Month: June 2016

Why is Trump so embarrassed about his Assets?

There have been a lot of allegations about how rich Trump is not.  Don’t get me wrong.  Trump is rich compared to you and I and 99% of the world.

But Trump claims to be worth $10 Billion.  Which turns out to be as suspect as claiming 10 inches.  He’s just super cagey about showing off the actual meat that makes up his $10 Billion.

He won’t show his tax returns which all modern Candidates do.  If you will recall, Romney was very reluctant too.  He managed to hold out until September, with reporters making huge hay over his reluctance.   I’m not sure how long Trump will hold.

But Trump’s reluctance, unlike Romney’s, is not centered on trying to avoid the perception of being one of the elite super rich.  No.  Trump is ALL ABOUT BEING RICH.  So why is he being shy?

Well, most pundits think it’s because he’s been exaggerating the inches cash and assets.  Most of these people still think he’s a Billionaire.  One source called him a Low Ball Billionaire.  Can you imagine?  Somehow being a billionaire comes with a status indicator.  What the Fuck?

Anyway.  Forbes thinks he’s got 4.5 Billion.  What I find mind boggling is that people seem to think this makes a difference.  $10 Billion vs 4.5 Billion.  Whaaat?  Are they kidding?  Do they have any concept of what a billion is?

But there are others who would lower him down to mere Millionaire Status, saying he’s not even a Billionaire.  In 2006 when Trump was claiming a mere $6 Billion, Timothy O’Brien claimed he was only worth between $150 million and $250 million.  Trump sued him and lost.  Now Trump claims $10 Billion.

Here’s the thing, Trump is selling assets to pay for this campaign.  He’s not particularly liquid in cash.  But that’s doesn’t mean he’s not a Billionaire.  Or just a super rich Millionaire.  He’s rich.  Very Rich.  Liquid Money is money that isn’t earning much or any money.  It would be a foolish Billionaire who was very liquid.

Trump is embarrassed about how rich he is.  Not because he’s too rich, like Romney was.  Because he’s not rich enough.  He’s been bragging about his size and now people want him to drop trou and he’s feeling all kinds of awkward about being found short.

Add into his natural inadequacy all the ways he manipulated those tax returns to minimize his taxable income and gains and he’s going to look VERY short of his boasts.  He thinks no one will understand that he’s really rich.

I bet he isn’t even thinking about how we will be pissed about his tax avoidance.  He’s worried that we will realize he’s not as Rich as He Claims to Be.  He thinks we be will be focused on how short it seems.

Which considering the length and breadth of his lies to date is an interesting insight into his psyche.  He’s an unrepentant and unembarrassed liar.  But he feels inadequate about money.

He wants to be seated near the Head of the Table by Bill Gates, but he’s afraid everyone will find out that maybe he’s not even IN the Billions Club, much less being anywhere close the head of the table.

He feels insecure about how he’s not rich enough.

It’s pathetic.  And disturbing that this is the sort of person people want to run this country. A man who’s house of cards will be brought down by a dick wealth measuring contest.

Donald Trump and the Mob

It sounds like the title to a bad Detective Story.  But there is a substantial connection between Donald Trump and the Mob.  

Trump worked with a guy, Felix Sater, who helped develop the Trump SoHo hotel and condominium in New York City. In 2000, Sater pled guilty to running a major mob funded investment scam.  He served no time because of a deal he made with the FBI.  Sater was also convicted for slashing a guys face with a broken bottle in 1993.  He’s a nice guy.

Allegations have been made that Trump worked with mob related operations in various building sites.  Its been said Trump Tower is a a monument to the Mob by Wayne Barrett .

But you don’t hear about it much.  No one is harping on it.  Perhaps because he has such a great clown show going on in front of the reporters, there is no need to dig to deep for something worth reporting.

You may consider it inevitable that he’s connected to the Mob because he’s a builder.  But put it in perspective – the man who claims to be right for the White House job is connected to organized crime.  We should try to avoid putting that sort of connection into the white house when we can see it ahead of time.

