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Thursday, March 23, 2023

I know. I know. There’s all the talk about will he be indicted and his supporters in Congress are twisting themselves in knots to say it’s nothing. I love the “it was a private payment, no campaign violation” and the “It’s a bookkeeping error” excuses. To which I say, “No, it was labeled as a business expense and for the purposes of hiding it during a campaign, which makes it also a campaign expense, and thus hiding such expense is illegal. If you think he’s being singled out, tell that to the 165 people charged with the same business expense error since the Manhattan DA took office. And it was for the purposes of hiding the truth from the voters. Remember John Edwards? Yeah, he got hit with the same campaign finance stuff for having a child via an affair that he paid to keep quiet during his election bid. I didn’t hear the sloughing off from Jim Jordan or Ted Cruz during that time.”

But, enough of that, I was thinking of something else and that is, “how would our world look different if a more traditional President had been elected in 2016?”

There are three things I can think of right off:

1. Covid would have been dealt with more effectively.

2. We wouldn’t be in so much debt and having a possible crisis over it.

3. Russia would not have invaded Ukraine.

Evidence:

To Point 1 – Biden had said as Covid was hitting that we shouldn’t depend on the Chinese accounts, but rather we should send people over there to find out for ourselves. We had a lab over in Wuhan that Obama set up. We had people on the ground. Trump not only shut that down but he then stuck his head in the ground and waved his hands saying Covid wouldn’t come to the U.S. and it would go away on its own.

Anyone who has looked at the history of pandemics knows that they don’t go away on their own. It takes hard work and good science to defeat them. There are numerous examples. The latest was Obama’s strong early actions to the outbreak of Ebola in West Africa. In the early 20th century a man died in New York City from a very infections disease. Typhoid? I forget. The head of the heath department realized that the only way to stop the spread of the disease was to get everyone in the city vaccinated, which he did, No small task, but there was no outbreak.

Point 2 – Trump piled on 25% of our national debt in his four years in office. Republicans always outspend Democrats and they do less to balance budgets and reign in spending than Democrats. Had a Democratic President been elected in 2016 our national debt would have been much lower for two reasons: Dems don’t spend as much and they don’t cut taxes like Republicans are fond of doing. This would have meant our economy would have been in better shape coming out of the 2016-2020 presidential term. 

Remember when W took office? Clinton left him a surplus of $265 Billion. Many said he could have used that to shore up Social Security and ending the possible shortfall looming, but instead he gave the money away.  This is the common Republican method of operation. They keep saying if they cut taxes (for the rich) that the economy will somehow magically get better, despite piles of evidence to the contrary. Remember Liz Truss? She was appointed British Prime Minister and put forth an economic plan for Britain that many of the right wing – sorry conservative – economic pundits hailed as terrific. She lasted 49 days. The main reason for her short tenure was her economic plan, which would have made a hash of the British economy. Even more than Brexit did.

Point 3 – If we had had a more traditional president in 2016 in the Oval Office who understood the danger of Putin (and this was clearly expressed by the other candidate) steps would have been taken to shore up Ukraine’s defenses years earlier. However, the man in the Oval Office groveled to the Russian President. We now know that during his campaign Trump had been scheming to build a tower in Russia, while lying about it on the campaign trail. When he got in office, his son-in-law tried to set up a back channel to Russia, and Trump held numerous meetings with Putin, which he tried to keep secret and to which there has never been an accounting as to what was discussed. Not only that, but right wing media beat the drum of lies about a secret server in Ukraine that somehow the Dems or Biden – someone – had used against the Republicans. Trump asked Zelenskyy to investigate and all the President of Ukraine wanted was weapons from the U.S. to defend his country. Given those facts why wouldn’t Putin think he could invade Ukraine without interference?

And to those who say it’s none of our business Russia and Ukraine have been tied together for centuries. Well, yes it is our business as the fate of our foreign policy and democracy around the world depends on Ukraine staying free, and yes Russia and Ukraine have a history, not a pleasant one. Remember “Fiddler on the Roof”? That’s musical about the Czars instituting a plan to kill and kick out people from Ukraine, mainly its Jewish population. Before that it was Catherine the Great invading and subjugating the people there. And when Stalin took power he took all the grain from Ukraine and let millions of people starve. So, yeah, there is a history between the two countries. But if you’re a Ukrainian, it’s not pleasant.

BTW I was sure Trump wouldn’t be indicted last Tuesday for the simple reason that he predicted it, and I’ve never known that man to make a statement that didn’t contain a lie. QED he wouldn’t be indicted that day.

