More Lies and Misdemeanors

Perhaps one of the silliest lies told by our current chief executive regards hurricane Dorian and Alabama.

I can imagine him looking at some early forecasts and drawing a line in his head that led to Alabama.

This wasn't ever supported by the experts but after all he knows more than the experts, at least in his head.

Latter he included Alabama in a statement about what states could be impacted, probably an honest? mistake that meant nothing.

However it meant something to him and for whatever reason he decided to prove he was right by altering an old hurricane forecast.

This might have violated a federal statute, was unnecessary and simply the act of a toddler caught in a lie, deny reality.

Something that meant nothing now has been blown up into something else.

Why?

Well, he's the dontard.

Lying?

When people tell stories they sometimes get certain details wrong, especially if significant time has passed.  In fact the term "fish story" was invented since people talking about how big the fish was that they caught is proverbially wrong with the fish getting larger the more time passes.

The essence about catching a "big" fish is essentially correct, to some extent, but some of the details are iffy, at best.

Of course there are lies designed to deceive or deny something or outright falsehoods like how big the fish was when you never went fishing.

So recently Joe Biden has been called out about telling a story concerning a soldier in Afghanistan.

A lot of the details in the story were just wrong, the rank, the service, the time frame and even the type of medal.

Still the point of the story about how the serviceman didn't want the medal for bravery because despite his heroic act, the person he tried to save died.

Is this lying?

Well I guess it depends on how you interpret these things.

If he told the same story but left all the details generic, it would still make the same point, our brave servicemen are faced with horrible circumstances and terrible situations, yet maintain a strong sense of duty.

So its what it is, but, if you look at the lies told by the incumbent President, I think getting some details wrong in a story is very different.

He Needs to Go

The president needs to go to El Paso to make a statement against the perpetrators of this horrific crime.

Some are arguing that he shouldn't be there and blame him at lest in part for the hate that inspired the shooting.

He may in fact share some of the responsibility which makes it all the more imperative that he take a strong stand against this and any violence.

As much as he bears some responsibility he must be part of the solution.

Failure to go will be non-verbal approval of the act, distinguishing these dead Americans as not worthy of a visit.

Of course he also might say or do things that are problematic, but lets hope not.

As the President of all the people, at least until the next election, he needs to be just that.

Lets hope he can be, at least for this tragedy.

Fantasy Man

So now Mr Fantasy doesn't want you to call him a first responder.  No one was going to do that because, well he wasn't.

In fact he never went close to the site when it was in process, instead watching it on TV and seeing imaginary celebratory Muslims.

The only real question is when he lost his ability to distinguish reality from what he sees on TV.

I'm not sure what is happening to him, he thinks he was somehow a part of what he sees on TV and things he actually did fade from his memory.

I think next we will be hearing about his exploits in Vietnam.

Sex Abuser

There is no doubt or at least there shouldn't be that our current President was lecherous and unfaithful most of his life.

He clearly cheated on his wives multiple times and we have audio and visual proof that he was OK with abusing his position as a wealthy man to visually and physically abuse women.

Certainly much of it was consensual and while despicable its within most codes of conduct, unless you are of course particularly religious.

However, there is not real doubt that he abused women, many women, many times.

I think even his supporters are aware of that, and in a perverted way, many of his most ardent supporters admire that he did it and got away with it.

Much of his appeal is to the outliers in what is considered by the majority as civilized society but considered by them the land of political correctness.

They yearn for the days of white male dominance where the old boys club winked at such behavior as long as you didn't step over the line of leaving physical evidence of your behavior.

Obnoxious behavior, date rape, inappropriate comments and even physical touching was just the boys being boys.

The challenge was to see how much you could get away with.  This was immortalized in many old movies where a slap on the face for unwelcome advances was, well cute.

Women were expected to protect themselves and if they wore overly provocative clothes or went to a man's room, well what did they expect?

The latest accuser of the president has some questions to answer, but we know he knew her and I think everybody knows he probably did it.

It fits into the credo he spelled out in the Access Hollywood tape.  Still, some of his supporters are probably high fiving his ability to get away with it.

Another notch in his belt so to speak.

