Rick Kinnaird

Wednesday, September 7, 2022

Okay, now we have the reporting that some of the stuff in Mar-a-Lago was super-duper top secret, concerning nuclear capabilities of a foreign country or countries. This stuff is so secret that only a handful of people would have access to it, and they would be at cabinet level. Not every cabinet level person would have access, only those with a need to know. These docs are checked in and out of a secure location and kept under lock and key. Here they were for 18 months in boxes at a club in Florida.

Let’s run through the litany of excuses to date:

– It’s a storage problem – Marco Rubio.

– It’s a paperwork issue – Jared Kushner.

– Just get rid of the Espionage Act – Rand Paul.

– It’s George Soros and the lib Dems (Oh sorry that’s Steve Bannon’s “attack the Jews” excuse for why he’s being indicted in New York.)

– What about Hillary’s email server? – Lindsay Graham

Here’s my analysis, paraphrased from Shelly Berman’s 1959 record “Inside Shelly Berman” Child Psychologist bit* “The guy is a thief.”

He stole. He lied. He tried to cover it up. (Well, not exactly. He just attacked the FBI and others associated with the raid with “It’s a disgrace.” Can’t he at least come up with a new line? No? Okay then.)

Meanwhile, the judge who said there should be a special master to go through the papers is being criticized for an extremely poorly written decision, that is not based on the law, the evidence, or logic. It has been said that this is the most consequential decision of her career and she will never escape the blight on her record.

Also, the law clerks working for her had better be ready to be laughed out of their profession.

I remember years ago reading a piece by Malcom Forbes in his magazine. He was recounting some absurdly stupid financial thing. His comment was “time for the boys in short pants.”

We are going to go through years of chicanery and stupidity because of Trump and his ilk.

I am seeing and hearing a lot of reporting by people asking big picture questions, like:

– What can we do to save our democracy?

Yeah, that’s essentially it.

I am encouraged by some of what I am hearing. However, the fundamental problem seems to be a lack of education and understanding coupled with powerful interests that want to move the country in a direction few want.

I could go on … but later for that.

• “Inside Shelly Berman” was a record my brother and I played endlessly. If you don’t have the record contact my brother, he can do every bit word for word. The first cut was “Child Psychologist” in which Berman said the parent went the child psychologist and said their kid keeps stealing things. The child psychologist concluded that “the kid was a thief.” Deep analysis, I know. It was many years later that it dawned on me that the psychologist was not a child. Once I said that my brother concurred that he had thought the same thing.

** It’s Peggy Lipton in Twin Peaks. She was soooo cool in Mod Squad.

Tuesday, September 6, 2022

Okay. The judge ruled that Trump could have a special master to review the documents.

What to review and to what purpose is not clear.

This lady was appointed in the last month of the Trump presidency.

She was deemed unqualified by the American Bar Association, which lets almost anyone through.

But she was approved by The Federalist Society, which is basically a one man show.

He was given $636,000 to do what he did to our judiciary.

He’s moved onto other things now. He’s been given $1.6B to screw over elections.

Look for politicians to be slimed in attack ads from unknown groups.

Okay, back to the judge’s ruling. People who are legal experts are baffled and befuddled by her ruling. Why? It makes no sense. Not only did she say Donnie could have a special master, but that the investigation had to stop while the special master did their thing. What exactly that is, as I said, is not understood. Why? Because it makes no sense. (As I also already stated.)

All the legal experts I heard said that people who are being investigated, or are indicted cry for a special master. They claim they are being treated unfairly, or as Tim Allen put it – jails are full of people who didn’t do it.

So what will happen? Hopefully, this will get kicked up to a court that still has rationale people on it.

I keep coming back to Trump’s campaign question, “what do you have to lose?”

Well, we are getting a taste of it.

Oh yeah and Senator Mark Rubio say that the Mar-a-Lago raid was just a storage problem. That misses the point. It wasn’t a question of how the stuff was stored it’s a question of theft. I mean if you or I robbed a bank do you think the arresting officers would care how well or how poorly the loot was stored?

Oh and then there’s the excuse that Donnie was saving all this stuff for his presidential library. Something people said he never or rarely talked about. Let’s go with it. He was going to save our nuclear launch codes and our spies in the fields names and addresses in his library so anyone could go look them up. Yeah, makes sense to me.

