Author: Mr. Rantastic

Mueller: Drip, Drip, Drip

~ Mr. Rantastic ~ Leave a comment

Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation must be like water torture for Donald Trump. Every piece of news about it is another brick in the wall that will eventually encircle the President and, more importantly, his business interests.

The wall won’t imprison Trump. It is doubtful that he will even be charged with any crimes. What the wall will do is keep others away. By the time Mueller is done, Trump Inc. will be a toxic hot potato that no one will want to be close to.

Trump is very well aware of this. So every time Mueller puts a fair sized brick in the wall, Trump tries to tweet it away. “No collusion” tweets Trump – he’s got nothing, it’s a waste of time. No Brick.

But the truth is that very slowly and very methodically, the wall is taking shape. Mueller is laying as strong of a foundation as he can to make sure that the wall will stand up to any legal trebuchet that Trump’s legal team can conceive of. So far, it looks pretty solid.

 

Succulents Are The New Black

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Have you noticed how succulents are popping up everywhere? No longer content to be a curiosity in the garden store, succulents have gone mainstream and more.

For a few years now it seems like every craft fair has hosted a few vendors selling tiny pots with a little sprig of a generic succulent stuck in it. “Oh yes, that will be $15 please.”

Now it is getting even worse. Designers are weaving succulent walls into cafes, beer gardens and anywhere else they can get away with it. Succulent pots adorn office reception areas. They have replaced silk flowers in toilets. There is no stopping them!

Someday the fad will run its course and we will be hit by the next big thing. Air plants anyone?

 

Trump: It’s The Ratings Stupid

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In case you have not noticed, Donald Trump is not exactly a traditional president. That includes how he measures how well he is doing.

Trump is from the celebrity and reality TV worlds (pretty much the same thing, really). In those worlds, success is measured by how often you are mentioned in the press and the ratings your TV program receives. It really doesn’t matter whether people ‘like’ you, how high your public approval ratings are or even what the press is writing about you. If you are in the news every day, you are successful. Period.

That is why Trump cares about how many people come to events like his inauguration. If he has the largest attendance then he had the largest ratings, and he is the ‘best’ president. Period.

If a celebrity finds their press coverage lacking, they have their PR flack manufacture something to bring them some coverage. Trump is his own publicist and he is brilliant at it, having honed his skills in over 30 years of sparring with New York’s celebrity press.

When Trump feels his ratings going down, he sends out a few tweets. Boom – he is back in the headlines and back on top.

The celebrity  press understands this game, but the political press is still trying to figure it out. Trump has completely broken their reporting model and until they come up with a new one he will continue to be a star and write his own headlines.

 

Super Sarah Sanders

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Sarah Sanders is running circles around the White House press corps and they have no idea what to do about it. For all of Donald Trump’s faults, he hit one out of the park when he hired her.

Every day the White House press tries to press her on something controversial that Trump tweeted or some dysfunction within his administration. There is no shortage of either. Yet Sanders is able to dodge, weave and deflect, many of the times turning the tables on the press corps.

For example, when queried as to whether a Trump comment that a senator would “do anything” for campaign contributions was implying sex, Sanders admonished the reporter to get her mind out of the gutter. Touche!

To be honest, as good as Sanders is, her job really isn’t all that hard and is probably a lot of fun. The White House press corps needs a through shakeup. They are where they are because they climbed the professional ladder and finally got to the job where they get invited to the right parties and have some status, and they are probably not a little bit full of themselves.

In addition, they are used to the formal White House press ritual that team Trump has absolutely no respect for. They are playing by the old rules and Sanders is playing by Trump rules. Until they news agencies ship some reporters with experience covering reality TV and celebrities, Sanders will continue to kick their butts.

The Clinton Standard

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Since when did the Clintons become the standard for propriety in politics? The latest news is that Hillary Clinton intervened to keep an accused of sexual harasser on her staff when he was about to fired. The implication is that the #metoo crowd should back off, because even Hillary tolerated harassers.

