Rick Kinnaird

Wednesday, August 28, 2024

The stock market hit another all time high the other day and the reason is pretty obvious to anyone who pays attention to such things. Donald Trump is looking more and more likely to lose the presidency this fall and that’s good news for investors.

On the day the market hit that record an evaluation came out about the costs to the economy of the two campaigns. Trump’s would cost $6,800,000,000,000.00 to the deficit and his plan to put tariffs on all imported goods would cost a household between $2,600.00 and $3,900.00, which was the way he was going to pay for his plans. However, at best it would only come up with $2T versus his cost of $6.8T. To add insult to this he would let the super rich off the hook and impoverish the working people with his sales tax.

Harris said in her acceptance speech that Trump was an unserious man, and he demonstrated that this week by making a campaign ad where he was selling trading cards with his face on them. Meanwhile, the Harris campaign is talking about the high cost of housing and what she will do to change that.

Harris went on to say that the consequences of another Trump presidency are serious. This is not only noted in the economic plan he put forward but in the other facets of his campaign. Kash Patel, a Trump loyalist – some would say ass kisser but that let’s Patel off the hook because his nose and perhaps his whole head is in and beyond Trump’s sphincter, has said that as soon as Trump is sworn in he will be going after Trump’s enemies. Who are they? Well, anyone who ha spoken up against him, for sure, but also anyone else he thinks, feels, dreams is not totally loyal to him. Let’s not forget how petty and mean Donald can be. Remember how he fired Comey while he was on the west coast and then was upset when Comey flew back on the plane that got him there? Donnie wanted to not only fire Jim Comey, but to humiliate him as well. Then he had the IRS go after him and his successor McCabe by having the most detailed audit of their tax returns. Who believes it was just random chance that both FBI Directors got that treatment? And don’t forget Trump fired McCabe one day before his pension took effect.

There are other consequences of another Trump presidency. He wants to turn the government into an autocratic machine to serve himself and his rich and authoritarian friends. It’s all written down i their playbook named Project 2025. it’s scary. It makes Mein Kampf seem like a child’s primer. Nationwide abortion ban, including banning medicines that help a fetus abort. The use of the military to round up people, put them in camps and deport them or who knows what. The plan specifies ways to bend, twist, and cheat to gain their objectives. 

There is little real policy in anything Trump says and what there is is based on fundamental misunderstandings of reality. I mean fundamental misunderstanding of science, economics, diplomacy, our system of government – you name it and there are multiple examples of this.

This is a man who thinks you take the flu vaccine after you get the flu.

Who doesn’t understand how or why you want to be in a pact like NATO.

Who didn’t understand the Iran nuclear deal.

Who thought you could take bleach to kill Covid. Okay, he only thought our scientists “should look into it.”

As Neil deGrasse Tyson has pointed out you can’t ignore basic facts and truths about how the world works under the guise of saying you want to be fair and let all sides have a voice. If what someone is espousing is factually wrong it doesn’t and shouldn’t be part of the conversation. And yet that is what Trump and many of his flunkies are trying to do.

It gets worse. There is this idea on the right that there are conspiracies. That these conspiracies are so interwoven into our fabric of government and life that the only thing to do is to destroy most of our institutions. Now, that’s not exactly how they put it. Steve Bannon say, “Destroy the administrative state.” Others say the left or someone or something is being “too woke.” But then it gets worse because there is no way to refute a claim of conspiracy, because if you do you are accused of being part of the conspiracy. 

What happens when a conspiracy runs into the real world? We’ve seen it happen. Russia propaganda fueled by far-right websites and then FOX said that there was a server in Ukraine that was flipping votes and the Democrats controlled it. Trump when he was President asked President Zelensky to look into it. What was Zelensky supposed to do? Trump went further. He said that he wouldn’t give Ukraine the weapons they needed until Zelensky brought him dirt on Joe Biden. Grudgingly, and at the last minute and far too late he started giving weapons to Ukraine. The result of this inaction and the unwillingness of Republicans in Congress to step up led directly to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

Then there was the incident in Italy. You have to ask yourself what was the Attorney General of the United States doing traveling to Italy with a Special Counsel? The whole point of a special counsel is to be arm’s length from the Department of Justice. This had been turned on its head during the Whitewater Investigation where it was a tool used to try and discredit President Clinton. So the two go to Italy and don’t find any dirt on Joe like they were led to believe by the right-wing disinformation sources. But what they were given was evidence of Trump’s criminality. What did the Attorney General do with that? He issued a statement saying he found wrongdoing and said it in such a way that it seemed to imply Biden when in fact it was Trump. Then he dropped the whole thing.