I saw a piece on 60 Minutes about the HIMARS system. A truck with missiles that has caused havoc behind Russian lines. And then I saw a YouTube video showing a Ukrainian javelin team taking out a whole Russian convoy. They waited for the lead tank to get to the end of a bridge, then BOOM. Then they took our the back vehicle. After that it was like shooting ducks at the state fair. Three boats came rushing up the river: Boom, Boom, Boom. Imagine if our ex-president had given them these things when they asked for them? Stuff Congress had approved, btw. We would not be in this mess.

So for those of you keeping score:

Trump gave away Syria to Russia,

He gave away Afghanistan to the Taliban,

He weaken Ukraine so that his pal thought he could walk in and take the country.

Now there’s a bunch of empty classified folders recovered from M-Lago. Where are the contents ot those folders?

Meanwhile, let’s not forget the at least six tenets of a criminal conspiracy that Trump was behind to try and stay in power. And let’s not forget the 130 members of Congress who went along with it.

Have a nice day.

Friday, September 2, 2022

Okay, the Trump Legal Team has said the classified documents thing is like an overdue book at the library.

It’s not, but let’s run with it. If the book is overdue you pay the fine. In this case the fine is espionage, which is twenty years or death. I prefer death, but if it’s twenty years it’s solitary confinement. I’d be okay with that.

There are claims that the FBI is some sort of left wing Dem agency. Really? People making that claim seem to forget it was the FBI that put Trump in office, and that they are, and have always been considered, a conservative, mostly white male enclave.

There are claims that this is like Hillary’s server. Those making the claim seem to forget that she was Secretary of State at the time and had access to any and all documents on that server. There were some “C” marked documents that mean “Classified” and she said she didn’t realize that was so. Trump had documents with big red stamps on them marked “SECRET”, “TOP-SECRET” etc.

The “C” items she had on the server were visits by foreign officials and mention of a drone program that had already been exposed by The Washington Post.

And, let’s not forget, that everyone of those Republicans outraged that she was using a private email server were doing the same thing! So was Trump and his family.

Now Trump went sixty some miles up the road to find a judge he hoped would be more amenable to his case. He got the judge he wanted. A young woman approved by The Federalist Society that he had appointed in the last month of his presidency. This judge has no experience with classified documents. She said she was inclined to grant Trump what he wanted. What did he want? Well, a full copy of everything the prosecutors have. And his legal team argued that he had not done anything that violated the Presidential Records Act, which is an interesting defense because that was not part of the complaint. It’s like aruging that you didn’t murder anyone when you are accused of blackmail.

Okay, so now we get to the courtroom. The judge did a some unusual procedural things. She banned wi-fi so we don’t really know exactly what was said. But after the ace Trump legal team argued about laws he was not accused of violating the #2 lawyer in the DOJ for this kind of case presented his argument and analysis. I present it here:

“He is no longer the president, and because he is no longer the president he had no right to those documents. . . that ends the analysis.”

But then we get into those hinky little things, most of them presented on the internet as memes with Peter Falk as Columbo asking a question. The one I like the best is:

“If you say the documents were planted by the FBI why do you say you want them back?”

Okay kids, I’m a little late in posting this – lots going on here. 

Thursday, September 1, 2022

But before we get to that, I was thinking about Ryan Zinke the other day. Remember him? He was Trump’s original Secretary of The Interior. His first day in office he rode a horse to work. Then it came out that whenever he was at work he wanted his flag raised on the building. I got to thinking, “What must it have been like to get those requests?” Imagine you’ve been working at the Interior Department for years and you get the request for a horse on the first day of the new boss’ tenure? Okay, there are police horses around so they could round one up. Actually several, because he had some other in the saddle with him. (Well, in other saddles. They weren’t all in the same saddle.) But then can you imagine? “The boss wants this flag raised whenever he’s in the building.” “Yeah? Who is going to do that?” “You?” “No, you!” “Rock, paper, scissors?” “Paper” “Rock, dammit.”

Not sure why I thought of that, but it points to the kind of self important hubris his folks had.

Then we get to the latest from the DOJ. All his most ardent supporters were strangely silent yesterday. Today, even the most conservative media outlets were admitting, maybe tangentially, that he had broken the law. Some went so far as to say he would be indicted. 

