Trump

Day 660

November 7, 2018 by Rick Kinnaird Leave a Comment

Day 670 Wednesday November 7, 2018 921 Days to Go

Well, it was and it wasn’t the blue wave many had hoped for. The House flipped for Dems, which is probably the thing we needed most to happen. Many of the marque races for progressives didn’t make it and many of the usual racists, nazi sympathizers, fools, and indicted criminals on the other side got re-elected.

One did not. Dave Brat. Even in defeat he refused to come out and meet his constituents face to face, and these were the people that volunteered to help him!

Abigail Spanberger won in Virginia’s 7^th, the district of Eric Canter. Dave, the tea party Freedom Caucus darling and pseudo-economist, the “a vote for Spanberger is a vote for Nancy Pelosi and her liberal policies” guy lost. In keeping with not meeting constituents face to face he was true to the end.

As of the day after the House stands at 230-205, and the Senate at 45-51. The Dems picked up 28 seats in the House, 27 pro-NRA candidates went down, over 100 women got elected.

On the Republican side the indicted got re-elected. Duncan Hunter, a man indicted for over 60 crimes won re-election; as did Chris Collins, most famous for committing insider trading on the White House lawn. Devin Nunes, famous for prostrating himself at the feet of Donald Trump and killing off the House Russia investigation yet holding multiple Hillary investigations won, but won’t be a chairman anymore. Maybe he can sit and watch how a real investigation is done. Dana Rohrbacker, Russia’s favorite Congressman, lost.

There were numerous close races that the Dems lost. They didn’t get quite to the 10-13% they needed to sweep those close races. The Republican gerrymandering and voter suppression worked in those races.

Speaking of gerrymandering, the king of voter suppression Kris Kobach lost big time. Marsha Blackburn won the Senate seat in Tennessee, thus making her the stupidest woman in the Senate. You’re off the hook on that one Susan Collins! But don’t worry Susan you still win most naive!

Marque races were squeakers but Dems came up slightly short. Gillum in Florida and Beto in Texas. Abrams in Georgia is fighting on against the most corrupt race in this election. Maybe not, maybe it was North Dakota, hard to say. McGrath lost in Kentucky. She’s kick ass and hopefully will run again.

Now what?

I’ve heard from some of the women that won. They want to get Congress working again. Impeachment isn’t high on their list. I hate to say it but Pence could be more dangerous from a long term legislative approach. Trump might actually make a deal. Hopefully, the House will chip away at stuff and make some progress. They may not get much done but if that’s the case the finger will be pointed squarely at the Senate. In 2020, that could be huge.

Meanwhile, we’ll get to see how corrupt this president is. Hopefully, Mueller will start releasing indictments. The only question in my mind is how deep can he go? Who do you take down first? Can a president rule from jail? Let’s start small with Hunter and Collins. They won. They guilty as sh*t. They should find themselves in a orange jump suits soon. Can a Congressman be in office and in jail? We’ll find out.

921 Days to Go

Glyphic inscribed object — The Mayan Mace

PS This object displayed in The National Museum of Guatemala describes the invasion from the north into the Mayan area by an individual known at one time as Smoking Frog due to the way his glyph looked and read. He was a king maker. He is mentioned throughout the Mayan glyphic texts and had a huge effect on the area, changing the course of its history.

Day 659

November 6, 2018 by Rick Kinnaird Leave a Comment

Day 659 Tuesday November 6, 2018 922 Days to Go

I’m reminded of a joke I saw on a bulletin board years ago.

It showed a man standing in front of his bed. His wife was asleep on the other side of the bed. On his side of the bed were two garbage cans fulls of stinky fly covered trash. The line under the cartoon had him saying, “There was something I was supposed to do today. Think! Think!”

There’s something you are supposed to do today.

Think. Think. What is it?

I’ll give you a hint. It’s Election Day.

What does that mean?

That means you go and vote.

Go to your polling place, even if you haven’t registered. Insist on voting. Get a provisional ballot if you must. But vote.

