Twelve states have undone the normal rules for the Electoral College, and their 'gimmick' is set for the highest national winner....to get their votes, whether the voters of that state voted that way or not.
Challenges in court? Some people are suggesting that no matter what happens....judges will be attempting to get into the mix of things, delay the Electoral College vote in December of 2020 (after the election) and thus throw this to the House to determine the President.
Will the House reset back toward the GOP, and prevent this gimmick? Well, it won't matter.
You see, how the House votes in this no-Electoral College episode, is state by state. Presently, Trump still has a GOP lead on the states, meaning more than 25. With that scenario in their favor, unless some freak of nature occurs, and another 20 seats flip to the Democrats in critical states.....this challenge idea really doesn't work.
Friday, 5 April 2019
Wednesday, 3 April 2019
The White House and Security Clearances
A lot of hype has come up over the past ten days over the handling of security clearances for the White House, and the normal security folks being 'out-ranked' to pass a clearance onto some folks, who weren't getting anywhere with the normal process. So, some individuals are suggesting mismanagement, or White House blunders.
Having been through the 'game' of security clearances in my life, an observation might be offered here.
At some point in the 1990s, the emphasis of the security clearance investigation business changed. Where before, the big hype was relationships (with foreigners), travel (especially overseas), and your spouse's relatives.....the new hardline direction was your money-flow and explaining money-details (on top of the previous three I mentioned).
So I worked with this guy who'd been a contractor, and gotten stock with company 'X'. At the conclusion of that employment situation, he left, and he sold the stock back to the company. He made somewhere in the $75,000 range off that sale, and sent the check to the bank to deposit. Two years pass, and it's time to do a 5-year renewal on his investigation (this being in the 1990s). About four months into this renewal process.....the audit people come back.
They want to know about this one deposit at the bank. Remembering it was not an issue. They wanted to know the path....where did the money come from. Well....this took an entire Saturday morning with his filing system, to find the old company 'slip' and the letter to explain the sale and profit. Prior to this period? No one would have ever noted the deposit, or had to do detail efforts to explain sources of income.
So I noticed over the next decade after that.....another guy, with two events that proved to be troublesome. First, he'd inherited a property and held it for around fifteen years......then sold it (making in the range of $100k to $150k). That deposit experience was split into two episodes (one was the downpayment and then the rest that came a month later). Yes, the audit folks doing the renewal of the clearance wanted to know about that.
This guy spent a good long day looking over his records. He finally found a will-statement to show how he acquired the property. But this deposit business occurred four years prior to the audit, and it proved difficult to show on paper how it was related to that property. They eventually believed enough of the story to let that go.
But he had this second inheritance episode to deal with (another relative). This involved an odd collection of items that had in the range of $100k to $200k (coins, guns, etc). The will in this case was real clear on the items. One sentence simply said the 'coin collection' in a bank box. Another sentence had 'gun collection in a basement room'. The collection was split up and sold over a two-year period, and while there were sales statements, they weren't that clear.
All of this made for a miserable experience with the audit folks, and added at least six weeks onto the experience.
Looking at these White House folks....most having a business background, I suspect that the audit folks want clear statements on how property was acquired, and sold at such-and-such profit. These folks really don't want a lot of knowledge on their private dealings to be written down or released to the public. I can understand how the White House leadership views this clearance business in a different light.
Another problem which rarely gets brought up.....if you were a business man who'd traveled a good bit of the past five years (say sixty trips outside of the US), then putting together a listing, and who/what details would be intense (maybe taking 20 man-hours to get all the info for a sixty-trip form). Why did you make four trips to London in April of 2014? Who did you meet? Did you develop a close personal relationship with any British citizens? These type of questions just lead onto more questions.
The end of this topic? I doubt it.
Having been through the 'game' of security clearances in my life, an observation might be offered here.
At some point in the 1990s, the emphasis of the security clearance investigation business changed. Where before, the big hype was relationships (with foreigners), travel (especially overseas), and your spouse's relatives.....the new hardline direction was your money-flow and explaining money-details (on top of the previous three I mentioned).
So I worked with this guy who'd been a contractor, and gotten stock with company 'X'. At the conclusion of that employment situation, he left, and he sold the stock back to the company. He made somewhere in the $75,000 range off that sale, and sent the check to the bank to deposit. Two years pass, and it's time to do a 5-year renewal on his investigation (this being in the 1990s). About four months into this renewal process.....the audit people come back.
