And So It Begins

The timing and content of Mueller’s indictment of Paul Manafort and his business partner Rick Gates are interesting.

Particularly interesting is the timing, in that the release comes on the heels of two weeks of media coverage of the Hillary Clinton campaign being the instigator of the infamous “Trump dossier,” confirmation that the Trump Jr. meeting with the Russians was a sting perpetrated by Fusion GPS, the company hired by the DNC and Clinton campaign to produce the Trump dossier, and of discussion about Uranium One’s contributions to the Clinton Foundation while Clinton was Secretary of State.

Even while still sealed, news of the indictments was released on Friday afternoon so that the media could bloviate all weekend and on the Sunday morning shows about who it might be and what the indictments might contain. It’s called “the politics of distraction.”

The content of the indictments are interesting only to the degree of how uninteresting they are. None of them have anything to do with Russia during the election or with the Trump presidential campaign. They have to do with Manafort’s and Gates’ work as lobbyists for the former government of Ukraine, the government which the US government helped to overthrow.

Democrats, and other anti-Trump forces, are rubbing their hands with glee, praising Mueller as if he is a combination of the Messiah and Steven Hawking, and forecasting the immediate downfall of Donald Trump. They are as giddy and as self assured as they were when projecting the electoral victory of Hillary Rodham Clinton.

National Cat Day

She is, of course, not actually a cat. She is a princess. And sometimes a little bit of a brat.

The Dike Is Broken

I am writing less often lately, mainly because national discourse has become so utterly divorced from reality that each time I start to write I get a sense of the Dutch boy with his finger in the dike. The trickle has become a flood and it is time to run for your life.

Harvey Weinstein’s devil is revealed, and now every public person of the male gender is being accused of sexual attack by every female person who has ever been within arm’s reach of him. Our elections are supposedly meaningless due to the ability of foreign powers to corrupt them, and yet we are supposed to believe that an election of Democrats next year would be entirely valid and would save the world. Articles purporting to be scientific discourse are filled with “might be” causes and “could happen” events.

When the news was first released that four of our soldiers had been killed by ISIS in the African nation of Niger, my first reaction after sympathy for the soldiers and their families was to assume that they were not killed by ISIS. My next thought was not to wonder why they were in Niger, we have military units everywhere, but to wonder why their deaths were being reported when similar deaths under similar conditions in the Philippines was not.

Last night Margaret Brennan reported on the battle in Niger on CBS News, saying that the unit was attacked by, “an ISIS offshoot operating in the area.” She described the group of “35 to 40 fighters” and its leader and, just twelve seconds after describing it as “an ISIS offshoot” said that the leader “is wanted by US and French authorities, but US intelligence has not established any direct link between him and the ISIS militants that the US is already fighting on the battlegrounds in Iraq and in Syria.”

We won't even go into the US "fighting on the battlegrounds in Iraq and in Syria," which we vehemently claim we are not doing, but how credible is a news organization which, within the span of just a few seconds, says that “an ISIS offshoot” has “no direct ties with ISIS militants?”

Feline Follies

So, I'm watching a football game and eating potato chips from the bag.

My calico cat, Molly, jumps up on my lap and immediately becomes hyperfocused on potato chips. Her eyes are the size of dinner plates and they follow each chip from the bag to my mouth. She periodically leans in and peers into the bag. Her breathing is rapid and her whiskers twitching. The anxiety steadily increases.

The left paw comes up and she tries to intercept a chip in transit, getting a sharp, "Ut, no" from me.

She tries the imploring look, and a little soft "meow," but I am heartlessly unmoved. Merely laugh.

She goes back to watching each chip in transit, like Pablo Casals watching a tennis match. Pablo Casals? Damifino. First name that came to mind.

Anyway. Anxiety is building and control is slipping. She kind of leans forward with each chip that makes the passage.

Finally she makes her move - darts forward and tries to bite a chip just as I am putting it into my mouth. She gave me too much warning, though, and I win. She settles back, giving me a look that reminds me that even house cats with three colors (well, technically two colors and white) are predators.

I break off a little piece of chip and lay it down for her to have, and she snarfs it down. She looks at me, licking her chops, clearly says, "We could have saved a lot of time and anxiety," and leaves.

Minds and Tracks

Notice that we are halfway through the month of October, and I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of pink accoutrements I have seen on the NFL football fields this month, because everyone is too busy screaming at each other about kneeling for the national anthem. Jesus. Can we walk and chew gum at the same time? Evidently not.

The light at the end of the tunnel is some idiot with a flashlight halfway down where the tunnel bends. When we turn that corner we will be disappointed to discover that it is night time.

