There Were A Lot Of Fine People ...

I just watched The Black Klansman.

What a great movie.

This guy had a dominant role.

In the movie.

As I remember it.

Images May 30 2019

Max 8 Once More

Last year a Max 8 crashed in Indonesia.

Boeing and the FAA looked at each other, shrugged and – I think this might be true – suggested pilot error.

As time went on there might have been some small mention of software, but I’m not sure and I’m way too lazy to try to do any research.

Early this year another Max 8 crashed.

I do remember that Boeing and the FAA resisted grounding the plane at that time because they needed “more data”.

I couldn’t help wondering how many more crashes would be needed for a complete data set.

At that time the FAA did acknowledge that the Max 8 might have a proclivity for coming into contact with the terrain.

Also the software issue became an issue.

Boeing said that they had made some software tweaks and everything was good to go.

By this time the rest of the world had gotten pretty nervous and had grounded all Max 8s.

Finally US airlines began grounding them and finally Boeing and the FAA agreed that that was probably prudent.

I assume in various backrooms there was a lot of discontent about not getting any more data.

Since then Boeing has been feverishly working on “the software”.

That has been quite a long time now.

And, last I heard, they are still working on it.

There must have been more than a tweak involved.

So why would anyone want to fly in a plane that needs some massive, and therefore of questionable reliability, form of software – think the old blue screen of death days – to keep it from making contact with the terrain?

I guess the Max 8 pre-takeoff safety briefing will continue to contain the advice to “clasp your hands behind your head, put your head in your lap and kiss your ass goodbye”.

Five Gee

5G is the next level of wireless network.

It’s the one that will allow every device everywhere to communicate with every other device anywhere at blinding speed.

You will be getting texts before they have been keyed.

So that’s all pretty exciting.

For America there is a problem.

Our wireless carriers have been sitting around thinking great thoughts and cranking up the profit machine on 4G, the current not very fast or device rich current G (generation) of wireless.

Remember this: America has the P.T. Barnum school of capitalism in effect.

There’s a sucker born every second and the great American business system will milk every last dollar out of every one of them using the least possible investment to do it.

In fact, the major investment made to further that end is in smoke and mirrors (advertising).

AT&T has rebranded its laughably lacking 4G as 5G.

I guess now that we have donnie everybody is going to start lying.

Qualcomm has posted this to the web:

“Welcome to the Invention Age.

Today, Qualcomm is applying over 30 years of mobile expertise to virtually everything—transforming industries, creating jobs, and enriching lives. We’ve done it by unlocking 5G. And it’s going to spark the next generation of technological progress. We’ve ushered in the next major era, the Invention Age. A time without barriers to invention. 5G is empowering rapid acceleration, unleashing new experiences, and will fuel the global economy with the ability to create new jobs and products. And all that starts with Qualcomm.”

That sounds good but there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of product behind the text.

Unfortunately China has developed a working, deployable robust and ready form of 5G.

One might think that the obvious thing to do would be for America and the rest of the world to buy 5G from the Chinese.

But America wants a level playing field.

We want to have everything be put on hold until – or, maybe, if - we can catch up with the Chinese.

In the interim donnie is demanding that the rest of the world not buy the technology that American business has been too fat, dumb and happy to develop.

That is to economics what “total exoneration” is to the Mueller report.

Mueller Has Spoken

He spoke just a little while ago.

And it was nationally broadcast.

He said there was massive Russian interference against the Clinton campaign.

He said there wasn’t enough evidence to accuse the trump campaign of having conspired with the Russians.

He said that he couldn’t indict trump for obstruction of justice because there is a policy against indicting sitting presidents.

He said that if he could have found trump as not being guilty of obstruction of justice he would have said so.

He said that he couldn’t say that trump did not obstruct justice.

That was what Robert Mueller said today about the Mueller Report.

Sine he wrote that Report, and since what he said today is also clearly stated in the Report we might conclude that what Robert Mueller said today is the truth about the Report.

