On the 4th of February.....roughly four weeks away, President Trump is slated to present a State of the Union message to the House/Senate.
I think it's now possible that Nancy Pelosi will not hand the articles of impeachment over....until the morning of the 4th, to stage a chaotic moment that evening and hoping that Trump will go into some ballistic mode for the likely one-hour speech.
Crazy to wait out another four weeks? Yeah, I might agree to that. But there's really not that many reasons to draw this out past the mid-January period.
What Trump might do?
If I were Trump and anticipating this to be the scenario....I'd come to announce around the last day of January (a Friday, the 31st).....I'd announce that a typed-up State of the Union message will be handed to the House at 7 PM on the 4th, and that as President.....I'm actually delivering the speech in some arena (maybe in a heavily Trump-voter state).....around real people.
Then at the conclusion of this State of the Union speech....I'd announce that as soon as the Impeachment is concluded.....I'm making another speech over where things are going in 2020, with five impact areas that I'm demanding the House and Senate attend to, and that I'm going direct to your own districts during the year to talk about these national agenda items. Either you get onboard, or I'll make you explain why you don't want these things as your goals.
Wednesday, 1 January 2020
Sunday, 29 December 2019
If You Built a 400 Unit Apartment Building for the Homeless in Los Angles
I sat and watched a discussion group over the past month get onto the topic of trying to resolve the homeless problems in Los Angles, and they came to this delicate topic.
Suppose you built this place....three-story unit, taking up an entire block, with some green park in the middle (landscaped).
Then you moved 400 folks into the units.
The question then arose...how long would it take for the unit itself....to become one giant ghetto with drug dealers and alcoholics laying around? And would the local neighborhoods next to this....would they accept this type of condition without causing massive grief over the destruction of their surroundings?
This scenario has been on my mind and it's part of the whole landscape of trying to resolve this mess.
Maybe you could establish a test for the future occupants and find 400 folks who were non-drug users and non-drinkers. But then you'd come to a portion of the 400 folks (maybe one-quarter to half of them) who were Paranoid Schizophrenic types. This would be the group who'd be arguing with fellow occupants about the style of their clothing, the color of their shoes, the imagined aura of their heads, and the provocative nature of conversation (just how much of a Cowboys fan you really are....might set them off).
So all of this laid out....does it really mean that a 400-unit housing project would really resolve much of anything?
That's the problem. You could go and get 20-billion dollars from the federal government to build units like this all over Portland, Seattle, SF, and Los Angles, then find a decade later that the money did absolutely nothing but create newer and more intense homeless problems. The odds of the 20-billion dollars in units being torn down within twenty years? I'd give it better than a 50-percent chance. And what happens then? The homeless who found homes, then lost homes?
Go and explain that to the public who paid taxes to build fake solutions.
Suppose you built this place....three-story unit, taking up an entire block, with some green park in the middle (landscaped).
Then you moved 400 folks into the units.
The question then arose...how long would it take for the unit itself....to become one giant ghetto with drug dealers and alcoholics laying around? And would the local neighborhoods next to this....would they accept this type of condition without causing massive grief over the destruction of their surroundings?
This scenario has been on my mind and it's part of the whole landscape of trying to resolve this mess.
Maybe you could establish a test for the future occupants and find 400 folks who were non-drug users and non-drinkers. But then you'd come to a portion of the 400 folks (maybe one-quarter to half of them) who were Paranoid Schizophrenic types. This would be the group who'd be arguing with fellow occupants about the style of their clothing, the color of their shoes, the imagined aura of their heads, and the provocative nature of conversation (just how much of a Cowboys fan you really are....might set them off).
So all of this laid out....does it really mean that a 400-unit housing project would really resolve much of anything?
That's the problem. You could go and get 20-billion dollars from the federal government to build units like this all over Portland, Seattle, SF, and Los Angles, then find a decade later that the money did absolutely nothing but create newer and more intense homeless problems. The odds of the 20-billion dollars in units being torn down within twenty years? I'd give it better than a 50-percent chance. And what happens then? The homeless who found homes, then lost homes?
