Archives for November 2018

Day 679 Friday November 16, 2018    912 Days to Go

Is the excrement close to the fan?

I think so, but it’s hard to say. I’ve been hoping every election cycle that we throw the rascals out and, at least, get a new group of them in. This past election did that somewhat, yet a nazi sympathizer hung in there as did two indicted Congressmen, and any number of “god fearing” folk. Let me be clear, by god-fearing I mean they use their interpretation of the Bible to justify all kinds of mean crappy decisions that they are all for until they themselves are caught in such transgressions. 

But now we have some interesting news. Turns out the DC Circuit Court is hearing some pleading (is that the right word? I don’t know.) behind closed doors. On one side is the Mueller team, on the other is we-don’t-know, but whomever it is, it’s high level because these things go right to the front of the line of cases. This is – btw – the court just below the Supreme Court. There is one judge on this court appointed by Trump and this guy worked in the White House. He wouldn’t tell the Senators exactly what he had done in terms of giving legal advice to the president as it pertained to Russia and the Russia investigation (it wasn’t about the Comey firing, or Manafort) but he did say that if any of those matters that he advised the president on came before the court he would recuse himself. Guess what? He recused himself on whatever this matter is before the court. 

So what could this matter be?

How about Trump, or Trump family members, and others or maybe all three of the buckets of deplorables* I’ve mentioned are going to be indicted in some manner related to Russia meddling in our election and their colluding with them.

*(I list Trump, the family members active in the administration: Don Jr., Ivanka, Eric, and Jared), and anyone who is a lackey and/or sycophant** for them as deplorable.) **(too many to list.) 

And, I contend, that the Trump team of lawyers who may or may not get paid by Trump or anybody, are fighting like hell to prevent this from happening.

And, I further contend, that this is one of the main reasons Donnie is grumpy. That and the steady drip of Democratic candidates that keep winning elections that were too close too call on election night.

Let’s look at two of those races:

One is in Maine where the Democratic candidate won out over the Republican. He didn’t get more votes than the Republican, but he won. How did this happen? Maine has an interesting law. Voters are asked whom their second and third choice for an office is. If no one gets over 50% of the vote then the second choice votes are added in to each total of the front runners, and the third choice, etc. until someone gets over 50%. The idea is to drop out third party candidates and or two moderate candidates that split the majority vote and let a wild card with a lower percentage (think Paul Lapage) from ascending to office with a minority of the votes. 

It worked in Maine. Once the third party guy was dropped out of the vote totals and the second choice of voters was counted, the Dem won.

And a Dem won in California too.

And there’s a third race to talk about, it hasn’t been called yet, but it’s an interesting story to me. It’s Emily Randall. She’s running for state senate in Washington state. She’s a college buddy of my daughter. I gave money to her campaign because my daughter called me and asked me to because, “Emily is awesome.”  I put somewhere on the form that I was Katie’s dad. When Katie talked to Emily the first thing she said to my daughter was, “Your dad gave me money.” That’s the closest thing I’ve ever gotten from a person running for office as a personal thank-you. 

Then the election came. It was too close to call. Mandatory recount. She was 134 votes behind, then 146 (.22%) then 74 behind. As of yesterday she’s 88 votes ahead.

There’s also a report that McConnell took money from the Russians, $3.5 million. So did Rubio and Graham. This isn’t an open and shut case, but it does seem troubling. The fellow, Leonard Blavatnik, gave money to Repiublicans, and in 2016 gave a lot more than he usually gives. He was a Russian citizen who came to the U.S. in 1978 to study. He now has US/UK citizenship and he’s worth $16.7 Billion. We owns the Warner Musical Group and has been trying to buy a major studio for years. He made his money starting in Russia as the country disposed of its state held assets. His buddy from his time in college is Viktor Vesksleberg whom the Mueller team boarded his private plane on a stopover in NYC. Blavatnik is also friends with Mikhail Fridman of AlfaGroup (and I suppose Alfa Bank, the bank that set up a server to talk to a server in Trump Tower). Together Blavatnik and Fridman formed AAR, which diversified into oil, chemicals and all that stuff.

Blavtnik has been lavish with his money earning him a knighthood in Britain. However, you gotta ask, “Is this all his money that he gave to the Republicans? Or was there something more?”

Maybe, we’ll learn someday.

912 Days to Go

PS Go Emily Go!

Day 678 Thursday November 15, 2018  913 Days to Go

Today is a grab bag of misdeeds and heinous things.

First off there was an official in the White House that attacked the press, calling them “the liberal media.” He said they were out to get him and it was a conspiracy by the Democrats and the ineptness and corruptness of the Department of Justice.

I am talking about the Vice President of the United States*, Spiro Agnew. *(former).

I mean what did he do that anyone could attack him for?

He only took envelopes of cash while he was County Executive in Maryland. In return he promised to steer contracts the way of the company that was paying him. He did it as Governor of Maryland. He did it as Vice President of the United States. While Vice President he took the money while in his office at the old Executive Building, at his home, and in the White House.

