Rick Kinnaird

Tuesday, July 23, 2024

Okay. Okay. Hold on. I had grave concerns about Joe Biden dropping out of the race. I thought it was a mistake. I was wrong. It seems to be a master stroke.

However, I am concerned. With Joe out there’s only one geriatric white man in the race. 

However, I received news that we had a choice. Joe Manchin was running for President.

He’s young, only 76! Compare that to dottering old fool Trump at 78.

Then my hopes were dashed. Joe Manchin says he’s not running. Really? I’m betting he’ll change his mind only to drop out again. Someone has to play Ross Perot.

Now imagine this phone call:

“Hello, Eric Yuan, CEO of Zoom?”

“Yes?

“We have a problem. We signed up for one thousand lines and we need more.”

“Okay, how many more do you need?”

“Forty five.”

“Forty five? That’s no problem.”

“Thousand.”

“You need forty five thousand more lines?”

“Well, forty four not counting the thousand we requested.”

“Hold on…”

That was the Zoom call with the Black Women for Kamala zoom call.

Yeah. It was a little over subscribed.

And now the contest will be “The Prosecutor Versus The Criminal.”

Donald like most criminals says it’s not his fault that it’s a mistake. Remember Tim Allen talking about being in jail? Yeah. All those guys and they were innocent. Yeah. Right.

Please note the day numbering was updated to correspond to the actual number of days Biden has been in office. Somehow the number was off recently. Management regrets the error.

Monday, July 22, 2024

I’ve got a lot better thing to do than be writing this, but … but … oh well.

Since my last writing at least two major major things have happened. Joe dropped out and Caitlin Clark and the WNBA All Stars who weren’t selected for the Olympic team beat “the best team in the world.”

Aside from that my headlines had “The Ten Worst Quotes in Wrestling History.” I guess this is surfacing because Terry Boilea ripped his tee shirt open to reveal he’s a closet Trump supporter. (Yes. Terry Bolilea is Hulk Hogan’s real name.) And, the other massive headline was something about the five most propitious horoscope signs. Big news to be sure. 

Now the headlines are about what a great guy Joe Biden is and how excited the Dems are now that Kamala is heir apparent. “The Prosecutor versus The Felon” blah blah blah.

I don’t know. Seems risky to me. But then I think a can of soup should be able to beat Donald. Hey, I’m selling Charlie Manson ear bandages just like the one Donald is sporting.

Meanwhile, a big chunk of the world stopped working because of a “fix” Crowdstrike sent out. Now a few more people have heard of them. Apparently, it was a C++ coding error. They forgot to check for a null byte. A null byte is an 8 bit integer where all the bits are set to 0. It’s a zero. typically, nulls are used in C and C++ to terminate a string of characters. If you have let’s say the words “Hi Mom” it would be stored as the six characters plus a zero byte at the end (a “space” is a character too). A zero byte is null. To find the end of the string you set a pointer  to the beginning of the string and “walk” down the string by incrementing the pointer by one until you reach a 0 or as they say “null byte.” This is pretty basic stuff, but it doesn’t mean someone can’t get twisted up in their code and forget to do it or accidentally “walk off the end of a string” and wander around in memory. Fortunately, there are a lot of null bytes in most executable code so you’ll usually hit one pretty quick. In fact, most compression programs just squeeze null bytes out of code. But the fact that there are so many and logic tests can be tricky it’s easy to miss a null byte test. Yes, it’s basic stuff, but it happens, and they can be hard to find. That’s why so much code that works is never rewritten even if it’s an ancient language. That’s why our fighter planes run on 286 chips, etc.

It’s amazing to me when I fly a big kite or I create some code that it does what I expected it to do. Well, I’ve been lucky with big kites, not so much with code. In fact, never with code the first time.

So Joe’s a great guy, wish him well, yeah Kamala. Is she up to the job? Well, we know Donald is not. He has a proven track record of do nothingness. And his speeches are rambling mind word salads. For reasons I can’t explain his supporters don’t seem to mind. He’s within three years of Biden’s age. He did nothing to improve our county when he was President and much to make it worse, and he’s promising to do real damage this next time around. 

