Monthly Archives: July 2019

The GOP & Russian Election Interference

General, Philosophy, Politics, , ,

It would seem my timing for this and my last post could not be better. As you may remember my last post dealt with several hypothesis on why the GOP did not support actions or laws to stop the interference by Russia, or any other foreign government, from influencing our elections. With the hissy fit that Moscow Mitch thru on the Senate floor yesterday I hope that the rank and file GOP will tell their representatives it is time to change.

Reason One: It is the traditional role

Sense the very early 20th century the Republican Party has taken the position that it was the best party to protect the nation from foreign influence. Sense the Russian Revolution they also took on the role of the party that is protecting us from Bolshevik/Communist infiltration. From 9/11 the GOP has told us that they were the party to protect us from terrorist. Yet when we are given hard evidence, by multiple intelligent agencies, they do nothing. This is an issue tailored made for the GOP. They have over a hundred years of experience campaigning with protecting the USA from the evil foreigners, starting with the Republican Parties antecedences the “Know Nothings” of the 1850’s. With how effective the current rhetoric of Pres. Trump about the ‘Hispanic’ menace or the hell holes the ‘the squad’ represent this should be a no brainer. The election is over a year away, it is not too late.

Reason Two: It is Insulting

That the GOP needed Russian help to elect Donald Trump in 2016 is insulting to the Republican Party. This is the party of Lincoln, Reagan, and two Bushes, and they were running against a Clinton and a woman, they didn’t need Russian interference. This would play very very well with the electoral base.

Reason Three: No need to work with the Democrats

The was no need nor reason to work with the enemy, AKA Democrats, to do this. The GOP controlled both houses of Congress in the 115th so no help was needed. As far as Robert Mueller, he work for GOP Presidents. At worst, if what the GOP has let us see, the Trump Campaign was nothing more than ‘Useful Idiots’. At best they saw the danger and walked away from any offers. (This last has very low probability given the Mueller Report.) An while the President doesn’t come out too well it doesn’t really hurt the party. Even now, Sen. McConnell could have a “Republican” law introduced to help keep any foreign influence from our elections. It could actually do something and be more than a legal placebo.

That’s all for now. It is up to you, dear reader, to decide just what the GOP is doing and why. Once you do, be sure and vote next year. Especially if you are upset with the GOP as they always do worse in high turn-out elections.

A Reason Why the GOP Senate is Acting the way it is.

Philosophy, Politics, ,

Once more, today, a Senator who is a member of the GOP Caucus of the Senate has stoped the passing of a Law to have any campaign who is offered help by a foreign government report such offer to FBI. No reason for the objection was given and some people are starting to wonder just what the GOP is up to. In my searches of the internet to see if I could find any reasons why the GOP Caucus is acting this way I have been flooded with theories and conspiracies but no hard statements form reliable or notable sources. I would like to put forward some ideas of my own and would like to see how they play out.

Hypothesis One: Motions were Unanimous Consent

This latest stoppage was to what is known as “Unanimous Consent” motion and it means literally what it says: all of the Senate agrees, votes Yes, to enact the law. It is possible that the Senator who objected to the Unanimous Consent felt that such an important act needed proper debate. Maybe she just objects to the whole idea of Unanimous Consent. This later idea is easy to check, if a bit of work, just see if she has objected to all previous Unanimous Contents while she has been in the Senate. But basically we are saying the the Senator in Question objects to the bill in question being passed by Unanimous Consent for what ever reason.

Hypothesis Two: A poison pill

It could be that there is some clause buried that the GOP strongly objects to. This is known as a ‘poison pill’ and is a very common tactic used by the minority party of one house to get the majority of the other house to kill the bill. To date I’ve n to heard of ‘poison pill’ in the bill, but I will keep my eyes open for it.

Hypothesis Three: “Not in my Senate!”

This is a simple one. It could just be that the GOP caucus does not want to pass any bill from the house it just doesn’t have to. That is this bill was not in the “Must Pass” category. This to is easy to check to see if only “Must Pass” bills from the house have voted on by the Senate.