The former #2 in intelligence was interviewed yesterday. What she made clear was that it was not only that those documents were in a place that they might have been seen by our adversaries, but that those adversaries are smart and probing for weaknesses. Those documents might have been revealed, wittingly or unwittingly. She also said that in her interactions with Trump, he never seemed to understand or appreciate the importance or significance of classified material.

Let’s also point out a few facts, which are unassailable:

1 – Trump stole classified documents.

2 – Trump did not keep them securely.

3 – Trump hid the fact that he had these documents. ie He lied.

These are all crimes.

This is a situation completely of his own making.

The legal team’s defense for Trump is that the FBI made a mess of his office. Wow. That’s a heck of a defense. As Morning Joe pointed out, it’s as if they think that the murderer puts the yellow tape down around where the victim was killed. 

But that’s not what I wanted to talk to you about today. I wanted to talk about Serena. Everybody who was anybody was there. I just wish that when the cameras panned on someone they would have put up the name of that person so I wouldn’t have to say, “Who is that?” Tiger was there, and H.E.R., and Lindsay, and Spike, and what’s her name and “Is that person famous?”, and Billie Jean, and … and … Venus, of course.

The woman she was playing was 26. and #2 in the world. That lady never seemed to sweat. Serena looked tired. I mean she’s 40, a mother of two. Serena was not hustling after every ball. She seemed to be conserving her energy. I didn’t think she was going to pull it off.

At one point her competitor hit a ball that was barely in. I mean the electronic replay showed it touching the white line by the slimmest of margins, like maybe by the fuss on the ball it was in. The crowd began to boo or otherwise show their displeasure with the call.

Serena lifted her hand and fore-finger. She shook that finger, along with her head. As if to say, “Uh uh, no.”

And just like that the crowd fell silent.

What an amazing display of sportsmanship and class.

For me that was the highlight the match.

Serena won the first set on breakpoint.

Lost the second set big time, and then stomped in the third.

It was as if she was saving her strength for that third set.

Or as Muhammed Ali used to say to Billie Jean when they were on the speaking circuit, “Billie Jean, you’re the queen.”

Billie Jean has of course given way to the reigning queen.

Many think this will be Serena’s swan song. We’ll see.

Stay tuned.

Monday August 29, 2022

I sat watching the NASA feed on YouTube, waiting for Artemis I to launch. I listened to the techno speak. There was a leak in  Engine #3. They couldn’t get it up to the right temperature (or maybe down?). They had to do something with the Flare Stack. Of course! I was becoming an expert once again. Okay, I had no idea, but it was thrilling.

I thought about the time we gathered in grade school and watched Alan Sheperd go into space. It was a dingy black and white TV. We cheered. He said it was a beautiful view. He was looking through a periscope. The optical lenses of which were provided by Dad’s company, Perkin-Elmer.

Dad laughingly told stories about the NASA engineers coming to PE asking for a periscope. “Why don’t you put in a window?” Oh no, they said, they had done the calculations and the capsule couldn’t withstand  a window. The PE folks couldn’t talk them out of it so they built the periscope. The next flight, Grisham’s, had a window. By the third flight, Glenn, they had three windows. Eventually they had five. Dad would laugh and end his stories with “What did you want? They were NASA engineers!”

I marveled at the various shots they had of the launch pad and the rocket. Especially, the close up of the base of the rocket. What a huge machine! Sitting there, the only thing that informed me it wasn’t a still picture were the whiffs of smoking vapor emitted from various places. The pull back view showed three large three legged towers. Were the black boxes on the towers cameras? I thought about Uncle George and how he had designed and built the original camera to track the rockets as they left the launch pad. Perkin-Elmer shipped the camera down to Cape Canaveral. The NASA engineers took it apart to see how it worked. They couldn’t get it back together again. Uncle George had gone back to his home in Minnesota by the time they contacted him. Aunt Jean took the call. NASA wanted to fly George down and were willing to pay him $700 a day to put it back together. That was a lot of money. George was out in the garden and told Jean to tell them No. He had to get his tomatoes in. Once that message was relayed they never called back.

What a world we live in. think of all the progress we have made.