Rick Kinnaird

Day 1196 We Gave War a Chance

Thursday January 3, 2020 

310 Days until the 2020 election and 391 days until the Inauguration

It’s a new year, a new beginning, time to reassess the countdown (Somehow it got off.)

There are 1456 days between the election and 78 days beyond that to the inauguration.

( That’s from 11/8/2016 to 11/3/2020 to 1/20/2021 )

As of 1/1/2020 Trump has been in office 1075 days.

As of that date we have 308 days until the election and 386 days to the Inauguration.

Therefore, as of January 3, 2020 when I started writing this piece, the rejiggered count is:

Day 1078 January 3, 2020

305 Days until the 2020 election and 381 days to the Inauguration

And the countdown continues with the rejiggered modifications.

Where was I? Oh, yes. Two data points:

1) I was outside of Quantico, Virginia, which is a large military base, when I saw a bumper sticker that read: “GIVE WAR A CHANCE”.

2) I heard a piece on the radio that talked about the idea of treating people with drug dependencies as a heath problem rather than as a criminal problem.

These two ideas made me think about Reagan and his “War on Drugs”. 

I asked President Reagan, “How’s that going?” (Too bad he’s dead. Oh well.)

Then Iran and the killing of their general happened.

Brooks of Shields and Brooks on PBS this week pointed out the long term effects of war from a purely troop count level. He mentioned that we still have troops in Korea, Japan, and Germany. That’s from the Second World War and the Korean War. Also, Saudi Arabia and the middle east, and Afghanistan and Iraq. This doesn’t count the  trash left around – like bombs. The French are still finding ordinance from WWI. There are whole parts of France that are still off limits due to the bombs still in the ground from The Great War. Farmers regularly find bombs in their fields. They pick them up and lay them by the roadside for the bomb squads to come and get them. This is from World War I.

When I was in Angkor Wat there was a war museum that I visited in Siem Reap. It has lots of rusting artifacts. There were sheds with rifles and land mines on display. What surprised me was the number of different devices designed to maim when you stepped on them. Vietnam has lots of them still in place. Every year people get a limb blown off. Usually, it is children. The man you owns the museum held up a rifle and said, “Do you know what this is?” He held it with authority. Obviously, use to handling that particular weapon, “It’s an M1,” he said. He hoisted several rifles, told us their names and explained how they were used in the war in Vietnam. When we got to the land mines he explained that when it came to land mines, if one of your buddies stepped on one and got his leg blown off you couldn’t run over to help him. Rather, you had to take your Bowie knife, turn the blade upwards and run it along the ground, looking for a trip wire to another land mine. Oftentimes these devices were planted in such a way that those who came to help would be maimed as well. Nice. He then pulled up his pant leg to reveal his prosthetic limb.

So, how’s the war going? Or should I say, “How’s war? Have we given it enough of a chance?”

Maybe, there’s another way? I don’t see that we are winning the war on drugs, or the wars in the middle east, or the war in Afghanistan. Just sayin’

The woman who talked about treating drugs as a health problem pointed out that doing so reduced the amount of crime, improved the health of those depend on drugs, and put the opioids under control. She pointed to Portugal that has done this and there are statistics to show it’s working out quite well for that country.

Not only does it seem to be better for society, but it’s cheaper.

The same might be true for war. Would it be cheaper to buy all the heroin that Afghanistan can make rather than fighting to keep it from being sold illegally? We’ve been in that country for 18 years. What if we had spent our money on roads and education along with buying their dope and offering to buy other cash crops? Somehow, I’ve got to think that would be cheaper. 

Now the talk of war with Iran is raising its ugly head again. We’ve been at odds with that country for what? 60 years? How’s it going? Yes, the guy we took out was a bad man. Has that solved anything? 

We had a deal with that country, then we welshed on it. What do we have instead? Possible war and the distinct possibility that they will have a nuclear weapon sooner, rather than later. Great. Do you remember the 2016 Republican debates and all their tough talk about Iran? How Hillary and Obama had done such a bad deal? Blah blah blah. Let me remind everyone that the current administration has done squat in this regard. Where’s the bigger, badder, tougher deal? 

Meanwhile fires rage in Australia, Brazil, Africa – how are you doing on climate change? Oh that’s right, it doesn’t exist.

What about health care? It was John Boehner that said in the twenty five years he was in Congress he never say the Republican put forward a health care bill. Has anything changed? Well, the Trump administration is doing everything they can to repeal the health care we do have, putting 130,000,000 at risk of losing it. Is that your idea of winning?