Go and explain that to the public who paid taxes to build fake solutions.
The 94-Million Dollar Problem
In a normal year, San Francisco will go and spend $94,000,000 on homeless folks within the city. That's to handle the 'crisis' in the city for 8,000 to 9,000 people.
I sat and pondered over this.
This comes out to around $10,400 a year, per person.
In Alabama terms, if you handed me the money and said that it'd be a regular sum for at least ten years....it'd be a rather simple task.
I'd go find a huge chunk of land (say 300 acres) and lay out a mini-city of modular cabins (15 ft by 20 ft) with a basic studio appearance. I'd issue out a free breakfast each morning, some baloney sandwiches with a Sun Drop cola for lunch, and a fried chicken plate each evening.
At the end of the year, I'd still have 25-million left in my hand.
The problem here is that this all San Francisco 'cost' and not Alabama 'cost'. You toss in city managers making $90k, and a little empire of 100 homeless technicians, and you have eaten away at fair chunk of the $94-million.
What'll have to happen to change the dynamics of the SF homeless issue? Well....you'd have to go and probably triple the $94-million to around $300-million....to really retake the city and end the 'crap-on-the-streets' chatter. And where does the money come from? Yeah, that's really the big question left to answer.
Then you come to pause on this last question....with the drug-usage dynamic playing into this....why would you assume that the numbers will stay at 8-thousand to 9-thousand? I would go and forecast that the homeless numbers in SF will bump to 12,000 by the end of 2021.
I sat and pondered over this.
This comes out to around $10,400 a year, per person.
In Alabama terms, if you handed me the money and said that it'd be a regular sum for at least ten years....it'd be a rather simple task.
I'd go find a huge chunk of land (say 300 acres) and lay out a mini-city of modular cabins (15 ft by 20 ft) with a basic studio appearance. I'd issue out a free breakfast each morning, some baloney sandwiches with a Sun Drop cola for lunch, and a fried chicken plate each evening.
At the end of the year, I'd still have 25-million left in my hand.
The problem here is that this all San Francisco 'cost' and not Alabama 'cost'. You toss in city managers making $90k, and a little empire of 100 homeless technicians, and you have eaten away at fair chunk of the $94-million.
What'll have to happen to change the dynamics of the SF homeless issue? Well....you'd have to go and probably triple the $94-million to around $300-million....to really retake the city and end the 'crap-on-the-streets' chatter. And where does the money come from? Yeah, that's really the big question left to answer.
Then you come to pause on this last question....with the drug-usage dynamic playing into this....why would you assume that the numbers will stay at 8-thousand to 9-thousand? I would go and forecast that the homeless numbers in SF will bump to 12,000 by the end of 2021.
Saturday, 28 December 2019
The 'Einstein-Insanity' Style of Impeachment
It's a term that I heard this morning and you have to sit and ponder upon it for a while.
In this type of impeachment situation.....you go through the same processes.....doing the same thing, and in each single case, you expect a different outcome in the end.
It'd be like a group of eighth-grade kids in the school lab, with the five ingredients for some lab experiment, and they go down the list of processes, to discover each day for two weeks.....you can only have the same outcome, unless you radically changed the procedures, or added a sixth ingredient, or deducted one ingredient.
It's a bit comical, but readily fits into the mess we have today.
In this type of impeachment situation.....you go through the same processes.....doing the same thing, and in each single case, you expect a different outcome in the end.
It'd be like a group of eighth-grade kids in the school lab, with the five ingredients for some lab experiment, and they go down the list of processes, to discover each day for two weeks.....you can only have the same outcome, unless you radically changed the procedures, or added a sixth ingredient, or deducted one ingredient.
It's a bit comical, but readily fits into the mess we have today.
