Archives for October 2024

Tuesday, October 29, 2024

I am going to be pulling from four sources:

A Fox News Sunday show,

John Oliver’s last show,

60 Minutes,

Rachel Maddow’s last show.

We often watch sports. Those programs are often on Fox. When I turned on the TV Sunday morning it was on Fox. It was a panel discussion. What was surprising to me was there were people on there talking rationally about Kamal Harris. I didn’t recognize any of them. Then I remembered what Trevor Noah said about Fox. That it’s like Waffle House. It’’s fine during the day, but as night comes on it gets weird.

John Oliver examined the basic tenets of Trump’s campaign. Trump said he was going to deport millions of immigrants and this they claimed would free up housing and jobs for real Americans and the economy would be better off. None of this is true. In fact, Oliver pointed out – just the opposite. About one third of construction jobs are done by undocumented immigrants. And this holds true for a higher number of agricultural jobs. What would the effect be? Economist estimate that it would have an effect on the economy big enough to throw us into a recession. Housing would shrivel because the workers are gone. Same for food prices. Oh and then there’s the repeated claim that immigrants are bringing crime and drugs. However, the statistics show just the opposite. And to be fair only one state keeps such records – Texas. Undocumented immigrants committed 50% less crimes than the general population – ie “real Americans.” So, if you want crime to go down … nevermind.

60 Minutes interviewed the guy in the last Trump administration that was in charge of separating families and deporting them. ie the kids in cages stuff. The interviewer said that the analysis by people familiar with such things (economists? government administrators?) said that the cost of deporting a million people a year would be $88,000,000,000.00. That’s eighty eight billion dollars. This would include building facilities, hiring guards and other personnel, feeding and transporting. His response was, “What price do you put on national security?” Well, lemme think about that. Somehow, I figure if we look at what Oliver pointed out that food costs would go up, housing would shrivel, and we’d be thrown into a recession and add to that 88 billion plus all the bad press and grief we’d inflict on people – I’d say that would be a definite detriment to national security.

But they aren’t talking about deporting a million people, they are talking about 13 million. Let’s do a little multiplication 13 x 88,000,000,000 = 1,144,000,000,000.00. That’s one trillion one hundred and forty four million dollars to deport 13,000,000,000 people.

However, there’s another tiny problem. When the rip kids out of their parents’ arms guy was asked about separating families: some American citizens and some undocumented, he said no. That wouldn’t have to happen. He could deport them all.

So my question is – if say a woman came here, overstayed her visa, worked illegally, married some dude, had a kid with him, brought her parents over too, would you deport all of them? The woman, the kid, the dude, and her parents?

Now it may seem harsh, but you know what? I could get behind that plan. Let’s start by making an example. Who could we pick? Put on your thinking caps. Someone famous. Someone who married someone who overstayed their visa. … Hum. Well, if the Republican Party won’t handle the situation. If the U.S. Congress won’t do it. If our judiciary is stymied, maybe our immigration service can throw the bastard out.

Just sayin’

Picture if you will:

DATELINE; MAR-A-LAGO

Today members of the INS carried out raids at Mar-a-Lago, The Trump Winery, and several undisclosed locations. Aside from most of the staff at Mar-a-Lago and the workers at Trump Winery being detained. Mr. Trump, his sons, his wife and her parents were taken into custody under the new “Take them all” policy. Mrs. Trump who entered the country under a temporary work visa and overstayed her visa was deemed to be here illegally. She had received a “genius visa” exemption, but that was invalidated. “She ain’t no genius,” one of the agents responded. However, others disagreed saying that to move from a Russian provincial state to here was pretty genius. However, under the “no exceptions” clause of the new U.S. policy …

Monday, October 28, 2024

So much to worry about, and me, what am I worried about?

Well, frankly nothing, other than Donald Trump becoming President and our country turned into an authoritarian state, and where would we move? And how are all those Trump voter going to live once he takes away or bankrupts Social Security and what about Gaza? And how can you have a two state solution when neither side wants it? And how do Jewish people rationalize shooting out the water tanks in Gaza, stealing Palestinian land in the West Bank, and practicing the worst case of apartheid on the planet? And Ukraine, now there are North Korean troops there, WTF?

