Monthly Archives: March 2019

Shocking revelation: Trump Cheats At Golf

Other, , , , ,

As revealed in the shocking new book, Commander in Cheat: How Golf Explains Trump, by Rick Reilly

“He cheats at the highest level. He cheats when people are watching and he cheats when they aren’t. He cheats whether you like it or not. He cheats because that’s how he plays golf … if you’re playing golf with him, he’s going to cheat.”*

Reilly has been with Trump on the fairway, the green, and in the weeds, and has seen first-hand how the president plays–and it’s not pretty. Based on his personal experiences, and interviews with dozens of golf pros, amateurs, developers, partners, opponents, and even caddies who have first-hand experience with Trump on the course, Reilly takes a deep and often hilarious look at how Trump shamelessly cheats at golf, lies about it, sues over it, bullies with it, and profits off it.

From Trump’s ridiculous claim to have won eighteen club championships, to his devious cheating tricks, to his tainted reputation as a golf course tycoon, Commander in Cheat tells you everything you need to know about the man.

Stacey Abrams, POTUS Candidate and her New Book

Politics, , ,

I assume Stacey Abrams is a candidate for President, though she has not officially declared.

The point has recently been made that three southern candidates came with a very small margin of beating their unbeatable Republican opponents in the last election. One of them was white, two black, and the only real difference among them candidate-wise is that everyone is falling all over themselves to elevate the white guy to the status of High Candidate, while the two African American candidates have, at best, been suggested for a subservient role.

That got me thinking, “has Stacey Abrams written a book by any chance” and yes, she has! Lead from the Outside: How to Build Your Future and Make Real Change by Stacey Abrams.

Leadership is hard. Convincing others?and yourself?that you are capable of taking charge and achieving more requires insight and courage. Lead from the Outside is the handbook for outsiders, written with an eye toward the challenges that hinder women, people of color, the working class, members of the LGBTQ community, and millennials ready to make change. Stacey uses her hard-won insights to break down how ambition, fear, money, and failure function in leadership, and she includes practical exercises to help you realize your own ambition and hone your skills. Lead from the Outside discusses candidly what Stacey has learned over the course of her impressive career in politics, business and the nonprofit world: that differences in race, gender, and class provide vital strength, which we can employ to rise to the top and create real and lasting change.

And here is a short video on the book:

A few preliminary thoughts about the Mueller Report vis-a-vis the Trump Crime Family and the 2020 election

Politics, ,

1) Mueller found no collusion, but does his report explain why a half dozen key Trump Crime Family members blatantly and in apparent coordination with each other lied about their contacts (which did happen) with Russian officials and agents?

This could be explained as follows.

For their part, Russia interfered with the election. This is known.

For their part, the Trump Crime Family attempted to coordinate with the Russians, but the Russians are not stupid. They regarded the Trump people as the Gang that Couldn’t Shoot Strait, and while Trump Jr, Flynn, Pence, and the rest of them, kept trying to open back channels and bend over backwards for the Russians, the Kremlin kept them at arms length. Why allow the idiots to get themselves arrested or impeached, thus becoming useless, rather than useful, idiots?

2) The special prosecutor a) chose to not move forward on obstruction but b) it was Barr and the Justice Department that determined that this is not worth pursuing. It is pretty clear that Trump committed obstruction, he is just going to get away with it. We have to see the report itself to consider this further.

3) Since so much of the left, the Democratic, the blue-wavist, momentum was (unwisely) tied up in this report, that is done now. Trump was polled as behind various Democrats in head-to-head comparisons, and his popularity and approval ratings were all down. The next head to head comparisons will likely show Trump as a possible 2020 winner, and his approval ratings will now go abruptly up. Had this report come out in this exact manner last October 1st, there would not have been as strong of a blue wave.

4) That slightly squishy zone, those who are Trump supporters but who we thought could be convinced to turn on him, will now harden and move fully into the Trump camp. This includes voters, the handful of Republican Senators that occassionally pretended to contemplate doing the right thing, and everyone in between. That particular political strategy for Democrats, not very important to begin with, is surely now zero gone.

5) We are probably left with only one option: To vote Trump out of office, and along with him, a bunch of Senators.

6) Now more than ever, infighting among Democrats is dooming our children, our planet, and ourselves.

This is an important perspective:

Who will be the Democratic Nominee, who will be the POTUS?

Politics,

We often hear of bookmaker odds for elections. Sometimes they are right no, sometimes they are not. Here is a press release from BookMaker showing the current betting status.

San Jose, Costa Rica–March 15,2019–Online sportsbook BookMaker.eu has released updated odds to win the Democratic Nomination with Joe Biden as the 11/4 favorite over a crowded field. Continue reading Who will be the Democratic Nominee, who will be the POTUS? →

Don’t cripe on Pelosi for her impeachment stance: She is correct

Politics, , , ,

Before you spend any more energy criping about Pelosi and impeachment, find out what impeachment is and how it would go.

What people need to understand is that the Senate, i.e., the Republicans, i.e. Mitch McConnell himself, runs the show in the impeachment hearings. It is done by the Senate. They do it. It is them. Not the house.