For the Democrats to take the House they need 23 seats. In order to do that due to the highly rigged gerrymandered districts the turnout must be 11-12% in the Democrats’ favor. If it was a fair election they’d only need 2%, but this isn’t a fair election. In fact, the Republicans have done everything they can to suppress the vote. They’ve kicked people off voting rolls. They’ve closed polling locations or moved them out of town. They’ve changed the rules on what makes a valid voting ID. What has the result of this been? It’s pissed people off majorly.

What else have they done? They’ve held military type exercises today near polling places where recent immigrants to this country live. Why? Immigrants fear the military that’s why. A lot of Latinos want nothing to do with the government. Voter turnout in Texas along the border may not materialize, which would be bad for Beto. However, women are pissed. The images of kids in cages still lingers. The loss of health care. The lying of Republican candidates about their stand on health care has upset them. Women are running in record numbers.

Young people traditionally haven’t voted. It’s not clear if they will turn up. However, where the candidates are young they seem to be coming out. Howard Dean said you want candidates to run that look like the voters you are trying to attract. It seems to be working in the places where the candidates are young.

Where Democratic candidates are running on the message of representing all the people and on not trying to run as Republican Lite, it seems to be working.

Turn out is huge.

It is likely that Republicans will hold the Senate but lose the House. But it could be that the Senate flips and the House has a huge Democratic majority.

If the House flips the Democrats will head up committees and Jeff Greenberg said the best job to have in Washington would be process server. Boy oh boy, I can’t wait.

Once people actually see how corrupt Trump is and how complicit Republicans have been in aiding and abetting him, I hope that more and more people will turn against his hateful racist anti-women anti-immigrant anti-Jewish actions and words.

Our own race between Spanberger and Brat is being touted as a bellwether; one of four in Virginia. Spanberger is being hailed as having run a smart campaign and Brat as one of the dumbest. The Republicans concentrated on putting up huge signs, many illegally I think, touting Brat. Spanberger seemed to concentrate on TV and super sized postcard mailers and making public appearances all over the district. Brat can not be found. He keeps his schedule hidden. I’m not kidding. He doesn’t want people to know where he is.

Meanwhile, other groups have been working since Trump got elected to change the political environment. Indivisible has 6,000 chapters and they have been showing up at representatives offices telling those representatives what they don’t like. For some Republicans they have held retirement parties, sending cakes and balloons wishing those folks a happy retirement. Many Republican representatives decided not to run again.

If Democrats take back Governorships in key states, and they are likely to do that, it will change the calculus on Trump’s electability in 2020. No longer will those states be able to put in draconian election regulations and obstacles in the way of people to vote. That could be huge.

Fingers crossed.

Seven hours until the polls close here.

922 Days to Go

PS Abigail, Dave, and Mr. “We Do Bad Things to Bad People” ahead of me in line to vote (I wonder, “Who gets to decide?”)

Day 658

November 5, 2018 by Rick Kinnaird Leave a Comment

Day 658 Monday November 5, 2018 923 Days to Go

Late last week we learned that the president is so concerned about the caravan coming up from Mexico that he is rushing not 5,000 troops as originally reported but he upped it to 9,000 then 15,000. Yup, we got 15,000 troops going to our southern border in Operation Faithful Patriot. More than we have in Afghanistan.

The president also said that if anyone in the caravan throws a rock that it will be considered a firearm and that troops could respond with fire (like you know from a gun – I’m mean rifle – so sorry.)

We also learned that 1,000 folks calling themselves Minutemen (I’m guessing the term is based on the Revolutionary War term and not their sexual prowess, but that is just a guess on my part) are going to the Arizona border to patrol a twenty three mile stretch. They say the border agents need their help and that they have a right to do it.

On Saturday night we saw Laura Ingraham showing what that migrant caravan could do once it got to the border, how fast they were coming, and how they would overwhelm the border wall.

We also got the threat assessment from the Pentagon of what they think is “The Most Likely Course of Action” (MLCOA) for the caravan.