But other than that what keeps me up at night is holes. Well, not the holes themselves but what is at the bottom of the holes. Yup. I should know better. I should quit, but how can I? Because I don’t know the answer. And when I do, who will care? It’s tough, some say, getting old. I don’t know. I’m not old yet. So when I get there I’ll let you know.

We have a drainage line from a downspout that runs under the lawn and goes to the back forty. It runs under the fence to get there. I remember seeing the outlet years ago. It’s over there – somewhere. Now, it’s disappeared. The water now appears about halfway down the lawn in a giant wet soggy patch when it rains hard. It hasn’t been too bad in recent years. That’s because the gutter runs the wrong way and has been spilling onto the deck rather than going down the downspout. 

But we got the downspout and gutter replaced and now, if it rains, the water should go down the spout. Part of the deal with the gutter guys was they were going to snake a power washer down the line and clean it out. That didn’t happen. The fellas stomped around the back, kicked some leaves, felt for a soft spot and gave up. We ran water down the drainage pipe, located the wet area and I dug through the lawn and found the black pipe. It was clogged solid with sand. Apparently, you can’t power wash your way through thirty or so feet of sand in a pipe.

Having been unsuccessful in locating the end of the pipe I decided to see if I could find the pipe a few feet farther down from the hole I had just dug. For the last week every afternoon I have asked myself this question as I have footed (not inched) closer and closer to the backyard fence. I had considered getting a curve bladed edging type tool so I could rock it back and forth on either side of the pipe. My son who has worked at many a golf course and fixed many a drainpipe said, “No Dad, Use a square ended shovel.” He sent me pictures of a drainpipe he and his team had to replace. Nice square patches of sod moved to one side so they could be put back in place. Long narrow perfectly cut trenches. Pea graveled and oh so nice. 

This did not in anyway resemble my work. Of course it didn’t help that the pipe wasn’t laid straight but instead wandered off course two feet from the downspout. In fact, as I dug more holes I wondered if the team who laid it had been drinking. It also would help if what I had was a sod lawn, but I don’t. Especially in the area the drain pipe was headed, mainly the root infested dry earth near the corner of the fence and the tree house/jungle gym. This called for the sawsall, which cut through some of those roots and on others jumped over them. The sawsall has a behavior of giving up on occasion. It spits out its blade and basically says, “Nope, not gonna do it.”

However, I got enough holes done the day before yesterday to have cleared the root rise and saw I was heading toward the treehouse. I was almost to the fence. I had taken to soaking the area the day before to soften the ground. Yesterday, I located the pipe just shy of the treehouse and less than four feet from the fence. Exciting? You bet.

I decided to try the other side of the fence and am happy to report that I located it there too. By then it was getting gloomy and subsequent holes yielded nothing, or if they did it was too dark to tell. Mystery son had said he used to use a golf shaft to stab the ground to locate the drainage pipe. I used a giant crowbar and or a pitchfork with four tines. However, in a root infest hellscape it’s hard to determine what you are hitting.

Not only that but if you had used dead reckoning, that is by standing in the back forty and lining up with the downspout and eyeballing where a direct drainage line should go, you’d be off by fifteen or so feet. Yeah, these guy who dug the ditch must have been an anti-Nascar driver. He wander off to the right. If he had gone straight he would have left the jungle gym/tree house off  to his right a good six feet. Instead the pipe went toward the far edge and almost to the corer of the fence. 

I had been asked, “Why didn’t they go all the way to the creek like your neighbors opposite your back yard on the next street over?”

Well, I figured that out. Drain pipe comes in 50 and 100 foot lengths. They bought fifty and quit where it ran out, which given the direction that pipe is headed is a good thing because it’s probably just shy of my neighbor’s woods.

The last little bit of pipe resides somewhere near a clump of roots and trees. It was too dark to locate last night. Stay tuned.

