Everyone gushes over the Rosenstein topic from yesterday, but no one really sits and talks about this single meeting of Chief of Staff Kelly and Rosenstein himself.
You can imagine them sitting down, and Kelly leading off: "You know Rod....all this chatter about you and this 'wire'....well, it's a problem."
Rosenstein would counter: "Well, yeah....but it's just gossip by those evil New York Times writers."
Kelly: "We thought about it, and we've decided that there needs to be a complete investigation done...like what we did to those FBI guys who were suspended or working in some basement office."
Rosenstein: "Gee, I don't think that's helpful because I'm managing Mueller, and doing all this work that Sessions can't or won't do."
Then Kelly would have just started laughing.
I don't think this is a firing....once you suggest that you might be willing to wear a 'wire' inside of the White House, your clearance is at stake. I think that's the whole point of Kelly having this chat. And if you did this review and found the 'wire' comment has occurred, then Rosenstein can't retain his clearance.
How did Trump's team reach this level of play? I think they sat down and drew up a list of likely NY Times reporters who were connected to Rosenstein....then found found one or two who were outside of that circle. They then agreed to funnel news to that new group, in exchange for them to plant this comment of Rosenstein and the 'wire'. The insider crew? They didn't grasp what was going on, and the outsider crew suddenly had some track to get their stories planted. Presently, I'm guessing the insider and outsider groups are in conflict. The damage has been done.
Rosenstein? Without a clearance, he can't function. And just getting to this decision....you'd have to suspend the guy for 90 days. The number three guy would step in (a GOP guy) and suddenly Session's little game falls apart.
Mueller? I will go out and predict that a meeting occurs between the new boss and Mueller within 10 days after Rosenstein retires (note, I'm not saying he's fired). The new boss will clearly define the Mueller process, and give him roughly two to four weeks to wrap up the Russian collusion business. Everything else? Finished and put into a secure folder. Anyone caught exiting the situation with collected data? Their clearances will be revoked and they could be dragged into court themselves.
Somewhere around the end of October, the Mueller-adventure ends. Sessions? I think he's played out the game as far as he can and will quietly retire in the spring of 2019.
It's interesting how this played out....Trump needed the NY Times to shake the tree, and once done....Rosenstein fell out of the tree. There's no need for a firing....you just revoke the guy's clearance for the threat of wearing a 'wire'. I can even imagine Rosenstein entering the work-area of Kelly yesterday, and some security guy going through his clothing to ensure no wire was being worn....just to send a signal on he would be treated from this point on. It's an insult to get padded down prior to each meeting, but Rosenstein basically begged for the insult.
An odd ending? Yes. If Rosenstein had never made that wire threat....there's no threat to his clearance. Threats by the Democrats to investigate this? Maybe. But there might be another special prosecutor hired to check the FBI conduct, and maybe former Obama staff members on FISA problems. You can imagine that meeting between Senator Schumer and Chief of Staff Kelly.
Tuesday, 25 September 2018
Monday, 24 September 2018
Seats
Folks appear all hyped up to get Congress involved to mandate or manage leg-room on air flights. I sat kinda amazed that you needed to have the least capable people in the world.....brought in to fix something....especially leg-room.
The simple fix to this deal is to go and make them list the ticket for sale, and exactly how much room you get in chair 9B or 11A. Yes, you let folks know that you can buy a ticket for 30 inches of legroom between Chicago and Philly....for $155, or you can buy 28 inches of legroom for $140. Yep, up front.....you tell folks this. In fact, you could offer up some 'leaning-seat' where you stand for the entire flight, for $100, and I would imagine that you'd get twenty people on each plane who'd be willing to buy a standing ticket for a flight.
Getting Congress involved? The last thing on Earth you'd want to do....is get them to manage this solution for you.
The simple fix to this deal is to go and make them list the ticket for sale, and exactly how much room you get in chair 9B or 11A. Yes, you let folks know that you can buy a ticket for 30 inches of legroom between Chicago and Philly....for $155, or you can buy 28 inches of legroom for $140. Yep, up front.....you tell folks this. In fact, you could offer up some 'leaning-seat' where you stand for the entire flight, for $100, and I would imagine that you'd get twenty people on each plane who'd be willing to buy a standing ticket for a flight.
Getting Congress involved? The last thing on Earth you'd want to do....is get them to manage this solution for you.
Sunday, 23 September 2018
This Ford/Kavanaugh Effect on the Nation (or Lack of Effect)
If you go out outside of the beltway....to an average town of 100,000 people, every Saturday night....they face this unique dilemma which has some relationship to the Ford/Kavanaugh business. You see, there will on any average Saturday night in this town....at least twenty-five private parties being held, with kids ranging from 13 to 17 years old, and alcohol being poured for enjoyable consumption. You can figure that at least two-hundred-and-fifty kids are at these parties.