Wow. There’s a lot to go through. It turns out that the late Saturday night Laura Ingraham report was false. It wasn’t even Laura Ingraham! It was on a show called Saturday Night Live. You may not have heard of it. It’s only been on for 43 years. There was a woman impersonating Laura, a lesbian! FAKE NEWS!

Those video clips they showed weren’t from the caravan! One showed Wal-Mart shoppers on Black Friday. (Why do they call it Black? So racist.) The next clip showed crabs scuttling on a beach; It was not the caravan! FAKE NEWS! The last clip was from a zombie movie – not the caravan members at the wall. FAKE NEWS! (but it was Brad Pitt’s mug in the zombie movie clip [nod nod wink wink] )

The president saying he will consider rocks firearms had led Stephen Colbert to say the NRA was renaming itself to the National ROCK Association. ( “Rocks are firearms too!” “What are you talking about? You know not all rocks are firearms don’t you? There are short rocks, and long rocks. I mean when you talk about rocks you have to be careful. Not all rocks are the same. The right rock in the right hands is a wonderful thing. In the wrong hands it could be very bad. What we need is a good guy with a rock…” )

Okay then there is the bit about the guys going to the border to “help” the border patrol. There is a video clip and a picture that I can’t get out of my mind. First the clip. It’s of a Border Patrol agent saying that having untrained people with guns on the border is dangerous and they, the Border Patrol, would rather not have them there. The Second is a picture of a guy who is fatter than Chris Christy before he lost any weight with a gun in a holster. He’s one of the Minutemen at the border. What could go wrong?

Also, we got the inside scoop on the military assessment of the threat posed by the caravan.

This is the MLCOA 271999ROCT18 from the JFLCC TOC of the DoD. Need I say more?

Military Map and notes on Caravan's approach from Mexico — Threat Assessment

Okay, Okay.

It’s the Most Likely Course Of Action.

The document is numbered 271999ROCT18 (and this is so obtuse that google couldn’t even guess what that meant.)

It is from the Joint Forces Land Component Command (or Commander both are referred to as JFLCC.)

From it’s Tactical Operations Center.

Of the Army North.

Not only does this document tell us what the military thinks is the most likely scenario of what will happen to the caravan, but also it’s cost, and the biggest threat it faces.

Lemme break it all down for you, because this is NOT FAKE NEWS.

This is THE TRUTH from our military that we pay for with our tax dollars.

(or as the far right would classify it, if they had the balls, this is one of the largest socialist institutions in the world that is paid in small part by they the rich but mostly by the voters stealing the hard earned (read inherited) dollars from them, the rich, via a scheme called “Taxes.”)

Here is the MLCOA (Most Likely Course Of Action) “Caravan dwindles as it nears US, limited TCO exploitation and no terrorist infiltration.”

The military estimate of the time to reach the closest point on our border is in excess of 30 days. They are 800 miles away from that point.

The more likely crossing point is 1200 miles away.

The military assessment* is that less than 20% of those in the caravan will actually get to our border. The estimate of the size of the caravan is 7,000. Twenty percent is 1,400 people. Our military will outnumber them over ten to one. Do you think that is enough? I mean someone in the caravan may be holding a rock, and we might need that many military because they are not allowed to use their guns on U.S. soil. Some law or constitution thing.

* This is the Threat Fusion Running Estimate** JOA from the U.S. Army North***.

** Sounds like a modern day Indian name.

*** Not to be confused with the Civil War, Army of the North.

What is the most likely threat the military faces on the border?

What is the biggest, baddest, most likely threat from our military being on the border?

I’m surprised the president and Fox News haven’t been all over this. Not to mention those militia men sites.

The biggest threat to our military is, and I quote, “Unregulated militia members self-deployed to border in alleged support of CBP”

CBP (Civilian Border Patrol)

The military’s past experience with these folks is this … wait for it ….

The military’s past experience with the self deployed militia members is …

STEALING.

Those militia members steal from our military.

I guess that fat f*ck needs a new belt.

