Travels with Gunther and Kara

Yeah…we’re here home alone socially distancing ourselves and I gotta tell ya it ain’t a whole passle o’ fun…nope, not at all.

The good news is that the weather is nice and warm, we got plenty of food and booze, Amazon is still delivering, and we still have more boxes to unpack. The bad news is that we’re getting kinda bored with doing nuttin’ and depressed with the news.

We ordered a china buffet and hutch for our stemware and good china from Amazon the other day…it was the one Connie liked best and was supposed to be delivered April 21…it was coming all the way from Atlanta ya know. Well…it arrived today…we unpacked the top hutch portion after looking at the damage to the shipping boxes, and discovered about 8 cracks in the wood…looks like it got smashed or fell over or something on the way from Malaysia to here. Neil filled out an Amazon return/refund page, repacked the top into the shipping box, and UPS will be here tomorrow to pick it up. She found another one she likes…although not quite as well…at Rooms To Go so we’ll order that one instead.

So…let’s see what the headlines have today…sorry it’s mostly political and/or virus related but apparently if you get elected as a congress critter or if you’re either in the media or a talking head you’re required to have a lobotomy and completely ignore any actual facts in order to support your political position or assign blame for the whole corona and the associated economic issues thing.

I rewrote this from what I originally said…as you know we’re not strong supporters of the President but (a) we did think he was better than the alternative, (b) he’s not doing as bad as his opponents say or as great as his supporters say, and (c) he did win. He might not be the best spoken President we’ve ever had…but then again that depends on which side of the political spectrum you’re on.

The President has sort of been back and forth on how serious he is taking this…at least according to the media…but to a large extent he is doing what one expects the President to do…trying to maintain calm, ensure the people that we’ll get through it, and letting to a large extent the medical establishment do their thing.

His latest suggestion…that we end the social distancing thing and get back to business by Easter…well, we can’t really do it that soon but he is correct when he says that we can’t make the cure worse than the disease and refers to the numbers of folks that die each year by flu, auto accidents, and several other causes of deaths as compared to the numbers of corona related deaths. Yeah…I know it’s not quite the same since auto accidents aren’t contagious but as a nation it is a fact that we so far have had limited numbers of deaths compared to other causes and the impact on the economy and markets due to everything being closed is significant. Will the economy eventually recover. Sure…but it will take awhile. Will some people die from the corona…sure they will but we simply don’t know how many that will be and we have no idea how many folks have been infected and recovered.

The President is getting blamed for the limited number of tests being done…and in reality that blame is not deserved. There have been fewer tests in the US than South Korea for instance…but that is a result of the CDC and FDA decisions on how to test for this virus. Those organizations are led by what Connie calls Ivory Tower Elitists who are believe that good enough is not actually good enough when better is available. So…instead of developing a simpler, faster, easier to conduct for this virus they developed a very precise DNA analysis test that simply takes longer and can only be performed by a limited number of laboratories due to the limited number of clean rooms and sophisticated instruments that are required. There isn’t anything wrong with that approach on the surface…but in this case maybe better is the enemy of good enough when good enough is much quicker. All that is water under the bridge though…and the decision on what test to develop did not come from the White House…it came from the doctors that run the CDC and FDA.

In any event…wide testing would not really help as much as the media hype would have you believe. One could easily have a negative result even if one had been infected yesterday as the test would not be accurate that quickly…or one could be negative and then get infected on the way home when one went into Starbucks. What a wider number of tests would likely show is that the virus has been more widespread than the number of cases currently being reported…but would show great numbers of people who have antibodies but who had either minor or minimal symptoms…or perhaps no symptoms at all as has been the case in some “positive” results. What these numbers would do is decrease the “death rate” from the virus as that number is determined by dividing the number of deaths by the number of cases…and if you make the denominator smaller the percentage goes down.

I think that what the President is trying to do is get us to not over react to the issue. Yes…it is contagious and…Yes, it is serious. However…it is also not the zombie apocalypse and we’re not all going to die.

Should we get everything back to normal by Easter…surely not and I can’t help but wonder if he is trying to just move us forward and tell us we’ll get through this but doing it in his normal blustery way.

Nope though…according to the media…it’s all his fault and I saw a NY Times article this morning with some scary looking charts. These charts show that if we have social distancing for 2 weeks and then stop the total number of infections will be 128 million…with an appropriate scale to make the peak tall and skinny looking. Then the side by side chart shows what will happen with 2 months of social distancing…only 14 million total infections. It looks scary…but there are no actual facts behind these charts. The Times “created this interactive model with epidemiologists”…but given the Times unfailing opposition to the President and blaming him for everything since his election…it’s not hard to believe that they picked “experts” who agree with them.