Between eleven and one....at least five parents will be called by friends, neighbors, or the cops.....to be told that their 'Junior' or 'Vicky' has passed out in such-and-such city park, or been found in badly drunken state with no clothing on.
At least ten of these young women in attendance (some as young as 13 and 14)....will admit under pressure from a parental interrogation that they've 'done' at least a dozen guys over the past six months. Three or four young ladies might even go and admit thirty guys in the past year. A couple of the ladies might even admit 100-plus guys by age eighteen. They laugh when dad suggests this is pretty stupid behavior.
Some young lady will tell of the young guy she latched onto while half-drunk....who convinced her that he was the quarterback star of the state university team forty miles away, and that she gave him full attention for over an hour. Then weeks later, she will admit that she found out that he was a 17-year old guy from the next town over, and that she's pregnant from the fake-quarterback and drunken night of 'fun'.
Some kids (male and female) will admit by age sixteen that they have a drug and alcohol problem, and Mom has to convince Dad that the kid really does need to go to 'Sky-ranch-rehab-center' for four months of rehab, and their health insurance only pays 50-percent of the $18,000 cost.
Some parent will review their kid's Facebook chatter....to discover that the kid procured four kegs of beer for last weekend's private party at the city park, and that two kids got so drunk....that they required an ambulance trip. Now this parent sits there in continual worry that the cops may call, and some prosecution effort may occur, and their 'Becky' might be facing six months in some state youth facility.
So all of these parents sit and view this televised soap opera out of DC, and have a different view on things. In their mind, their daughter is some dimwit or junior-alcoholic with no capability to control herself, and they see a bunch of political folks giving fake-enthusiasm or fake-worry over how this one incident occurred. But in this town, like in thousands of other towns, this is a daily worry confronting parents. So this business of hype with Ford-angle? It's not working, and it's maybe even having the opposite effect.
These are the parents who are putting tracking devices on their kid's cars. These are the parents forcing the 15-year old kid to take a drug-test on Sunday morning. These are the parents who are calling the cops on their son's friends for the alcohol being handed out to underage kids. These are the parents sitting there with some young 16-year old girl who is pregnant but she can't be sure who the father is....because she passed out in the middle of some party. And these parents are all angry because the system isn't working.
Between eleven and one....at least five parents will be called by friends, neighbors, or the cops.....to be told that their 'Junior' or 'Vicky' has passed out in such-and-such city park, or been found in badly drunken state with no clothing on.
At least ten of these young women in attendance (some as young as 13 and 14)....will admit under pressure from a parental interrogation that they've 'done' at least a dozen guys over the past six months. Three or four young ladies might even go and admit thirty guys in the past year. A couple of the ladies might even admit 100-plus guys by age eighteen. They laugh when dad suggests this is pretty stupid behavior.
Some young lady will tell of the young guy she latched onto while half-drunk....who convinced her that he was the quarterback star of the state university team forty miles away, and that she gave him full attention for over an hour. Then weeks later, she will admit that she found out that he was a 17-year old guy from the next town over, and that she's pregnant from the fake-quarterback and drunken night of 'fun'.
Some kids (male and female) will admit by age sixteen that they have a drug and alcohol problem, and Mom has to convince Dad that the kid really does need to go to 'Sky-ranch-rehab-center' for four months of rehab, and their health insurance only pays 50-percent of the $18,000 cost.
Some parent will review their kid's Facebook chatter....to discover that the kid procured four kegs of beer for last weekend's private party at the city park, and that two kids got so drunk....that they required an ambulance trip. Now this parent sits there in continual worry that the cops may call, and some prosecution effort may occur, and their 'Becky' might be facing six months in some state youth facility.
So all of these parents sit and view this televised soap opera out of DC, and have a different view on things. In their mind, their daughter is some dimwit or junior-alcoholic with no capability to control herself, and they see a bunch of political folks giving fake-enthusiasm or fake-worry over how this one incident occurred. But in this town, like in thousands of other towns, this is a daily worry confronting parents. So this business of hype with Ford-angle? It's not working, and it's maybe even having the opposite effect.
These are the parents who are putting tracking devices on their kid's cars. These are the parents forcing the 15-year old kid to take a drug-test on Sunday morning. These are the parents who are calling the cops on their son's friends for the alcohol being handed out to underage kids. These are the parents sitting there with some young 16-year old girl who is pregnant but she can't be sure who the father is....because she passed out in the middle of some party. And these parents are all angry because the system isn't working.
Saturday, 22 September 2018
Ford and the Fear of Flight
It's basically come out in the past twenty-four hours that this gal Ford, that has made accusations on Kavanaugh.....has the fear of flying. So she's asked the Senate folks to give several days to drive across the United States.
I sat and pondered over this.