So let’s see the headlines:

MILITARY RUSHED TO BORDER A MONTH BEFORE ANYTHING COULD HAPPEN

MILITIA GOES TO BORDER UNINVITED

MINUTEMEN ARE THIEVES!

Cost estimates for this operation are hard to assess as the time spent at the border is not known, but current published assessments are $200,000,000.00 by year end.

You know for 200 million you could feed a lot of refugees. You could even go to the countries that have the problems and start fixing the problems that caused those people to flee their countries in the first place. I mean when you dig into it. It seems many of the problems were started by our government in the first place.

But that’s another story.

CARAVAN OF TERRORISTS WITH FIREARMS CLOSE TO BORDER

is the more likely headline.

Vote on Tuesday. Go to your polling place.

Vote Vote Vote.

It’s our best hope.

923 Days to Go

PS Threat Assessment MLCOA by the JFLCC TWG (Tactical Working Group)

PPS In my fantasy world I would like to see any of those thieving militiamen turned over to Trump and Jared’s good buddy the crown prince of Saudi Arabia to let his gang of 15 handle them. I think theft there is dealt with by the cutting off of hands. This would solve two problems: theft and the ability to throw a rock (or pull a trigger.)

Day 657

November 4, 2018 by Rick Kinnaird Leave a Comment

Day 657 Sunday November 4, 2018 924 Days to Go

Hokie Football, Donald Trump, and Superman

Like The Great Karnac with an envelope held to his forehead trying to divine from the three answers above what the question is that links them all, I will reveal…in this screed.

First, Hokie Football. There is a cycle to being a Virginia Tech football fan. It starts in the off season between two or three fans: “Did you hear who we got? … He’s a five star recruit … “ etc. It builds to “This might be the year.” The year they once again vie for the National Championship and if not that at least defeat Virginia.

There’s a rhythm to the cycle. As long as the team wins – it might be the year. Then comes defeat and it’s not the year. Then there’s the reasoning and the analysis and the “what happened.” Followed by the “I don’t know,” and “I don’t get it.” Then “What is wrong with?” and “Why don’t they… ?” This is soon followed by “Did ya hear who were getting next year?” and the cycle is complete. You have to have a kind of Rodney Dangerfield attitude to be a Hokie fan.

I read Matt Taibbi’s latest in the Hot Issue of Rolling Stone. The only thing hot about the issue was the picture of Zoe Kravitz on the cover in a pose similar to her mom, Lisa Bonet, 29 years before, but that’s enough for me in terms of hotness. I like to thumb through the mag and see all the singers I’ve never heard of like “Hip-Hop’s Laid Back New Hero.” As opposed to the old one, but I digress. Matt’s article was talking about Trump. (Surprise!) He warned not to underestimate the man as everyone had done in 2015-2016, when no one thought he had a chance. Matt says he’s more dangerous now. He has consolidated the party behind him and this makes him the odds on favorite to win in 2020.

Matt’s point is that Trump wasn’t trying to make America Great Again his pitch was Let’s Fuck Shit Up and his followers love it. So what if he’s screwing them? They don’t care. They are already screwed. The great thing about Trump is he tells them that it’s not their fault, that someone else is to blame and we better go get them or keep them out or do something crazy. Yeah, Bro.

And that is his appeal. It isn’t about fact. It’s about narrative. Trump has the instinct to seize the microphone and not let go. His rating are through the roof. He holds standing room only rallies. He can find the lowest denominator and go even lower and the cameras keep rolling.

This lead me to Superman. If your old enough to remember the opening to every Superman episode on TV … (that would mean you remember black and white TV ) … you remember a young middle aged guy standing Rick Perry chest out tall (no not quite but close to that – no glasses, no chin stuck out) and he’s wearing a superman costume (because he’s Superman – duh.) and the announcer is saying in bold strutful language,

“Truth, Justice, and The American Way.”

The fan in the studio is turn up to blow on Superman enough that his cape is waving like the American flag as he stand there arms-akimbo.

