Archives for September 2023

Saturday, September 30, 2023

Having finished Cassidy Hutchinson’s book “Enough,” I’ve had some time to reflect.

She’s been brave and she shows what patriotism is. However, why is this so hard? Why is she the only one to do the right thing? Yes, I know many have testified. But many of the principals have been less than truthful. Not recalling or forgetting when in fact they know perfectly well. Why did those people in the first place do such criminal things? Are they dumb? No. Then they are complicit and they know it. The majority of those in the inner circle “in the family” as Cassidy said they call it are all guilty. Guilty of something, maybe it’s being unpatriotic. Maybe, it’s a crime and maybe it’s not, but whatever it is it’s not for the good of the country that they acted.

There are some things that Cassidy wrote that I wish she had expanded on. She said she’s a Romney or Reagan Republican. Okay, what does that mean? Does she like how Romney made a career out of buying companies on the cheap that were in trouble, selling off their assets, and loading them up with debt and then abandoning them? Does she like how Reagan began the great middle class slide by attacking unions and increasing our debt? Or how he struck a deal with the Pope that ended the zero-growth policies and started the movement to force women to have unwanted children? What exactly did she mean?

The only clues were when she was talking about the replacement for Ruth Bader-Ginsberg. She had hoped she wouldn’t have that as another task and thought that finding a conservative, small government person was would be a good thing. She was glad she didn’t have to add that task to her plate and was glad they found that woman – what’s her name. How is picking a person with little judicial experience and a member of a cult earlier in her life a good conservative choice. What is meant by conservatism anyway?

The thing that gets me about these folks calling themselves conservative is that they never seem to address problems of real people. There are these complaints. Maybe it’s immigrants, maybe it’s prices, maybe it’s big government, maybe it’s the debt – but when you get down to it these things are not real or they are at best symptomatic. 

Since the advent of Fox and conservative groups buying up many rural TV outlets there are vast information deserts in the U.S. and no real information is available.

Now the ignorant are being weaponized against truth and priciple. 

*The reference is to the game of Adventure, back when such games were a character oriented terminal and you interacted using verb-object commands such as “Drop rod”, “Get bird” etc. And the game woud respond with information about your current situation such as being in the maze of twisty little passages all different (as opposed to “the maze of twisty little passages – all the same.”

It is with great regret that it appears Apple has dropped the game of Adventure from its Unix (ie terminal app). What is the world coming to?

Thursday, September 28, 2023

Yesterday, I was looking at my monthly newsletter from Far Horizons, the travel company I have used for many of my trips. I was shocked to read that Damian Evans had died. He was a young man. (Late 30s – early 40s? Cancer.)

I first learned of Damian from a National Geographic special on Angkor Wat. Damian had done the LIDAR work in Angkor. In that special he showed a canopied forest in Cambodia. Then he showed it with all the trees and vegitation stripped away. You could see where the old canals and roads were, where the huts and temples were. He then put little images of huts on each square and temples on the larger ones. “This,” he said, “is how Angkor looked when it was the largest city in the world.” It was mind blowing.

I wanted to use those images in a talk I was giving. Damian was a subject matter expert and group leader for Far Horizons. They were kind enough to put me in touch with him. I only needed a few images. He sent me his whole slide deck! Not only that but he sent me a link to a talk he gave using those slides. So I had a much better idea what was what. We chatted by email on a few things. I was going back to Angkor and I told him I had hoped to meet him. He said he had moved on to Laos, but he told me whom to get hold of – Kim Po Thai. Wow, Thai has a resume that reads like the who’s who of archaeology/adventure filming: Nat Geo, History Channel, Smithsonian, Travel Channel, etc. My wife upon seeing that asked, “Are you worthy?”

No, I said, but my thoughts exactly. What was I doing hanging with these people? 

The last time I heard from Damian was July 2022. I had just procurred the 1960s tome that is the classic mapping and images of Angkor. 

He wrote back:

Very nice, those can be a little hard to get ahold of these days…

He did a trip for Far Horizons. I considered going, but time did not permit. I’d catch him next time.