If you draw the map, it's roughly 2,800 miles and around 41 hours of driving. So then you add in bathroom breaks, breakfast, gas-stops, and two-hour naps along the way. This moves up to around sixty hours of driving. If you did a true eight-hour hotel-stop? You have to figure two of these, and you start to get up to 72 to 80 hours.
I worked with one single guy in the Air Force (out of thousands) that had a serious problem with flights. His first flight....going down to San Antonio....simply didn't go well because of a storm in progress. After that, he tried awful hard to just avoid flying....period. When he got his first assignment overseas (to the Philippines)....he convinced some AF doctor to give him some heavy sedatives, and he basically slept the eight to ten hour flight. He repeated the sequence again later in life when he got orders to Germany.
If you went this California via Greyhound to DC route? Well....it's roughly three entire days on the bus, with potentially twenty-five nutcases or drug-addicts sitting by you on this journey. At any point, Professor Ford could be in fear of some assault onboard the bus.
All this activity, and the session being private with no public testimony? Well....yeah. The circus episode would basically be limited to a couple of senators and the professor.
I sat and pondered over this.
If you draw the map, it's roughly 2,800 miles and around 41 hours of driving. So then you add in bathroom breaks, breakfast, gas-stops, and two-hour naps along the way. This moves up to around sixty hours of driving. If you did a true eight-hour hotel-stop? You have to figure two of these, and you start to get up to 72 to 80 hours.
I worked with one single guy in the Air Force (out of thousands) that had a serious problem with flights. His first flight....going down to San Antonio....simply didn't go well because of a storm in progress. After that, he tried awful hard to just avoid flying....period. When he got his first assignment overseas (to the Philippines)....he convinced some AF doctor to give him some heavy sedatives, and he basically slept the eight to ten hour flight. He repeated the sequence again later in life when he got orders to Germany.
If you went this California via Greyhound to DC route? Well....it's roughly three entire days on the bus, with potentially twenty-five nutcases or drug-addicts sitting by you on this journey. At any point, Professor Ford could be in fear of some assault onboard the bus.
All this activity, and the session being private with no public testimony? Well....yeah. The circus episode would basically be limited to a couple of senators and the professor.
Forty One Years
A week ago (yesterday), it would have been 41 years since I got on the bus at Lackland (Air Force boot-camp) and left. It came into my mind this week.
Boot-camp during that period was six weeks. Between the heat, humidity, and physical activities (normally only in morning hours), it was a miserable experience. I think if anyone would have laid this out, I would have delayed going in for two months (fall weather).
I would have the last breakfast, and around 8 AM....the bus would pull up and I'd get onboard to spend a number of hours riding up to Sheppard AFB, Tx. They would dump us out in some parking lot and we'd get a room-key, some linen, and a meal-card.
This barracks was one of their mega-structures that was just about impossible to figure out anything but the floor area. I probably spent twenty minutes walking in a full circle to find this room.
I stepped into a plain simple room that I would share for a number of weeks with someone, and felt wonderful AC air chilling out the room. I would open my small bag that had all my civilian clothing from the first arrival at bootcamp and discover that the sweat and smell made it just about impossible to wear. So getting laundry powder and doing a wash was priority number one.
This was a Friday.....so I had the entire weekend, and roughly forty dollars in my pocket. It was a long weekend and other than a inprocessing time schedule for Monday, there was no real agenda.
The negative with Sheppard? As hot as it was in southern Texas.....it was just as hot there in northern Texas. Fall really didn't arrive till the middle of October. The base was a curious blend.....there was some modern structures there but they had buildings which had been put up in the 1940s and were still being used today.
Boot-camp during that period was six weeks. Between the heat, humidity, and physical activities (normally only in morning hours), it was a miserable experience. I think if anyone would have laid this out, I would have delayed going in for two months (fall weather).
I would have the last breakfast, and around 8 AM....the bus would pull up and I'd get onboard to spend a number of hours riding up to Sheppard AFB, Tx. They would dump us out in some parking lot and we'd get a room-key, some linen, and a meal-card.
This barracks was one of their mega-structures that was just about impossible to figure out anything but the floor area. I probably spent twenty minutes walking in a full circle to find this room.
I stepped into a plain simple room that I would share for a number of weeks with someone, and felt wonderful AC air chilling out the room. I would open my small bag that had all my civilian clothing from the first arrival at bootcamp and discover that the sweat and smell made it just about impossible to wear. So getting laundry powder and doing a wash was priority number one.
This was a Friday.....so I had the entire weekend, and roughly forty dollars in my pocket. It was a long weekend and other than a inprocessing time schedule for Monday, there was no real agenda.
The negative with Sheppard? As hot as it was in southern Texas.....it was just as hot there in northern Texas. Fall really didn't arrive till the middle of October. The base was a curious blend.....there was some modern structures there but they had buildings which had been put up in the 1940s and were still being used today.