We might also notice how different what Robert Mueller has said about the Mueller Report is from what Fat Billie has said about the Mueller Report (as donnie and the dildos go to the mattresses Fat Billie is the one in charge of dismantling the American Security Apparatus; Sarah the Stabber is dismantling the press; Fat Mikey is dismantling the security structure of the Free World; Mitch the Turtle is in charge of stopping all legislation and Mikey the Vapid is getting the christian soldiers to start marching; nobody has figured out what Johnnie the Bolt is doing).

But that might be a digression.

So back to my point.

Everything donnie has said about the Mueller Report has been the usual fare: lies.

trump can’t speak truth.

All he can do is lie.

Or as he has just tweeted “Mueller said today ‘insufficient evidence; case closed’”.

I guess donnie was listening to somebody else.

More likely, he is lying.

How odd.

Spike Lee Prevails

This has been an unusual movie year for me: I have seen five of the top nominated movies.

They have been: Bohemian Rhapsody, The favorite, Vice, Green Book and Black Klansman.

I just finished watching Black Klansman.

Bohemian Rhapsody was obviously runner up for best movie.

The Favorite was one of those British historical things that get you all emotionally involved with people long dead, but this one, in the final analysis lacked the human connections of movies like Elizabeth or Shakespeare in Love.

Vice was way too long and had one good scene, otherwise it was a bore.

Green Book was a lot of fun and it was even more fun to see Aragorn as a fat Italian.

Clearly the best movie for 2018, and probably this century so far, and probably way back into the last century was Black Klansman

Meanwhile ...

Now that donnie has quit governing until the House of Representatives abrogates its Constitutional duties, he apparently needs things to do.

So he has decided to continue dismantling America’s reputation in the world.

This time he is legitimizing war crimes.

Fox has his back on that one so it’s no problem.

Since donnie wouldn’t know Duty, Honor or Country if it jumped out of a KFC container and bit him on the ass, it is no surprise.

But to those of us who did serve and are serving and who do care about America and her hard won reputation for being the good guys of history, we are appalled.

Old bone spurs doesn’t give shit though.

As long as “The Base” laps up his horseshit he is happy as a pig in what they – “The Base” - are lapping up.

This a picture of me in Nha Bey taken by one of my best friends from high school.

In the background is the helicopter that he flew so many missions in there wasn’t room for the oak leaves on his air medal ribbon.

He was a Navy officer; I was an Air Force officer.

He invited me down to Nha Bey from Saigon to see the war a little closer than I was able to see it in Saigon.

We didn’t do war crimes; it was considered un-American.

But that was before donnie, fat billie, Mitch the Turtle, Mikey Vapid, Fox News and "The Base".

We didn't even know what reality tv was.

I Guess It’s To The Mattresses

The crime don who is currently masquerading as President of the US has declared all out gang war on the Constitution and its various institutions, customs, protocols and laws.

donnie the dildo has declared a moratorium on government and governing until the People’s Branch of the legislature ceases to function.

Fat Billie, his consigliore, is going after the entire security apparatus of our country.

The Press is to be dismantled and reborn in the groveling fiction-as-news Fox image.

Mitch the Turtle is making sure laws are stopped in their tracks in the deliberative branch of the legislature.

Mikey the Vapid is telling Christian students to prepare for the impending battle.

One could assume that the script of the great reality show has just been clicked up a notch or two.

That would be both optimistic and tragically incorrect.

The intent of the reality show is obvious: make official the creeping coup d'état that has been in progress since calendar 2000.

I pray that the Constitution and its institutions are ready for this battle,

And that battle is to the death, figuratively speaking, of course.

But if we the people lose this one – or worse, just shrug, say “my my”, and go about our daily trivials – we the people are dead, spiritually speaking, of course.

That’s how serious this deal has become.

And They Have Found A Witch

MSN News posted a number of overnight tweets from donnie.

Here is an example:

"After two years of an expensive and comprehensive Witch Hunt, the Democrats don't like the result and they want a DO OVER," he added in another tweet. "In other words, the Witch Hunt continues!"