Enough. Get the cuffs.

Thursday, March 2, 2023

It’s been almost a month since I posted a screed. I’ve made several starts in that time, but something always happened. Something that distracted me. it seems the waves of arrogance and stupidity come so fast that it’s hard to say something before you are gagged with another wave.

The same themes keep resurfacing: dishonesty, deceit, arrogance, contempt, stupidity, racism, sexism, … you name it. It’s the same old garbage. Maybe, it’s in a new shiny bag, but most of the time it is not. The only thing that has changed is the gall of the liars. 

Such stuff has always dogged our country, but now it seems to be in a more virulent and widespread form. The thing is they aren’t trying to hide what they are doing. There is no shame. In fact, they like to commit their crimes in the open and then complain when they get caught that they are the victim and that the system is unfair. The sad thing is that they represent about 30% of the population and that percentage is located in sparsely populated states that give them a huge ability to effect things nationwide. I don’t see that situation changing or getting better.

Let’s take a quick gander at what’s been going on in this regard:

– The former Attorney General of Arizona had an investigation into election fraud. They spent 10,000 hours, looked into 638 claims and found nothing. They had issued an interim report claiming all kinds of stuff. The final report ran down every claim and found nothing. What did the former AG do? He buried the final report and ran on the disproved election fraud claims.

– The Dominion Voting Machines case against Fox has uncovered the text messages between various Fox on-air personalities (not sure what to call those people. They are not journalists, or news anchors. Entertainers? Maybe.) The off-air texts show they believed the people like Trump and his lawyers were crazy with their election fraud claims. But they continued on-air with the claims of election fraud. One of them was worried that if the truth got out it would hurt their stock price. There was also worry that if they didn’t feed their viewers this BS that those viewers might go elsewhere. They even got one reporter fired for having the temerity to chase down facts that disproved some of the claims they pushed.

– The head of Fox said under oath: Yeah, I could have done something about it, but I didn’t.

– Matt Gaetz, the Bevis of the House to Jim Jordan’s Butthead, has been in the news too. He wanted to bring a fellow into his committee meeting to lead the Pledge to the Flag. This was part of his “own the libs” campaign. He said, “It’s not like I’m brining in a murderer.” Then he brought in a murderer. Was he done? Oh no. He was also in the news when he tried to get a Pentagon official trapped with some damning evidence he had found. The Pentagon official asked him for his source. Gaetz told him. The official responded that there don’t take stuff from a Chinese propaganda outlet seriously. In other words, to be clear, a Congressman was actively pushing Chinese propaganda in a House committee meeting. What’s the defense for that? “I didn’t know?” “Yeah? So what?”

– The FBI release a report that the Covid virus could have come from a lab in Wuhan. They gave the report “low confidence.” Ah True Proof! Right? No. There is nothing new in terms of evidence. A scientist who actually knows something so stated. Not only that but the virus found in the Wuhan lab is very different than the one that ravaged the world. What do scientist say? “We may never know for certain.” Yeah. Okay. Hey, what if the previous President had sent people over to China when this first broke out? Like Biden suggested? What if Trump hadn’t shut down our team over there? What if Trump hadn’t sat his fat ass on his little hands and actually done something to find out instead of denying everything?

– And the latest? Veritas ousted James O’Keefe. if you haven’t seen John Oliver’s latest “Last Week Tonight” you are missing a treat. It turns out that O’Keefe has been mishandling money. A common problem in right wing circles. But before we go there let’s review Mr. O’Keefe’s CV.

He came to prominence by asking a group that helped poor people how he could claim money he earned as a pimp legitimately. He released a video showing the people answering his question. At the time he asked that question he was meek, unassuming, and dressed in a shirt and slacks. He then dressed up in huge sunglasses, a fur stole and outlandish clothes for the lead in to his video. It went viral on the right wing media and it succeeded in shutting down an organization that helped poor people.

This became his bread and butter MO. One time he got caught trying to tap the lines of a Senator. I never understood why he wasn’t thrown in jail for that. 

But now? Oh boy. Oliver dug up footage of O’Keefe starring in a diner theater performance of Oklahoma. For which he charged Veritas $20,000 or more. I guess to go there? I don’t know. That was one of the problem areas for the Veritas board. Then Oliver showed pieces of O’Keefe’s Las Vegas show that never made it to the Strip. If you watch Oliver’s show you’ll wonder why folks wouldn’t pony up money to see O’Keefe being set upon by FBI agents only to dance with them moments later, or the great choir scene where he looks upon his younger self. The choir with him then breaks into a sad attempt at in-sync rhythmic dancing. Well, it was neither, but that seems to be what they were attempting.