Well, duh. She’s the person who excused her husband when he cheated on her with a young intern named Lewinsy.  In fact, she aggressively defended him.

But here is the thing. The Republicans have spent the last 30 years telling us how corrupt and slimy the Clintons are. So telling us that even the Clintons cheat, lie, steal, etc. is not the best way to say that it is ok to do it. We are not really talking about Ghandi or Mother Terresa here.

The truth is that the Clintons are an excellent straw man. Bill is an admitted adulterer / harasser yet has high approval ratings – ergo, other harassers that aren’t as popular also should be able to get away with it.

Hillary doesn’t have Bill’s high approval ratings, but she is living in some kind of alternate reality. She fancies herself a politician and is easily drawn into the fray. But the truth is that she is a great policy wonk but a terrible politician, constantly making decisions without understanding how they will play out politically, such as defending harassers or ignoring advice not to use a personal email server.

The best thing she could do for the Democrats would be to declare that she is a flawed individual who should not be a standard for anything, and fade away from politics. A true politician would realize this. Unfortunately, she is not a politician.

Where’s My Purse?

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Getting ready to go out with a friend yesterday, she was frantically looking for her backpack purse. “Did you see it? I hope I didn’t leave it somewhere . . .”

I let her search for a few more minutes before I kindly pointed out that it was on her back.purse

“Ohhh. Hmm. Ok, ready to go now.”

I have seen this movie before, but it still makes me laugh.

 

The Self-Driving Future: Part 4

~ Mr. Rantastic

So I am driving down the highway in my self driving car and the driver in the next lane pulls a bonehead lane change. We crash. Who is liable?

Of course the self driving car should be smart enough to avoid bonehead moves by other drivers? But how smart? What will the standard be?

On the one hand, the self driving car would probably have a camera recording everything that happens around it, and would be able to show the cops and insurance company the reckless and probably illegal move the other car made that ‘could not be avoided’.

On the other hand, the manual driver might say, “Look, maybe it was an idiot move, but people make idiot moves all the time – that’s part of driving. An alert driver would have been able to avoid an accident and your self driving car is obviously not as good as an alert manual driver.” Sue the manufacturer.

Inventively there will be horror stories in the press about people with unexpected hits on their insurance due to self-driving crashes. Eventually, the government, the lawyers and the insurance companies will work it out. But until they do, look for many folks to be reluctant to turn on the autopilot.

 

Trump Will Lie To Mueller

~ Mr. Rantastic ~ 1 Comment

At some point over the next few months, President Donald Trump and Special Counsel Robert Mueller will have a conversation. Each will be accompanied by a phalanx of lawyers. Mueller and his team will ask questions. Trump, guided by his team, will answer. And then Trump will throw in a few lies.

It is certain that Trump will lie? No, but the odds are pretty good, and here’s why.

  1. He has done it before. Trump has been in court many times. He is familiar with testifying and has told many lies and misleading statements in the past
  2. He doesn’t believe he is lying. Trump is a narcissistic pathological liar, in other words he believes his lies because they are part of his self image.
  3. Even if he knows he is lying, he feels that as president he can do whatever he wants. Trump probably believes it is his right and duty to lie in the right circumstances, and a vindictive witch hunt by Mueller is one of those circumstances.
  4. He doesn’t see any downside to getting caught lying. The president can always pardon himself from committing perjury, right? Even if that doesn’t work, what’s the worst that can happen? He’s the guy that could get away with shooting someone in Times Square. They certainly aren’t going to impeach him for a lie or two. If they try, there will literally be blood in the streets – his people will never take an impeachment attempt lying down.

Mueller probably knows that he will never take Trump down. But he can take his company and business associates down. When he uncovers the full nature of the money laundering and side deals that Trump, Inc. has been involved in with the Russians and firms like Deutsche Bank it is going to get mighty uncomfortable to be in business with or as a Trump.