Yeah.

Okay, let’s think about what Superman stands for and see how that stacks up to The Donald.

Truth? He, Trump, can’t handle the truth! (Shout out to Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men.) Well, he, Trump, wouldn’t know it, the truth, if it hit him in the face. Even if it did, he wouldn’t care. Truth is not what he peddles in. Lies, conspiracies, gas lighting, what you see is not what is happening, what is happening is opposite of what you see, this is the stuff of Donald Trump. When his slot machines weren’t working in Atlantic City he told the press they had been used so much they malfunctioned.

Rolling Stone listed Trump’s Conspiracy theories since 2011 across the bottom of a double page. They could only fit fifteen so they labeled it “Trump’s Top Conspiracy Theories.” Birtherism, Climate Hoax, Anti-Vaxxers, Election Fraud, Fake News, Kavanaugh lies, death toll in Puerto Rico are but some of them. Like Fox News you can’t really argue the case because you can’t agree on the facts, on the basic underlying fact or facts.

Meanwhile Trump has put virulent anti-abortion Christians in charge of health and human services. He has let the polluters run the regulator agencies that are supposed to regulate them. He bemoaned the fact that others had a few people from Goldman Sachs in their administration while he filled his with them. He has let the rich, the Russians, the oil, gas, and chemical lobbyists have their way. Some have asked why we haven’t seen the Russian fingerprints all over this election, and I say why should they meddle? Who could fuck things up more than Trump and the Republicans?

Oh, funny side story, while Stacy Abrams had Oprah campaigning for her Mike Pence went to some rally and tried to make fun of Oprah by saying, “He was kind of a big deal too.” No, Mike, no you’re not. I quote your wife, “You got what you wanted, now leave me alone.” Leave us alone Mike.

Okay back to Superman. I know what truth is. Trump does not. I think the Republicans in Congress still have some idea what it is, but it doesn’t suit their purposes to acknowledge it so they choose to ignore it.

Justice? Trump’s idea of justice is to stall, deny, and outlast. The Republican idea is to pack the courts with what they call conservative judges. They are not. They are from a group of hand picked by the very rich whose idea is to deny the people their rights, and to not get taxed. They have little interest in the common good and see themselves as deserving. Period.

That leaves only The American Way. What is that? I thought I knew. As a kid I thought it meant being fair and giving everyone a chance, an equal chance. That if you worked hard, were a good person, you’d be rewarded. That was kind of the promise of The New Deal.

Ever since Reagan those ideas have been under attack. Actually, they’ve always been attacked by the rich and powerful. By powerful here I mean those that have economic power or influence in other than the political or judicial sphere. The aim of these people is to rig the system in their favor and keep it that way.

What to do?

Fight, resist, vote.

The most likely way to change this horrible situation is to vote other than Republicans or Libertarians into office. Republicans because they are corrupt; Libertarians because what they seem to espouse makes no sense and contains that element of magical thinking that so mystifies me. As the old joke about the two scientists looking at blackboard full of equations and one says to the other, “Then a miracle happens.” That’s Libertarianism in a nutshell, wrapped in a flag. This leaves only the Democrats, who have a startling way of grabbing defeat from the near certain jaws of victory. Yes, Hillary should have won, did win, except …

We can hope that Trumpism has awoken enough people to get out there and run for office and to vote.

The biggest problem I see with the Dems is they have failed to groom a new generation. Howard Dean said you should get people to run your party who look like the people you want to vote for you. The Dems have by and large failed to do that. We are now seeing a group rising up, despite the political machinery that hasn’t supported them.

Hopefully, it will start to turn the tide this election and in 2020 I think we will see a new young Kennedy-esque Democrat run for president.

Hopefully, the tide will turn, and the day will be carried.

And we can once again believe in The American Way.

Hopefully.

Get out and vote!

924 Days to Go

The election is in three days, Tuesday, November 6^th, 2018. Polls open in Virginia at 6am and close at 7pm.