Speaking of not dropping the whole thing – Mr. Trump has broken new ground by being criminally indicted for the fifth time by a grand jury. Five times! Conspiracy? I think not.

In Jack’s Smith refiling of the case he has excluded any involvement of government officials. This after the Supreme Court ruled that a president could preside over fake election schemes as long as he did it in an official capacity. So Jack only named “private” individuals. There is also the taking to task of Judge Cannon’s ruling that the special counsel was not properly appointed. A tried and true tactic of anyone who has been accused by a special counsel. Cannon is the first one to buy the argument. The filing has phrases in it never before seen in such a filing, which made Neil Katyal wonder what the rough draft must have looked like.

So far the posts from my right wing friends have been, well underwhelming. Harris was accused in one post of using a long sentence. Wow, that’s all you’ve got? To be clear, she speaks in sentences. Trump says words – not sentences. His speeches are described as ramblings, not speeches. 

Then there’s the AI stuff. Someone wiped a crowd meeting Harris on the tarmac off the picture and then put them back in and claimed it was fake.

Besides the trading cards, I was offered a gold medallion of the Trump shooting. Trump raised fist on one side, American Eagle on the other. Limited supply. Get them before they are gone.

And in other news Clarence Thomas has been found to have not filed his taxes properly. Well, he probably didn’t understand that when a billionaire gives you stuff, like money, jet rides, vacations that it’s income. Who would have known? OMG! Gag me with a hay fork.

Saturday, August 17, 2024

I have been interested in Calculs since high school. I was pretty good at algebra, geometry, and calc – in high school. In college I took Calc I my freshman year and I did okay, but things alluded me. I think the difference was in high school I had a really good teacher who gave us homework and went over it the next day. In college, it was a lecture three times a week and if you didn’t keep up – too bad. I think too there was this attitude of giving you the toughest problem they could find and if you got well then you obviusly understood. If you didn’t get it – well – there was no help.

But the ideas behind calculus I’ve always liked and toyed with mentally. 

I had seen a book on differential equations at my daughter’s home and liked how it was written. It connected the real world to the mathmatical one. 

For my birthday she gave me a small thin volume Lectures on Ordinary Ditterential Equations by Witlold Hurewicz. Here is the opening page of the book:

Last September sixth was a black day for mathematics. For on that day there disappeared, as a consequence of a accidental fall from a pyramid in Uxmal, Yucatan, Witold Hurewicz, …

Uxmal is a wonderful site. It has a massive pyramid called “The Pyramid of The Dwarf.” Alledgedly, a dwarf built it overnight. This pyramid is unlike any other pyramid in the Mayan world. I has smooth sloping sides. I assume Dr. Hurewicz must have fallen from it. Climbing is now forbidden. I think for good reason.

The year of his death was 1956.

Wednesday, July 31, 2024

Here at NBC we’ll show you minor sports with little to no explanation of what any of it means.

Let’s switch to Peacock where we’ve teased that you can watch all the medal cerimonies and not miss a minute. This is true. We put the camera on something and let it roll with little or no explanation about what is going on or what is coming up. Somewhere in the time from 7am to 5pm you’ll see a medal ceremony.

Go instead to highlights and we’ll show you Coco Grauff complaining to the umos. Why is she complaining? Who knows? How about that great fnish in montain biking? Yeah, we saw a woman crossing the finish line all alone. Terrific work there crew. Switching now to cycling we’ll watch people slip on the rain covered streets. Who won? Who cares. 

Okay enough. Switch to Gold Zone. We showed you four screens of action at once. Oh, you thought you got to pick? Nah. In fact, sometimes we show you one screen, and sometmes four, and sometimes we don’t know what we’re doing then we’ll show you a black screen. Remember you paid extra for this! Now that we’ve figured out there’s a black screen up there we’ll show you what looks like a 1950s postcard of the Seine River with the catchy title of “Enjoy this view of the Seine.” Clever. Now back to four screens. We got tennis – too small to see, badmitten – too small, natch, Beach Volleyball and Equestrian. Let’s go big screen on Equestrian. This is horse prancing. Very interesting – for three or five seconds, because the drama is well, slooow. Okay, let’s switch to BMX. I forgot this was in the Olympics. This is like half pipe snowboarding but with bikes. Performed by mainly slightly pudgy twenty year olds. There are basically two moves that they do: “Don’t Do That! You’ll Break Your Neck!” and “I Told You So.” The latter is actually only done when someone crashes, which is frequent.