Hypothesis Four: Force of Habit

This final idea is that Senator McDonnell is just in the habit of not passing any bills put forward by a Democrat. It has been almost then years that he and the GOP Caucus has been objecting to any bill that the Democrats, House or Whitehouse, has put forward. The very idea of agreeing with the Democrats is an anathema to them. Not that they don’t welcome support form Democrats when it is clearly a GOP Bill but whenever it looks like the Democrats can claim to have a win it will be stoped dead. Currently i see no way to test this.

Of all four hypothesis’ I favor the fourth and I hope someone will suggest a way to test it’s validity. In any case we seem to be in for an election in 2020 where who ever win’s will have to defend their election against charges of being elected by the Russians.

A new Boss of Boss’s

Philosophy, Politics, , ,
Mr. Big

Hypothesis: Donald Trump has Turned the GOP in to a mafia organization.

As anyone who has followed the Trump Administration and read just a few of the ‘tell all’ books knows it has been said a time or two that it is run like a ‘Mob Family’. Not sure if they mean like a real mafia organization or just like our TV/Movies version. In any case the most recent action(s) of the GOP in the House I think it is safe to say that the House members of the GOP think it is. Further more they seem to be running their caucus like it too.

This is not something new. The GOP, all of it, has been on this road for sometime now. I submit it can be traced back to 1990’s and the “Contract on America” and the start of a much more vigorous control of the GOP Congressional Causes. It started to take it’s current form with the 2010 elections and the near absolute control of many of the state houses by GOP super majorities. With these super majorities in place the GOP was able to redraw congressional districts to favor the GOP. Good old guided age gerrymandering. With these new districts in place it became an assured thing that the only thing a GOP incumbent needed to fear was being primaried by someone to the ‘Right’ of them.

The primary challenger doesn’t have to be really more to the right of the incumbent, he just has to make the incumbent look like he is to the ‘left’ of him/her. With the way the congress worked in the teens this was quite easy to do. All the challenger has to do is show that the incumbent has ‘compromised’ with the ‘left’ (read that Democrats) or worse yet, voted with them when the caucus didn’t. This means that the House GOP Wip has a great deal of clout to swing. All he has to do is walk over to the congress person in question and say in a quite voice “Nice little district you have here. Same if you loose it.”

Other things have also come about. Like ‘out of town’ talent ($$$$$) can now be easily and quietly brought in. With the creation of ‘fake news’ and the creation of tailor made new reporting and the end of the fairness doctrine it is very easy to down any incumbent. Add into the the open acceptance of ‘transactional politics’ (I call it “Zero Sum” politics) where if your side doesn’t get everything it demands then it has lost and you have the makes of our current situation.

So how does this lead to Pres. Trump turning the GOP Mafia type organization? haven’t I just shown it was already been turned into one? Well, not really. I’ve shown all of the elements/components needed to make a mafia were present but it was missing one element. It needs a person ready willing and able to be the ‘Boss’. Sure the GOP had many many people wanting to be the Boss, but none of them had what it takes to do it. Donald Trump did and does. I submit that was missing was the way Donald Trump communicates to the ‘base’. Donald Trump has many faults but not being able to size up his mark. An make no mistake his was the GOP, not the American people. He doesn’t give a tinkers dam about the American people. He doesn’t care about the GOP except that it is a tool for gaining what he wants. Don’t ask me what he wants, I don’t know, but i am afraid we are soon to find out.

After the Apocalypse

General, Philosophy, Science, , ,

An now for something completely different, America’s love of post apocalypse stories.

Of recent I have noticed more comments about how the Americans seem to be in love with zombie apocalypse stories and games and this is take as being a indication of just how pessimistic we are in Americas future. To this I say HA!

I shan’t go into the long history of the popularity of apocalyptic literature thru history. Instead I’m just going to look at it’s popularity in the past 68 years an keep mostly to the movies movies as the best (an worst) books were often made into movies.