The adventure continues.

Saturday, October 26, 2024

If you hate baseball and are forced to watch one game, may I suggest last night’s World Series Game #1?

Okay, if you really hate baseball how about one inning? Half an inning? Two Pitches.

Okay. Two pitches. It’s the bottom of the ninth. Coming into the ninth inning the Yankees and the Dodgers were tied at two apiece. The Yankees score a run at the top of the ninth: score stands at 3-2. LA comes to bat at the bottom of the ninth, down one run. They get a guy on base and have one out. The Yankees only need two outs to win game #1. The announcers say that the team that wins game #1 has a 63% chance of winning the series. 

The Dodgers star player Shohei Ohtani is three down in the batting order. If somehow the can get through the next to batters and Ohtani comes to the plate there’s a great chance he can hit a homer or at least crush the ball enough that one of the run on base can score and tie the game up. Earlier in the game LA was down 2 to 1. The guy before Ohtani, Mookie Betts, got on first and stole second and third. Ohtani hit a ball that hit the very top of the outfield wall where a fan interfered with the ball and by rule is only a double. Otherwise it might have been a triple or if he had hit it a few inches higher a home run. The guy is amazing. He did it so easily.

Okay so there are two players before Ohtani and two outs left. If they can just get Ohtani to the plate. There’s a guy on base. The next player up hits a ball that goes near second base on the first base side. Some might say dinks the ball and it dribbles out toward second. The second baseman jumps horizontally to catch it. He misses and it continues toward the outfield. Maybe, he even got a piece of it under his belly. I’m not sure. Doesn’t matter. Another man on base. Mookie is up. The Yankees aren’t going to pitch to him. They also bring in another pitcher. That pitcher walks Mookie. Bases loaded. Ohtani is up.

One pitch. Shohei hits it. High pop toward the 3rd base foul line. It’s going out of play. The outfielder races to catch it. He dives as it goes out of bounds. He catches it and pirouettes over the fan wall. A masonry construct about three feet high and a foot thick. We see his legs sticking up in the air. He not only comes up with the ball but throws it from there to his fellow players. 

Two out. The Yanks are one out away from winning it.

A guy named Freeman comes to bat. The announcers say he hasn’t hit anything in four or five weeks. He has had a bum ankle and they aren’t sure how well he can run.

The pitcher throws a low ball. Freeman digs deep and crushes it to the outfield bleachers. Grand Slam. Game over. Dodgers win 6-3.

Freeman is a big guy. Red head, like Andy Dalton the QB. After he rounds the bases and his teammates slap him on the back, and jump up and down he goes over to see the announcer. The announcer is a little skinny guy, crew cut, bow tie, blue sports blazer. They begin talking. His team mates dump a bucket of water on him. Who cares? Dodgers win. The announcer says that he saw him go over to his dad and say something. What did he say?

Freeman responds I have no idea. I think just screamed in his face. 

Or something like that.

Sports history. For as long as there is baseball they will be talking about those two pitches.

Wednesday, October 23, 2024

On Monday night, in three hours, MSNBC outlined and reminded viewers of the various crimes and crazy things DJT has done and said.

Rachel Maddow pointed out that Trump has just signed a deal to build a tower in Saudi Arabia.

His son-in-law got $2B and has never given the Saudi’s a cent back.

It was also pointed out that the Biden economy has had the most remarkable turnaround of any economy and is the envy of the world.

There was a report outlining DJT’s plans for Social Security. He will bankrupt it in six years.

Lawrence picked up the coverage and mentioned Jill Stein. Her own kids are against her running. Her votes were the difference in 2016. She is backed by Putin.

Stephanie went on to outline other shortcomings and fabrications of T and the Republicans.

One of the clips on one of the shows had Colin Allred confronting Ted Cruz who smirked at the comment that he, Cruz, was the leader in the Senate of the Jan 6th insurrection. Allred said to Cruz that it wasn’t funny. This actually wiped the smirk off his face.