Friday, 27 December 2019
Pelosi, Impeachment and Senate 'Scheduling'
Most people don't grasp this, but there's a flowing schedule which sets out Senate priorities over the next month or two. Various committees have people scheduled to appear, and witnesses have the dates marked on their calendars.
So as each week goes by......the Senate schedule is kinda in a mess to keep organized.....if they don't get the Articles of Impeachment.
It'd be like your boss hinting of a major conference meeting next week, but as of Friday this week.....you have no idea which day it will occur, or at what time. And you might be shocked that this critical meeting.....gets pushed to the week after, or even two weeks after next week.
So Pelosi is kinda playing with this mess, and seeing how much she can probably get away with.
So as each week goes by......the Senate schedule is kinda in a mess to keep organized.....if they don't get the Articles of Impeachment.
It'd be like your boss hinting of a major conference meeting next week, but as of Friday this week.....you have no idea which day it will occur, or at what time. And you might be shocked that this critical meeting.....gets pushed to the week after, or even two weeks after next week.
So Pelosi is kinda playing with this mess, and seeing how much she can probably get away with.
Closing of the Newseum
Next Tuesday, the Newseum will shut down in DC. It was a critically placed building (fine structure) that sat between the White House and the Capital Building.
I went to the structure in 2011 and spent two hours walking around. For me, it was the biggest waste of $20-$25 that I'd ever made in my life. On that particular Saturday, there was one busload of kids in the place (mostly bored by the tour), and maybe ten tourists.
They basically tried to make a museum into something that tourists would want to come and see.....it being all about the news.
Financially, from day one (11 years ago), it's been in this profitability 'mess'. No one cared to come, and it was continually draining resources. So the structure is being sold off, and this marginal idea will come to an end.
I went to the structure in 2011 and spent two hours walking around. For me, it was the biggest waste of $20-$25 that I'd ever made in my life. On that particular Saturday, there was one busload of kids in the place (mostly bored by the tour), and maybe ten tourists.
They basically tried to make a museum into something that tourists would want to come and see.....it being all about the news.
Financially, from day one (11 years ago), it's been in this profitability 'mess'. No one cared to come, and it was continually draining resources. So the structure is being sold off, and this marginal idea will come to an end.
2019, and Great Movies
Back in the mid-1970s....there was a year or two in there where there just weren't that many great movies produced. In fact, you can go to several periods in the past 30 years where there might have been six classics put out in a year.
So I come to 2019, and this odd factor of maybe fifteen great movies, and it's kinda shocking at the level worth seeing.
The list:
- The Irishman
- Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
- Richard Jewell
- Little Women
- Avengers Endgame (ok, maybe not a classic but worth viewing)
- Knives Out
- Marriage Story
- Parasite (South Korean, and surprising quality)
- Joker
- Downtown Abbey
- Uncut Gems
- Ford versus Ferrari
- The Lighthouse
- 1917 (probably one of the ten best war movies ever made)
- Dolemite is My Name (Eddie Murphy ought to win a Oscar)
- Midway (actually a great war movie)
- Birds of Passage
Then behind this group....there's at least ten more which are just a step or two behind. This group would include The Kid (great western), Deadwood the Movie (another great western),
So I come to 2019, and this odd factor of maybe fifteen great movies, and it's kinda shocking at the level worth seeing.
The list:
- The Irishman
- Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
- Richard Jewell
- Little Women
- Avengers Endgame (ok, maybe not a classic but worth viewing)
- Knives Out
- Marriage Story
- Parasite (South Korean, and surprising quality)
- Joker
- Downtown Abbey
- Uncut Gems
- Ford versus Ferrari
- The Lighthouse
- 1917 (probably one of the ten best war movies ever made)
- Dolemite is My Name (Eddie Murphy ought to win a Oscar)
- Midway (actually a great war movie)
- Birds of Passage
Then behind this group....there's at least ten more which are just a step or two behind. This group would include The Kid (great western), Deadwood the Movie (another great western),
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