TGIF 7/29/22

It's good week/bad week time again. Let's dive in; I'll tell you which list I put them on, and you're welcome to chime in with your opinions.

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito spoke earlier this month in Rome  at a conference sponsored by the University of Notre Dame. During his keynote address, Alito was heard "mocking foreign leaders who lamented his opinion doing away with a half-century of federal constitutional protection for abortion rights in the US." 

He also spent time talking about religious liberty, saying

It is hard to convince people that religious liberty is worth defending if they don’t think that religion is a good thing that deserves protection...  Our hearts are restless until we rest in God. 

His personal beliefs are fine, but they're none of my business - not to mention that millions of Americans disagree with him. The problem with him expressing them is the appearance that they influence his decisions, as could his appearance at a conference sponsored by the Religious Liberty Institute at Notre Dame. The article notes that "The institute or its faculty members have filed amicus briefs in at least five Supreme Court cases on religious freedom issues."

Alito the man had a good week, I guess, for finding a place where his beliefs are widely accepted. Alito the justice? Bad week. As with the other justices, the less time they spend before partisan groups espousing their beliefs, the better.

Andrew Yang, former presidential and NYC mayoral candidate, has officially formed a third party - the Forward Party - with two Republicans: David Jolly, a former Florida congressman, and Christine Todd Whitman, former governor of New Jersey. 

The linked New York Magazine article notes the Forward Party relies on polls showing dissatisfaction with the current situation in the US, and "showing that “roughly half” of Americans would call themselves independents." Using That Guy from Vermont as an example, the author points out how labels mean different things to different people. 

And, while support for a third party is high, according to Gallup, "that doesn’t mean that many people will actually join one.

Yang, Jolly, and Whitman have their work cut out for them. I'll give them a mixed week - they're trying, and people are talking about them, even if what's being said is not all good. 

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is having a bad week. There's her husband's stock activity, and there's her Asian trip, and a potential visit to Taiwan, which is causing agita on both sides of the Pacific.

But instead of treating the trip like a regular one-off congressional visit... which usually prompts a sternly worded letter from the Chinese Embassy, China has responded to the potential of Pelosi visiting the island by repeatedly upbraiding American counterparts, leaving the Biden administration wondering if Beijing is serious about provoking another crisis in the Taiwan Strait over the speaker’s arrival. 

Stateside, she's "left President Joe Biden's team in a no-win situation - even if it doesn't prompt a serious crisis." Even some Dems are questioning it, as are Republicans.

To the degree that it’s not exactly in America’s interest to drive a crisis right now, then that probably wasn’t particularly well chosen.

To me, it's a mess of her own making, and completely unnecessary for her, and for us.

Will Smith made a video. You can decide for yourself how this is helpful, and to whom.

Donald Trump had a bad week, for two reasons. 

First, he stuck his bone spurs in it with comments about 9/11. Trump's hosting the Saudi-backed LIV Golf Tour at his Bedminster, NJ course, which is not all that far from the site of the former World Trade Center. Families of 9/11 victims condemned his hosting the tourney in a letter which told of their "extreme pain, frustration, and anger," and quoted Trump's own words from 2016:

 … Who blew up the World Trade Center? It wasn’t the Iraqis – it was Saudi. Take a look at Saudi Arabia. Open the documents. We ought to get Bush or somebody to have the documents opened because frankly, if you open the documents, I think you are going to see it was Saudi Arabia … 

But what's he saying now, when he's got the world's attention (and plenty of Saudi money flowing to his business)?

Well, nobody’s gotten to the bottom of 9/11, unfortunately, and they should have, as to the maniacs that did that horrible thing to our city, to our country, to the world, so nobody’s really been there. But I can tell you there are a lot of really great people that are out here today and we’re going to have a lot of fun and we’re going to celebrate.

Staying with the tournament, it seems Bedminster is again using the Presidential Seal "on various items, including golf carts," despite previous complaints, and despite a law against using it this way.

