat right in front and watched them. We were trying to figure out which member she was with, probably the drummer, who had the best voice of the three. They sang stuff like The Band would have done, just more off key and slow with a violin thrown in. 

This morning we got up and went to Miss Shirley’s. Wow. A classic creative menu. 

We started with Nana’s Grapefruit Brûlée – half grapefruit with sugar caramelized on top.

I had the Crab Hash and Fried Green Tomato Eggs Benedict.

It makes me realize that there is good food out there creatively conceived. 

Here’s their menu:

https://www.missshirleys.com/uploads/files/menus/Spring2023Menu.pdf

I could start at Miss Shirley’s drive for an hour and a half to Captain Billy’s drive back to Annapolis and go to sleep (I wouldn’t need another meal) and do it all over again the next day. Might get tired of it after a week or ten days.

Thursday, August 24, 2023

OMG, where do I start? Can you imagine any of these people running the country?

First off, the moderators lost control right from the start.

Second, who was the skinny kid saying crazy sh*t and, I know, who cares? But, I gotta give him this, he was saying stuff and calling out the group or an individual, so by the rules established the person who was attacked got to respond and he got to reply, which took up most of the night. What he was saying was nuts. Therefore, most of the night was spent on him.

Third, the only person who seemed vaguely presidential was Nikki Haley, and her stand on abortion, like all the others save one, was a loser.

Of the eight up there, three or four were nothing burgers. Ron DeSantis thought yelling was a good idea. He was for enforcing the laws we have when it came to guns and that criminals should be locked up, except when it came to the ex-president, then we should get rid of the current Attorney General and stop weaponizing the Department of Justice and the FBI. He then went on to explain how he had weaponized the political system in Florida to get rid of two prosecutors, and he would do the same if elected President because these people had been put in place by George Soros. What happened to “let the people decide” as they had done in Florida with the two prosecutors? If George Soros is so powerful what about other even more powerful people like the folks behind the Federalist Society, why stop with Soros why not get rid of all of those appointees?

I had the sense that they likened Soros to the little creature in the movie “Men in Black” that sat in the head of the robot and controlled it.

Ah me.

Then there was the doing away with what Biden had done economically, but there was a real lack of specifics, other than a mention of inflation, interest rates, and national debt. Too bad they weren’t running against Trump’s record on these things. Somehow, Biden’s improving on all these metrics, and Trump had made them worse was glossed over. In fact, Republicans always increase the debt and yet they blame Democrats for what they the Republicans have done.

They blamed Biden for the pull out in Afghanistan. Why didn’t they give Trump credit, which he has taken for tying the incoming President’s hands? It was pretty much a fait accompli by the time Biden got in. Yes, it was messy and things could have gone better, but when your predecessor draws down troops so much that you couldn’t do much else why not take credit for creating the mess you left for the guy coming in?

Guns – They said the problem is we aren’t enforcing the laws and being tough enough. Really? How does that help the loner with no record who can legally buy a gun and shoot up a school?  Wouldn’t it have been nice to at least have one person say we have too many guns? But no. It’s be tougher, or it’s mental health problems. Skinny Indian guy said we should open the mental health facilitates Reagan closed. There’s an idea. Maybe, that’s not the way to go, but at least it’s an attempt to treat mental health. Okay, it’s not guns, but it is a problem.

Health Care – never mentioned.

Climate Change – Show of hands? No, let’s debate instead. No debate. WTF? Except the skinny Indian guy he said climate change was a hoax and we needed to drill baby drill.

Abortion – Everyone on the stage believes in killing mothers. I’m sorry they call it pro-life, which means a woman must die if she has something inside her that sounds like a heart beat even if it will never be able to live outside the womb. They debated how long they should allow a woman to make up a decision about her body, and whether it was the state or the Federal government who should do the policing, but no one said, “Hey, it’s none of our business,” or “Why not let the people who know about this help a woman?” (ie doctors, not politician.)

Education? – Get rid of the department, let parents decide, stop going after parents in school meetings, … So many wild things. Skinny Indian guy wants to give money directly to parents for education. Great, who’s going to make sure they use it on education? (You’ve gotten rid of the department.) 