As I was scanning this work of world literature the image of a witch popped up.

It tweeted "Boo!!!...……"

Another Group Of Images

Thoughts On Boeing

By the time I was born in early World War Two Boeing had become a great company.

That greatness was the result of a fortuitous confluence of factors.

A high level distillation of those factors can be described: great organized labor, great entrepreneurial management and great get-your-hands-on-the-products-and-processes executives, all three of whom were imbued with deep scientific curiosity, engineering ability and fanatic commitment to quality.

And those managers, engineers and other skilled workers and executives lived – together daily – on the shop floor.

And – I think this is probably true; it’s hard to imagine otherwise given the culture of those long ago times – they all ended up after hours in the same Renton, bars, grills and taverns; they probably kept talking – in the egalitarian environment that bars, grills and taverns can foster – shop: what was ahead of schedule; what was behind schedule; what was going well; what was screwed up; how to keep getting better and how to fix the problems.

That all produced airplanes like the 70 year old B52 which is still a central part of America’s air war capability.

Or the, until Max 8, flawless (yeah I haven’t forgotten the batteries, but that got fixed quickly and transparently and permanently) string of 7XX airliners.

Have you ever seen the 707 doing barrel rolls over Lake Washington?

So how could that company get to the Max 8?

Of course I don’t know.

But I think it has to do with the fact that a few years back a cadre of executives having no cultural or hereditary relationship to the Renton Culture decided that they needed to remove themselves from the sweaty stench of the managers and workers.

They moved off to Chicago and began thinking great thoughts in tall buildings.

In that environment, far from “the egalitarian environment that bars, grills and taverns can foster” it is easy to imagine how executives could have spun – to each other – a plane whose design point: quick production, cheap cost and no pilot training, but which was really a lumbering disaster needing sensors and software to keep it from crashing, as a no sweat slam dunk.

And then they spun it, slam dunked it and lied, misrepresented and obfuscated its problems, not the least of which is that the spinners are all off in Chicago.

And two planeloads of human beings have died because of the ivory tower spinners.

I think the Chicago tribe should all be fired and replaced post haste, with promoted-from-within managers and workers from Renton.

And their prime directive should be get back to the bars after work and hammer out – once more and again – what it means to be a great company: what it means to be Boeing, a Seattle company.

Smoke And Mirrors Part One: Coda

I have no idea what I am talking about.

But since most of what I am talking about has something to do with donnie the idiot, I feel ok about having no idea what I am talking about; donnie is the archetype of someone who has no idea what he is talking about.

So my post about donnie, the farmers and Walmart – yesterday – inevitably had inaccuracies.

I said that donnie was going to use his 25% Walmart tax to buy all the animals that American farmers can’t sell to China anymore and convert the Senate into a slaughter house/meat packing plant to process those animals and send the chops,steaks and wings etc. on to the American grocery distribution system.

After consulting with Stephen Colbert, my expert on all things donnie, I discovered that the plan really is to send the stuff to less wealthy (I think the term was shithole) countries so that the poor of the world can eat well on food provided by donnie’s 25% Walmart surcharge.

At least that was the apparent plan in donnie’s most recent tweet.

Keep tuned to @donnietheidiot for real time updates.

I guess “The Base” has had a change of heart about foreign aid.

It can be said with certainty that they must have had a change of heart about how to pay for it.

Since “The Base” comprises the vast majority of the “Walmart Shopper Mudsill” (a Walmart confidential marketing term) they, by definition, will be the vast majority of that funding source.

I assume (I’ll verify this with Stephen and get back to you) that this plan assumes that whole live animals will be sent to the shitholes and that they will be responsible for producing chicken feet, pig snouts and the occasional pork chop (since the shitholes are primarily muslim there will need to be some cosmetic reprocessing to be able to pass off all that pork as halal, but that is a story yet to be told).

donnie says there will be a lot of “great American” jobs aboard the ships carrying all those cows, pigs and chickens: each cow needs a shit sweeper, one for every dozen chickens and two for each pig; the inside-the White House code name is “shit jobs for shitheads for shitholes”.

donnie is even thinking about rebranding himself as the “shithead in chief”.