We just need to go to IMDb and you can find quite a few lists of Nuclear Apocalypse movies starting in the early 50’s. Some of the worst ‘passion pit’ second realers were were SF apocalypse themed. It stay this way till the mid to late 60’s when we started to worry about over population (who can forget “Soylent Green is people!”). This is also when we started to get the first ‘Zombie’ apocalypse stories, but like “The Night of the Living Dead” they often weren’t called zombies.

In the seventies and eighties we also keep having the thymes of nuclear apocalypse but we also see a few where it is just war with the USA loosing to the USSR. We also start seeing more and more ‘dark’ or pessimistic endings. An this is where I think we can see the key to the love of Zombie Apocalypse starts. Almost with out fail most if not all humanity, or at least civilization, is destroyed. An there is nothing that can be done about it.

So now let us consider how many horror movies we’ve seen where the heroes have won and all of sudden, just before or even after the credits a scene flash’s on the screen showing the monster is not really vanquished. Yes, I know it is just a sequel marketing device but it is also a horror movie trope. Evil can never truly be defeated. This is an old, old, old idea in theology, going back to Zoroastrianism if not before. It is also not limited to horror stories, just read 1984 and the perpetual war Oceania is fighting. Lots and lots of dystopian stores are like this too.

In fact, I think that all of the Apocalypse stories are really just theologically based horror stores. In more recent times we have had truly theological apocalypse stores like the “Left Behind” series. Also we are now seeing a lot of what can be called the ‘Sixth Great Extinction Event” apocalypse stories based on global warming. One of the worst was “The Day After Tomorrow” but lets not throw stones.

Now as to just why Americans seem to love apocalypse horror stores I really have no ideas. If you do please share with us, we would love to hear your ideas.

What the Trump Presidency can teach us all

Philosophy, Politics, ,

I take this time after Pres. Trumps speech yesterday (4 July 2019) to point out some things we all can learn from his presidency. I include not just Liberals and/or conservatives but all political persuasions. I also included those of us who study politics, either amateur or professional, practical or scholastic.

Just over 50 years ago, in my senior year in high school I started studying politics seriously. In four more years I got my B.A. in Political Science and had lived thru one of the greatest political events in history. It was at this time I first heard someone say that what we needed to do was elect a “Businessman” to be President. Someone who had demonstrated their abilities to get things done. Well we have elected a “Businessman”, so what can we say we’ve learned in the past two and a half years?

First off we can say for sure that most ‘Businessmen’ have no clue how to work in our political system. Be they Chairman of the Board of a mega corp or the president of a family owned mega business (as is Donald Trump) they only know how to give orders. They have no idea just how to make compromises. To not get everything they want from a deal. An when they try they usually do a very bad job of it.

Hypothesis One

One of the principal reason Mega Businessmen are so bad at working out political compromises is how responsibility and accountability work at the upper levels of management in Big Business. It is axiomatic in big business that “Credit flows up while shit flows down.” By this I mean that when something works well the credit for both the idea and it’s successful implementation will go to the highest manager who want’s it. While if something doesn’t work out the blame for the failure will go to the lowest working possible. I learned this early on in my career: “Mahogany Row is “NEVER” wrong.”

Is it any wonder that a person who has spent most of his/her working life in an environment of the person above you is always right and you never ask, but always command will not be skilled at bargaining? Also, given Hypothesis One, when ever an order is given it is given in such a way as to be always deniable if things go wrong but credit can always be claimed when they go right? If this is true we should be able to find evidence in how things are run in the current Administration. Look how many ‘acting’ key positions we have. Look at how they word orders. Indeed, just look how President Trump talks with his mediate staff. (That is when we can find out what was actually said.)

Hypothesis Two

Everything is a transactional deal. That is everything is Zero-Sum with a winner and a looser. Nothing is ever both sides win or both sides loose.

We are now going to get into something really heady here, Game Theory. It is one of the more advanced forms of mathematics loved by Political Science. If you want a fun way to understand just what Zero-Sum game theory is all about I recommend watching the old movie WarGames. I’m not sure when the great business schools of the west started teaching, or at least accepting, the idea that all business transactions are zero-sum transactions with only winners and looser. Any one who studies game theory knows that there are many games that are zero-sum that no-one can win. Just try Tic-Tac-Toe, if both sides make no mistakes no one can win. Their are also games where all players can win.