Their charts aren’t wrong…they’re just one possible outcome based on a particular set of assumptions made by an unknown set of experts that just might possibly be designed to get the conclusion the Times wants and produce those scary graphs. It is also possible that they are 100% correct…but given the political divisions in the US in the 2020s and the hatred for the President that liberals and most of the media have I don’t believe the Times has a pure and honest motivation here.

Our friends in the media…on both sides…are likewise stupid.  Each of them is slanting their coverage…including their facts…to support their political leanings.

Congress…they’re not any better. The Senate wrote a recovery bill…and since the House Democrats wrote the last one the Senate Republicans wrote this one. Nothing wrong with that in my view…but to hear the Democrats talk this is an abomination of the first magnitude. However…most of what the Senate wrote was actually related to the virus crisis…and the Senate Democrats had some valid objections…for instance they wanted the loans to business to have limitations to prevent using the funds for stock buybacks, bonuses, or other things that benefited the corporation and stockholders at the expense of workers. Mr. McConnell added these during negotiations…which rightfully he said.

Then Ms. Pelosi got irritated…and she came back to town and almost torpedoed the Senate negotiations when she had her caucus write a House Democrat plan…which reads like the progressive wish list. Green New Deal, mandatory same day voter registration, mandatory diversity requirements on corporate boards and executives, money for PBS, money for Planned Parenthood…their list went on and on. As President Bartlett on “The West Wing” used to say…they didn’t want to let a good crisis go to waste but instead wanted to load up this must pass bill with pork and far left demands…and then when the Senate rightfully refused to go along with all of the non virus related expenses it would be the fault of Republicans…at least that is what Democrats and most media would have proclaimed.

Talk about trying to politicize a must pass bill. I understand that the progressives have a wish list…just like the conservatives have one that includes 2nd amendment rights, protection of the border, and cutting back on illegal immigration…which the other side prefers to call “undocumented” and ignore the fact that they are in fact in violation of the law. I also understand that neither side likes the other side’s wish list…but then I also understand that both sides have some valid concerns on many of those issues. 

Unfortunately…I also understand that neither side is really interested in compromise, doing their job, and moving the country forward. It’s much more important to belittle the other side, spout inflammatory rhetoric about the leadership on the other side…and let’s not forget it’s all the President’s fault.

Shouldn’t the corona virus bill…um…address the corona crisis and not be blatantly politicized to try an end run to get crazy demands passed?

On to the election…it is starting to look like Bernie the Socialist…who at least admits that his plan will result in vastly increased taxes on everybody…has peaked out and won’t be the nominee…if he was the President would win reelection in a landslide comparable to Dukakis in 80whatever it was because the folks between center-right and center left…which is at least half of the total voting population I think simply won’t vote for what he wants.

Mr. Biden is now evaluating his choices for VP and has stated he will choose a woman. Immediately the calls went out demanding a “woman of color” be the choice…regardless of competence…the failed Georgia governor candidate Stacey Abrams appears to be the consensus there despite having no real experience and given Mr. Biden’s age he need a VP who is ready to govern on day 1. Me…I think  that he would get a lot of votes if he chose Condoleezza Rice…she’s a woman of color, is reasonably centrist so would help him pull in center voters…but (a) she’s too smart to accept, (b) she has a good job already, and (c) since she’s a Republican Mr. Biden would be crucified by his party…particularly the far left part…even though her selection would demonstrate a willingness to compromise with the other side. She’s far more qualified than Ms. Abrams is though…and since historically candidates run to the fringes during the primary and back to the middle in the general election…she would be a decent choice IMO. Heck…back in the days of the 1700s there was not a VP on the ticket…just the two Presidential nominees and several losing nominees were asked to serve as VP by the winner…something to think about maybe. But…nah…common sense appears to be mighty uncommon these days.

I saw several articles today claiming that Ms. Warren is the “obvious” choice…but she’s not for the same reasons that Bernie was not the correct choice…way too far left to get elected just like the way too far right candidates failed to get the nomination in 2016.

I don’t know what Mr. Biden will do…I’m not on his list of advisors…but I hope he resists the demands of the far left and stays away from the wacko crowd.

Connie and Neil will have to evaluate his positions as he gets closer to the general…and also the prospects for single party control of the government before deciding what to do. Me…I think it would be dangerous for either side to have both the Presidency and control of both houses in Congress…there’s way too much room for political novices to do things that appear good for their party in the short term but are both bad for the party in the long term (removal of filibusters by the Democrats for judge nominees for example) and bad for the country as well. The US remains a primarily center-right country but the vast center geographic portion of the country is essentially ignored by at one party since CA and NY are the only states that really matter ya know…what they think and say should just go since they clearly know better than those rubes in Iowa what the country needs.

A few shots we got since last week.

This is the worst of the 6 or 7 cracks in the top hutch portion of the “going back to Amazon” china cabinet.If it had just been one or two…even the worst ones would have been pretty easy to fix with a little wood glue but there were just too many. After we thought about it…we figured that whatever other one Amazon shipped us to replace this one would have been in the same container on the same ship and gone through the same shipping issues…and while it would likely have different damage we figured it would be pretty similar overall…hence the return/refund. Rooms To Go will unpack it while they are delivering it and we’ll be able to reject the delivery if it is broken a lot easier.

Double Crested Cormorants…these are juveniles as evidenced by the white breast an orange throat…adults are pure black and the males have 2 crests that give them their name.

It was really, really calm one morning so Neil got a couple of reflection shots of our pond from our neighbors back yard. First one is pretty much straight out of the camera and the second one got the HDR treatment to punch up the color, sky, and contrast.

OK…let’s get on to interesting things found on the net…some virus related and some not.

Where did the man-bun come from?

Green New Deal capital punishment.

Most dangerous mammal on the planet.

People are stupid…and it ain’t just Americans…stupidity knows no borders.

This was taken last fall at a climate change protest in Paris where women threw their clothes in the air…stupid photographer I think.

And my personal fave today.

Cyas.

…but that would be an oxymoron because…sure they can because let’s be honest with ourselves…they’re politicians and you can tell they are lying if you see their lips moving.

First up on the hit parade this week…the Iowa caucuses to determine the state’s delegates to the respective Democrat and Republican presidential nominating conventions.

On the Republican side…the President was unopposed except for a couple of fringe candidates…and they used the tried and true method of after the second round of caucusing the precinct captains recorded the votes on paper and called them in to state party officials…and the President won. None of that was surprising.

On the Democratic side however…things went awry. First up…back in 2019 the state party officials decided to build themselves an app for a phone to send in the votes electronically. There was paper involved at the precinct level but the primary way to report results was this app that was specially written for the caucuses. Let’s count the ways that things went wrong with this app.

• The app was written by a company named Shadow Inc…a bare boned coding operation owned and operated by the folks that ran Ms. Clinton’s IT back during the 2016 election…ya know, those brilliant programmers. According to the company bio page…some of them had actual IT experience and a bit more of them worked on her campaign but at least one was a teacher and another worked recently at Starbucks. The company’s founders and backers are directly linked to a progressive non profit named Acronym. Nothing wrong with any of that on the surface until you see the other things they did wrong.
• The app was still being coded Sunday…the day before the caucuses.
• No security audit was done on the code…and it was written for the Android operating system which has known software bugs and security holes.
• No full functionality testing was accomplished…you know…something on the order of “get all precinct captains to try and report a full set of test results in the same hour”…in order to see if the back end of the system actually worked.
• Numerous precinct captains were not a able to download the app until they were…at the caucus site
• No training was done for the users
• No verification was done that the precinct sites actually had…ya know…phone signal which was required for the app to work.

So…when the app failed…the precinct captains tried the backup report via phone method…and where then left on hold for 2+ hours before they gave up, hung up, and went home.

As of this moment…Friday after the caucuses…full results are still not available.

Not to be outdone though in stupidity though…there are some Republicans claiming that the “failure” was actual a “rigging of the results” by the Democratic National Committee…but then they clearly want Mr. Biden to win as his changes of winning the November election are likely better than the far left candidates who will get little support from the majority of the country’s citizens who are in the political range of center right through center left. Since…by the partial tallies so far released…he came in 4th place…this alleged rigging didn’t work very well.

Nonetheless…Mr. Biden’s campaign is being touted by the media as “dead and buried” or “on life support”…despite the fact that he was never expected to win either Iowa or next week’s New Hampshire votes…but is heavily featured in the following week’s primary in South Carolina.

Also…the death of the Iowa caucus process is already being also touted by the media. Now I have no idea of how the process works…but I’m guessing that the caucus can’t be replaced by a primary (which the state would pay for) without some sort of legislation in the state. I’m also not sure that the date could even be changed without approval of the state. Sure…the DNC would get a vote on it but whether they get the only vote is too far down in the weeds of things I care about to make a guess.

Moving along chronically…Tuesday night was the State of the Union address by the President. Naturally…the Republican side claims it was the greatest speech in the history of SOTU speeches…and the other side claims it was a “reality show speech” or “campaign address”. Setting all that aside though…because that happens every year where the non presidential party says it sucked and the other side says it was great…there were several examples of stupidity involved.

• On arrival at the dais…Ms. Pelosi offered her hand to the President to shake which he ignored. Not really surprising as he’s really not a politician and clearly doesn’t like her but he didn’t shake hands with the VP who sat next to her either so maybe he just thought it unnecessary.
• Ms. Pelosi ignored the traditional “I have the high honor and privilege of introducing to you the President of the United States” greeting. I’m surprised that a smart politician like her…even though I don’t like her politics she is usually a pretty good politician…did something like that.
• When the President talked about prescription drug prices…numerous Democrats started chanting HR3…which is a bill for free prescription drugs sponsored by the late congressman from Baltimore. Not surprising…anymore than the Republican yelling “you lie” during one of the previous SOTU addresses. However…at least one congressman sitting in the speaker’s box was involved which put the disrespect on national television
• The father of one of the Parkland shooting victims jumped up and protested when the President talked about the 2nd amendment…granted he was not a congressman but he was invited by one.
• Ms. Pelosi ripped up her copy of the speech before the president left the dais afterwards…again on national television.
• Numerous Democratic women wore white to the speech in silent demand that the ERA…which was recently ratified by the reburied 38th state and they are furious that it is not part of the constitution now…despite the fact that two different deadlines for passage passed 30 years ago and the Supreme Court has ruled that the ERA is dead unless the proponents start over.
• Awarding the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Rush Limbaugh…this is usually reserved for persons of more impact on the country and not given as a political sop to one of your supporters. It is the Presidential Medal of Freedom though…so the President was within his rights to do so…but it was not a smart political move…but then as I said the President is most definitely not a politician.

What are these people thinking? One would expect that at least some of them would demonstrate some political savvy and not do or say stupid things.

Moving along to the final political event of the week…the conclusion of the Senate trial of the President’s impeachment articles…but these comments are about the process…not the actual articles…although the actual charges do deserve a few words. Let it be known that (a) we are not real fans of the President ‘round these parts, (b) but he did win despite the fact that he says and does things that are not politically smart or even always correct/true, and (c) the Democrats have never accepted the outcome of the 2016 election but as the previous President famously said…”Elections have Consequences.” While we think his actions were dumb and not a good political idea…they were not illegal. The Constitution does say that he can be impeached for “bribery, treason, or other high crimes and misdemeanors”. While later political writings by the founding fathers did offer reasonable assurances that they intended it to be a political process and that an actual crime may (or may not, depending on who, which writing, and how you interpret what they actually wrote) or may not be required. However…the actual words in the Constitution…which in our view are the only ones that count…and also in our view the Constitution says what it says and not what you want it to say…they seem to indicate to me that an alleged crime is actually required and in most previous federal impeachments not to mention both Presidential ones…an actual crime was alleged in the articles. Nonetheless…the comments below are more about the process and political stupidity involved and not the actual articles.

Essentially the charges come down to the President wanting the Ukraine to investigate Hunter Biden and his father the former VP and current presidential candidate in return for military aid. The previous administration refused to provide them military aid…and even went so far as to demand the firing of one of their prosecutors that…according to the previous administration…was corrupt and refused to investigate corruption in the Ukraine. The view that the prosecutor was corrupt is substantially correct…but the nuance is a bit finer than that and I’ll admit that I’ve not investigated it fully myself…but the fact remains that the previous administration successfully bullied a foreign country to do something the administration wanted. In the end…what the President did was largely equivalent to that…he tried to influence a foreign country to do something he wanted…just like Presidents have been doing ever since we because a world power since at least the first world war. And…according to the law as Neil understands it and he used to be in that business…the aid was released before the end of the fiscal year which is the legal requirement…so the administration did not break the law as the GAO claimed. However…what the it comes down to is that the President tried to pressure a foreign country. The fact that the pressure also might benefit him politically…well, despite the claims of the Democrats and media…isn’t actually against the law. In fact…neither of the articles of impeachment charged him with anything actually illegal…distinctly different from the previous two presidential impeachments.

So…what is impeachment anyway? You have to remember that under the Constitution it is not a legal process…it is a political process…and that view by the founding fathers was further explained in numerous writings by them outside of the Constitution back in the 1700s.

So…under this political process…the House conducted what one can only describe as a hasty impeachment…because he needed to be removed from office immediately before he rigged the 2020 election. Never mind that House and Democratic leaders have been saying they would impeach him since the day after the election in 2016 and have never accepted the fact that he won. Never mind that a year ago Ms. Pelosi said that an impeachment was doomed to failure unless there was…bipartisan support for it. Never mind that the House didn’t bother issuing subpoenas for witnesses they wanted to hear from…and never mind that it was a pretty one sided process in the House. Remember…it is a political process and the House majority is Democratic. 

Once the “we have to impeach him now” process was concluded…the vital speed that was “urgently needed” came to a complete halt as Ms. Pelosi sat on the articles for a month before sending them to the Senate. Supposedly this delay gave her”leverage” over Mr. McConnell to force him to ensure that the Senate would hold a “fair trial”…and the only definition of fair trial the Democrats were willing to accept was to allow the House managers to call witnesses but not the defense team. The Republicans who control the Senate…and remember this is a political process…determined to use the same trial rules that were approved 100-0 before the Clinton impeachment and determine the need for witnesses after the presentation of the case by the prosecution and defense teams.

Naturally…and obviously…her leverage was zero and the trial was conducted as a political trial by the Senate just as the indictment was politically conducted in the House. Democrats raged frequently the past 3 weeks about how the Republicans were putting party over country by voting in block…even though the Democrats in both the House and Senate likewise voted in a block…but at least according to the Democratic leadership that was principled resistance and recognizing that the overwhelming evidence and proven guilt was the reason for their votes.

Speaking of overwhelming evidence and proven guilt…the demand for new witnesses was rejected…it is a political process after all. The chief witness…Mr. Bolton…who the Democrats wanted to call was going to prove that the President pressured the Ukrainians…but then he already admitted that in the transcript so no new evidence there. Mr. Bolton was going to quote from the new book he is flogging…which is incidentally been classified by the White House and the March publication date is in doubt to prove this point. No new evidence other than “I said it in my book” was to be presented…and let us not forget that until a month ago the Democratic Party thought that Mr. Bolton was the devil incarnate.

Just in case you have any doubt that this whole impeachment thing was a political process…here are a few statements that were made in the past month or two

• We need new witnesses.
• We do not need new witnesses…we have 28,000 pages of evidence and have the transcripts of 20+ witnesses who testified to the House to review.
• It is the House’s job to indict and investigate…not the Senate’s job. Their job is to evaluate the investigation completed by the House and pass judgement thereon.
• Each Senator takes an oath to do impartial justice…and unless you vote to convict you’re not impartial.
• Every Senator has an open mind
• Every Senator already has his/her mind made up…but those on my side are impartial and convinced by the overwhelming evidence that he is guilty and those on the other side is just partisan
• Every Senator already has his/her mind made up…but those on my side are impartial and convinced by the overwhelming evidence that he is stupid and foolhardy but it doesn’t rise to the level of impeachment so they voted innocent and those on the other side is just partisan

If you go back and look at the Clinton impeachment then all of these same statements were made by many of the same people who made them these past 2 months. The only things that changed was the party of the President, who had the majority in each house of Congress, and the people who said them. While I did not do an exhaustive level of research on it…Mr. McConnell and Mr. Schumer could have just swapped their speech notes from 20 odd years back because they both contradicted what they said back then.

As I said…a political process…and now it is done. Except that it is not done and the House is going to continue to investigate and is likely (according to Mr. Schiff) to file new impeachment charges “if the President is reelected”.

Ms. Pelosi’s words about a bipartisan impeachment from a year back proved prophetic…if only she had not let her more rabid left wing anti-Trump members railroad her into doing something that was (a) doomed to failure and (b) likely will cost her party in the 2020 election.

Post acquittal…Mr. McConnell had a press conference as did Mr. Schumer. Mr. McConnell called a spade a spade and said it was political, touched on the testimony and evidence that was presented, talked about the 90 times the charges were “proved” or the evidence was “overwhelming”, asked why if that was true then why did the other side demand more witnesses which would indefinitely delay the matter, stated that Mr. Schumer had admitted that the primary reason was to stall things in the Senate as long as possible for political gain. Mr. Schumer sounded like an even more so than usual Grumpy Bernie Sanders and whined about the overwhelming proof and proved…again…while deriding the Republicans for voting as a block while defending his side voting as a block. 

Dumb…and their other brother dumber…and mebbe their twin dumbest as well.

Interesting things found on the net.

I’m not trying to downplay the latest coronavirus…which is actually just the flu but a family of viruses that has spikes around the edge that look like a crown so the family is named coronavirus. Anyway…it is just a version of the flu…and while it is fatal in some cases…the overall death rate is (depending on which article you believe) either half of the normal seasonal flu death rate or up to about 1.7 times that rate…but it is only in the low single digits. Caution is needed…but the hype in the media is just that…hype…and the overly aggressive quarantines are probably not really needed.

Cyas.