beginning of the end

For the last few months, I really didn’t believe that Trump will be impeached by a Republican majority congress. I expected the various investigations to drag on as long as possible while Republicans wring out a few more tax cuts. I was resigned to the fact that we have to wait until 2018 mid term to have any Democratic majority in house or senate. Even then, I don’t expect Trump to have the grace to resign due to impeachment, but rather, I would expect him to wait for Senate to convict him. more »

Comey Firing and the Continuing Saga

Yes, this is the worst yet. The Firing Trump fired FBI director James Comey on 5/9/2017. This is fine, he is well within rights to do that. The real question is “Why now?”. FBI is current conducting an investigation into Russian collusion with the Trump campaign, so there is obvious comparison to Nixon here. The Memos Based on the memos released by the White House, the firing was based on a recommendation from Deputy AG over Comey’s handling Clinton Email Investigation. more »

Break From Work

What do you do when you need a break from Real Work? For me the answer is re-organizing. And it’s re-organizing on computer. I spend time on re-reading and cleaning up my notes, moving folders around, deleting unused files, upgrading old versions of software. Sometimes, I rewrite some configurations for tools I use - vim, vscode, etc. Hopefully, this is more ‘yak shaving’ than ‘bike shedding’. My most recent break finally saw me checking up on this issue homebrew #143. more »

Trumpcare Passed House

Today the House passed the health care bill known as Trumpcare. The tally is YES NO Not Voting Republicans 217 20 1 Democrats 0 193 0 Total 217 213 1 After ramming this revised bill through the voting process without CBO review, without committee debates, without public hearings, the Republicans are seen gleefully celebrating in the White House’s Rose Garden. more »

Day 100: Revealing Quotes

A study in quotes “nobody knew that health care could be so complicated” - 02/27/2017, speaking to a group on repealing and replacing Obamacare. “After listening for 10 minutes, I realized it’s not so easy” - 04/12/2017, in conversation with Chinese President Xi Jinping about China should simply eliminate the threat posed by North Korea. “This is more work than in my previous life. I thought it would be easier” - 04/28/2017, speaking with Reuters reporters more »

Review: The Andromeda Strain

The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton I didn’t realize this novel was written in 1969. While it was easy to pick up some hints that it’s not a modern science fiction (computer usage based on timesharing, phone switchboard, plot revolving around atomic bombs and government carrying out rather successfully large conspiratorial projects), it holds up remarkably well! I think it’s quite a stretch even in near future to build a lab similar to the secret lab depicted in the novel. more »

AP interview with trump

So AP landed a one-on-one interview in the Oval Office with Trump. The transcript (like any Trump one-on-ones) is just amazing. See if you can understand what’s going on here… TRUMP: They had a quote from me that NATO’s obsolete. But they didn’t say why it was obsolete. I was on Wolf Blitzer, very fair interview, the first time I was ever asked about NATO, because I wasn’t in government. more »