Baffling. Just Baffling.

I don’t get UK Politics.

I mean when Cameron resigned I was sort of shocked.  In a vague way I get that he was doing some kind of “noble thing” because he fucked up in large and terrible way.  I guess?  But I don’t REALLY get it.  But the UK people I follow on twitter seemed to just nod knowingly.  Maybe they think he’s idiot, but they don’t seem baffled by the act of resignation.

Then the resignations of the MP and Cabinet Members just came flooding in.  Now I’m befuddled.  Why are they all quitting just when they are most needed?

When your country is in crisis, you don’t do the honorable suicide thing.  You buckle on your adult panties and you get to work putting the place back in order.  You have large fights about the best way to do it, but you keep going, you negotiate and compromise and hammer out some solutions that neither side really likes but both sides find at least acceptable.

But you don’t politely bow out because you don’t agree with how things have gone so far.  What the ever living fuck is that about?  Grow the fuck up.  This isn’t the damn PTA.  You were elected to a position of government.  Do the damn job and stop prancing around writing noble and slightly martyred resignation letters.

Utterly ridiculous way to run a damn country.  Or in this case, not run a country.

I mean, these are the people KNOWN for being stubborn and sticking out the damn blitz.  One of their heroes, the Duke of Wellington is oft quoted for saying

“I made my campaigns using rope, and if a piece broke I tied a knot”

Tie a knot, Idiots.  Stop faffing about resigning and just get the place back in order, one way or another.

Churchill was famous for not giving up.  For facing down utter disaster and pulling his country through.  Churchill would have told them all –

“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”

Continue, damn you!

From my vantage and at this distance all I see are a bunch of children in a crisis running home crying for Mummy to get them some tea because its been rough at the playground this week.

It seems to me that someone needs to have a Come to Jesus Meeting with these halfwits.  I wonder if the Queen is available? Maybe that could be her real role in the UK.  Scolding the Parliament into doing their damn jobs.

I am not always thrilled with my country, the US.  But I will say this, we aren’t plagued by the hypocrisy of Virtuous Quitters that seems to have decimated the UK Parliament.  I cannot imagine any of our Congress, many of whom have few if any redeeming qualities, quitting just when the country needed them most.  Much less the President.

Calling a General Election at such a time is just adding  Chaos to Crisis.  Ridiculous.

Neutrality is not enlightenment. It is a position only accessible to those for whom the stakes are very low, who want to feel superior to those who have no choice but to care.
~araxoolie

This is so very true.  There is a tendency among people who have very little to lose to say “Shush, You are being rude.  Just Shush. Be accepting and polite.”. But there are times when being polite is UTTERLY POINTLESS.

When people’s lives have been stripped mined they don’t have any need to be polite.  It will not save them.  Their best solution is to be LOUD AND ANGRY.  To be effectively calling out what is wrong.

Do not Shush the disenfranchised because it feels awkward and rude to you.  Ask yourself, why are they screaming?  Why are they making a fuss and being so rude and angry?  Why aren’t you angry?

Do you see the problem, but are just giving precedence over your current comfort and the need to fit into the social dynamic that is Polite Society?  Because that is a certainly a strategy that works well in at dinner party for the boss, but it’s not one that will change the course of history.  Think about it hard – Are you unconsciously prioritizing the need to smooth out the immediate discomfort of shoutiness over the absolute problem that caused it?

Or is their problem not a problem for you and so you just don’t want to know that anyone else is suffering?  Well, guess what.  They have no need to make you more comfortable in your easy life.  Their life isn’t going so well.  Too bad if you have to see it, hear it and face it.

Will the human race die from its own inanity?

I think its likely.

What I find most frustrating about that fact is that is entirely possible not to think like an idiot.  It’s a trainable skill to think clearly.

We spend a huge amount of money educating people and what we accomplish in 12 years is teaching them to read, possibly to write, and occasionally to be able to add up numbers.

We fail miserably at education.  Mostly because we think education is about learning facts rather than learning the skill of thinking intelligently.