Back to the Dominion case. Because only Fox is listed in the case and it’s an organization and not a person there can not be damages for pain and suffering. Really? Let’s get Mitt Romney in here to explain that organizations are people too.

– Oh, and shockingly there’s another Republican in Congress who lied on his resume. He joins the George Santos club. It pretty flagrant stuff. No big deal. He forgot what his degree was in. See, he dropped out and then completed a degree via distance learning. He also didn’t go to Dartmouth and Vanderbilt as he claimed. How did that get in there? Simple mistake. Oh yeah, he isn’t really an economist as he claimed, but he was on a show with Arthur Laffer, who is still trying to get people to believe in his curve. Then there’s the law enforcement agent thing. See he’s a human trafficking expert. Oh wait. No he’s not. Just slipped in there somehow. It’s okay. You can still go on Fox. They don’t care.

Friday, February 10, 2023

After Biden’s State of the Union speech what’s her name gave the Republican response. I couldn’t take her whiney voice and decided to go brush my teeth and only half listened. Apparently, I didn’t miss much. The analysis the next morning was “What was she talking about?” and or “Who is The Woke Mob?” The consensus was that, “The Woke Mob” and other terms she used were code phrases that people on the far right understand in their echo chamber. I’m reminded of Stephen Miller and his “Camp of Saints” comment. WTF? Well, in Miller’s case it is referring to a French novelist who wrote this book suggesting black people from South Africa invaded France, took it over, and overthrew the white government. In Sarah Ukabee Sanders case I don’t know who these folks are but I’d sure like her to actually identify them.

It’s like all the yelling about the Chinese balloon. Many wanted it shot down earlier. But ask them to put a finger on the map of exactly where they want a 2,000 pound object to land and – well – you know. Not here. There? No, not there. Then where? Hello? Hello?

Another thing I can’t get past yet is the “Big Confrontation” between Mitt and George (Romney and Santos). Brave bold Mitt telling George he doesn’t belong here. Okay, how about you Mitt? Do you belong in Congress. Here’s a guy who made his living destroying companies and throwing people out of work. Pretty much what Richard Gere did in Pretty Woman. (By the way, the new movie “Maybe, I Do” with him, Diana Keaton, Susan Sarandon, William Macy, and Emma Roberts is very cute.).

Another thing I keep running through my head is Mike Lee’s stunned look when Joe Biden said – some of you want to sunset Social Security. Mike was like “what is he talking about? Not me!” He didn’t say sunset it, he said, “Pull it out by its roots,” and also Medicare and Medicaid. 

A lot of these Republicans elected to Congress want to pull things out by their roots. Mitch McConnell said it above it ObamaCare. Rick Scott ran the Republican Senatorial Re-Election Campaign with that promise. Here Scott created one of the largest hospital chains in the country and that company charged the Federal government lots of money for tests they didn’t perform. To be fair they did perform tests, just not the ones they billed for. Seems the tests they claimed to have done were more expensive. Scott resigned from the company and the company wanted to settle with the Feds and did so in two cases. Each case was a fine of over $800 Million for a total of $1.7B. Scott was deposed at his offices in Stamford, Connecticut. (Huh? Not Florida?) He took the fifth 75 times. Why would a guy who overcharged Medicare want to get rid of it? 

But back to dumbfounded Mike Lee with that amazed look on his face during the State of the Union. The next day there were clips of his saying he wanted to pull Social Security out by its roots. I haven’t heard the spin on that one.

Then there’s the fashion show at the speech. We only had two contestants, but to be fair both sides were represented. Well, maybe all three, because I’m not sure if Kyrsten Sinema is Independent or a Democrat. Frankly, I’m not sure if she’s a man or a woman. She looked like a woman that night. But Honey? What’s with the bright yellow dress and the huge shoulder sleeves? Did you think you were going to a cocktail party where you’d be the star?

Across the way, in the back row was MJT in a white coat. Folks weren’t sure if she was going for the Cruella DeVille look or, the one I like better, is the Tonya Harding hit ‘em with a skate look.

Then when Biden said things that were factually true the Repubs went crazy, yelling liar and booing. Biden got them to stand to say they weren’t going to destroy Social Security. It will be interesting in the coming days to see how they reverse direction or deny that which they are on record as saying.