Cities – apparently, cities (and our economy) are both bleak and in decline. Where is this coming from? I now understand that Fox runs articles on the terrible plight of cities all the time, especially on weekends. Ah, if your major source of information runs stuff like that I guess you would tend to believe it is true, and there is ls support for those contentions. However, if you listen to mayors, which I have, they point out that they have programs to address many of these problems, but they need money to do it. One mayor said it took her six years to get money for one program. Why so long? Many state legislatures are controlled by white Republicans. Many cities are Democratic and or black. Money from the Federal government goes to the states, which give it to the counties around a city not to the city itself. Look no further than Jackson Mississippi to see the problem.

The Wall and drugs – Most seem to be for building the wall. Somehow that will stop their fever dream that a wall will stop drugs from coming into this country. Once again, why not consult with people who have studied this? Oh, wait, they say the wall won’t stop the drugs? But you want to do it anyway? Oh, okay. Continue.

The problem is illegal immigration. Oh. Okay. Hey, why do people leave their villages, tramp hundreds of miles through the jungle and danger to come here? Maybe, there’s a problem in their hometown? Maybe, if we helped clean that up they would stay home? Just a thought. Henry Kissinger said the same thing fifty years ago. You’d think the candidates would have caught on by now. Why doesn’t Fox switch from showing the homeless people in our cities to interviewing the people waiting at our borders for years who can’t get the app to give them an appointment? Who left their villages because they were being terrorized by criminals? Chris Christie said we should send them back because we got people waiting in line legally that haven’t gotten in. Okay Chris, let’s say you’re a mother of three, your husband was shot by the drug gang or the militants, the gang wants your 12 year old boy to work for them and they are eyeing your 14 year old daughter because they think she’s pretty. How long ya gonna wait around? Just asking.

And, BTW, immigrants commit crimes at a rate 50% LOWER than the general public. So they aren’t bringing crime here. Just sayin’.

For me, all of these people are non-starters due to their sanctimonious stand on abortion. Additionally, their inability to even discuss: climate change, and too many guns makes them unrealistic and delusional. They all seem to hew to the old cut taxes and regulation – proven over and over again not to work makes them unqualified as well.

Ukraine? OMG, I forgot. If you can’t see that the little bit we spend on aiding Ukraine isn’t a fight for our own security you have no business saying you want to lead our country. 

Okay, I’m changing my weight prediction on the you-know-who. I hadn’t realized their was evidence from his earlier bookings that said his weight was around 275. So, I’m going 293. I’m basing my number on the same way I would tell someone when I was flying a kite how high it was or how far out the line was: always pick and odd number and never one that ends in “0” or “5” because it sounds then like you are estimating. But an odd number? Sounds like you know your sh*t. Speaking of which that leaves numbers ending in 1, 3, 7, or 9.

That’s called Number Theory. Trust me. I know what I’m talking about.

I should stop, but one more thing. “How many would back a convicted felon for the highest office in the land?”

Six out of eight. Okay. Thank you. But watch the clip and see how it went down.

Skinny Indian guy raised his hand immediately – no question. then everyone to his left (our right) seeing that action kind of went along and raised theirs. Ronnie D was to our left and you could see him leaning over the podium looking down the line and when he saw the other hands go up raised his. Mike Pence’s hand seemed to attached to a string with DeSantis and raised his.

Christie half raised his and then put it down, and then claimed he wasn’t raising his hand at all. What? We saw you. Oh, you just happened to start raising your hand, thought better of it and put it down? No? You were putting your hand outside the car window to feel the air go by? What were you doing? Uh huh, uh huh. Why is it we always have this problem with Chris? It’s “I didn’t say that.” “I didn’t do that.” Yet, the words and the actions certainly seemed to indicate that. You didn’t cause the back up on that bridge, but there is little other explanation. Oh traffic study. Got it. Then the woman who gave the order and indicated that she knew said traffic study was going to cause a mess and indicated so was the one who did this all by herself? And it just so happened that your good friend offered to be her lawyer, pumped her for information to see if she had the goods on you, and when he was done told her he couldn’t represent her, just like she had asked at the beginning, because he was too tight with you. So it was okay to let her hang out to dry. Rather than stepping up and admitting you made the call, because – after all – a lower level government employee would have no reason or interest in doing so. Christie you are such a putz. 

Okay. gotta go. 

293 going with 293. Maybe 287. Could be 279. Can’t say I didn’t call the number. Somewhere between 265 and 350 for sure.

How much is ad space going for on this? Bigger than the Super Bowl? How about some new ads for. the occasion?

I think a Tidy Bowl ad with the yellow headed Trump toilet bowl cleaning brush with the faces of various co-defendants faces in the bowl would be good. Scrub. Scrub. Scrub.

