Rick Kinnaird

Day 687 Saturday November 24, 2018 904 Days to Go

Stacking Logs of Deceit
and
The Defective Personality of Politicians

So much has happened since I’ve been able to sit down and write I’m afraid some will slide off the edge of the table. The best I can do is to list. As I was thinking about all the items I got to ruminating about how many politicians and leaders in many walks of like seem to be lacking in some personality trait. Is this what drives them? I think in some part yes. The teaser for the show “The Good Doctor” has the lead actor asking the question, “I have autism, does that mean I can’t be a good doctor?” In another teaser he says, “I have autism, which makes it hard for me to show empathy.”
My understanding of people with autism is that they don’t understand empathy, guilt, and emotional pain at a basic gut level. They can recognize the emotional pain that others are having and conclude, “Oh, that person must be feeling emotional hurt” but they don’t experience it themselves. And so it is with Donald Trump, he doesn’t understand many basic human emotions. He has demonstrated on numerous occasions, in many different situations his lack of understanding. People say he doesn’t get it, and it’s true; he doesn’t. He is, I am convinced, incapable of understanding a range of human emotion and reaction that most of us take for granted. This leads to his not only being inappropriate, but also to his following up with a comment or comments that demonstrate no remorse (because he is incapable of it) or understanding of why he should be (remorseful, sorry for someone’s plight,, etc.) I am sure a person who studies body language could draw conclusions by his frequent pose of both arms wrapped tightly around his waist. It strikes me as child like and defensive.
Many leaders seem to be lacking in some core personality trait. They are portrayed as slightly autistic or psychopathic. There have been many books written about Hitler in regard to lacking a balanced personality, Nixon too. There are the traits associated with a sociopath or a psychopath which many leaders possess. Nixon seems to have had a chip on his shoulder having grown up poor and not gone to a big name college. It seemed he always felt inferior and needed to not only prove himself, but to guarantee at all costs the outcome he desired.
I have heard it said about Nixon that he played people much like one plays pool, watching the way one ball caroms off another. He didn’t seem to care whether what he was saying was true or not, but rather did it have the effect he was seeking?
Rachel Maddow had a show about Nixon and his run for the presidency in 1968. What she reported by and large isn’t new, the detail is. Nixon committed treason before he became President, plain and simple. The evidence is there for all to see. There is no question about that. Nixon lied about it. He lied to then President Johnson saying he knew nothing about it and that what Johnson was telling him would be terrible for the country if it were true, and it was true. In public, Nixon bashed the current administration for not ending the war in Vietnam; in private, he sent a secret emissary to tell the South Vietnamese not to come to the peace table until he was president. He was duplicitous. This was a thing Nixon seemed to have done his whole career. Hence, the moniker “Tricky Dick,” because he was.
Nixon knew, it seems to me, what he was doing and he knew the consequences and the results if any or all of his misdeeds came to light, and he went ahead anyway – fully knowledgeable. Trump is another matter. He doesn’t seem to really understand. Maybe he does, but if so, it is deeply buried. The only time he seemed to get a glimmer was when the U.N. General Assembly laughed to his face. In that moment, he had a smile that seemed to say, “okay, you caught me.”
The problem with aiding and abetting a person in doing their dirty work is that you are now unable to work for anyone else, and you become dependent on that person for your survival. They on the other hand don’t want to get caught and if it looks like they might will do everything they can to avoid you or, if need be, throw you under the bus. The examples of Nixon and Trump doing this are many.
In the case of Nixon and the treason he committed, he used a woman named Anne Chenault to deliver messages to the South Vietnamese. His message was don’t go to the negotiating table until after the ’68 presidential election. This was treason. What was Chenault hoping to get out of doing this? Probably an ambassadorship or some sort of recognizable high profile job. Nixon distanced himself from her immediately after the election. Why would he want anything to do with her? She could expose him.
Nixon did a similar thing with Agnew. Once it was clear that Nixon could not save Agnew from the FBI investigation that had Agnew dead to rights; Nixon turned on Agnew, to the point that Agnew feared Nixon would have him killed.
I wonder how the fifteen men who carried out the brutal murder of Jamal Khashoggi feel right now? Five are indicted in Saudi Arabia and facing death penalties. What did they do? (Aside from strangling, murdering, and dismembering a man?) They carried out the orders of the Crown Prince. Do you think the Crown Prince would have them executed if it meant they couldn’t link him to the death of that journalist?