The day after the speech the House’s committee on Weaponizing the FBI got going. The lead off for the Republicans were Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson. Old Chuck looks – well – old. And I’m always surprised by the nonsense that comes out of his mouth. Ron? Looks good, but man he is over the edge. Both were spouting conspiracy stuff and Chuck was trying to wrap himself in “the American people” flag. Then Jamie Raskin spoke. He did something the Republicans are loath to do – he mentioned things that are factually true. This as opposed to the nod-nod wink-wink “we all know this” nonsense Grassley and Johnson said.

The Republican playbook is straight out of the middle school playground. “I didn’t do that. You did that!” 

But the other thing that got lots of Senators upset was the Chinese Spy balloon. Apparently, some of the Repubs were photographed standing outside with rifles in hand looking up at the sky and suggesting they’d shoot it down. I like that. Maybe, Neil deGrasse Tyson or an NRA spokesperson can explain basic physics to them about bullets, trajectory, and distance? Nah? Why bother. Rules don’t apply to them.

One thing Lawrence O’Donnell pointed out on his show was that the one thing none of these people will do is put a finger on the map and say, “shoot it down here.” Why? Well, back to trajectories and whatnot. The apparatus on the bottom of the balloon was estimated to weigh 2,000 pounds. Now lemme see, a two thousand pound object at high altitude would reach terminal velocity of 125 miles per hour before slamming into your house, car, cow, ground – whatever. You willing to let that happen to your house? What about your kids? The dog? Oh, unlikely? Okay. Let me repeat are you willing …? Oh, hadn’t thought about that?

Well, let’s move on and talk about the three balloons like this that floated over our country when Trump was in office. Hello, hello? Oh wait. Didn’t happen. Couldn’t have happened because The Donald didn’t know about it. Lemme explain. It was in his briefings, but he would have to have read those briefing and he didn’t. So therefore, he didn’t know. (and therefore in his mind it didn’t happen.) Cue the Mike Lee stunned expression.

BTW In a DC Courthouse the local court reporters are being kept busy going from one of three trials going on in that courthouse connected to Jan 6th. There was a father and son team who made a day of it on the 6th. One of them was walking around the Capital with a Confederate flag. He got three years.

But so far, none of the higher ups have been charged. Some say the closer we get to the election the harder it will be to charge them. I disagree. I think that if Trump is the nominee we deputize the five former cops that beat that 29 year old man to death and have them …

Okay, that’s going too far. Really? I don’t know. 

One last thing – that balloon. Some said it was the size of five school buses. I don’t know how much volume a school bus displaces, but I do know that it takes 1.000 cubic feet of helium to lift 65 pounds at sea level. therefore to lift 2,000 pounds at sea level would take about 31,000 cubic feet. According to google a school bus is 960 cubic feet. (See, I learned that between the top of the paragraph and now.) Therefore is would take the volume of 32 school buses to lift that rig. But wait, a hot air balloon displaces a little over 77,000 cubic feet. So 30,000 cubic feet isn’t that bad. …

The debate rages on.

What are we talking about anyway?

I gotta go,

ps Correction: I had stated in an earlier version of this post that Emma Roberts was Julia Roberts child. That was incorrect she is the daughter of Julia’s brother, Eric.

Saturday, February 4, 2023

This is a little different post for me. A week or so ago I heard a loud popping sound on one side of our dishwasher. All of a sudden when opening the door it dropped like a stone. I had to hold it and it was heavy. A quick google revealed that the spring on one side of the door had either broken or come undone. As I looked at parts they showed a spring and a piece of nylon cord with plastic ends. What I could not find was a diagram showing how the spring was supposed to look when properly in place. The parts diagram showed the spring and the cord but they were floating off to one side. I couldn’t figure out how the spring and the cord worked to take the weight of the door.

The directions on the parts web site said that the job took 15 or 20 minutes. They lied. Or perhaps they never replaced a spring and cord on a dishwasher. The directions said: cut the power, pull the dishwasher out 10 or 12 inches …

Okay, I pulled it out that distance and couldn’t go any farther. I had removed the front panel of the door too. Well, it turned out that you didn’t need to take off the front panel of the door. I thought you did to get at the door hinge. I couldn’t imagine what the hinge looked like. The side panel, which it became clear I had to get to stretched all the way to the back of the machine. that meant I had to pull the machine completely out from under the cabinet, but I couldn’t. The water line and then the electric wires held me back. They needed to be detached. To get to the shutoff under the sink meant taking all the bottles out of half of the sink. There was quite a bit of time making sure I had to do both.