National debt – big bug-a-boo when Bill Clinton and Obama were presidents. Now? This administration has racked up the most massive debt this country has ever seen.

Gun violence? Naw. Nothing. Nada.  

In fact, what have the Republicans and Trump done since being in office? 

Enriched the rich.

Packed the courts so the idea of a fair trial is negligible.

Oh yes, and kicked people off of voter rolls in key states so they can cheat out another win.

With the help of Russia.

305 Days until the 2020 election and 381 days to the Inauguration

PS Mr. Potatoe* Head

*Yes, I know. That’s a shout out to Dan Quayle (Ha ha ha ha ho)

Day 1193 Rollercoasters, Pelosi, Warren

Tuesday December 30, 2019

312 Days until the 2020 election and 393 days until the Inauguration

We’re watching the game. Virginia Tech is about to score. Shelby’s phone rings. It’s Claire, our niece.

She’s on a rollercoaster at King’s Dominion. She’s with her friends and the park is open late and they are going to stay all day and into the night. The rollercoaster is going up. She’s screaming. Screaming with joy and exhilaration. Tech scores a touchdown. Shelby missed the actual play because Claire is describing her time on the rollercoaster.

Which brings me to the end of year shows and Nancy Pelosi (come on that’s a natural segue.) Actually, they were end of the decade shows. By that I mean they reviewed the past ten years in pictures and interviews. Talk about the good, the bad, and the ugly. 

Two pieces really struck me. They were on Elizabeth Warren and Nancy Pelosi. 

There was an interview with Elizabeth Warren that they replayed. I’m a Warren supporter for President. I like her because she is talking big transformative change. She is addressing the big problems we have, and she has plans for how to do those changes. One thing she mentioned was that it didn’t matter who was in charge as President the person running the Fed was from Goldman Sachs. Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump – didn’t matter. The person running the Federal Reserve was from Goldman Sachs. She pointed out that in the latest round when Trumo was coming in he appointed the chairman of Goldman Sachs. Sachs gave that guy 250 million dollars on the way over to run the Fed. They didn’t have to do that. Why do you give someone $250,000,000.00 when you don’t have to? Interesting question. 

Warren has the knowledge and the experience, backed up by a record of success when it comes to taking on big business and making them play fair. I like her. She mentioned that the first thing the Trump administration did when they took office was to pass legislation that let big business off the hook, and they didn’t say a word about it. 

It was the precursor to Goldman Sachs that wrote the original legislation that set up the Federal Reserve. So this is a sweetheart deal that has been going on for decades if not since the very beginning. Now, don’t get me wrong, I think any modern country needs a strong central bank system headed up by an institution that controls it. If you don’t have that you end up with a private firm doing it. Think Fisk and Gould or J. P. Morgan (the man, not the bank). Then as now, these men, these people will not bet against their own self interest. What we need is a strong central bank and regulations backed up by laws that allow the economic system to automatically put controls in place when certain thresholds are met, without having to get politicians involved. The problem with politicians getting involved is that they act too slowly and by the time they do they are out of sync with the economic conditions. They end up voting in fixes that exacerbate the system rather than make it better.

Warren, better than any other candidate understands this and many other economic problems that we face: both as individuals and as a nation. She has fixes. But they are big changes. Businesses will squeal. They already are. When asked who she would have as a running mate, if she could pick anyone from anytime, she didn’t hesitate – Teddy Roosevelt. He had the balls to take on big businesses and he stopped their chicanery. Business is back with more chicanery and it is high time to stop them.

Claire called back. She was on another rollercoaster. This one moved a different way. Sideways somehow. Who was she there with and who brought them? So and so and so and so’s mom. She was screaming in delight. Virginia Tech scored another touchdown and Shelby missed the actual play, but that was okay because her niece was having such a good time at King’s Dominion. It was special because her niece had decided to include Shelby, her aunt, in the fun. 

Then there’s Nancy Pelosi. There was all the yelling about her being too old, too this, too that. Those critics have pretty much all admitted that she has admirably steered this Congress and her majority in the House with skill and finesse. Outmaneuvering Donald Trump at every turn. It’s really not outmaneuvering; it’s standing up for truth, for what you believe in, and doing the right thing. 

The picture of her standing up across the table from Trump is classic. All the others in the photo, all the men, are sitting there while she is standing up to the bully in chief. The hand clapping at his State of the Union speech was another moment. Her speaking about not hating Trump, how she prays for him, is something he doesn’t comprehend. He can’t imagine it. Lastly, when she banged the gavel on the measure passing the impeachment resolution and her side started to cheer: one look, one wave of her hand and there was silence.