Ah me, let’s stack logs:
Log 1: A few days ago I took a walk and listened to Chris Hayes’ podcast, “Why is This Happening?” The episode talked about the attempt by Wilbur Ross to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census form. BTW Chris does a good job on his show, but if this podcast is any example of the rest of them, he is even better here.
In this podcast Hayes had on a lawyer from the ACLU who was suing Ross and the government over the inclusion of citizenship on the Census form. The back story is this. The Constitution specifies that “every person” shall be counted every ten years in the U.S. It’s a big undertaking. I know because I was tangentially involved in the 1980 Census, when I was an Account Executive for AT&T on the Department of Commerce account. The Census is under the umbrella of the Commerce Department. We had one sales rep whose only job was to make sure the communication lines and numbers would be ready and installed when the Census began. This was two years before the Census started.
Wilbur Ross, as Secretary of Commerce, wanted to add the question, “Are you a U.S. citizen?” to the form. Seems innocuous, but it’s not. Not at all, it was shown in this podcast that Ross’ purpose was to scare people from being counted, mainly immigrants and people here illegally. They don’t want to answer questions from the government. They are under the threat of deportation. They have seen what the government in their country of origin is like and they don’t want to talk with anyone from the government. Ross knows this and wants to use it to keep them from being reported so that people in rural areas that support Republicans will get more money because they will be over represented because the immigrants will be under represented. This is clear because when Census workers found that they could get better more accurate information from other sources they were turned down. Ross has lied to Congress about his intention. He said that he was doing this because the Justice Department asked for the question to help with enforcement of the Voting Rights Act. He left out the little tiny detail that he asked the Justice Department to ask Census for this question. There is also the little detail that the Trump administration has not brought one case under The Voting Rights Act. Ross and his cronies skirted all the apparatus that Census has in designing the Census form, and when they were shown that they could get the data they wanted in a cheaper way that would be more accurate they refused to even have a meeting to discuss it.

Log 2: Ivanka has been using a private email server for government business. Hundreds, maybe thousands of emails are involved, just like Hillary. Her excuse? She didn’t really understand that she shouldn’t be doing that. What did Daddy say? It’s totally different than Hillary. See Hillary had a server in her house. What?

Log 3: The CIA has concluded that the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia ordered the murder of Jamal Khasoggi.

Log 4: Donald Trump sided with Saudi Arabia over our intelligence community’s assessment. The excuse we’ve heard before: “Could have been anybody. We don’t know.”

Log 5: Trump says he stands with Saudi Arabia in defiance of our own intelligence community assessment, because of the great amount of money they are spending to buy arms from us, and because this will create thousands of new jobs. None of this is true. The president continues to cling to false facts and half truths, despite having the best facts and information at his fingertips. Who says a 72 year old man can’t change? I do; I do.
This is not new behavior on the president’s part. He’s been doing it most of his life.

Log 6: I’ve started reading “The Apprentice” by Greg Miller, a reporter and specialist on the intelligence community. I highly recommend this book. In 2014, the Dutch secret service CIA type organization had penetrated the Russian hacker building’s computers. They had access to the cameras that were at the doors. By looking at the pictures that were taken of people entering the building they were able to link the names of the people working in the building with the faces. They did this 2014 and knew that the Russians were hacking election systems. They passed the information on to NSA, which passed it on to the FBI. The FBI warned the Democratic Committee that they had been hacked, but it tool eight months for the FBI to get past the front desk of the DNC. It had been a low level matter and the DNC folks had not seen any evidence of hacking and thought it was a hoax caller.
I repeat. The Dutch knew we were being hacked in 2014. It took over two years before anything was done.

Log 7: Trump went to California to see the devastation by the wildfires out there, and once again displayed a complete lack of empathy or knowledge. He topped it off by man-splaining what California had done wrong in regard to preparing to prevent the fire. According to Trump, they should have raked the forest floor. He said he heard this from the President of Finland. The Finnish chief said, “It wasn’t me.” This leaves a few questions like what would you do with the debris you raked up from the 76 million acres of forest? It also leaves open the question of “how would raking the forest help when the damage wasn’t done in the forest?”
Ryan Zinke; our give away Federal lands to oil, gas, and timber interests; Interior Secretary said the problem was environmentalists won’t cut down a tree. Okay Ryan, show us which tree.
This kind of “blame the victim” is standard in the Trump playbook and Mr. Zinke is learning well from the master.
I looked at the pictures of Gavin Newsome and Jerry Brown standing near Trump as Trump expounded. I had to wonder what was going through Jerry Brown’s head as he listened to Trump say such stupid, foolish, and insensitive things.