PS Yaxha

PPS What links them all? I forgot to tell you. Sorry. There’s a cycle to the Hokie football season and there is a cycle to Trump and his lies. However, in both of those cases there is an underlying set of beliefs, just as there is an underlying set of beliefs in and about Superman. While we may believe in Truth, Justice, and the American Way – Trump and his cronies do not.

Or as Donald would say, if ever on truth serum, “Truth? Justice? The American Way? Ha! I’ll call it those things, but what I say is truth or justice or anything else for that matter will be far from what any of you in rational America think it is. Fortunately, for me, there’s a sucker born every minute.”

Day 656

November 3, 2018 by Rick Kinnaird 1 Comment

Day 656 Saturday November 3, 2018 925 Days to Go

Yesterday I learned the Dawn space craft had reached the end of its life. Earlier in that month the Kepler space craft began to shutdown. Last year Cassini’s mission ended. We’ve heard of problems with gyroscopes on Hubble, which got replaced once by the now defunct Space Shuttle program.

What have we heard about our missions in space recently? Under Obama we cut back due to Republican insistence. Under Trump, other than parading out some wacky emblems and suits and calling for a Space Force, we’ve heard nothing. Nothing good at least.

As we retreat from the world; we are also retreating from space. The damage this man and his cronies have done will take decades to repair, if it is possible.

The upcoming election give me hope and skepticism. Hope in that we are hearing politicians saying things like, “We are better than this,” and “I want to represent all the people.” I have also been aware of the taken for granted dirty tactics and outright cheating by the Republicans. I’m afraid they have gamed the system enough to eke out wins where they don’t deserve to win. Like most places.

We were watching two shows recorded just last week. One reviewed all the people indicted under Trump. The other went over the biggest swampiest wasters of taxpayer money and destroyers of government institutions (wait, that may be a separate category.) There was no overlap between the two groups. Yet, here we are barraged week after week by scandal, crime and lies.

Just this past week it was revealed that the Trump hotel in DC owes contractors over five million dollars, that the Trump Organization is under investigation for a pyramid scheme milking people out of millions of dollars, and that Donald in private is more racist than he is in public. None of this is shocking. It is what we have come to expect.

Trump is saying he will send troops to the border to stop the caravan of migrants seeking asylum. He puts it differently. He says it’s an invasion and that there are a lot of bad people in the caravan. Looking at the pictures we see mainly women and children. Our army is not allowed to take military action in our country. We have a thing about that ever since the British were here. Plus, they aren’t trained how to handle border type situations. Let’s be clear. The caravan was reported to be 5,000 people. Maybe, as many as 7,000. Yikes! That would take 10 to 12 sections in Cowboy Stadium with a seating capacity of 100,000. I mean we could bus them all to Dallas, feed them hotdogs and pizza at a football game and no one would know they were there, because it just ain’t a lot of folks when you get right down to it. That would be a lot cheaper than sending our military on a sightseeing trip to the border.

Lemme break this down for you. Rent 100 tour buses and put them on the buses, take them to Dallas, but 5,000 tickets to a game (currently the Tennessee game has tickets for $6, other games are $283), feed them food and then let them run wild in the streets of Dallas.

Okay so let’s scope this out:

Rent a bus go 500 miles (distance from Mexico border to Dallas) – $1500/bus/day times 100

Ticket to game (ave $150) times 5000

Food ($30) times 5000

that’s

buses = $150,000

tickets = $750,000

food = $150,000

total $1,050,000

To treat the caravan to a football game and a meal.

Hey. I think that’s better way to go than throwing kids in cages and threatening to shoot them at the border.

And it’s cheaper.

Yeah, but …

What? You got a better idea?

Let’s hear it,

925 Days to Go

Election in 4, 3, 2, 1 Days

PS The pool at Cancuen, Guatemala, site of the Royal Massacre. Thirty one skeletons of men, women, and children were recovered here. They were nobility and buried in full regalia. circa 600 A.D.

I don’t know why this seemed like an appropriate photo to share at this time…