They want to know about this one deposit at the bank. Remembering it was not an issue. They wanted to know the path....where did the money come from. Well....this took an entire Saturday morning with his filing system, to find the old company 'slip' and the letter to explain the sale and profit. Prior to this period? No one would have ever noted the deposit, or had to do detail efforts to explain sources of income.
So I noticed over the next decade after that.....another guy, with two events that proved to be troublesome. First, he'd inherited a property and held it for around fifteen years......then sold it (making in the range of $100k to $150k). That deposit experience was split into two episodes (one was the downpayment and then the rest that came a month later). Yes, the audit folks doing the renewal of the clearance wanted to know about that.
This guy spent a good long day looking over his records. He finally found a will-statement to show how he acquired the property. But this deposit business occurred four years prior to the audit, and it proved difficult to show on paper how it was related to that property. They eventually believed enough of the story to let that go.
But he had this second inheritance episode to deal with (another relative). This involved an odd collection of items that had in the range of $100k to $200k (coins, guns, etc). The will in this case was real clear on the items. One sentence simply said the 'coin collection' in a bank box. Another sentence had 'gun collection in a basement room'. The collection was split up and sold over a two-year period, and while there were sales statements, they weren't that clear.
All of this made for a miserable experience with the audit folks, and added at least six weeks onto the experience.
Looking at these White House folks....most having a business background, I suspect that the audit folks want clear statements on how property was acquired, and sold at such-and-such profit. These folks really don't want a lot of knowledge on their private dealings to be written down or released to the public. I can understand how the White House leadership views this clearance business in a different light.
Another problem which rarely gets brought up.....if you were a business man who'd traveled a good bit of the past five years (say sixty trips outside of the US), then putting together a listing, and who/what details would be intense (maybe taking 20 man-hours to get all the info for a sixty-trip form). Why did you make four trips to London in April of 2014? Who did you meet? Did you develop a close personal relationship with any British citizens? These type of questions just lead onto more questions.
The end of this topic? I doubt it.
Getting Rid of the Electoral College
First, is it actually possible? You'd have to write an amendment out, and get it passed via one of two methods: (1) Getting a two-thirds vote via BOTH the House and Senate or (2) getting the legislation passed by three-quarters of the state legislatures. The odds of either agreeing and passing the end of the Electoral College? Pretty much zero. The Democrats may have 235 members in the House, but way short on the two-thirds number required. The odds that all 235 would agree to dump the Electoral College? If you were a southern Democrat, you'd find some voters who question the value of this idea.
Second, lets say you got the vote and accomplished this.....dumping the Electoral College. What really happens over the next three election cycles after that?
My humble belief is that people would begin to realize that it's the population centers of five states (California, Texas, Florida, Illinois, and New York) that matter. So people in lesser states (like Oregon or Tennessee) would see reasons to skip voting. It wouldn't matter if you were Republican or Democrat.....you'd just see this as a wasted cause. This in turn, would affect local and state offices. You could actually have a state election in Mississippi where only 35-percent of the registered voters showed up, and the bulk of the state's voters simply skipped the election.
Somewhere down the line....maybe in a dozen years, you'd find that maybe a quarter of the normal voters simply refused to participate, and the President's election was mostly considered a 'joke'. Then, the most unlikely scenario would occur....you'd have a comedian who'd run as an independent, and shock both himself and the political establishment....by winning. You can view this scenario underway in the Ukraine (yes, the comedian is actually considered a prime candidate to win now).
Opening up a bigger mess? In the end, if we got to this termination of the Electoral College, it'd be brought back within twenty years, to resolve and fix things.
Second, lets say you got the vote and accomplished this.....dumping the Electoral College. What really happens over the next three election cycles after that?
My humble belief is that people would begin to realize that it's the population centers of five states (California, Texas, Florida, Illinois, and New York) that matter. So people in lesser states (like Oregon or Tennessee) would see reasons to skip voting. It wouldn't matter if you were Republican or Democrat.....you'd just see this as a wasted cause. This in turn, would affect local and state offices. You could actually have a state election in Mississippi where only 35-percent of the registered voters showed up, and the bulk of the state's voters simply skipped the election.
Somewhere down the line....maybe in a dozen years, you'd find that maybe a quarter of the normal voters simply refused to participate, and the President's election was mostly considered a 'joke'. Then, the most unlikely scenario would occur....you'd have a comedian who'd run as an independent, and shock both himself and the political establishment....by winning. You can view this scenario underway in the Ukraine (yes, the comedian is actually considered a prime candidate to win now).
Opening up a bigger mess? In the end, if we got to this termination of the Electoral College, it'd be brought back within twenty years, to resolve and fix things.