Log 8: More details are emerging about Mat Whitaker. Turns out he got paid $1.2 Million from FACT. The organization set up to give Matty-Boy something to put under his name while spouting off on Fox News. We don’t know who’s behind this group because the contributions are secret. Mat also got a ton of money from the invention scam business and from some other secret donors.
But the thing that got me most about Mat was this little tidbit. He was a prosecutor in Iowa. He had it out for drug offenders, 83% of the time asking for the most extreme penalties possible. These were over and above the maximum penalty in the sentencing guidelines. He was even rebuked by his peers and judges. In one case he gave a woman, a mother of five, who was caught on a drug offense for the third time, this choice – goto trial and risk life in prison or accept the deal of 21 to 27 years in jail. She took the deal and after eleven years Obama commuted her sentence. For this I say, and I said it involuntarily as soon as I heard the report, “Mat Whitaker is a worthless piece of shit.”

Log 9: Speaking of Mat Whitaker, there’s a novel twist to any case he touches. The thinking goes like this, “Because Mat Whitaker has not been confirmed by the Senate for any principal job, he can not serve in a principal job, as defined in the Constitution, because he is serving in that capacity, anything he does is invalid.” So if he can’t end the Mueller investigation, he could rub his hands all over it, and thus open the door for the whole business to be thrown out.

Log 10: It appears the Dems will have won forty seats in the House of Representatives. The largest win since Watergate.

Log 11: In Mississippi there is a run-off election for Senator. The white woman Republican said she’d like to sit in the front row for a public hanging. The meaning and intent are perfectly clear to any black person living in the south. She says she’s sorry if her words offended anyone. What? Many say she’s not sorry at all. She was sending a deliberate message to her base. She leads in the polls.

Log 12: Ken Fisher of Fisher Investments wrote an article that showed that despite thoughts to the contrary, according to the data from the elections – Republicans are the party of the poor, and Democrats are the party of the rich. He points to the data that the poorest states are Republican, and the richest are Democratic. I keep looking at the issue of why this happens, mainly on the poor side. What is it that motivates someone to vote for people who by thought, and deed are out to screw you over?

Log 13: There has been some cost estimates of the ripping kids out of the arms of their parents and of the sending of troops to our southern border. I think the figure for the jailing of kids is at a cost of $150M to the end of the year, and the troops was $200M. For what? For political theater.

Log 14: The wildfires in California are the worst in the state’s history. The cause is climate change (or not raking the forest, and not cutting down a tree because you’re an environmentalist). Rain is coming and now mud slides are feared.

Log 15: Exxon knew about the dangers of climate change over fifty years ago. They decided to bury that information and to attack people who espoused those ideas. They hired some of the same people and firms the tobacco lobby hired. It’s no wonder then that similar tactics were employed.

Log 17: I won’t speak for anyone else economically, but my investments were up 48% under Obama, under Trump they are down 6%. Granted I invest more aggressively than most people and I therefore expect more volatility, but to those who think Trump is good for the economy, I say, “Bull.”

Log 18: Let’s not forget the idea that Trump is a great businessman. This is based, it seems, on his show The Apprentice. There is more than ample evidence to now show he’s a terrible business person and that part of the family business model is lying and fraud.

Log 19: Let’s not let DT grab all the news. John Kasich the gosh gee-whiz governor of Ohio has been working tirelessly to not let women have a say in what they can do with their bodies. He’s worked for years to restrict abortion in his state. He like Mike Pence have employed some pretty sneaky underhanded tactics to get extreme measures passed to restrict abortion in his state. His latest law is to say no abortion after six weeks. It’s unsafe to have abortions before six weeks and most pregnancies don’t show up until six weeks. Nice work John! Yeah, he and Mike Pence the gosh golly mean spirited hiding behind geniality midwestern look are both odious.

Log 20 Trump had a busy busy day the other day. Officially, his schedule was greeting the White House Christmas Tree and lunch with Mike Pence. That was it. He and Melania came out of the White House, walked around a Clydesdale pulled wagon that had the Christmas tree on the back and he swatted on of the horses on the flank and walked back in the White House to have lunch with Mike. What a loser. Which one? Both of them.
You want to see a Christmas tree? I’ll show you a Christmas tree.

I’m tired of chopping. Enough logs for now.

904 Days to Go

PS The 2006 Rockefeller Christmas Tree being delivered and how it stood on our sideyard next to the house I grew up in.