It is a trial is run by the Senate with the Chief Justice presiding, and the President present the whole time in the front of the room. Trump will be able to call witnesses. Repeat. Trump will be able to call witnesses. McConnell will be able to call witnesses. Repeat. McConnell will be able to call witnesses.

This means that not only will the impeachment fail, but the Republicans in the Senate, led by Mitch McConnell, will basically be putting on Celebrity Apprentice 2.0 staring Donald Trump.

It won’t just be a fail. It will be a multi day show put on and arranged entirely by Trump’s people.

Unless we get to a point where there is the necessary number of Republicans in the Senate to convict, we do not want this to happen. Pelosi is right.

No, it is NOT rational to keep flying the Boeing 737 Max

Technology

Boeing 737 Max:

-First commercial flight May 2017

-First fatal crash October 2018

-Second fatal crash March 2019

Both fatal crashes were attended by a nose-down response by auto-pilot right after takeoff.

The same nose-down response by auto-pilot was reported many times (dozens?) by pilots for months.

Boeing has a software fix that changes the way autopilot handles incorrect nose-down responses with autopilot. The software fix (delayed by the Trump-McConnell shutdown) is still not ready yet.

This is the highest rate of crashes or fatalities of any single model of commercial airline. Maybe. I haven’t checked, but it’s gotta be or close, anyway.

Response by Hyper-skeptical skeptics: “Air travel is safe, so this is not actually a problem, don’t ground the flights.”

Response by the idiots who run the Trump administration: “Everything is fine, don’t worry about it.”

Response by every other country in the world, practically, “Out of an abundance of caution, ground the planes until this is figured out”

Response by the air flight industry and regulators when the b787 dreamliners had unexpected unexplained problems: Ground all the planes and fix the problem.

Response when SW planes discovered to have inadequate inspections: Ground the plains and fix the problem

Response when BQ400s have landing gear problem a couple of times (2007): Ground the plane until it is addressed.

In other words, the NORMAL response to this sort of situation is to ground the model. This is THE REASON AIR TRAVEL IS SAFE. Air travel is not inherently and automatically safe. It is safe because when a model aircraft if considered POTENTIALLY FAULTY in some serious way it is grounded until that problem is addressed.

Finally, after everybody else grounded the plane, the Trump administration FOLLOWS.

I’m sure the hyper-skeptics are still saying it is irrational to ground the 737Max planes.

Inslee for President!

Politics,

I a not actually supporting a candidate for nomination for USPOTUS at this time, and I won’t for a while. I’m too engaged in the process of caucus, delegate selection, primary, etc. to do that. Let it never be said that Great Laden caused a particular candidate to be favored in their quest to get Minnesota’s convention delegates.

I will say that I am likely to discount (as in move down the list) old white guys including Biden and Sanders, but I have no intention of ruling anyone out at this time.

But, I am very concerned about climate change, and at this time, one could argue that Jay Inslee is THE climate candidate running right now. For all you Sanders fans out there, and for all you who like Sanders but want him to be a Democrat, notice that Inslee is the “I’m Sanders but an actual Democrat” candidate. Perhaps. He’s also the White Male Elizabeth Warren candidate.

Point is, I think everyone should support him with sufficient vigor to keep him in the race so he can make an impact on the debates and possibly beyond. Maybe he’s the one. Who knows?

Watch these interviews to find out more:

How to extract pages from a PDF file

Technology, ,

If you have a PDF file and need to extract a subset of pages, creating a new PDF file with those pages in it, you can do that.

I like PDF Lab‘s PDFtk aka PDF toolkit. This is not OpenSource and there is both a non free pro and free version of it. I’ve tried the free version (example below) and was impressed. Next time I need to do a lot of PDF work I’ll probably fork out the 399 for the pro version. (That’s 399 pennies, quite cheap. It is developed by Sid Steward, the author of PDF Hacks: 100 Industrial-Strength Tips & Tools.

So, for example, I can get pages 11-20 of a larger file called big.pdf extracted into a smaller file called extracted.pdf like this:

pdftk A=bigpdf cat A11-20 output extracted.pdf

That line of code makes almost no sense to me, but it works.

I learned about this tip at a Linux Journal Tech Tip page on extracting pages from a PDF, where you will find several other approaches.

The Umbrella Academy

Books,

How can you not love a TV series where the most together character in the room is a chimpanzee that can talk.

I recommend the Netflix series The Umbrella Academy, and I hope Netflix does not do to this what they did to the Marvel shows they recently created, which was to sell them to a different pay to stream network that I do not subscribe to.

The Umbrella Academy is based on a set of graphic novels. There are multiple versions, but this is a suggested in-order set to look at if it interests you.

Number 1: The Apocalypse Suite, which includes numbers 1 through 5,thought this volume goes through number 6 and has other material in it:

The Umbrella Academy, Vol. 1

Number 2: Dallas. Yes, there is a Kennedy connection.

The Umbrella Academy: Dallas

Number 3: Hotel Oblivion.

The Umbrella Academy Volume 3: Hotel Oblivion