Saturday, 30 March 2019
Statue Admiring
One day while out walking, I came around this corner, and here was this artsy sales shop on the street, where 'merchandise' was laid out.
I spent around three minutes standing there and admiring 'booby' lady and the water-fountain appearance.
In Alabama, we would have put something like this near the barn and offered up this for horses and cattle to sip from, while standing there after sweating through a trailer-load of handling hay.
I didn't have a chance to ask the Greek guy about the cost factor....it was probably at least a thousand dollars. He probably sold a dozen of them yearly. Greek guys have time to sip coffee and stand there to admire things like this....daily. It's probably a good thing that you can't buy things like this in the US.
Thursday, 28 March 2019
'Collusion' Story
Somewhere between 2000 and 2005, while I worked as a contractor for the Air Force in Germany, we came to have this new four-star Air Force general arrive. In a matter of days (not even weeks), this guy had created a turbulent atmosphere with massive chaos and people began to question his sanity. Somewhere in his 'we need to do this' orders....was the creation of various fake-programs, which all revolved around the use of the word 'combat'.
There were programs for health care, the chapel folks, keeping the base clean, etc. Each program was addressed as 'Combat X' or 'Combat Y'.
At some point, he insisted that commercials needed to be developed to inform the public on bases about these programs. The reaction was....a lot of Army folks watched the AFN (Armed Forces Network) as well.
As they began to watch the 'Combat X' commercials (usually 30 to 60 seconds), they eventually started laughing. In Army-bluntness.....the Air Force folks didn't know what combat was, and invoking combat on base cleanliness was a joke.
So I had to go one day over to Mannheim to visit a small AF office there and ended up in a conversation with two Army guys, and a AF NCO. This 'combat' commercial thing came up.
The Army guys explained that a new drinking game had been created in the Army dorms. In a TV room.....the young Army guys would come in and sit down on a Saturday evening with a bottle and a shot-glass. A challenge would be mounted in the TV room to the group (usually five to ten), and each time that a Air Force 'Combat X' commercial came on....with the word 'combat' uttered....they had to do a shot.
On normal work-day evenings, it wasn't that bad....maybe the word 'combat' got uttered just ten times. But on a Thanksgiving weekend, with football games on and the necessity for AFN to fill commercial time, you might have the word 'combat' uttered 40 times in one evening (over 4 hours). You'd walk into a TV at 11 PM and find six guys passed out, on the 'combat' challenge.
I've been watching this news media business over the past couple of months, with CNN's constant round-the-clock Trump coverage, where his name is uttered forty times in an hour, and collusion is uttered at least twenty times per hour.
I'm beginning to wonder when college kids will go to a drinking game with CNN, where 'collusion' is the key word for a shot, or the word 'Trump', and you find some kid passed out about thirty minutes into the prime-time newscast.
The question is.....if the kid passed out at the half-way point of the show, does he count as a full-up viewer, for national statistics.
And for the record, within 24 hours after the 'Combat X' general left his job....the commercials stopped. I imagine it was hard for the Army guys to recover in this period, and while at some rehab episode....they had to explain how they stupidly got into this shot-game.
There were programs for health care, the chapel folks, keeping the base clean, etc. Each program was addressed as 'Combat X' or 'Combat Y'.
At some point, he insisted that commercials needed to be developed to inform the public on bases about these programs. The reaction was....a lot of Army folks watched the AFN (Armed Forces Network) as well.
As they began to watch the 'Combat X' commercials (usually 30 to 60 seconds), they eventually started laughing. In Army-bluntness.....the Air Force folks didn't know what combat was, and invoking combat on base cleanliness was a joke.
So I had to go one day over to Mannheim to visit a small AF office there and ended up in a conversation with two Army guys, and a AF NCO. This 'combat' commercial thing came up.
The Army guys explained that a new drinking game had been created in the Army dorms. In a TV room.....the young Army guys would come in and sit down on a Saturday evening with a bottle and a shot-glass. A challenge would be mounted in the TV room to the group (usually five to ten), and each time that a Air Force 'Combat X' commercial came on....with the word 'combat' uttered....they had to do a shot.
On normal work-day evenings, it wasn't that bad....maybe the word 'combat' got uttered just ten times. But on a Thanksgiving weekend, with football games on and the necessity for AFN to fill commercial time, you might have the word 'combat' uttered 40 times in one evening (over 4 hours). You'd walk into a TV at 11 PM and find six guys passed out, on the 'combat' challenge.
I've been watching this news media business over the past couple of months, with CNN's constant round-the-clock Trump coverage, where his name is uttered forty times in an hour, and collusion is uttered at least twenty times per hour.