Hey Donald, you want to see real power? Real authority? Real restraint? You want to see an iron fist wrapped in a velvet glove? Watch that video.

We didn’t get anymore calls from Claire.

Tech lost by a point. (One more call and we would have won.)

Shelby texted her brother Ben, Claire’s dad. She and her brother often compare notes on the game. Shelby mentioned Claire’s being at King’s Dominion and didn’t know she was going that day.

“King’s Dominion?” Ben texted back. “She’s in the backyard on her swing.”

312 Days until the 2020 election and 393 days until the Inauguration

PS The happy couple at midnight (in bed with champagne).*

*Okay, I set up a camera on tripod starting around 11. It took until 11:45 or so to figure out how to use the easy to use app to connect the camera to the phone and take a picture and then transfer it to the phone so we could put it on facebook. But we managed to hit the upload button at midnight!

Happy New Decade!

Monday December 30, 2019

314 Days until the 2020 election and 395 days until the Inauguration

That’s the question asked by some of my conservative Republican friends via facebook memes. 

On the surface it seems like a logical fair question, and it is – on the surface.

Let’s dig a tiny bit deeper.

Imagine you show up at your polling place, the one you’ve come to for decades, you present your ID, the same one you’ve always presented and you are told it’s no good. Just imagine that.

Now, for the sake of truth, honesty, and the American way you ask why not. Why isn’t the ID I’ve always presented for decades to show who I am no good? 

Now, for the sake of truth, honesty, and the American way let’s say the poll worker knows and tells you, “Well, you see the Governor and the Republican Party wanted to figure out how to cut down the Democratic vote so they asked repeatedly what ID poor and black people used to identify themselves at polling places. Once they had that information they passed laws and or regulations saying those IDs were no longer acceptable.”

Now suppose, for the sake of truth, honesty, and the American way, you find that unbelievable. Why would the governor do that? He’s the governor. He’s supposed to represent all of us. But the poll worker reassures you that it’s true. Not only is it true but he went back after the law and regs were passed and asked again to make sure.

By the way, quiz question, “What state are you in?”

Not confusion, although that may be true. Welcome to North Carolina! Where the governor Pat McCrory and his Republican henchmen are working assiduously to screw over the poor and African American voters. Why? Well, they don’t vote Republican. 

But don’t worry a judge struck down that dastardly trick. The judge also had to strike down the gerrymandering that the Republicans tried to pull off – not once, but at least twice. I think the Republicans finally came up with an acceptable gerrymander so they could keep the state Republican despite the popular vote being Democratic. 

And it’s been ruled okay by the Supreme Court.

You want justice? You want fairness? You silly person.

This is just the tip of the spear. This is old news. Now, we’ve got Georgia and Wisconsin where hundreds of thousands of voters have been thrown off the voting roles. Go ahead and register, but when it comes time to vote you won’t be on the rolls. Why? Didn’t you return that crappy little postcard they sent you? The one that looked like junk mail? Oh you moved? Too bad, so sad, loser.

Yup, poor people move a lot, but they stay in the same area. So when they go to vote they’ll learn that their name no longer appears on the voting rolls. Welcome to Kansas or any of 17 states where this trick has been played.

But just in case a voter may sneak through there’s another one. See it’s called “cross check.” It’s based on the idea that if there is a name that appears on voter rolls in two states and it’s the same name it must be the same person. What to do? Why, take them off of both rolls. Sorry, John Smith.

Recently, hundreds of thousand of voters were taken off the rolls in Wisconsin and Georgia. Why? Well, they said they were trying to clean up their records. So what if it was mainly Stacie Abrams voters that she had registered? Just a coincidence. Well, yeah, the guy in charge of the voter rolls was her opponent, and he did squeak out a victory. Guess it was a good thing that during that election he forgot to register those 50,000 voters that had applied. Maybe, he didn’t forget. I mean he was head of the election and the applications were in his desk. But he’s gone ahead and gotten even more voters purged. 

To be safe he’s got voting machines that the Russians or anyone else can easily hack. Remember the eleven year old kid who did it with a Word doc telling him how to do it and he did it in what? Five minutes? Yeah. Well, don’t worry because you’ll never know because Georgia doesn’t keep paper records and their man makes sure to erase the votes before anyone can get a look at them. A law to make it required to have paper back up failed to come to the floor of the Senate. Way to go Mitch!

In Wisconsin the case got struck down by a judge saying they hadn’t shown sufficient hardship or made their case or something like that. It was partially based on a Supreme Court ruling penned by that great (tongue in cheek here folks!) Constitutional scholar Anthony Scalia who ruled that people with photo IDs in place of driver’s licenses could get a new ID by going to the place where they handed out the IDs and that it wasn’t a hardship to go 17 miles to do that. 