Federal law prohibits knowingly using the printed or other likeness of the presidential seal “for the purpose of conveying, or in a manner reasonably calculated to convey, a false impression of sponsorship or approval by the Government of the United States.”   

Given the previous complaints, it seems "the Trump Bedminster golf course is aware of, or  should be, that using the seal is illegal, but is using it anyway."  What a surprise.

TGIF, everyone.

TGIF 7/24/20

A bunch of random stuff to mull over as the 'work week', however that's defined for you, comes to a close.

The NFL Team Formerly Known as the Washington Redskins will be known, this year anyway, as the Washington Football Team.

Why, you ask? Well, there apparently are some trademark and licensing stuff, plus logos and stuff, plus who knows, maybe generating more interest waiting for the new name to be revealed?

And, speaking of waiting, in case you can't, here's a bone you can gnaw on, if you like, that suggests the new name has been chosen, and perhaps why there might be some legal stuff to deal with.

Let's see, what else do we have?

• Person. Woman. Man. Camera. TV.

• Regular math, not Andrew Yang MATH: did you know that the average maximum weekly unemployment benefit for the 50 states, DC and Puerto Rico is less than $500? Or that only nine states pay extra unemployment for someone who has dependents?  Or that only thirteen states pay at least a "living wage" ($600/week, the equivalent of $15/hour for 4o hours) in unemployment (with or without dependents) Or that Kentucky's maximum is higher than New York's? The figures don't include the extra (and effectively expired) COVID-19 pandemic benefit of $600 per week. 

• You can get an MBA for only $12.99 through the Find Something New initiative co-chaired by Ivanka Trump as part of her workforce portfolio.

• The entire assembled teams of the New York Yankees and the Washington Nationals took a knee before the National Anthem last night - and the world didn't stop spinning, except for lots of people on social media. And, staying with baseball for one more item, the Toronto Blue Jays will play most of their home games in Buffalo, where they have a Triple-A affiliate. The reason? Concerns about the coronavirus, of course, which prevented them from being able to travel to and from their home stadium. (Not for nothing, there's a ban on travel across the US/Canada border which is preventing people from working, being present for the birth of their children and so on).

• The president may or may not have asked his Ambassador to the UK to ask the Brits to see about holding a British Open at Trump's Turnberry course in Scotland. Both Trump and the ambassador say it didn't happen. Golf Magazine justifies the ask by saying that according to their rankings, Turnberry is #17 on their Top 100 Courses in the World list. If that's true, they can do it when Trump's out of office.

• The FDIC has relaxed regulations related to banks hiring people with minor criminal records, "expanding the pool of potential candidates and leveling the playing field for aspiring bank workers." Going forward, folks with offenses like small dollar theft (less than a grand) or possession of fake identification, can be hired without a waiver; around 100 or so waivers were requested annually.

And, I'll leave you with the funniest thing I saw all week. 

TGIF, everyone.

Sidebar: Ranting and Raving (v4): It's not the Impeachment, Stupid

I wanted to share some additional information related to my earlier post on how it's not impeachment that's messing up the president's response to the coronavirus crisis.  

That post was prompted by a Henry Olsen column from about a week ago in the Washington Post. One of Olsen's points was that the impeachment process was slogging along back in January and February, and that was the same time China was in the thick of battle with the virus, and (emphasis added)

Despite the near certainty that Republicans would not vote to convict the president, Democrats and most of the major media were almost entirely focused on impeachment. As a result, the White House was focused on addressing this threat to its survival, not on preparing for a threat from China that might never even materialize.

I wanted to see if what Olsen suggested - that the White House was basically consumed with trying to survive, and so couldn't also focus on the potential COVID-19 threat, so I did a little digging. Here's what I found.

I reviewed the activity just on the president's primary Twitter account (there's also the White House account, the @POTUS account, his campaign account, and others who reliably talk about whatever he wants them to) and found that he tweeted or retweeted 1,834 times in January and February - around 30 times a day. I searched that activity for a few keywords, to see what was on his mind.