I'm beginning to wonder when college kids will go to a drinking game with CNN, where 'collusion' is the key word for a shot, or the word 'Trump', and you find some kid passed out about thirty minutes into the prime-time newscast.
The question is.....if the kid passed out at the half-way point of the show, does he count as a full-up viewer, for national statistics.
And for the record, within 24 hours after the 'Combat X' general left his job....the commercials stopped. I imagine it was hard for the Army guys to recover in this period, and while at some rehab episode....they had to explain how they stupidly got into this shot-game.
Wednesday, 27 March 2019
Talking Over News
My brother brought this topic up....Tom Brokaw and the biased nature of news, and it deserves a bit of pondering and consideration.
As a kid growing up in rural Alabama in 1975, my sources for news was limited to roughly fourteen things: (1) CBS, (2) NBC, (3) ABC, (4) the AP folks via local radio, (5) two regional newspapers (Florence, Birmingham), (6) the Nashville paper, (7) Grit, (8) some farm newspaper that my dad subscribed to, (9) Paul Harvey news and commentary (more commentary than news itself), (10) Time magazine, (11) copies of National Geographic that a relative would drop off, (12) Argosy magazine (ending in 1978), (13) PBS with a weekly political chat show (I might have watched that once a year), and finally (14) US News and World Report (what my grandfather often quoted out of for political dialog and everything you needed to know and could read in sixty minutes).
At some later point (after I'd left home), my dad added some Mennonite paper (mostly lacking news but giving you good advice on weather predictions for the fall, baking recipes, wagon accidents, and travels of various Mennonites).
Today? There's probably over 300 sources of daily news that I read through on a daily basis. Some based out of the UK, and Germany. I'll even occasionally watch RT (the Putin network), and catch an hour per week of France-24 (in English).
The blunt truth is that there are now at least ten different variations on just about every single story. Some folks will tell you a 40-line story, which has only three simple facts built into it. CNN can spend an entire hour with four experts telling you about Russian collusion, as if it was a wild bear in your basement and about to get through the basement door (any minute now).
Some folks (well, maybe not my brother) can name all members of the Kardashian family, and give you a four-line description on their status for this week.
Some of the networks will bring on various Senators for a Sunday chat, and do their best to let the marginally intelligent guy get by with answers that don't seem to say much.
All of this just makes me wonder....have we turned the news into entertainment?
As a kid growing up in rural Alabama in 1975, my sources for news was limited to roughly fourteen things: (1) CBS, (2) NBC, (3) ABC, (4) the AP folks via local radio, (5) two regional newspapers (Florence, Birmingham), (6) the Nashville paper, (7) Grit, (8) some farm newspaper that my dad subscribed to, (9) Paul Harvey news and commentary (more commentary than news itself), (10) Time magazine, (11) copies of National Geographic that a relative would drop off, (12) Argosy magazine (ending in 1978), (13) PBS with a weekly political chat show (I might have watched that once a year), and finally (14) US News and World Report (what my grandfather often quoted out of for political dialog and everything you needed to know and could read in sixty minutes).
At some later point (after I'd left home), my dad added some Mennonite paper (mostly lacking news but giving you good advice on weather predictions for the fall, baking recipes, wagon accidents, and travels of various Mennonites).
Today? There's probably over 300 sources of daily news that I read through on a daily basis. Some based out of the UK, and Germany. I'll even occasionally watch RT (the Putin network), and catch an hour per week of France-24 (in English).
The blunt truth is that there are now at least ten different variations on just about every single story. Some folks will tell you a 40-line story, which has only three simple facts built into it. CNN can spend an entire hour with four experts telling you about Russian collusion, as if it was a wild bear in your basement and about to get through the basement door (any minute now).
Some folks (well, maybe not my brother) can name all members of the Kardashian family, and give you a four-line description on their status for this week.
Some of the networks will bring on various Senators for a Sunday chat, and do their best to let the marginally intelligent guy get by with answers that don't seem to say much.
All of this just makes me wonder....have we turned the news into entertainment?
Explaining 'Smolletocracy'
Smolletocracy: this is where you (a dysfunctional society) exist with a corrupted authority, fake politics, and fraudulent legal system.
It's where you wake up each day....whining over your place in life and live in a fraudulent manner, or having hour-by-hour hoaxes dreamed up.....to continue your fake lifestyle.
It's where you wake up each day....whining over your place in life and live in a fraudulent manner, or having hour-by-hour hoaxes dreamed up.....to continue your fake lifestyle.
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