There will be no next time.

Wednesday, September 27, 2023

Yesterday a judge ruled that one of the counts against the Trump Organization in New York was so clear and so compelling that there was no need for a trial and ordered the licenses of The Trump Organization to do business in New York to be pulled. The NY AG wants a fine of $250,000,000.00. This order said that neither Trump nor his two eldest sons could do business in New York for five or ten years. (I’ve heard both.)

This kind of action, where a judge rules without even having to go to trial is called summary judgement. (If I understand correctly.) It is rarely granted, but often asked for. However, the evidence was so strong the judge felt there was no need to go to trial. There are another seven charges that will be tried in connection with this case.

The assets of the Trump Organization will go into receivership and be sold off. Maybe, he can get bailed out by say a rich Saudi? I don’t know. Apparently, the Trump Organization’s primary wealth is in five building in New York. 

Trump tried to transfer his holdings to Delaware, but this was blocked by the AG.

Now what? 

I’m sure Donald is cranking up the nasty woman epitets. But the case is so clear he won’t have much to go on.

Oh well.

Moving on. As I read Cassidy Huthinson’s book I can hear her calm patient voice. I knew about the incident with Matt Gaetz at Camp David, but her recounting in the book makes it worse than what was said in one of her TV interviews. 

Cassidy and a bunch of others went back to Kevin McCarthy’s cabin to drink. There was a knock on the door. Kevin opened it. There was Matt, who was surprised to see Kevin. Matt straghtened up a bit and said he was looking for Cassidy because he noticed her golf cart out front.(He must have thought this was Cassidy’s cabin and that he might get lucky.) Cassidy came to the doorway and asked what he wanted. He said he saw her golf cart and was a little lost, could she walk him back to his cabin? No said Cassidy, just follow the circle around you’ll find it. Matt persisted a bit and Kevin said to Gaetz, “Get a life, Matt,” and slammed the door in his face.

Two things: I now understand why Matt is always disparaging Kevin and I guess this was Matt’s idea of a date with Cassidy.

Kevin btw comes out pretty well (so far, being one third of the way through the book).

At one point Cassidy relays what Mark Meadows told her to say to Kevin, which she did. Kevin told Cassidy that Mark was playing her (ie lying to her), and that she should call him when she realized that. He hung up. Cassidy called him a few days later.

UPDATE:

Thursday, September 28, 2023

I am 2/3 of the way through Cassidy Huchinson’s book “Enough.” I am surpised that Kevin McCarthy comes out quite well – so far. Liz Cheney does too. The rest? Not so well. You’ll be surprised to hear the Matt Gaetz is a sleaze who repeatedly tries to get close to Cassidy. Ted Cruz is a jerk. Ron DeSantis a whiner whom Cassidy had to tell that he needed to understand boundaries. Remember she’s 23 or 24 at this point in her life. Mark Meadows is a bit more compicated. He seems to be a coward and sneaky. Not necessarily towards Cassidy, although he lied to her one time that set her up to take a fall, whcih Kevin pointed out to her. She descried a normal day at the Trump Whitehouse as chaos. That’s a big change from “no drama Obama.”

Tuesday, September 26, 2023

Cassidy Hutchinson. Wow. Such grace and poise.

She says Rudy put his hand up her skirt on Jan 6th. Matt Gaetz said they dated for awhile.

I don’t think Rudy has commented. She said she and Matt never dated, and implied she had higher standards. Maybe, he thought dating meant pretending to be lost at Camp David and trying to wheedle his way into her cabin?

Who are you going to believe? 

She speaks quietly with little or no emotion when she is recounting events. She broke into a smile and laughed when she talked about adding blond highlights to her hair because Trump suggested it. (Then changed back.) But other than that one show of girl talk like behavior her inverview with Rachel was quiet and calm.

Mark Meadows comes across as a nothing-burger, who will do anything to avoid conflict and to please “the boss.” In other words, a spineless lying coward. 

So if it comes down to him or Cassidy – who are you going to believe?

Or for that matter any of the Republican men or women?