Character

I watched some of the badgering of Peter Strzok as they tried to turn what was essentially pillow talk into a conspiracy.

Now he shouldn't have use his government issued phone for these communications and on a different level maybe he should have honored his marriage vows, but these two failings do not a conspiracy make.

Its pretty ludicrous to watch these elected representatives try to spin this into something that will either help the dontard or help their party in the mid-terms.

They just couldn't do it.

I'm sure they will try to act like they got something, but they just didn't.

There wasn't anything to be got.

As Mr. Strzok pointed out at one point, the FBI is hardly a den of democratic operatives, it is in general a very conservative organization.

These are law enforcement professionals who deal with issue of national security and terrorism.

They are dedicated professionals but of course they aren't required to drop personal convictions at the door.

They don't conspire as a group to influence politics and apparently unknow to our reps, they are governed by the Hatch act which restrict political activity in your official capacity.

As I said the texts that should have been on private cell phones are simply idle talk between two people in a personal relationship, who viewed an individual candidate negatively, not his party or his voters.

A natural reaction to a sexist, homophobe who exhibits bias towards many and respect for none.

Government?

Sometimes as I observe the clown show in Washington, I wonder how did we get here?

The answer is mostly apathy.

Too many Americans don't care or don't think they make a difference.

In fact, it almost seems like we have turned the system over to the most rabid among us.

If you do in fact believe strongly in something, say that abortion is akin to murder, you are simply more likely to get involved and support certain candidates.

Poll data shows that most Americans actually support reasonable approaches to a lot of the issues facing us while rabid minorities have odd agendas.

Of course apathy is only part of the problem, the other is misinformation.

The government is not interested in coming for your guns or making your children change their sexual orientation.

These are not real issues.

Similarly, football players who kneel during the national anthem don't cause any harm to anybody.

They have the right to express a view, like everybody else.

We have so much inflammatory rhetoric about things that are simply either not true, or inconsequential that we should laugh at these issues?

Having to press one to speak in English to a robot on the other end is not the end of American culture.

Its recognition that this is a diverse nation with many people legally here who are native Spanish speakers.

We are not about to adopt sharia law, its not even remotely possible.

However we have entertainers pretending to be news people who incite listeners for ratings.

We believe all sorts of things that are demonstrable false and because of that things that are demonstrably true get questioned.

Apathy and misinformation, not a formula for good government.

Great Deal Maker

It seems like the talks with North Korea are on again.

O course it can still change as we know the unpredictability of our dontard.

It seems like the North Korean dictator actually has more of a plan and certainly better control over his minions than our guy does.

It will be interesting to see what comes out of it, although whatever it is will be called the greatest deal ever negotiated by our egotistical dontard.

Doesn't matter what it is, unless of course there is no deal, in which case it will be the greatest walk our of a bad deal ever.

Clearly Muhammad Ali had a great influence on him, although he probably preferred his original name.

I read his ghosted book "The Art of the Deal" quite a few years ago, since my job entailed a lot of negotiations.  The book isn't really about negotiations, it was mostly about all the things he had to do to build the Trump Tower, or whatever his first Manhattan building was called.

It certainly was a little interesting, but not of much use unless you had a similar project in the works, and even then probably not much help, except it sort of detailed the process in a very general way.

Ultimately it was a story of appeasement, how much he had to do to get what he needed from the zoning people, the unions and ultimately the buyers of his condos.

So in order to make a profitable deal you have to give as little as possible to get what you want.

Well, that's not really much of a revelation, unless of course you didn't already realize that.

Now what do the two sides want in Korea?  One has already got a lot more international recognition before the talks even start.  He also wants less American protection for the south and less sanctions.

What will we get in return?  Probably about the same thing as we had in Iran,  which in this case will be a wonderful, great deal.

Odd how that works.

Wake Up America

It seems like the dotard didn't mean it when he reversed an Obama policy on elephant trophies.  I'm sure he is willing to reverse any policy his predecessor signed without thinking or reading it, but in this case it annoyed people almost everywhere who weren't going to Africa to collect elephant ears.

He clearly isn't heavy into doing research and in his past careers he didn't need to be.  