One BMX guy did something besides take his hands off the handle bars or spin his front wheel while in the air. He rotated the bike in a vertical plane: back wheel over front, while he wasn’t holding the bike. Pretty cool. Or was it front over back? Now back to four screens. Water polo is up in one corner. Something important is going on. Not sure what. Two teams. Oh, it’s a shoot out. Goalie versus opposing player from ten or fifteen feet away. Cool. What makes this really interesting is we are getting the audio from the BMX competition. Now a shot of a tennis match. When tennis or badmitten is in one of these little qudrents you can’t see the ball, just the players running around – who know what’s going on? Oh wait, the girls in green on the water polo section are jumping up and down. They must have won. Probably Australia. Who knows? Now to kayaking, now called something or other canoeing. But first crewing. Back to volleyball. Don’t those ladies get sunburned? I remember there was a big hoopla about them being required to wear those little two piece bathing suits and the protests over that. I can only think one thing – butt crack. Same for the gymnists. And what about those weird bathing suits for some of the men’s teams? We want to highight the men’s jungue. Maybe not. I dunno.

Okay. let me give Gold View a better try. Stand closer. Go with the flow. Oh, what’s this? A note on the bottom of the screen of the kayaking (Excuse me canoe paddling or something or other) explaining the green and red gates? Well, everyone knows you gotta go throughhe green gates going down stream and the red upstream. (Said no one, ever.) Just like in rugby, it’s important where you place the ball down in the end zone (I mean try zone). This determines where you kick the extra point from. We’re talking angle of kick. Yeah, would have been nice to have an explanation. Also, off sides and a penalty, but hey, what do you want from one of the premier sports organizations for broadcasting in the world?

Did you hear about the USA women’s rugby finish for bronze? No? Go to Peacock, click on the “Gold/Bronze women’s Rugby” icon and see … see…What is this? Finland and someone? WTF? They areno\’t in the final four. Oh this must be one of the playoff games of eight teams leading up to the four teams to the two teams, which is the final. Just advance the clicker and when you stop, wait for two minutes of commercials to find out where you are and what you are watching. There’s no little fast motion screen to show you where you are. Just drop in, wait two minutes of commercials and see where you are. Not the right place? Click agian. Wait two minutes. My tolerance was five times or ten minutes of crappy commercials and not finding the game, and we paid for this?

Hey, Comcast or Verizon or NBC or somebody I got a boffo idea. Do what they do in Cambodia. Have a channel for each sport and let the user with a remote click around. Weird huh? You can watch as much as you want of a sport then click to another one. No? You know what’s better? Yeah, force me to watch your crappy coverage. Hey, did you hear we didn’t qualify in air pistol? Did you show it? Maybe. Somewhere. Who knows? Replace them guns with AR-15s, the rifle of America, and we’ll show you. As targets have school children. Not real ones just pictures of the ones that were massacred. Too much? Bad taste?  Yeah. Okay.

Then there’s the outrage over the greek live scene of drag queens (was it drag queens?) dressed up emulating a Greek painting. Oh, the outrage. Making fun of the Last Supper. OMG. The outrage is from people who have never been to France – obviously.

Back to dressage, Mitt Romney, prep school waterboy, had a horse in this event a few years ago. What a competitor. Why isn’t pranercise a sport in the Olympics?

I gotta go. I’m waiting to see the murder ball sport with the grapefruit sized ball. What is that? Get Snoop Dog out here.

Tuesday, July 30, 2024

The Federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour. I thought it was $7.50. Let’s do some basic math.

If you work 40 hours a week for 50 weeks, that’s 2000 hours.

At $7.25 an hour that works out to $14,500 a year.

Who can survive on that?

In Virginia where I live the annual cost of living is $48,249 according to SoFi.

That would mean you’d have to make $24.12 an hour to live in Virginia.

At $7.25 an hour, every year you’d fall $34,049 behind.

What do people do?

I don’t know. What I do know is that after World War II a man could get a job that would pay enough to afford a house, feed his family, and his wife didn’t have to work. This is no longer true.

I’ve heard it said that minimum wage jobs are “entry level jobs” and the assumption is that they are for high school kids trying to make a little extra money. This too is not true. The majority of minimum wage jobs are held my people trying to make a living.