Think about that. Ask yourself, why would a person not have a driver’s license? I’m guessing because they don’t have a car. Why don’t they have a car? I’m guessing because they are poor (or the new urban elite that live in a city.) So how are they going to get to the place handing out the new IDs? I’m guessing taxi or walking. Is it a hardship for a poor person to take a 17 mile round trip? Heck you can walk it in six or seven hours if you’re healthy. What if you aren’t? What if you have to depend on a walker? Take a taxi, how much does a seventeen mile taxi ride cost? Oh snap, you’re poor. You don’t have the cash. Not to worry, once you got there they would have told you that the copy of your birth certificate was good enough, or that you marriage license was needed to show you had changed your name. They would have thought of something to make you have to come back. Hey, it’s the law! Sorry (ha ha).

Am I against photo ID? Naw. But I would like to see the playing field leveled. Let’s start with a simple little change – the only ID allowed for you to identify yourself at a polling place is your picture ID and the only acceptable ID is your SNAP ID. (SNAP is the welfare ID for you to get food cheaply or for free.) Don’t qualify for SNAP? That’s okay, we’ll set up a SNAP card for people who don’t qualify. Naturally, you’ll need to bring lots of paperwork to prove who you are and why you don’t qualify. We’ll even move the office to a place you’ve never heard of, and we’ll put in wacky hours, so even if you show up, it will be closed. When are you available? Uh huh. Uh huh. Sorry, they aren’t open then. In fact, we have a new procedure. It’s called “When we see you coming flip the ‘OPEN’ sign to ‘CLOSED’.” Yeah, I know. Too bad. But that’s the law.

And just in case you want to take it to court, we’ve been working to put people who agree with us on the bench.

But don’t give up. This is America! Everyone has a chance. We just want to make that chance as narrow as possible for you. God Bless.*

*Reminds me of a thing my buddy told me. He said when you’ve really screwed someone at work you reach across the table, put your hand on his shoulder and say, “What’s best for the company?”

314 Days until the 2020 election and 395 days until the Inauguration

PS One of King Tut’s boxes** he was buried inside of. At the old Cairo Museum. 

** Sorry “shrines.” Okay to the tune of “What my true love gave to me”

“One granite sarcophagus, three gold coffins, four wooden shrines, and a pure golden mask!”

(Hum, doesn’t quite rhyme.)

Sunday December 29, 2019

315 Days until the 2020 election and 396 days until the Inauguration

I started to title this screed “What happened to the Grand Old Party?” but I realized that was overused and trite. It’s easy to say, “It’s Trump,” but I think it’s more than that. True, Donald has a way of bringing out the worst in people, but has this been what the GOP has been all along and were better at hiding it?

Have they always been racist and capitalist criminals? I use the term capitalist criminal because many of the strategies that some of their richest donors used to become rich, while not illegal are certainly unethical. Perhaps, that’s to light a way to put it. Maybe they are illegal, but it’s hard to get caught. Or maybe it’s illegal, so what? Get over it.

I was reading the Forbes list of the richest people in each state. There’s a guy who heads up a hedge fund that basically extorts companies to do things to give shareholders more money short term, but leaves the company in worse shape than before. Money that one could argue could go to building the company’s infrastructure is instead funneled to shareholders. This was the sort of thing I didn’t like about Mitt Romney. What he did was to take over a company, sell off its assets, re-bundle the stock and shove it off onto someone else. Either that or after stripping the company hand it over to the government as a problem child. He did that with a steel company. His buddy did a similar thing with Dunkin Donuts, leaving Dunkin with a massive amount of debt. It didn’t help the company sell more donuts, but it made him rich. 

My father’s generation, known as the greatest generation, were people that seemed focused on doing a good job, on making things, on accomplishing something. These folk? The Trump’s and the Forbes 400? Many of them are fore flushers and con artists. They aren’t building anything, just ripping off people. How did we come to this?

If you’ve listened to the Republican arguments as to why Trump should be impeached they don’t make sense. I’m not talking about a fallacy of logic. Well, maybe that. I’m talking sentence construction. Basic grammar. I mean to make an argument you have to start with sentences. Grunting, saying random words, doesn’t count. Yet, in some cases that is what they are doing. When they do form sentences it’s usually, “I haven’t seen anything which rises to the level of impeachment.” Okay, then I have to ask, “Have you bee to an eye doctor recently?” I mean, “What’s wrong with your vision?”