Real estate like many other things is a situation where you want to buy low and sell high.

Buying into Manhattan when it was having hard times might have seemed risky but was as close to a sure thing as there is, if you have enough resources to hold long enough.

In that case it wasn't even that long as the city rebounded.  However, its not like he's great at this, he did mange to have multiple business bankruptcies and to a certain extent his brand and fortune were saved by having a successful reality show.

The dotard has turned his name into a brand and it does allow him to profit to some extent.

The attributes he had in those days haven't changed.  He was a bit of a playboy around town but managed to get his name associated with more attractive women than he ever dated.

He used to manipulate page 6 the way he uses twitter today, to keep his name in the news.

There are many much richer people in New York who manage hedge funds who you never hear of because they don't parade around and they work long hours.

In some ways, his only real career was being a celebrity and it still is.

Its sad that he was able to appeal to enough deplorables to capture the republican party and I do think that the rise of the Steve Bannon's will lead to a republican party that drives out any moderates.

The question is clearly at what point do the non-deplorables wake up?

Some already have.

Sunday Musings

I realize that the Trumps and Kardashians are very similar except the Kardashians are more ethical.

Look, Trump is a big picture guy, only way he can keep the crayons almost inside the lines.

I'm wondering who is going to be the one to go transgender?

This whole president gig is just a set up for the Trump reality show coming in a few years.

The republicans can't figure out that attacking Hillary doesn't really do much anymore.

It appears that many Republican voters can't focus on more than a single issue, look at the recent Alabama primary.

The guy they selected is going to bring the level of the congress down a few notches, which is difficult to do, if he gets elected and he probably will.

All these voters seem to want people to challenge the establishment unless they're football players I guess.

Remember all those threats about what we were going to do to North Korea?  Did anyone believe them?  The carry a little stick while talking loud guy might believe himself.

I'm pretty sure he is so delusional that he isn't actually lying, just, you know, delusional.

Of course he might just be lying.

Tax plan isn't going to help him, really?

The people who actually believe him have to realize that nothing he says means anything.

Or maybe not.

He's doing more to fight the NFL than he is to counter North Korea.  Guess once he figures out that a dotard is an insult he might react.

I wonder if he could even identify North Korea on a map.  He doesn't have any golf courses there.

He might think its in Africa with that country he made up at the UN, Nambia.

Everything is Rigged

My actual experience with how things are rigged in New York Construction and public works bidding is admittedly a bit out of date, but I believe that it is likely fairly unchanged.

Now on the surface it may look like a competitive process but the real process is generally very different.  First, there is the process concerning who gets to bid.  Frequently to get a chance to bid you have to meet certain arcane requirements which are well known to insiders but not easily fathomed by new entrants unless you "hire" the right consultants.

Second, there is a certain amount of collusion that goes on between these same insiders who determine how much each should bid so that they all get a chance to earn on some basis.  Throw in the need to accommodate certain special interest groups the bids are totally rigged.

Finally, even if it is your turn, you have to demonstrate that you have the "right" people appeased which includes the unions, the minorities, the environmentalists and others.

Now the result of this is a system that is too cumbersome, too expensive, and too corrupt, but which employs thousands and satisfies a lot of constituents who vote or influence voting.

Now attempts to reform this have been undertaken many times and maybe its different today than it was, I tend to doubt that but its possible.  I'm also pretty sure that its not very different in most other major cities, they all have special interests that need to be satisfied.

The point of all this is that of course coming out of that system you know everything is rigged.  You were one of the riggers.  Further, once you jumped through all the hoops and got the contract, anyone challenging it was a serious threat that needed to be fought.

So when we see the president elect losing it over a recount that is very unlikely to accomplish much, its understandable.  He sees it as someone trying to steal his contract.  Now of course the other possibility is that he knows something was done that might be uncovered, and I certainly think he would be capable of that, maybe he had people counterbalancing the "phony votes" in the big cities he talks about, but I think that is an unlikely scenario.

However, instead of just ignoring this side show, like he should have, he effectively loses it, makes unfounded accusations, and seems to be fuming.

Hope the world is ready for a rocky ride.