We now have businessmen leading us who have been brought up in the world of “If I don’t win, I’ve Lost” trying to make deals with others who know they think that way. So where is a question, why should they make a deal with us if they “know” they are going to loose?

Hypothesis Three

Everything can be ‘monetized’. Or what is the Danegeld? What is meant by this is everything has it’s price and if you are rich enough and/or famous enough you can do anything you want.

In the business world this is mostly true, because in the business world everything is mostly civil law. The problem is that you get into the habit of thinking everything has a price. That money will always solve the problem when things go south. In politics, not so much. In international politics even more so.

In business, if you are a corporation, if you do something that gets lots and lots of people ill or dead, you just dissolve the company, pay a relatively small penalty form company assets and go on your way. You are protected by the corporate vail if nothing else. If someone wants to hold an individual responsible for what happened you have to jump thru whoops to show the individual knew a lot of things before they can prosecuted. More often than not they can show they never ‘Meant’ it that way. They were ‘Misunderstood’ or the underling was ‘over zealous’ in there actions.

This what one of my old professors like to call the “Henry the 2nd” defense. Those Knight of his misunderstood him when he cried “Will no one ride me of this mettlesome priest?” And went off and killed the Archbishop Becket. (I’ve often wondered if the Pope would have be so upset if Becket had just been a parish priest?). Unfortunately for Henry the Pope didn’t buy it. The question now is will the electorate.

So what can we learn? Maybe not to elect an amateur to high office and most assuredly don’t elect a Mega Businessman. Or maybe not.

What Pres. Trump is doing to the GOP

Politics, , ,
Trump,Kim

Give all that has been happening the past few weeks I’m motivated to add to my thoughts put forward in Terrible Liars. But instead of looking at the lies being told I’m going to be looking at the actions, and lack of same, of both the Republicans and all of the self avowed Conservatives and Anti-Comunists.

For most of my entire life the GOP (aka Republicans) along with all ‘apolitical’ conservatives have loudly proclaimed their total and complete support of anti-communism and renouncing the ‘pinko’ liberal Democrats who are, at best, weak on Communism if not outright ‘fellow travelers. Don’t believe me, just go back and study the history of the McCarthy era. Too far back, how about the 1980’s? Still too old, how about 2016? Until Donald Trump was elected the GOP was know to tar and feather anyone who would show any kind of cozying up to a Communist/Socialist country. You know, countries like North Korea, or the PRC (aka China). Can anyone give me a link to a single member of the GOP that has denounced Pres. Trump for his cozying up with either of these countries? If you can I’m post it, I promise. An before you say word one about the Tariff War he started with China just show me where it was done because China was Communist and not just better at playing the Oligarchal Capitalism game than we are?

Now lets move on to just what the Trump Administration is showing is true about the GOP. Mainly that the don’t care a rats ass about true freedom and liberty. That they really don’t support Free Market Capitalism but do support Oligarchal Capitalism. That term sound strange to you? Well what it is sure isn’t, you know it as the MOB. Want to see how well it works, just take a look at Russia. All they have done is swap things around. In the USSR the state controlled all businesses now businesses control the state. Now take a look at China, not much difference when you cut out all the useless verbiage used to obfuscate how things are really organized. All we have are Mob bosses seeking to control as much as they can with little concern about side effects.

This is what the GOP is really all about now. The pursuit of power, by the powerful. The use of power for the sake of using power to demonstrate who has the power and how much. The sad thing is that the rank and file members of the GOP are much like the Outer Party in 1984. Better off than the Prols, but still totally oppressed by the Inner Party. Don’t believe me, just look at what the GOP is doing for the Farmers of the Midwest, or the people of coal country. Are they trying to change things for the better? No, they are only taking action that will increase the wealth (power) of those in power. I have yet to hear one new idea from this Administration to help just these two groups out. Send me links if you find them, I will post them.