It was also pointed out that the five major newspapers in Texas have all backed Allred.

In Missouri, two of the leading papers there have turned agains Josh Hawley and backed Lucas Kunst, saying Hawley is the worst Senator in the chamber.

But they left out a few goodies. Trump has started a crypto business. Okay. So what? Well, it is instructive to know with whom and how adept his partners are. One is known for having started and failed at having a porn site. The other has already been in the crypto business. Unfortunately, there was a hole in the code which allowed someone to go in and steal two million dollars. Said person was never caught and, oh yeah, that was all the investors’ money. Sorry. Hey, guess what code the Trump crypto biz is using? Yeah. I know. Well not all the code is from that business. If you are an investor I guess you have to hope that they aren’t using the part that allowed someoe to steal all the money.

And the surprising thing is that while Harris will undoubtedly win the popular vote, Trump has a better than 50% chance of winning the electoral college. It has been pointed out over the last few days that if anyone else had said or done the things that Trump had done in just the last few days it would be game over. 

While the economy is going gangbusters and is the envy of any other nation, the general populace is feeling like, “Eh?” and they think Trump would be better. The reason for this is due to the ability for people to forget how bad it was under Trump. And, to be sure, if he is elected again it will be much worse. Articles have come out saying Trump’s plans for Social Security will bankrupt it within six years. Wow. Typical. Make a mess and have it explode after leaving office. 

His former chief of staff, his former head of the Joint Chiefs have both said Trump is a fascist to the core. What does fascist mean? Mussolini described it as the cozy relationship between business and government. No wonder Elon Musk is up there jumping around. He’s got 17 pending investigations into his companies. Yeah, I bet he’d like them to go away. Tech bros who after Jan 6th said Trump was unfit are now throwing him million dollar fundraisers. The price to get in on the action have gone up, according to his former Ambassador to the EU by a zero. As in that guy gave a million.  Now you’d need to give ten million. Trump is selling our democracy to anyone but the price has gone up. His corruption is out in the open, like many of his dirty dealings. Just yesterday it was revealed that Elon Musk would be put in charge of overseeing the very industries he is involved in,, and for which he is being investigated. 

Speaking of Elon, he has violated election law by offering money to people for voting. Yeah. Can’t do that. Ten grand fine and five years in jail. Or is it only five grand? Hard to keep up.

Meanwhile the multi-millionaire from Malibu California who is running against Tammy Balwin in Wisconsin for her senate seat says because he’s never been a senator he does know anything about – fill in the blank. He said this, I think, about helath care. Tammy wrote part of The Affordable Health Care Bill. And this know nothing wants to be the senator form Wisconsin who would vote to repeal that law and repalce it with Trump’s “concepts of a plan.”

Meanwhile, old Donnie (and I do mean old) has said he’s the father of IVF. President Obama has asked, “what does that mean?’ The far right and their document Project 2025 have been very clear what they want to do about IVF. Ban it. 

In other stuff, Colin Allred was debating Ted Cruz. Cruz being the putz that he is, smirked when Allred said of Cruz that he led the insurrection on Jan 6th in the Senate. Teddy wiped the smirk off his face when the former NFL linebacker said, “It’s not funny.” Good for Colin. However, I think the twelve year old kid who confronted Cruz when he was running for President back in 2015 said it best, “You Suck!”

That comment kind of flummoxed Ted, and people say Ted is smart and a great debater. He sucks.

In the Gaslighting Network called Fox the people there keep saying Harris has no plans, no policies. I get that. Like Trump they don’t read. She’s got seventy some pages of very specific policies and plans. Things that actually would help people. They are specific and they are targeted. Now, Trump? He has concepts and he has plans. The concepts are around things, like health care and lowering costs, that are in the cocepts stage. In the plans department, oh boy, mass deportations, tarriffs that would increase the cost of basically everything by 20%. On I hear you, “only on foreign goods.” Okay, so let me ask you. You buy a car, made in ‘Merica. Great. What about the parts made elsewhere? Like the chips from Taiwan. They are going to get the tariff. So your Ameircan built car is going to cost more because of the tariffs becuase many of the piec es that go into that car come from elsewhere.