You were perfectly happy to have Ken Starr wander around for years looking for something on Bill Clinton. You had how many hearings about Hillary, be it on Benghazi or her emails and yet when you have criminal conduct and flagrant flaunting of the Constitution and Congress you see nothing? 

What happened?

There is a white supremacist in the White House running immigration policy. Every agency in the government seems to be run by a fox guarding its chicken house. The president is willing to take the word of our biggest opponent rather than our intelligence or military community. The president’s attorney and AG and Secretary of State are running around the globe trying to get evidence on things that don’t exist. We look like fools and yet I see ever week people I know cheering Trump on.

The Republican Party used to be pretty good at hiding that it didn’t give a damn about the working person. Now? Now, they are carrying out a campaign against common sense. The scary thing is it’s working. The even scarier thing is that structurally they could hold the Senate for decades and block any progress for the foreseeable future. Trump like to say “the do nothing Democrats.” Yet, the House has passed over 400 bills and the Senate has yet to take up any of them.

It’s not the Democrats who are do nothing. The Republicans have been busy too. In the Senate they have rammed through lots of judges. Many of them unqualified. In fact, the Senate no longer wants the opinion of the American Bar Association. I guess they got tired of hearing that the people they were nominating to lifetime positions were idiots. Meanwhile, clean air and clean water standards are being thrown out the window. Basic safety regulation are also being eliminated. Last week the inspection of pork has been sped up. This is basic stuff. What’s the attitude? “We don’t need it,” I guess.

Measles outbreaks and Mumps outbreaks are happening.Why? We don’t need vaccinations anymore is the argument. Yeah, how many have died due to that stupidity?

Stupidity and a lack of sense – common or otherwise are the order of the day. Trump and the Republicans are leading the charge.

If you support Trump or are a Republican ask yourself this, “When have either Trump or the GOP helped you?”

The Republicans have not put forward a health care bill in over 25 years. That’s not me saying it that’s the former Republican Speaker of the House. How many times do you need to see a graph or chart showing you that from Reagan on the average worker has not had any meaningful raise? 

The only time they have gotten relief is when a Democrat has been in office, but any real relief has always been blocked by Republicans.

And when it comes to spending your money? The champs are the Republicans. They outspend Democrats on a phenomenal scale. Yet, the Republicans keep harping on how wasteful the Dems are. Why not? People stupidly believe it, despite the evidence.

Remember the Republicans have cut taxes, not on you, but on the super rich. They have spent more on programs that don’t benefit you, but are happy to chop away on the ones that might give you a leg up. Pre-existing conditions? Yeah, don’t need that. It only affects 130,000,000 Americans – vote for them. Vote for your own poverty! Helping people who are starving? Screw that. If you don’t give them food it will incentivize them to find a job. Oh, they have a job, but it doesn’t pay the rent because the basic ratio of how long you have to work to pay rent has changed drastically? Too bad. Lazy.

Meanwhile, I read about hedge fund managers who are in the business of blackmail. I’m sorry, when Carl Icahn was doing it they called it Greenmail. Did you know the IRS has a separate form for Greenmail? (Form 8725 in which they define the term “Greenmail” and tax it.) See, it’s okay to hold up a company as long as the IRS gets its due. 

This is the “it’s not illegal” argument. I’ve recently seen memes that point out just because it’s legal doesn’t make it’s moral.

I guess that’s the point. As long as it’s not illegal it’s okay to do. Trump has taken that to a new shocking level. Not only does he commit illegal and immoral acts, it is reported that he has no shame. He could care less if something is illegal, immoral, and doesn’t carry if it’s shameful. The only question in his mind seems to be, “Will I get caught?” and if so “Can I get out of it?”

Welcome to the land of Donald Trump and the real Republican Party.

Now to important stuff – football.

If you didn’t watch the two college games yesterday you missed two phenomenal performances.

In the first game LSU scored seven touchdowns – in the first half. Their quarterback, the Heisman winner, showed why he deserved to win it. He completed passes that were crazy, and he did it over and over again. Not that Oklahoma was a slouch team, but they couldn’t compete.

In the next game Clemson’s quarterback experienced something he had never experienced before, being behind in a game. Clemson showed in its last drive, and final defensive stance, why they are National Champions. This sets up one of the most interesting championship games of all time. The phenomenal Heisman Trophy winner against a player that has never lost a game. My son went to Clemson. Therefore, I’m rooting for Clemson, but LSU? Wow. I have no prediction.

315 Days until the 2020 election and 396 days until the Inauguration

PS The old Cairo Museum