He surrounded himself with crooks and cheats, but this time they are more organized. He’s pledging the same things the Republican Party has pledged since our middle class started sliding into poverty. Cut taxes – not for you, well maybe a little – but on the Uber rich, who support him. Destroy our alliances, piss off our allies, and carry out the most inhumane deportation program he can get away with.

Let’s hope.

Okay, the best team in the world got spanked. This raises again the specter of should they have left Caitlin Clark off Team USA? I don’t know. It seems pretty dumb to me, but I’ll tell you who they are probably regretting not asking back and that’s Arike Ogunbowale.

That woman came alive in the third quarter and lit up Team USA with huge arching three pointers. She beat Team USA. And Angel Reese was nice in her attitude and comments. I guess she’s showing her middle class Randallastown, Maryland back ground and not her “Bal-te-mo’” hood stuff people have been trying to put on her. I lived in Randallstown I should know. In fact, I was going into Baltimore from Randallstown on Liberty Road three days after Watergate when I heard the news about the break-in. I was turning by the Mondawmin Mall and I said to myself, “I don’t care what they say Nixon was involved.” That’s the day I became a Democrat and not a “it’s none of my business, who cares? “apathetic college student.

Saturday, July 20, 2024

Remember the movie Pretty Woman? Do you remember the business Richard Gere was in? He was in the business of buying a company whose stock was undervalued and whose assets were worth more than the price of buying the company. He would swoop in, sell off the assets, load the company up with debt and then leave it to rot. This is the same business as Mitt Romney was in at Bain Capital. They like to dress it up with fancy words and phrases but that’s what they were doing. This is the same thing that happened to Red Lobster, Dunkin’ Donuts too. DD is struggling to pay off the enormous debt that Peter Thiel’s buddies placed on it. I don’t see any difference between this and what happened on the Sopranos when someone asked for help with their restaurant. Tony ordered all kinds of stuff from the restaurant’s suppliers and sold it out the back door. Never paid their bills and eventually lit the place on fire. 

If you take an Econ course you are told that a business must have a product or service someone wants and is willing to pay for. If you go to business school you are taught to look for businesses that you can extract the most amount of money from in the least amount of time. A person with a MBA is not trying to make a business better. They are trying to bleed it dry or as near to dry as they can get it. Then they wash their hands and declare there is nothing that can be done.

The Republican Party is in the business of helping these people make as much money as they can. They do this in the form of tax cuts for corporations and the ultra rich. They load the country up with debt and then when a Democratic administration comes in they howl that there’s too much debt and the government needs to cut spending and programs. 

When Republican administrations are in power they try to get as many goodies as they can from the government. They try to get rights to drill on government lands and to cut tree too. They attempt to reduce regulations on medicines. 

I recently heard an article on about trench collapses. When a trench collapses people die. A way to prevent that is to put barriers on the edges of the trench. This costs money, therefore companies try to avoid doing it. The article interviewed parents and spouses of the people killed. Each time the workers asked, begged, for wall supports. They knew and understood the danger. The companies did nothing. The dirt walls collapsed and the workers died.

What about OSHA? Yeah, what about OSHA? Turns out they can’t shut a company down. They can post signs. They can ask. They can even issue a warning, but that’s it.

Welcome to capitalism in America.

Friday, July 19, 2024

There are any number of items to be addressed. First off I made a comment where I asked why Trump was wearing his ear patch on the wrong ear. Whether he was or not, I don’t know. I had it reported to me by a highly reliable source who said she read it on the internet or X. Maybe, it was a joke? Maybe, it was a reference to the fact that Mr. Trump got out of the draft because it was claimed he had bone spurs. Yet, he could not remember which foot had them. Some would say he dodged the draft by paying off a doctor to say he had bone spurs. This would be speculation and I withdraw the speculation. I think he should be honest with the American people and submit both feet for X-Ray examination. As far as I know bone spurs don’t go away unless you have surgery. If they find no bone spurs then Trump is a liar and a draft dodger. ( But we already knew he was a liar! – Shut up. Friggin’ whiners. )

Another item – when I went to find a factual source for what I had been told about the ear bandage I discovered lots of people at the Republican Convention sporting ear bandages. Big ones! Reporters say that these people are showing solidarity with their nominee. To which I say, “Poppycock. If they were really showing solidarity they’d graze their ear with an AR-15 shot and then bandage their ear.” I mean, come on. What kind of wimps are you? to be fair you should get a friend, neighbor or spouse to shot at the year from 140 yards away.