Hutchinson said she was a Romney or Reagan Republican, I wonder what she means by that? What is it that either of the two men said or did that someone like her would want to associate with?

Ah me. Well, I’ve wondered that question, in general, for a long time.

The Republican party has been a party of grievance, unreality, and hypocracy for decades. I’m just surprised that more people have not caught on.

Saturday, September 23, 2023

Finally, we are seeing some people calling out the Margorie Taylor-Greenes and the Lauren Boeberts of the world for what they are – performers. Nihilistic performers to be more accurate. Who have no intention of governing, or solving problems, or protecting democracy or the Constitution. It’s a start.

Meanwhile, I keep wondering if there isn’t a way to get around Tubberville’s blockade of military appointments. I keep hearing people tell us how dangerous this is. Yeah? So What? Three got through because Tommy let them through. Many say that was a mistake. It should have been all 400 or nothing. I don’t know. Why not let one person plug up the works? Like the old joke about who should be in charge of the body (this is an anatomy joke – btw). The rectum thought it should be the leader and tightened up until every other organ was about to fail so they let him be in charge.

Mitch is silent about this. He seems barely able to walk, forget talking. some say he could threaten Tubberville with stripping him of his assignments, etc. But what if he keeps the sphincter tight?

In other news, (not news really – more confirmation) Senator Menedez has been charged with taking bribes. Like gold bars and cash. I know the right will go crazy saying, “See they do it too!” But he pales in comparison to those on the right. Speaking of which Clarence Thomas has been revealed as having taken more lavish gifts. This time from the Koch brothers. Is it fair to say brothers, now that one is dead? Thomas was at a political event and fund raiser. A big no-no for other judges below the level of Supreme Court. Koch Industries stated that he was only at the dinner, not the part where they asked for money. See? No problem. 

Koch also was caught saying that for donors to meet a high level official was a big deal. So what? Do they (Koch) have any business before the Court? Well, yeah. They’ve got a case that could destroy government regulation as we know it. See, instead of having people who devote their lives to studying and making recommendations and regulations we could have a judge who knows nothing decide if whatever the regulation that is established is a good idea. In other words, this would destroy government regulation as we know it. It would destroy our government. Something the Kochs have been pushing for decades under the guise of Liberarianism. I wonder if the common folk show up at their door with pitchforks (now upgrades to AR-15s) that they cry, “Freedom!”)

Oh yes, and Clarence for having shown up at several Koch fund raisers and taken private jets to get there says that well, shucks, it was just oversight on his part. Well, not on this one, but that’s what he has said in the past. What makes this especially rich (heinous?) is that he has let innocent people go to their death because they didn’t file the paper paperwork in time or they had minor clerical errors. Maybe, that’s what we need – more death penalties for such things?

Great twitter thingee. Or should I call it X and Xer? (Doesn’t have the same ring.) There’s a picture of Boebert in the House chamber. She’s at the speaker’s lecturn. Behind her is sitting a guy with a thought bubble saying, “I wonder if she wants to go to a movie?” Ha ha. Get it?

BTW – Can’t anyone start a business called “X” and not worry about being sued for copyright or trademark infringement? Remember IBM and their operating system “2”? Or Intel and the 486 chip? Intel called the next one “Pentium,” to avoid these problems. See, you can’t sue someone for using the number 2. What about X? What about capital X with a long right bottom leg like Xfinity uses? I dunno.

Watch for my new company X-ercise. A legal fight for your rights, diet and exercise and trademark and patent infringement solutions company. “We X-terminate the competition” (or fat, or what ever.)

Meanwhile, Kevin is pushing forward an impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden. Why not? No facts? No problem? Great theater. Would someone arrest Matt Gaez for child sexual assault and get it over with?

David Brooke actually apologized. He tweeted or X’ed that he paid $78 for a hamburger at Newark Airport. the restaurant came back and said the burger was $17 and the rest was liquor. There has been no end to the grief he has taken. On PBS he actually apologized, said he was trying to be funny and he shouldn’t have done that X. (tweet? Sweet? Whatever.)