Thursday, 20 September 2018
If Trump Doesn't Run in 2020?
While I figure the chances are still 75-percent chance that he'll run in 2020 and likely win, the scenario of him declining the opportunity and saying he's accomplished most of his goals exists.
How this scenario would work?
1. By August of 2019, he needs to make a decision. My guess either way.....there's going to be a minimum of five Republicans to run against him in the primary. If he declines, he'll say so by late August 2019, and I think he's got one single person in mind to support and help win....Nikki Haley.
2. Haley would quickly show up in Iowa to make a few speeches and impress folks. The Trump machine would help pick up funding, and tens of thousands of pro-Trump folks would send $100 to start this campaign.
3. Opposition within the GOP to her? It'll be limited.
4. She'll have the votes prior to the convention to wrap this up easily, and she will select New Mexico's governor....Susanna Martinez....as VP. An all-woman ticket? That's my prediction.
5. Trump leading rallies in his 30 states of 2016? That's the big factor....Haley can pretty much guarantee that he'll be out in front and be the chief organizer of her economic plan. Everything on the plate today....continues on.
Sessions? Gone and forgotten in a matter of hours after the election. Charges out of this entire mess? Thrown out. People with convictions? Given pardons by Trump. The mess basically ends with the arrival of President Haley.
A wild and crazy prediction? Maybe. But it's only if he says no....he won't run. I still lean the other way.
How this scenario would work?
1. By August of 2019, he needs to make a decision. My guess either way.....there's going to be a minimum of five Republicans to run against him in the primary. If he declines, he'll say so by late August 2019, and I think he's got one single person in mind to support and help win....Nikki Haley.
2. Haley would quickly show up in Iowa to make a few speeches and impress folks. The Trump machine would help pick up funding, and tens of thousands of pro-Trump folks would send $100 to start this campaign.
3. Opposition within the GOP to her? It'll be limited.
4. She'll have the votes prior to the convention to wrap this up easily, and she will select New Mexico's governor....Susanna Martinez....as VP. An all-woman ticket? That's my prediction.
5. Trump leading rallies in his 30 states of 2016? That's the big factor....Haley can pretty much guarantee that he'll be out in front and be the chief organizer of her economic plan. Everything on the plate today....continues on.
Sessions? Gone and forgotten in a matter of hours after the election. Charges out of this entire mess? Thrown out. People with convictions? Given pardons by Trump. The mess basically ends with the arrival of President Haley.
A wild and crazy prediction? Maybe. But it's only if he says no....he won't run. I still lean the other way.
Medical Story
Misjudging a step or two on the stairway in the house...my son took a harsh stumble and ended up making a trip to the doctor this morning (12 hours after the fact). I might have gone to the emergency room last night, but that would be me making that decision.
I commented while on this drive over....things would be different in Alabama in this case. As a kid, in the old 'era'....you would have been given a fair bit of whisky to sip down, while relatives would have thrown a bale of hay into the back of some truck for you to lay on while driving to the county hospital. Four to six hunting dogs would have ridden with you in the rear, keeping you company.
Upon arriving at county 'general' hospital....some kind-hearted nurse gal (being a Baptist) would have done a prayer for you, then smelt your breathe with the whiskey and said it was the devil's work at hand. The doctor (WW II vet) would have looked over the x-ray and then wrapped you up in some 25-pound cast assembly.
But in this German reality? Well....you drive to some x-ray and bone guy (not the emergency room) and then sit and wait for three hours while they manage to find 12 minutes to do the x-ray and make some decision. Sitting in the waiting area are fifteen-odd folks who all seem to be hurting bad, and you sense their suffering at double the rate of your own.
There's not going to be any nurse gal to pray over you.
At the end of the day....the Alabama method of handling this situation might have been more understanding and peaceful (mostly because of the whiskey).
I commented while on this drive over....things would be different in Alabama in this case. As a kid, in the old 'era'....you would have been given a fair bit of whisky to sip down, while relatives would have thrown a bale of hay into the back of some truck for you to lay on while driving to the county hospital. Four to six hunting dogs would have ridden with you in the rear, keeping you company.
Upon arriving at county 'general' hospital....some kind-hearted nurse gal (being a Baptist) would have done a prayer for you, then smelt your breathe with the whiskey and said it was the devil's work at hand. The doctor (WW II vet) would have looked over the x-ray and then wrapped you up in some 25-pound cast assembly.
But in this German reality? Well....you drive to some x-ray and bone guy (not the emergency room) and then sit and wait for three hours while they manage to find 12 minutes to do the x-ray and make some decision. Sitting in the waiting area are fifteen-odd folks who all seem to be hurting bad, and you sense their suffering at double the rate of your own.
There's not going to be any nurse gal to pray over you.
At the end of the day....the Alabama method of handling this situation might have been more understanding and peaceful (mostly because of the whiskey).
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