What is sad, however, is that the proposed deployment of the Senate as a slaughter house will go by the boards.

That proposition had two endearing characteristics: it gave them something to do, and it was a great fit for the skill set of the majority of the Senators.

Smoke And Mirrors Part One

The Chinese have reciprocated with donnie’s 25% tariff.

One of the exports most vulnerable to the adverse effect of tariffs on American exports is farm stuff.

Chinese agribusiness companies are unlikely to want to see a 25% increase in the cost of the stuff they sell; you know, like chicken feet and pig snouts and the occasional whole chicken or pork chop. 

The reason for this is that those companies would need to pass on the 25% to its customers; and they would need to pass the 25% on to Chinese consumers.

And that is a tough sell.

Especially since the Chinese agribusiness industry doesn’t need to buy from American farmers.

They can buy from European farmers, just as an example of an alternative.

So donnie has just really screwed American Farmers.

But he has a plan (remember that WKRP Thanksgiving episode)?

He’s going to use the tariffs that the government is levying on Chinese imports – you know, all that stuff that Americans buy at Walmart – (which, incidentally will be 25% more expensive) to buy pigs and chickens etc. from American Farmers and – I am not really clear on how he plans to get those items into the American grocery system as wings, legs and porkchops, maybe he’s going to turn the Senate into a slaughter house/food packer and sell their output to the big food retailers – sell them to American food buyers.

At least the Senate would be doing something for a change.

So donnie is screwing the farmers by causing the farmers biggest overseas customer to slap tariffs on the farmers exports, making those exports unsellable in China, and is going to make it all better by buying and reselling the farmers’ unexportable stuff, adding, one would need to suppose, some abnormal costs to those unexportables (the Senate/Slaughter House) to American food retailers who will sell the newly, one would need to suppose lower quality and higher cost unexportables (the Senate/Slaughter House) to everyday god fearing Americans who have paid for the privilege out of the 25% increase that the same Americans will be paying at Walmart where donnie has screwed them just like the farmers.

At least everybody has a share in the screwing.

Milo Minderbinder has not been dead; he has just been lying dormant.

A Few Images From The Ferry Dock On May 11, 2019

It was a fairly sunny day but not especially warm because the ever present wind cools all but the warmest ferry dock days down to the wind chill 50s.

But I know a secret.

If you get out of the parking lot and take the trail down to the beach you are in a lowered depression that shelters against most of the wind.

And the temperature feels more like the mid 60s that the thermometer shows.

Since I was two and a half hours early and second in lane 8 going down to the beach trail to see if there were creatures and things waiting to have their pictures taken seemed to be a good idea.

So that's what I did.

There weren't a whole lote of pictures to be taken - at least I didn't see many - but here are the few that I saw.

Key Me

This is an email I sent thanking a Key Me employee for sending me a a code to get a free key.

I have no idea whether this is a new idea or just new to me and the world is covered with key making kiosks that I have never noticed.

But I was pretty impressed.

And I have two new keys.

Here is what I said:

“Thanks.  I probably won’t use it – not any time soon, anyway, but thanks.

Your company is interesting – and unusual – because it is offering a service that is so obvious that one wonders why it hasn’t been done before, and a service that would appear to be so difficult to render that the reason for nobody doing it seems to be as obvious as the need for it.

You guys have actually got something that works: I saw the sign at Safeway a couple of times back and decided I would find out what it really meant.

I finally remembered that I wanted to find out on my most recent visit and went looking for the person who would make the keys.

I was really surprised to find a machine that looks like a Coin Star kiosk.

And the user interface was pretty much like Amazon.

And it really can read the shape of the key.

And the keys – that look like a butter knife (no definable teeth) really work.

I am probably pretty easily entertained, but I think that you guys prove again that Americans can do really odd, but really useful things.

I never would have thought that digital technology threatened the bread and butter business of the locksmith industry.

But it does.”