Now we get to the speeches of the RNC convention. After the shooting many known Republicans called for unity and toning down the rhetoric. Then they gave speeches that did just the opposite. It was said that Mr. Trump had torn away his speech and wrote on of a more conciliatory nature. From the reports I heard this morning (not from the wrong ear source I might add) his speech was slightly subdued but it was the same old stuff:

– Cut taxes

– Drill for oil

– Deport immigrants

I’d like some more honesty in these speeches. How about:

– I’m cutting taxes for my rich friends and you’ll get a few pennies too,

– Screw the environment. I’ll let oil and coal companies do what they want,

– Immigrant kids in cages! Yeah baby!

The most recent right wing stuff I’ve heard is – if we spend money on immigrants then there’s less spent on you. Immigrants are taking your money!

Why are so many people coming to this country? Because their countries suck. (How did donnie say it? Oh yeah, that’s right.) There is no mystery on how to really fix this problem. Make other countries suck less. Apparently, people don’t want to live where they are in fear for their lives. Weird huh? And they come to the land of mass shootings – really weird. However, that is preferable to being constantly under threat. The last Republican presidents to at least talk about the real problem were Nixon and Reagan. Nixon sent Kissinger to Central and South America. Henry reported back that we’d need to pour a lot of money into those countries to fix them. Nixon did not pour money into them. 

Then Reagan sent troops to Columbia to clean up the narcotics mess. Unfortunately, when you move an army, lots of people learn about it, thus giving ample time for the drug cartels to move out of danger.

Back to “Cut Taxes.” 

“A. It didn’t work before, let’s try it again. Go to A.”

This has been the mantra of the Republican Party since Reagan. It hasn’t worked. It’s increased the debt and folks are still struggling to get by. There have been tow huge economic transfers of wealth in this country: one) to the rich, and two) to the boomers.

Who has gotten screwed? The working poor, the middle class, Gen X, Y & Z.

In Donald’s speech last night it was reported that he promised the same old stuff without mentioning how he would do it. He also did explain how he was going to pay for any of the tax cuts, etc. Seeing as how last time he incurred the largest debt our nation has ever seen under one President, I’ll tell you how. – He won’t.

He’ll wait  until he’s out of office and then yell and scream about the debt.

As Bill Clinton said about Republicans, “Their only complaint is we don’t clean their mess up quick enough.”

Let’s recall, for example Afghanistan. What did he do there? he had the head of the Taliban released from jail. Told him when the U.S. was going to pull out. Then he drew the troop levels down so low just as he was leaving office that the incoming President had no choice but to pull out and it was a mess because their was no plan for how to do it. What did Trump do then? Complained that it was a mess. 

He also did this in Northern Syria, abandoning our allies and giving that region over to Putin and al-Assad.

He did this with Covid too. His team would not talk to the transition team about their plans for rolling out the Covid vaccine. It turns out there was a good reason for this. There was no plan.

Infrastructure? – same thing. No plan. Press conference? yes. Plan? No. Press conference? yes. Plan? No. Press conference? yes. Plan? No. Press conference? yes. Plan? No. Sorry I got stuck in a loop.

Where there were plans in place he destroyed them:

Iran Nuclear deal? Get out. Result – Iran is now free to build a bomb.

NATO – Get out. Fortunately he could do it. But he says he’ll do it this time.

And what about future plans?

Ukraine? Get out. (Why? well Zelensky didn’t find the dirt on Biden from that non-existent server. …)

Government organization? Get rid of civil service protection for the top levels of the civil service. Thus allowing him to appoint “his own people.” I mean who would you rather have running our epidemic disease department, Anthony Fauci or Ronnie Jackson or that witch doctor who Ron DeSantis appointed head of health services in Florida?

The Trump proposal via the Heritage Foundation is to get rid of top level civil servants and put in flunkies. This happened last time in places like the Commerce Department. A bunch of Jared’s buddies showed up, knew nothing, and went about throwing sand in the gears aimlessly. They did it aimlessly because they didn’t know any better. Imagine this time if they get someone in there who really knows how to screw things up?