Trump has demonstrated an ignorance about foreign policy, economics (both micro and macro), geography, history, diplomacy, … well everything. Can you think of anything that Trump seems to know? Remember when Obama was running and people said they wanted someone smarter then themselves? Trump ain’t it. In fact, W wasn’t it. Remember old W said that he was a C student? Yeah. Why do Republicans keep picking poor students to be their leaders? And the ones who are said to be smart act like idiots. Why?

Then there were the ads over the weekend accusing of any Dem who had been in office of voitng to let boys go into girls’ bathrooms. Well, this is more right wing Republican BS. I know – shocking. So, as I remember it, the Republicans put up a bill that discriminated against LGBTQ people. It was a hate bill. A bill that discriminated. Period. Full stop. Naturally, any sane person who believed in equality and our Constitution would vote against it. Well, part of the language of the bill was about bathrooms and who could use which one. Now, as far as I know, there have no been a rash of boys trying to go into girls’ bathrooms. Peepholes, maybe. But that’s been around for like ever. And there have been some grwon men caught using camera to spy on women in bath and changing rooms. Otherwise no. WAIT! HOLD THE PHONE (beer? presses? whatever) There was a guy who admitted to going into women’s changing rooms when they were changing. Who was that? He said, “When you’re a star they let you do that.” Who was that? He wasn’t really a star. More of an orange blob. Oh yeah. Donald Trump. If they had only named it “The Donald Trump no peaking on the young girls bathroom bill” maybe it would have gotten a few Democratic votes.

But let’s talk about Arnold Palmer’s you know what. Okay? I mean it’s two weeks out from the election and the Republican candidate for President of The United States of America is talking about dick size of someone else.

In the last week or two it has been revealed that Trump has done the following:

announced going into the crypto biz with a failed porn site guy and a stolen from and failed crypto guy,

signed a deal to build a tower in Saudi Arabia,,

swayed and moved slightly on stage while listening to music at what was supposed to be a town hall rally where he was going to take questions from people,

held a rally where the people were left stranded in the desert,

Announced he was the father of IVF, something he has published plans to end,

The amount of blathering unhinged bull, stupidity, gaslighting, fantasy, corruption and criminality in the past week or two is there for all to see. You do have to look. And like the cardinal that would not look through Galileo’s telescope they refuse. Why? Well, if you looked you’d know that the guy you’ve been backing is a wack job and the shame and guilt to admit that is too much. And then when the paddy wagons roll up and take you or your friends away you’ll say, “I didn’t think …”  Just like the people in Germany in the 1930s.

Day 1368 – Technology and SAMO

Saturday, October 19, 2024

Okay, I’ve got a small basket of odd facts to pass along.

Fox, Bret 

 interview with Kamala Harris. It is reported that he showed the wrong clip when trying to trap Kamala. What he showed was not a clip that illustrated the point that Trump has been saying some vile stuff on the campaign trail. Kind of like when – who was it? – got hold of thousands of hours of security tapes from Jan 6th and found one where two guys were standing in a hallway and said, “See. Nothing bad here, just typical tourists.” Oh yeah, Tucker Carlson. 

Speaking of old Tucker, his bit about Russian grocery stores and subways. Don’t know much about the grocery stores but the subways? Yeah. They are clean and all that. Somehow he forgot to mention they were built with slave labor and thousands died in their construction. But then that would require a minimum of research and who’s ever accused Tucker or anyone at Fox of really doing research, other than to dig up gotcha quotes and clips?

I’ve been reading Chip Wars. It tells the history of the microchip. Something  I grew up with and did not realize all that was going on. During the Vietnam War there was a bridge between North and South Vietnam. Despite numerous attempts the U.S. forces could not knock it out. Their bombs were too inaccurate. Then I fellow at Texas Instruments (TI) came up with a laser guided system that could be attached to the existing bombs. The way it worked was there was a lens on the front of the bomb that could be set to look at a target. This was actually a laser through the lens. There were fins on the back of the bomb. If the bomb veered off course the laser would move out of the frame of the lens. A microprocessor would adjust the fins to bring the laser back into the laser frame. 