Day 681 Sunday November 18, 2018    910 Days to Go

The Twentieth Century will be remembered for many things: two world wars, incredible inventions, and huge improvements in people’s lives. In that century the car and the airplane came into their own, as did electricity and radio, TV, and computers. Lives were transformed by the discovery of penicillin and sulfa-based drugs and antibiotics. We learned that we were a small tiny part of a much larger universe than we had ever imagined. We saw the advent of weapons so terrible that hopefully they will never be used again.

But also, and largely forgotten was the advent of manipulation by companies and the increase of preventable diseases. In WWI the troops were given cigarettes as part of their rations. Thus a generation, and generations after, were hooked on something that slowly killed them. We saw food go from healthy to empty. Sugar and bad fats were introduced into western diets. Diabetes and overweight people became a norm. 

We’ve seen over and over again that companies can’t be trusted to be honest. The latest case is Facebook. Many thought the fresh young faces and tech savvy young would make the world better. It didn’t. They didn’t.

We now have the very institutions that made us as Americans different and great under constant attack. One party is now controlled by kooks and the petrochemical lobby. Talk about a rock and a hard spot! Either you go with a nutty idea based on religion, no knowledge, or something cooked up by a group of individuals or their companies designed to enrich them. So what if the Earth burns up? We’ll be rich! And God will come down and lift us all up to heaven (not you, you didn’t believe! Sorry.)

There is hope but we have to fight for it. We have to speak to everyone, not just those that agree with us. 

I keep coming back to some simple sayings. One was when I was an intern on my first real job. I was working in a factory. We had a problem. I criticized the fellow in charge of part of it. It was an ad hominem comment. I don’t remember what I said but I remember what I was asked by the person who operationally had to carry out what ever was decided. 

He said, “What would you do?”

He looked at me for what seemed an eternity (8? 10 seconds?). I had nothing. I was speechless. He closed his eyes and turned away.

I also remember soccer moms yelling at their kids, “Don’t bunch up!” 

Okay great, what should the kids do?

The Republicans have been in charge for two years and what have they done?

They’ve packed the courts with hard right conservative hand picked by big corporation lawyers. In other words, men out of touch with the mainstream of political thought in this country.

They have passed a massive tax cut for the rich and paid for some of it by taking away the middle class deductions that most folks use (state tax deduction and mortgage interest deduction).

They have put people in cabinet posts who either have little knowledge of the job or are dead set on destroying the agency and its mission.

They have done everything they can to destroy the Affordable Care Act and have not come up with anything better.

They’ve even screwed over the rural areas where farmers are struggling by starting trade wars over agricultural products.

They’ve screwed over manufacturers by starting trade wars over steel and other metals and minerals.

Trade wars end up costing the consumer in this country more. 

It’s interesting that the folks worst hit by these things are living in the reddest states. If a conversation can be had that points out these simple facts and that there is another path, a better way, then maybe we can turn this country around.

In the Democratic Party there are those that say Nancy Pelosi shouldn’t be the next Speaker of the House. Then the question becomes, “Who else?” One name has been floated, but what has this person done to deserve the job, other than being not Nancy Pelosi? I haven’t heard.

It’s funny how Dave Brat ran against “the liberal policies of Nancy Pelosi” and lost. What exactly were the policies that Dave didn’t like? I don’t know, he never said, as far as I know. But now folks are saying, “You know it was Nancy Pelosi that got the Affordable Care Act through Congress.” She’s responsible for pre-existing conditions being covered. In fact, she has been the most effective Speaker of the House in modern times. (John Boehner and Paul Ryan take note.)

I do hope that she works to groom new younger people within the party to take on more responsibility.

We’ll have to wait and see on that.

Meanwhile, it seems that Mueller is getting ready to unleash a bunch of subpoenas or indictments and I suspect that the circle around the president will get smaller and tighter. When rats are caged without food they eat each other, I wonder what will happen when Don Jr. is indicted, or the Donald himself? Who will throw whom under the bus? Or will they go down together? What about Jared and Ivanka? It will be loud, bloody, and outrageous followed by a whimper. 

I wish I knew what Agnew’s supporters thought when he pleaded in court. He was lucky. they let him plead no contest. I hope the goods are so damning that they won’t let Trump and his band of crooks to get away with that.

 910 Days to Go

PS The kid at Coba. A huge site, which you can get driven around on bike rickshaws. I got there late in the day and didn’t have time to make this climb, only enough time for a victory picture.