“Entry Level Job” suggested that the person will move up and get a better paying job. This too is not true. You only need so many managers at a burger joint or a Walmart. The vast majority will be minimum wage jobs.

And let’s not forget what Chris Rock said of minimum wage jobs, “We’d pay you less but the government won’t let us.”

There have been studies looking at the effect of raising wages and or solving the problem of poverty..

I listened to the radio when NPR was interviewing someone speaking for the idea of having unions and increasing wages. He made several interesting points: 1) After WWII laborers benefitted nationwide from the autoworkers forming a union and receiving better wages. 2) It turns out that raising wages hurts the employer at first, a little bit in the pocket book, but the overall effect is beneficial because they don’t have as much turnover and they get better worker loyalty. Also, the community benefits because people have money to spend. 3) He pointed out that a Walmart executive stated that the reason they didn’t want unions was “they wanted to drive the bus.” ie It’s question of control.

The other report was about the man who created ChatGPT. He’s done an experiment giving people $1000 a month for three years and seeing the effect. Not shockingly, people reduced hour to spend more time with their kids. They spent the money by and large on basics like food, rent, and gas.

Project 2025 wants to do away with the minimum wage, but back on services and benefits for the poor, and create a tax program that will save the rich thousands and cost everyone else $2,600 a year.

This is the program Donald Trump says he’ll put in place.

Friday, July 25, 2024

The other day Donald called Kamala a name. A bad name? More a stupid name. The kind of thing you’d hear on the playground when you were in seventh grade. That’s all he’s got? 

Meanwhile, his running mate it has been revealed had sex with a sofa. How do we know? He wrote about it. I have to wonder if Ron Howard put that scene in his movie based on the book? You know, it’s odd that they, the rabid right, hate the Hollywood elites, but seem okay with embracing them when it’s about them. 

I have questions. Are our sofas safe? Should J. D. Vance be banned from furniture stores? What about love seats? Divans? Couches? Do we need to get plastic protectors for our furniture?

It’s no longer “The Prosecutor versus the Felon,” but “the Felon and the Sofa Fucker.” Has he been rehabilitated? Did he go to therapy? Or at least a Christian “Save the Furniture” program? Have we caught him giving a side eye to a nice plump set of cushions? Or does he not go for over stuffed and prefer sleek Danish modern?

What about IKEA? I mean you select the cushions out of bins, do they need to be wrapped in protective plastic?

Speaking of the law, I’ve been wondering, “if you commit a crime, and are found guilt of that crime, and the penalty is time in jail, don’t you go to jail?” I’m asking. It seems that the defense after being found guilty of a crime of “I didn’t do it and the judge is an idiot,” doesn’t usually fly. At least, it hasn’t yet. Neither does, “do you know who I am?”

And why are so many people who worked with the Donald not supporting him? And why are so many who did in jail, or going to jail, or accused of crimes, or unethical business practices? I don’t remember that with any other President (well Nixon a little, and a few in history like the Teapot Dome, but that’s chump change compare to what Trump and his supporting cast have done and or been accused of). Now, some say it’s that someone is out to get them, and they’re right. It’s called “The Law.” Their defense is “We didn’t do it.” and “It’s a political witch hunt.” 

It would seem strange to begin a witch hunt on a guy before he sought political office. Also, it’s not like someone is testifying against him that caused the guilty verdict. It’s that the crime was committed on paper that you can see before your eyes. One of the things that Trump doesn’t understand is a flu shot. It is reported that he seems to think that if you get the flu then you should get the shot. It also seems, though unconfirmed, that if you commit the crime out in the open that it’s not a crime. I guess the defense is, “Who would be so stupid as to commit the crime in broad daylight?” 

Answer?

Well, you know the answer.

On September 18th Donald J. Trump is due in court to be sentenced on 34 counts where the evidence is overwhelming. Typically, this sentence is four years in jail. I’m good with that.

“Oh but he was President!”

“So?”

“He’s running for President again?”

“So?”

I’ve never heard of a sentence where the judge is told, “I’m too busy and too important to go to jail” that worked.

Maybe, I’m missing something.

Oh yeah, you may get leniency if you show contrition and say you’re sorry. But what if you threaten the judge, his family, his law clerk, and everyone associated with the case? Does that help?

I don’t think so.

I’ve said this before and I’l say it again, as to the Secret Service and protecting a former President? 

Hey, they can wait in the parking lot. New York State will take good care of him for four years.

Four more years? Nah. four is enough.