In case you were wondering, he mentioned coronavirus/virus 28 times, and COVID-19 once.  When it comes to topics likely related to impeachment, he was much more active: 

• 197 mentions of impeach/impeachment
• 197 mentions of Democrats
•  99 mentions for Adam Schiff
•  65 mentions of some kind of hoax
•  65 mentions of Nancy/Nancy Pelosi
•  60 mentions of Dems
•  49 mentions of fake (most of them fake news)
•  29 mentions of Biden (Joe or Hunter)
•  26 mentions of Russia
•  24 mentions of Ukraine
•  15 mentions of FISA
•  14 mentions of whistleblower
•  12 mentions of Romney

But, it's not like he was slacking on other subjects, including calling Democratic presidential candidates names, endorsing Republicans, and other presidential things:

• 57 mentions of Bernie/Bernie Sanders
• 40 mentions of debate/debates
• 37 mentions of poll/polls/polling
• 35 mentions of Michael Bloomberg (including Mini Mike)
• 25 mentions of China
• 25 mentions of endorsement (my complete and total endorsement, e.g.)
• 11 mentions of Stone/Roger Stone
• 10 mentions of Pocahontas/Warren

As expected, whether he was talking about impeachment things or non-impeachment things, he was definitely focused on himself. But here's the thing: when you have over 57,000,000 legitimate Twitter followers (and another 15,000,000 fake ones) you can push any message you want, and before you know it, what you are talking about becomes what the media is talking about. 

Would you be surprised that, as the White House was fighting for its very survival, the president managed to attend 10 rallies - or, on average, one every six days? 

During this very trying time for White House, the president managed to make nine trips to the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, which averages just under one trip every seven days.  

He also attended four fundraisers, two each month, or one every 15 days, on average. These were important to the president's own survival instincts, and raised tens of millions of dollars. One of them would have cost me and My Sweet Baboo a pretty $580,600 to attend, if we wanted the full treatment. One of the fundraisers was all the way across the country in California, not at all near his beloved Palm Beach. 

And finally, I looked at media coverage, just from Olsen's own paper, the WaPo. Would it surprise you that, in January alone, there were over 200 articles or posts that included the word 'coronavirus', and in February, there were over 600?  Or that the articles and videos were across all categories of the news spectrum? Politics, health, technology, finance, the economy, opinion, travel/leisure, lifestyle, entertainment and more?

That's an average of just over 13 mentions a day, compared to the president's average of around 2 per day.

Olsen can say that the focus was on impeachment, but I'd say that, as always, Trump was focused on his favorite subject: the one he sees in the mirror. The one who likes to golf, who likes to visit his own properties (and charge us dearly for the privilege), who likes to raise money for his own political survival, and who loves to be the center of attention.

And, of course, who loves to make everything bad good again, or at the very least, point the blame fingers in someone else's directions.

Again, it's not impeachment that drags him down. It's him.

Tidbits and Trivia (v1)

A quick look at some un-fact-checked facts, quotes, and trivia:

• Every week in both 2015 and 2016, a toddler three years or younger accidentally shot either himself or another human being in the US.  The rate of toddler shooting was 6% up year-on-year in 2016.

• At the time this tidbit was published, in early January, Donald Trump owed at least $1B to 150 Wall Street banks and other financial institutions including Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase, and Fidelity Investments.  Conflict, anyone?

• "Great talents encourage great incapacities," according to poet Sarah Manguso, "but maintaining an inability to cook an egg or drive a car won't make you into a genius". Thankfully, I can cook an egg  - and have no aspirations for genius.

• According to Oxfam, the world's eight richest people are worth as much money as the 3.6 billion people who make up the poorest half of the word. Gates, Buffett, Zuckerberg and the rest of  the gang of eight collectively have $426B, compared to the $409B the poorest 50% have between them. 

• The Daily Telegraph (UK) reported that President Obama played 306 rounds of golf during his presidency, which amounts to some 38 or so rounds a year.  Which, I think may be even less golf than any of my friends play in an average year. 

Not sure there are any dots to connect, but I'm all for anyone giving it a try.