Last time Trump appointed a guy to run the weather service who had a weather channel that competed with the weather service. What did this fellow want to co? Forbid the Weather Service from making public statements and give those statement to his channel that would in turn charge you to get their reports.. So only the folks who paid would know about the hurricanes and tornadoes. But then I’d imagine they’d replace the life long wether forecasters with their own team, and a team not necessarily knowledgeable about weather so, maybe no one would know?

BTW The Samurai Armor exhibit closed August 4th at VMFA. If you are in the area go see it. It is exquisite.

Thursday, July 18, 2024

I saw John Stewart interview Bill O’Reilly the other day. O’Reilly was saying the economic wasn’t so great because the price of gas and groceries has gone up under Biden. To which I say, “Duh.”

When asked why were prices going up O’Reilly said he didn’t know. Or maybe it was it the President’s fault. I forget which. 

Okay, time for some Econ 101 with a little nuance.

If you ask an economics professor why are prices going up he or he will say too much money chasing too few goods. I know this because I’ve asked them.

This is a simplified view of the world to be sure. If asked to give more details the Econ professor will say people have more money and they are therefore willing to pay more for the goods and services they want.

Again, this is a simplified view and it assumes a perfect economic world where the only forces working on prices is how much people are willing to pay for something. It ignores another important part of the economic picture and that is how much the suppliers are able to get away with raising prices. 

When does this happen? Well, if you have something and nobody else has it then you can charge whatever you want – as long as people really need what you’ve got. Let’s say it’s a medicine that keeps that person alive.

If you ask an Econ professor what can drive down prices setting they will say, Competition.

Ah ha, so if someone is selling widgets for $10 and everyone body needs one then a person could come in and sell a widget for $9, thus driving down the price. The fellow at $10 will have to lower his price to compete.

It turns out that competitors will check other people’s prices and adjust their prices accordingly. This is sometimes referred to as collusion, or price fixing. (I can hear the cries now, “No it’s not I just saw what the other person was charging.”)

As an example the price of insulin is high, even though the process is well known and free of patent or copyright. Why does the price keep going up? (I’m not talking about government capping, just the price without regulation.) It’s because there are only three makers of insulin in the U.S. I have heard professors of medicine knowledgeable about this topic say you need four to start seeing competition and the price start to come down. I don’t know if that’s the correct number but you need several competitors to get the price to start coming down and you can’t have them colluding.

So let’s return to Bill’s statements about the price of things being high. Why is that? He said he didn’t know what, or if, anything the President can do to change that.

Certainly, after Covid people had access to more money and prices went up. But that isn’t the only reason. If you’ve seen the charts showing that most of what consumers need, like food, meat, etc. is in the hands of a few large corporations. There isn’t enough competition to force these companies to reduce their prices.

What could the President do? What could Congress do? Well, let’s look at history. Teddy Roosevelt was faced with a lack of competition in many industries, notably coal and sugar. The coal workers went on strike. The companies wouldn’t negotiate with the union. Teddy told them to negotiate. They said no. He said negotiate or I’ll bring in the army and run your mines. They negotiated. That’s how this country got the 40 hour work week, and overtime.

In the case of Standard Oil, John Rockefeller would lower the price of gas until others went out of business, then he was the only game in town and could charge whatever he wanted. FDR and Congress forced them to break apart. That’s when Mobil and what became Exxon was born. Years later Republican administrations let Mobile and Exxon merge. Why is gas going up? Not enough competition between oil suppliers. 

What did President Biden do when the price was going up? He released millions of barrels of oil from the government reserves, thus forcing the price of gas to go down, It stabilized. That’s a fancy word for saying y it stopped going up. Otherwise we’d be paying $4.50 a gallon, like we were at one point under the previous President, who did nothing about oil and gas prices. Oh wait, maybe he held a press conference about it? That’s what he did for infrastructure. He held so many pressers about infrastructure that it was a running joke in Washington. He never grasped the idea that to do something in Congress you have to pass a law, called a bill. No one in the Trump White House seemed to work on that.

What could “WE” do now? Well, if Congress would pass some legislation to break up these big corporations   so they had to compete, prices would come down. That’s the side of this problem that the folks who bemoan the fact that prices are gong up seem to not mention.

Enough for now.