With this new system the next time they did a bombing run with sixteen planes, twelve hit the bridge.

The U.S. Defense Department strategy to keep up with the Russians was to build smarter weapons. Russia went with volume. When Desert Storm, the Iraqi War, happened the success of the U.S. strategy was well demonstrated with the high accuracy of their weapon systems.

Moving on, we watched The Daily Show  last night. A drag queen was on. She pointed out that there are a lot of laws that have been passed in most of the states to try and limit health care for trans kids, most notably in the south. These laws also go after trans athletes. Now I get that you don’t want men who now claim to be women competing in women’s sports. But, that’s a slippery slope and one that has many pitfalls. It seems people are referring to the most egregious cases and passing laws based on them, or on the thought that something nefarious or terrible is going on. 

As this person pointed out on The Daily Show when the lawmakers trying to pass these laws were asked for numbers, as in numbers of cases of the type of thing they were trying to prevent, they didn’t have any. In other words, they were making up laws for things that may not really exist, or minimally exist. I remember old Kristi Noem, governor of South Dakota, puppy murderer, and most recently cheerleader for 39 minutes of listening to music with What’s His Name having passed a trans law in her state. It banded trans athletes from competing in female sports. Great. When the head athletic person in the state was asked how many trans athletes the state had the answer was “One” and that was a few years passed.

The woman on The Daily Show, Laverne Cox pointed out that 47 states have passed anti-trans laws and that this has led to an increase in violence against these people. I mean, they are people. You can debate their sex, but not their humanness. She also pointed out that the Republican lawmakers who are passing these laws seem to be fascinated by trans people. This based on the areas of the country that watch the most pornography of trans people. Seems to be an overlay of trans fear laws with trans porn. Huh. Kind of like the Baptist pastors who rail against homosexuality that are caught with gay boys?

But, I digress. The question for me comes down to “What do we as a society do?” 

There are folks that say there are only two sexes: man and woman. To which I have to raise my hand and say, “Question. When a person is born and they have both male and female genitalia, or if they outwardly look like a woman but have male sex organs internally or vice versa, and this happens a lot, they aren’t male or female, but both or neither. Correct?”

It’s easy to dismiss this, to turn a blind eye, but it happens, and there are plenty of cases. When I was a freshman at Johns Hopkins University (1969) there was a doctor, Dr. Money (Yup, that was his name), over at the hospital. He was confronted with these cases of mixed genitalia. What to do? At that time it was the practice to make these babies one sex or the other, via drugs and surgery. In fact, Dr. Money gave a lecture every fall. It was famous. He held it in the largest auditorium the hospital had. He presented slide after slide illustrating the situations. A penis where you’d expect a clitoris was the one I heard about. (I never made it to the lecture.) 

As far as I know Dr. Money pioneered sex change operations. They weren’t really sex change as much as they were “pick one.” Unfortunately, a baby can’t tell you what they want. As some of these people grew up, apparently, they didn’t feel comfortable in their bodies. And, it seems some people, even though born of one sex feel the same. More “situations.”

There have been examples, especially in swimming where it seems a person has declared they are female when before they were male. What to do? It’s a tough call. Some athletic commissions have tried to make decisions based on testosterone levels. But what do you do when a person who is outwardly and inwardly female that naturally has high testosterone levels? This was true with a boxer in the last Olympics and a runner a few years before. In the case of the runner they said she had to take drugs to lower her testosterone. Those drugs made her feel awful, so she stopped taking them. I don’t remember what happened to her athletically.

I don’t have the answers to all of this but I can say that these lawmakers who once again are getting in the middle of this says more about them and their fantasies and prejudices than it does about the people being affected.

Here’s the YouTube replay from The Daily Show:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZLofYpKdqI