Tag Archives: politics

STORMY DANIELS PRIVACY

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A confidentiality agreement is a promise to keep something private, or a pledge to keep something private.

Stormy Daniels signed a 2016 confidentiality agreement supposedly prepared by an attorney representing candidate Don Trump. Trump did not sign; the attorney, a non-party to the agreement, did not sign. The attorney advanced $130,000 of his own money to pay Daniels. Don Trump and his minions now claim the candidate did not know of the agreement with Stormy Daniels; Trump has not repaid the attorney for advancing the money. The reasons to disclaim knowledge of the agreement and of the money appears campaign finance law violations.

Under these facts a third party, the attorney, is trying to interpose a confidentiality agreement on Daniels (1) which has been disclaimed by the principal on other side, (2) which was never executed by the principal on the other side and (3) an executed fully enforceable agreement presents a prima facie case of a crime.

Stormy Daniels’ situation is like circumstances of victims, suspects, and law enforcement, on one hand, and internet companies and computer/telecommunication companies, on the other hand. The so-called electronic privacy agreements between the Internet/computer companies and suspects who commit crimes is the same as Stormy and the attorney. The Agreements drafted by Internet/Computer companies can be modified at will by the drafting parties e.g. Apple Computer routinely grants the Chinese government any access it wants. Consideration can be gone. Yet some Internet/Computer companies assert the right to keep secret the actions which may constitute an obstruction of justice; or they be aid the commission of the crime and be an ancillary after the fact; or they may interfere with an investigation, or they may lie to law enforcement. [When a person omits to disclose pertinent facts which are known or easily available to a person, individual or corporation, that is lying and may be a crime.] These omissions may arise in a number of circumstances: After a police shooting when the cops circle the wagons against investigators; when someone with foreign help (government or organization) commits a crime within this country; when an American kills another American and interposes an electronic privacy agreement.

Most Americans know what privacy is: home, family, talking. Benjamin Franklin warned (paraphrased) The only way a secret can be kept among three persons is for two of them to die. If something needs to be private don’t tell anyone. However, relying on agreements prepared by third parties which may not be executed, or is changed or violated at the whim of the drafting party, means there is no privacy at all.

IDIOTS, Jr.

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Now that Pres Don has gotten rid of competent, intelligent white guys, individuals who have done something with life and prospered, unlike himself, he’s going for the retreads of the second string.

Larry Kudlow, new Director of the National Economic Council, is of CNBC fame where Don had his TV show. Larry wasn’t as big a person as Don; he’ll never be exposed to the elements on the Hollywood Walk of Fame i.e. the homeless. Both Larry and Don believe the homeless are using the tax cuts to bilk millions from the government from favorable programs handing out dough. How else, could the homeless live in such an exclusive neighborhood?

These attributes fit Larry’s behavior when giving advice on TV: Angry rich man complaining the United States government taxes him to give money to the poor. He sounds like and is as current as George Bush proposing economic prosperity, the lift of a driving dream. WRONG POLICIES! Larry’s a very retro guy: Let’s Make America Great Again Like It Was During The 1920s. That decade finished well, didn’t it?

John Bolton, new National Security Advisor, looks like a walrus, with a white lip. Give him a uniform, narrow his mustache and he looks like someone else. He also sounds like that person: Adamant, right and righteous, hard, and opinionated based upon faith and fibs.

Both men have had stints in government, and no one in government hired either of them later for any position of responsibility. But each stuck around getting whatever exposure was available – CNBC, Fox News, Fox Business and mail solicitations. Bolton had a petty foundation he was the face card for, and once a month, bi-weekly and sometimes weekly envelopes arrived with cant writings inside expounding political and social positions edging toward totalitarianism. The only benefit a right minded, red blooded American got from Bolton was observing in the photographs that Bolton was getting gray. (Kudlow is mostly bald.)

The big advantage that Don Trump has over Bolton and Kudlow – they are lower on the food chain. Neither has Don Trump’s girth, 400 pounds of flab. Each is relatively trim ready to wear second-hand, empty suits. They are names, sometimes recognizable, unrespected, timeless and each has fallen into Don’s event horizon. The best that can be said about each man: When Don fires them, no one will know they are gone.

UNWILLING TOM STEYER

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Tom Steyer, billionaire speculator, made loads of money disregarding climate change by investing in coal and fossil fuels and ripping off Americans by using tax laws for the rich. Steyer believes he is all right and now purified! He’s moved to San Fran. He is running ads why Don Trump should be impeached. Steyer’s impressions of Trump are not grounds for impeachment. They may support arguments and inferences of Trump’s abysmal judgment, his everlasting proneness to gross distortion and proof of the large vacuity where his brain ought to be, but grounds for impeachment?

In the ads Steyer features himself as the good advocate. In 2009 Trump featured himself as a searcher for truth with the birther issue. Trump claims to have forced the state of Hawaii to produce Barrack Obama’s birth certificate. If it had been produced immediately, there would have been no Don Trump. But Trump took a sliver of notoriety, added a game show, ran for President and won.

Steyer features himself on the same path, except in the end he will have no document saying Trump was born in the USA. Trump is a Queenie. Thanks to Trump we have learned Obama was born in Hawaii, and always was. Steyer says Don Trump has conspired, colluded and combined with a foreign power, the Ruskies. Saying something does not prove it. Steyer’s ad campaign is no more effective than the RIGHT-WING AMERICANS erecting billboards during the 1960s: IMPEACH EARL WARREN.

Steyer should stop the ads and prove one impeachment charge. Try loans to Trump, his children, his businesses, his business associates, his son-in-law, his son-in-law’s family by Russians, Russian banks, the Russian government, or anyone in Cypress. This is a financial detective investigation. Although certain statutes and regulations may prevent an investigation within the United States of America, those laws and rules do not extend beyond our borders. Palms frequently get greased, overseas.

Steyer knows this. No one makes a billion dollars after taxes and does not know the ways of money in the world or how to use it. A proper investigation producing evidence (dates, documents, times, places, assets) may cost 10, 20 or $50,000,000. Come on, Tom. Break open the piggy bank! If Steyer does not want to do it himself, there are plenty of underemployed lawyers who would with hourly payments. Steyer knows this. He can do his best, but is too cheap. Will Steyer’s tax evasion schemes in which he is participating be exposed?

Perhaps Steyer is now distracted. He has lost interest in politics. Or he’s getting married, divorced, changing relationships or has to move because he lives in the sinking Millennium Tower embedded in a foundation of sand, set in a city of progressivism prone to earthquakes. Or, he might want to begin a start-up, a pot growing operation in the fire area of Sonoma County – help the tax base!

TRUMP VULGARITIES

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In the draft of the film script, The Lady Eve, which Preston Surges handed to Barbara Stanwyck read on the pages where she and her father watched Henry Fonda, the mark, come aboard:

JEAN [Stanwyck]
,,,and I hope he’s got a big fat wife so I don’t
have to dance in the moonlight with him. I don’t
know why it is but a sucker always steps on your
toes.

COL. H [Father]
(looking over rail)
And is a mug about everything.

JEAN
I don’t see why I have to do all the dirty work…
There must be plenty of rich old dames just
waiting for you to push them around.

COL. H
You find them and I’ll push them.

JEAN
Boy, would I like to see you giving some old
harpy the three-in-one.

COL. H
Don’t be vulgar, Jean. Let us be crooked but
not common.

(Axel Madsen, Stanwyck, Harper Collins, NY, 1994, p. 189.) A Brooklyn girl, Stanwyck, knew every vulgar term and could use each appropriately. She never did.

But last week we had Anthony Scaramucci mouth off, vulgarly, in the most ordinary, common ways showing no class, no education, of awareness or propriety, morals, ethics and comportment. Being a street thug was good enough.

Living the low life of a ground crawler was surprising to Scaramucci’s boss, Don Trump, and he was upset that Scaramucci upstaged him: Fire Scaramucci, who may now be mooching in his infamy and notoriety. Don Trump is on vacation.

POLITE DISCOURSE

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Everyone wants polite social discourse especially after the Republican congressman was shot. But it’s hard to leave the old ways: In the government sandbox be rude, be offensive and pee but use no plumbing. I’m sure Don Trump got solace from that good Christian woman, defending him and blessing his actions. I bet, though, when Sarah Huckabee is at home, if her kids are as rude and offensive as is the President, she whips them. [Spare the rod, spoil the child is the Proverb modified from 13:24.] In this matter spanking anyone would produce adverse results. The guy’s been spanked before.

BORDER WALL

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Should the United States Congress fund the border wall? NO. Don Trump made a sacred promised, forged by fire, to the American people that the Mexicans, not Americans will pay for the border wall.

Don Trump should not let the Mexicans breach one of his sacred promises. He has not publicly demanded that the Mexicans pay for it. Mexico may not realize they have an obligation. Don Trump should admit if the Mexicans do not fund the border wall, the wall will not be built.

Americans should give the Mexicans more time. There are many issues:

The Mexicans should know what the tax rate is on this new construction. Is any part of the wall deductible? Does the wall affect the free flow of money, north and south?

Who pays health care? With the status of health care uncertain in the United States, wall funding and construction cannot be determined until health care is resolved, so employers know what the landscape looks like for five years.

Don Trump must waive any requirement that only USA made ingredients go into wall construction. If the Mexicans are paying, they will use Mexican (yet North American) steel, cement, plastics, rocks and bricks. They should use Mexican plans. Mexican materials are durable; the construction is sound. Missions in California have survived earthquakes and floods. Those buildings have been in place ten times longer than any edifice Don Trump has ever erected. And architecturally the missions are much more pleasing than glass, steal, plastic and cement towers.

If the Mexicans are paying to construct the border wall, they should be equally allowed to hire Mexicans to do the work. Those workers should NOT be arrested and deported while working on the wall, only the next day to grant them entry into the country and later they will be arrested and deported. These workers should be granted documents so everyone, Mexicans and Americans, knows who everyone else is.

The wall should be built according to American standards, none of the fly-by-night construction leaving a trail of 100 law suits against the general contractor or the owner. Labor must be protected. There are volumes of labor statutes, already enacted and in the books, to guarantee worker’s rights. Everyone must follow the law.

Having made sacred promises to the American people about the border wall, Don Trump cannot flip his principles like he’s selling teepees and go against American ways. It is the free market, free enterprise, unfettered competition. If the Mexicans are paying for materials so their own labor will have jobs to do this foreign aid project on American soil, those workers would be treated as well as any other worker at a job in America.

ANALYSTS, COLUMNISTS & EXPERTS

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Why did the Democrats lose? Each analyst, columnist and expert reads the results and expresses good points, many of which are found in statistics of the election.

A compelling, overarching reason for the Democratic loss is their static view of the electorate and issues. The Democrats constructed a model, like a model guiding stock market trades. The Democrats enunciated the model and gave it support at every opportunity. The pre-election polls indicated the model was sound; the Democrats were favored.

The model included philosophy as well as philosophy of governing; where to spend money. It included psychology, how to react to things (insults), what to say, how to contact the electorate, etc. The model representing the theory of philosophy and the psychology was imprecise and incomplete. Bless her, Hillary Clinton stuck with the model.

What the model also overlooked was Hillary Clinton’s effectiveness as a candidate. At the beginning of the campaign the candidate and the Democrats knew of her flaws and ingrained behaviors. Hillary is bookish; her speech can be elevated to obscurity and incomprehension – she spoke in complete sentences; her movements and motions before a crowd can seem defensive. Hillary Clinton did improve as a campaigner, but she also lapsed into more familiar ways. There are things – Certainly if talk is in complete sentences, but talk in short sentences. Never say Motor Vehicle; say car. Use the Anglo-Saxon side of the language rather than the French (Latin). The grammar is Anglo-Saxon. Mark Twain also observed, At a dime a word, I never use metropolis when I can use city. [Note Metropolis is used in cartoons today.]

Hillary Clinton also had a public record that was known to the American people. Whether they believed she did some or all the things listed, her ratings on trustworthiness were very low. She never got a positive trustworthy rating, even in comparison to her opponent. She carried that load through the election but lost to another New Yorker whom Americans also did not trust. In the end Hillary Clinton was a flawed candidate beaten by another flawed candidate.

Analysts, columnists and experts don’t talk about the best candidates. I am not referring to Bernie Sanders, who was incredibly sincere and seemingly honest in his campaign. He spoke well and had enthusiastic crowds, but the Democrats would have suffered the same fate. Bernie was more to the Left and easily placed there. The Democrats who came to Trump would not have gone elsewhere in large numbers.

A Sanders nomination, along with Trump, would have brought forth a real third party – Michael Bloomberg. He had the revenues, he had the ability, he had the resume, he had the ability and he had conducted polling. He could have taken the middle of America. Second Amendment people complain about him, but in California and especially in Nevada, his local, small-step gun control measures won in referenda. Bloomberg did not run.

The Democrats lost their best choice, Joe Biden. Certainly, he was part of the Obama Administration; he had that baggage. But he likes people and attracts crowds; he seems openly friendly. Despite a long public record, he had no glaring embarrassments to bite him.

Sanders’ supporters believed if Hillary Clinton were dropped or were rejected in the Winter 2016, Bernie would have gotten the nomination. Head to head with Biden, it is likely Sanders would have lost.

This speculation over candidates and each of their strengths is why columnists, analysts and experts forego looking at the Democratic nominee. Nobody wants to believe that Hillary Clinton lost one or two-tenths of a percent of the vote in Pennsylvania, Michigan or Wisconsin based upon perceptions of her earlier public life. The percentage of the vote lost in each state may be narrower.

Now, reporters, analysts and experts are coming from the woodwork for their year-end analyses. THIS IS WHY IT HAPPENED. In The Big Short, Michael Lewis, quotes a trader who sums up his trade and the after reaction from the financial community:
“I must say that I have been astonished by how many people now say they saw the subprime meltdown, the commodities boom and the fading economy coming…And if they don’t always say it in so many words, they do it by appearing on TV or extending interviews to journalists, stridently projecting their own confidence in what will happen next. And surely, these people would never have the nerve to tell what’s happening next, if they were so horribly wrong on what happened last, right? (p. 246)
Guess what journalists, experts, analysis’s and columnists are doing today, all without doing much thinking, doing no research, doing no analyses and failing to be trustworthy and honest. They’re just moving their mouthes because that’s all these jokers can do!

Looking at the entire election and asking about the substance and method to convey it, plus scrutinizing the candidates. is important. The whole thing did not need changing. Hillary Clinton won a majority of the popular vote; she came close to victory. Democrats now cannot turn off her voters. But the message of the Democratic Party should be more hopeful. For example,
the problem with Obamacare is Bill Clinton is correct: It’s crazy to double costs and cut in half services provided. As costs got worse over the years, the Democratic Party never announced solutions to address the issue. They stuck with the model; they adhered to theory. They worshipped Health Insurance figureheads that might be idolized. No one in Congress proposed anything resembling healthcare – paying for health insurance does not mean one has healthcare. Happily one roadblock is removed in January 2017. Old-timer, Harry Reid was a deceitful, detestful man whose slime trail leads to the flames of Hell.

LATE EMAILS

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In the movie Primary Colors (Bill Clinton’s 1992 Campaign) is a scene about doing adverse research about Bill and women. Emma Thompson plays Hillary; Billy Bob Thornton plays James Carville.

They meet in a basement room. Billy Bob poses, “Suppose you’re into woods with your pants down, and you realize you’re facing a wild boar…” Emma immediately understands what the conversation is about. Billy Bob: “We want to know how many boars are out there.” Emma: “Do it!”

The grieving, weeping and blaming about the 650,000 emails made known in late October 2016 is perplexing. The documents came from a computer controlled by a trusted aide of Hillary. When the server-email story broke and in March 2015, and subpoenas were issued, what did Hillary’s team do? Look at all the computers? Check all email accounts? Survey the extend of the problem?

NO, there were so many boars racing around the woods that the Clinton campaign was blindsided in late October 2016 while flying on a plane without wifi.

Anyone reviewing files and emails would have come across the 650,000 emails, and read, reviewed and listed them as an internal document of the campaign. Note the computers and emails were not destroyed; they were under subpoena; the authorities just had to pick them up. It was reported that this computer was known about by the FBI (and supposedly the Clinton campaign) for two months before the release. It is likely the Clinton campaign knew about this computer and its contents long before August 2016.

What reaction should the Clinton Campaign have had to the announcement of 650,000 new emails? What follows is my suggestion for a statement provided the boar hunt or a census had been undertaken:

We’ve known about this computer. We preserved the emails on it. We’ve held it
for FBI pick-up for a year.
We do not know why the FBI is claiming the 650,000 emails are brand new;
The FBI has known about it since ______.
The computer is Anthony Weiner’s. It is his primary computer.
We looked at all email accounts on this computer. Here is what we found:
450,000 emails predate Secretary Clinton’s term as Secretary of State.
150,000 emails post-date Secretary Clinton’s term as Secretary of State.
47,000 emails appear to originate from Anthony Weiner
2000 emails which don’t refer to Hillary come from Huma
1000 emails refer to Hillary Clinton with the primary subjects being
Chelsea’s marriage; arrival times, books read, writing manuscripts,
health, scheduling, etc.
None of the emails on this computer from this account discussed actions, decisions, meetings or opinions of HRC or the office of Secretary of State.

Upon being blindsided, it would have been best if the Clinton campaign tried to come as clean as it could. Give this sort of summary or table of contents. Don’t let the other side characterize them: 650,000 emails is ten times as many emails that Hillary gave to the State Department. Reporters were probably looking through the 650,000 wondering how Hillary arranged for the Chicago Cubs to get into and win the World Series, when Comey said there was nothing of importance in this batch of emails.

Alas, in the end, it appears that the Clinton campaign did not look for boars in the woods. They were not ready.

LEAVING HOME

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Now that Don Trump is President-elect, celebrities can leave the USA.

The biggest obstacle is: Pack the first box.

Some celebrities are Canadian. They never leave North America.

But most celebrities will do just fine, staying:

Politically, Al Sharpton is on the opposite side of Trump. He’s a New Yorker; he has tax problems; he knows the game. He can play his role more fully now than if somebody in the Executive Branch is preempting him. He likely will not be invited to the White House, but he doesn’t make money going to Washington D.C.

Chelsea Handler has released photos of herself on the Internet, just like photos of sundry and various other women. With the election results there will be fewer photos on the Internet. With less diversion and an on-going TV show (hostess is a genuine human female not an ET-Alien), Handler should stay.

Samuel L. Jackson, a premier actor, has seen the good and bad of show business and political jesting. In his work he needs better roles (Snakes on a Plane?????). He is the sort of actor who can insist that scripts and roles be better written. His greatest influence would be in Hollywood procuring excellent scripts, supporting first-class productions and letting his talent reflect that work. Why leave the country?

Did Miley Cyrus really say she would leave the country?