Once the water line and electric wires were disconnected the machine came out easily. There were two screws in the very back that held the side panel in place where it wrapped around to the back. I don’t think understand how the folks who wrote the directions on line thought pulling the machine out ten or twelve inches was going to do the trick.

Once I got the side panel off I could see how the spring mechanism worked. The hinge is an L shape and one end of the cord is attached to the upright piece of the hinge. The cord then passes under a plastic roller. The other end of the cord attaches to the spring and the other end of the spring attaches to the side of the flange of the dishwasher casing. It would have been real handy to have seen a diagram or photo of that.

Okay, now I’ve got the spring in place and I need to put on the side panel, put together the front of the door, and then I can scoot it back in place. But how am I going to get the water pipe to come through the curved opening? And what about the electric wires?

Ah, grasshopper. In a fit of brilliance I took a 2 1/2 foot s’more stick, which has a pointy end and passed it through the dishwasher tunnel to the end of the plastic water tube. The pointed end fit nicely into the flange of the tube. I taped the electric wires down so that when I pushed the dishwasher back they passed under the frame. It worked! The wires showed up close to the electric box and I was able to cajole the water tube through the tunnel. I hooked up both and tested the dishwasher by running a load of dish. No leaks! 

The next morning I put in the kick plate, which I had left off to be able to see the water tube connection.

So how long did it take? Not counting putting the kick plate on the next morning. I started around 5:30 in the afternoon and took an hour or more to make and eat dinner. I watched TV for an hour. I was done about 12:30 am so seven hours minus two would make it five hours total. That’s a bit different than 15 or 20 minutes.

For those of you who might be tempted to say …

Don’t. Just don’t.

• *Wherein I seize a tour bus and charge off with the terrified passengers and I proceed to tell them about the sites I am taking them to see. Naturally, I know nothing about what I speak.

Saturday, January 28, 2023.

Lawrence O’Donnell had Timothy Snyder on his show a few nights ago. It was a short piece, but it was the best analysis I have heard about anything. Snyder is a history professor at Yale. His area of expertise is Central and Eastern Europe. He has written a number of books. One is entitled “On Tyranny – Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century.”

He was asked about the recent arrest of an FBI agent.

The agent was arrested for taking money from Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska. He took money from Deripaska while working for the FBI and after he left. The agent was in charge of investigating the Russian attempts to influence our elections.

Let’s backup. Paul Manafort was Trump’s 2016 campaign manager. He was passing information (internal polling information, etc.) to Deripaska via an intermediary. Manafort had worked for Deripaska before the Trump campaign. In fact, one might suspect and conclude that it was Deripaska that wanted Manafort to be campaign manager for Trump.

Let’s not forget that a woman aboard Deripaska’s yacht recounted Deripaska discussing with three English speaking people the 2016 election. She was in Thailand and tried to flee via a stop in Moscow where officials boarded the plane and roughly took her off. Nothing much has been heard from her since.

Now Deripaska is linked to an FBI agent who was supposed to be investigating him.

All this is a re-enactment of what happened in Eastern Europe a decade earlier with the former Russian backed president of the Ukraine. I can’t remember all the details and I wasn’t able to find the clip.

The second part of the interview O’Donnell asked about Margorie Taylor-Green’s comments about our giving aid to Ukraine. Her stand is we need to keep our forces strong here and that it’s gotten way too expensive.

Snyder’s answer was very informative. Actually, he said, it’s been cheap. If you look at our defense budget it hasn’t cost much. What do we get out of it? Well, if Ukraine wins then Russia is no longer a threat and this puts the Chinese on notice if they have any intentions toward Taiwan.

Lastly, for folks who have read the headlines about the layoffs at places like Amazon and think the economy is in trouble. It has been pointed out by economists that this is the fastest recovery in our nation’s history. Unemployment is low. Wages are up. And if you look at the job growth before and after Covid it is a steadfast increasing line. While the layoffs at some tech companies sounds like a lot, the over all numbers are good and growing.

And for those who think the help during Covid was a mistake or too much. One thing economists point to is the number of people defaulting on their credit card bills. It stayed steady. It didn’t go up. The economists’ analysis is that the government bailouts gave money to people and they were able to keep paying their bills because of it.

Finally, on another show there was a black Republican congressman. He seemed to have all the answers. Until you listened to them. He said that if we taxed the rich we’d collect less money. Figure that one out.

Okay. Back to work. As you were.