How about some accounting ads? “When you want to screw over the tax man but get the maximum for loans from the bank call us, We’re the pros. Call 800-We Knew D Due”

How about “Thirteen? Pregnant? Suck it. You choose to be raped now live with it. – Christians for Life.”

I gotta stop. 

Wednesday, August 23, 2022

A commentator said something this morning that really hit home and it is what I think Donald fears the most.

When Trump is booked, he is fingerprinted, mugshoted, and weighed. The photo and the weight are released to the public.

How much do you think he tips the scale at?

I’m betting 350. (Do I hear 375?)

Whatever it is; it’s a load.

And that boys and girls, this is what Trump fears most. That we will know.

Sunday, August 20, 2023

We watched “Don’t Look Up!” the Jennifer Lawrence, Leonardo DiCaprio movie about a giant comet heading for Earth that would destroy the planet. They tried to warn the President and officials in Washington. Instead of taking action, the President used it as a means to rally support for her next election and a super rich industrialist used it as an opportunity to try out new stuff and possibly get even richer by mining the comet.

Okay. You may say that’s funny or yeah, it seems like real life sort of … etc. But let me assure you this sort of stuff goes on all the time in the real world. I have witnessed it first hand.

When I was last involved with technology and big corporations the cutting edge stuff was databases. Databases are a way to store information and be able to search and retrieve data from the stored information. There is a language one uses to extract information from a database and there are rules about how to store and create databases. You can think of databases as a series of spreadsheets. Each spreadsheet has a name and each column within the spreadsheet has a name and a type. By type I mean the column may be used to store numbers or names (ie characters) or money etc. You can relate one spreadsheet to another by have a column with the same information in each table. For instance it could be Social Security Number. Spreadsheets in database are called tables. You may have a table with names and addresses in it that is connected via a Social Security Number in another table that says how much a person got paid and when.

Okay, now that you know all you need to know about databases, let’s talk about designing a database. Before you actually create a database you layout a design. This lists al the tables and the columns and the types of those columns and it tells how those tables are connected.

Okay. Let’s leave that for a second and talk about how you can solve problems with computers. There are two approaches: smart and clever, or big and stupid.

If you don’t have much money you go smart and clever. If you have gobs of money you might go the other way.

If you have a really big project then keeping track of everything is hard. It takes lots of oversight and smart people. It is easy for big projects to founder and never reach completion.

If you are trying to sell software and you are a salesperson there is a tendency to say, “We can do that!” with out having any idea if you can or not. This is also true of people in upper management in a big company, “The tech folks will figure it out.”

This behavior leads to a division between the tech people and the sales and or upper management folks. If the tech people are pushing back the sales or upper management will oftentimes tell them to figure it out. The thinking being that the tech folks just need to work hard or put in more effort or something. 

I have watched this in action and it can lead to terrible consequences. Essentially what can and does happen is upper management makes some decision and assumes the tech people will figure it out.

I was stunned when I was brought onto a project where a lot of money was invested and I asked myself and then others, using the buzz words of the day, “Is it better, cheaper, or faster?” The answers I got were, in order, “Probably not, No, and we don’t know, which is really saying no, but we don’t want to say that.”

Gobs of money was spent to buy more equipment in the form of bigger computers and disk drives because the new system demanded it. The old system had a data design that took a bit of time to understand, maybe an hour, maybe half a day, but you could understand it. The new system used a huge data map created for every and any situation and was bulky and slow. It was laid on top of a different database system that was also bigger and slower. 

I asked why and never got a straight answer. I concluded that someone must be getting kick backs or sexual favors. Why would anyone do this? I discovered tech papers that were written by techies in other companies which basically said they were told to shut up and implement the system. I discovered papers written by the tech staff within my own company that pointed out that this was going to be expensive, bulky, and no better than what we had. In fact, it would be worse. They went ahead anyway.

Eventually, I was forced to leave because the guy who had worked for the company selling the software to my company got hired by my company. He became my boss and worked on developing reasons to get rid of me. I guess he had to; I kept saying the king had no clothes.

I learned later that when the system was put in it was so slow that people just treated it like a black box and would begin the login in process, go for coffee, and come back and hope the thing had responded.

They were warned. Others had warned. The techies throughout the industry knew it was a stinkin’ piece of you-know-what, but it didn’t matter. Yes, it can happen, and it does.