If you spend anytime on the internet, you will see countless people make ridiculous points, that have no logic, and/or no basis in fact.  They never bother to run an idea through any kind of critical thinking, never bother to do the most minimal research on an idea.

We don’t have to live like this.  We don’t have to have people starving.  Dying of curable diseases.  Living without shelter, dying in violence.  We don’t have to strip the earth of all it’s resources and have our descendents die slowly in horrible circumstances because we were just too stupid to allow them the privilege of life.

But we do.  We do because we are stupid.

And the more people there are in any group, the stupider the group becomes.  And humans do tend to herd ourselves into groups, virtually as well as in real life.  And once we are in the group, all we hear is the echo chamber of our own ideas and so we don’t feel any compulsion to consider anything differently.

And all of it is within our power to do differently.  All of it.  It only requires thought.  And a desire for the greater good.  But even if you are just a selfish clod, you must recognize the benefit gained to yourself by the greater good.  Well, you recognize it when you use your brain to think critically.

So little hard thinking is done in this world.   And eventually it will kill us.

Watching for Omens

I’ve been following the UK Brexit Referendum.  I worry that it’s a sign of the coming times for the US.

A sign that the people who claim fear instead of compassion will change the direction that humanity has been crawling.  The direction of peace and a place for everyone.

A sign that the people who only want only Us and not Them will win in every country and the world will become more divided and violent.

A sign that humanity will never grow out of the kindergarten stage of recess name calling and poking and gratuitous violence.

A sign that the few will always direct the fear of the many to their own advantage the demise of a truly civilized civilization.

A sign that if they win, Trump will follow.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this.  We were going to grow out of it.  How did we end up here?

 

Rationalization

The human is always able to find a way to rationalize its actions.  Most often without any awareness that we are doing it.

We can usually find  a way to make ourselves comfortable with our choices and actions.  We don’t like unpleasant feelings about ourselves, so we find good reasons that we are doing something necessary or good when we say or do things that contradict our beliefs.

We enjoy pointing out when other people are being hypocritical in some way or another, but the reality is that every person on the planet is doing something, or has done something in the last day or less that is contradictory to something they have previously stated or believed.  We ALL do it.

  • We criticize Betty for being judgemental, all the while being judgemental about Betty.
  • We claim to be kind but are willing to insult George because we don’t like him.
  • We give money to the poor, but only if they aren’t on the street begging because those people are scammers.

We do lots of things that aren’t who we say we are. We believe things but don’t act that way in reality.  But it’s OK.  Because there is always a way to justify it.

Our monkey brains make one reason remove the contradiction.  If I have a reason, it’s OK that I’m doing this thing I claim is not the sort of thing I do.  It’s OK to be mean to George because I don’t think George is nice.  I don’t like him.  That means that I get to still think of myself as Kind, even if I’m mean to George.

That is the magic of rationalization.

But the weird thing is that this magic only works inside of ourselves.  Other people don’t see the magic happen.  So if I’m mean to George, people will think I’m mean and if I claim to a kind person, they will call it hypocrisy when they remember the George incident.  That magic reasoning that I only worked on me, not on them.

Sadly we think it works on them.  We think everyone can see it all as clearly as we can.  George deserved it, so I’m still a kind person.  And I’m very hurt when people start accusing me of being cruel to George.  Because I used the magic rationalization it has never occurred to me that those things I said to George were not consistent with calling myself kind.

It takes a bit of introspection to really look at how we are tricking ourselves into thinking we are something that we really may not be.  It’s a very uncomfortable thing to do, to search inside yourself and scratch aside our the illusions of yourself.  But if we want to have a certain self integrity I think it’s a worthwhile endeavour.

It can also be a bit obsessive and become non-productive.  I have discovered that there are rabbit holes of rationalization.  I can rationalize the rationalizing.

It helps if you already have decided who you want to be.  And then you look.  Because if  you don’t know who you want to be, then there is no point in looking at all, is there?