Not Forward Thinking

Democrats were thrilled to have laws created by executive order when it was a Democrat doing it. They are less thrilled when a Republican does it.

It was suggested by a few, back then, that what was created by executive order could be reversed by executive order, but it never occurred to them that they might lose a presidential election, even after mocking and excoriating Republicans for proclaiming a “Republican century” two decades earlier.

And Democrats are, for the second time after a presidential election loss, casting doubt on the validity of the electoral process itself. Does it not occur to them that, if and when they win the White House back, Republicans might proclaim that, “Democrats were right, the electoral process is not valid, and this Democrat president is not a valid President.”

So far, Republicans have never cast doubt on the electoral process after a loss. Democrats have done it twice now, and if they do it often enough Republicans might decide to emulate them.

A Democratic discussion group was outraged that Harvey Weinstein was not prosecuted long ago, until it was pointed out to them that he was raising millions of dollars for the Democratic Party and that his position as a major part of their money machine protected him as long as the Democratic Party controlled the Washington power structure. Would he have been brought to justice if Hillary Clinton had won? The discussion stopped when that question was asked.

There may be a group that does less forward thinking than liberals, but I have not come across it.

Anaheim Fire This Morning

This weather satellite image was at 7:00am local time, and it means the wind is still offshore and still pretty strong. Not good news. No fires in San Diego; that is just remains of morning marine layer.

Update, 6:00pm: Good news; smoke from the Anaheim fire has completely disappeared from the satellite image.

Mind Boggling

Dianne Feinstein is running for reelection. Consensus is that it means there will no meaningful primary election for the US Senate in California, and Nancy Pelosi says that is good news for the Democratic Party and for America. If reelected, Feinstein will complete her next term at age 91.

I’m not sure which is more mind boggling; Feinstein running for reelection, or Pelosi claiming that her doing so is good for America.

Google said that putatively Russian-connected sources bought $53,000 worth of ads “in an effort to influence the 2016 election.” That amounts to 8 ten thousandths of one percent of the $6.8 billion that was spent on campaign advertising.

Something like putting one teaspoon of baking soda into Lake Michigan and claiming that doing so changed the chemistry of the lake.

It’s also pretty weird to think that anyone would believe that Russia is so stupid that they would think that $53,000 worth of Facebook ads would alter the results of the election.

Unintelligible Intelligence

The “Labor Report” is absolute gibberish this month. It is often misleading, although I don’t believe that is deliberate. I think it is just a high level of incompetence on the part of the Labor Department and the media. But this month it reached a nadir.

First it tells us that the economy lost 330,000 jobs in September, but falls all over itself assuring us that the figure reveals “strength in the economy” because it was due to hurricanes. I doubt that people who were in the areas hit by the hurricanes are buying that, but we aren't at the best part yet.

It goes on to say that the unemployment rate, “derived from a separate Labor Department survey of households,” declined to 4.2% in September.

How does the unemployment rate decrease when the number of employed showed a rather large decrease? Not a bad question. Why are media reports of the number of employed and the unemployment rate coming from two separate reports? That is a very good question.

The Household Survey, which includes the 4.2% unemployment rate, shows that the number of people employed increased by 906,000 in September. Why did the media choose not to report that? And why does one report show a decrease of 330,000 while the other shows an increase of 906,000 for the month? That's a difference of 1.26 million people.

This would normally be where I would provide the answers to these questions, but I don’t have any. I’m wondering why I seem to be the only one asking the questions.

I Don't Think So, But...

This morning Molly was walking down the hallway, licking her chops and minding her own business. She's gotten a little hard of hearing in her old age, so she didn't notice me coming out of the bedroom in front of her until, seeing her, I said aloud, "Hello, there's a cat."

I swear, she looked over her shoulder to see if there was a cat behind her.

Interesting Stat

The Denver Broncos, in their 34-year history, have had more trips to the Super Bowl than they have had losing seasons.

Heartbreaking

When I was growing up, guys wore blue jeans and cowboy boots every day. We wore cleaner and newer jeans with more fancy boots to dances on Saturday nights. Girls, on the other hand, only wore their skirts and boots on Saturday nights when it was time to go out and listen to country music, flirt with boys, do some dancing and drink Coca Cola. The skirts were longer then, of course, but… Those were good times.

These poor girls went out for a night of country music and fun and wound up running for their lives. It’s enough to break an old man’s heart.

It should never have happened. We must decide, as a people, that beyond the need to comfort and offer healing to those who were harmed, it means nothing. We must not allow fear to take control our lives. If we do that then evil, what ever its form or purpose, has won the day. If we must live in fear, then what’s the point?