He demonized the press, the Justice Department and he enlisted the help of his supporters in the Republican party. He also asked President Nixon for his help. The two of them plotted to shutdown the investigation, to obstruct justice by getting the Chief of Staff, Bob Halderman to deliver messages to a U.S. Senator. When Halderman resigned they used the new Chief of Staff, Alexander Haig. When that didn’t work they found a new errand boy, George H. W. Bush. They all colluded to obstruct justice.

So this is an old play book for the Republicans.

Meanwhile, what else is happening? Melania has issued a statement saying someone in her husband’s staff doesn’t deserve “the honor” of working in the White House because there was a cat fight or something over who got to go on a flight to Africa.

Ben Carson’s HUD seems to have some problems. I know, crazy, huh? Yeah, seems HUD is paying slum landlords $1200 a month per 3 bedroom apartment for roach infested, leaking roof, rotting walls, mildew covered rat infested places. Seems HUD doesn’t have enough inspectors or enforcers. Ben got rid of most of them. Who needs them? Good job Ben. Ben! Ben! Wake up.

Then there’s the guy who is head of the EPA in the Southern area. He’s responsible for shipping tons of shit (yes shit) to the south and stacking it up there to stink. He started doing this before he got this job. Talk about failing up! For some reason, he’s under indictment. Like maybe the fact that he was getting paid by the company shipping the shit while he held jobs to over see this operation for the government. He’s got Spiro beat. No envelopes of cash for him, just wire it directly into his bank account.

Meanwhile the economy is going down the tubes. The president says it’s the Dems fault for winning the election. He saying a lot of crazy s h I t right now. Why? He lost in the election big time. Someone ought to tell lying  Mike Pence (You know he’s kind of a big deal, right?) He’s telling reporters that the midterm election was a huge victory for the administration because they managed to hold onto the Senate. Whoo-who.

Tucker Carlson is distraught because a mob showed up at his home. That means twenty people with signs. What? He doesn’t like the tactics used on him that were used on pro-abortion people? He didn’t have to leave his home or fear for his life like Dr. Ford. He wasn’t press attacked at his home like Bill O’Reilly used to do to people by sending out a producer to confront someone at their home.  Boy, these right wing pundits are bigger pussies than I thought. Remember, he is part of a group that used to hang out at another conservative buddy’s town house in Georgetown. The crowd included Ann Coulter and Brett Kavanaugh. They are all cut from the same cloth.

Meanwhile the recounts continue and the Dems keep winning.

913 Days to Go

PS Psychic Meditation 

Day 676 Tuesday November 13, 2018    915 Days to Go

Okay, here’s a prediction. Scott will be opposed to any more counting of ballots until he is for counting all the ballots, until the law will prevent that from happening, and he will lose.

Here’s how this is going to play out in the Senate race in Florida. Rick Scott is calling for him to be declared the winner based on the election night results. He is claiming all kinds of fraud by the Democrats. This has no basis in fact. The fact is, and the reason Scott is jumping up and down to stop any counting of more ballots, there was a machine in Boward county that malfunctioned. It was one of the machines that counts the ballots in Boward County. Boward County is Democratic, about 70% Democratic. The counting machine “undercounted” about 24,000 ballots. That means it didn’t read the ballot and kicked it out. Therefore these ballots, which weren’t counted as part of the election night count will be counted now. This is what has Scott worried. He’s ahead by 12,000 votes. If 70% of the 24,000 ballots are Democratic that would be almost 15,000 votes. However that might not be enough. We’ll see. But if it puts Nelson ahead, then we’ll see Scott yelling to count all the votes, including the absentee ballots sitting in post offices. The Miami Herald found mail carts full of absentee ballots sitting in post offices. Here’s the interesting thing, the Florida law says if the ballots were not received by election day they aren’t counted! Crazy, I know, but hey that’s their rule.

Once again Boward County is leading the way in screw ups and incompetence. The ballot was poorly designed. The ballot in that county had the Senate nominees listed in the lower right hand corner and this resulted in many people not reading that far in the ballot and not checking off their choice. This is called an “undervote” when it is shown that the votes in that area are way under the rest of the state. In Boward Count the number of people who didn’t vote for Senator were 27,000, which is a lot.

Meanwhile, Sinema won the senate seat in Arizona. The first Dem to hold that seat in quite awhile.

915 Days to Go

PS “Here’s to you; and here’s to me. If perchance we disagree …”

Day 675 Monday November 12, 2018 916 Days to Go

It’s Veterans Day. A day of remembrance.

Donald Trump is in Europe for the big parade. He was supposed to go visit the graves of the American fallen, but he skipped it. He didn’t show up for dinner at the Museum D’Orsay last night. They waited two hours for him. Some have said that the reason he didn’t show u was because it was for world leaders. (Ha ha get it? “He’s no world leader. He’s the president of the United States.”)
So people are wondering why he’s there. As I mentioned earlier, he’s there to meet with Putin. Russian media announced it. The White House didn’t.
Apparently, Jim Jordan and Bob Goodlatte are there too. They are huddling in Trump’s hotel to figure out what to do after the shellacking the Republicans took in the election. Somehow I’m on the email of “Fight4Freedom” and I get all kinds of wacky emails from them. Here’s one just before the election:



Friend:

Republicans in Congress make the job too complicated. I tell my colleagues it’s simple: DO WHAT WE SAID!
• We said we’d repeal Obamacare
• We said we’d secure the border
• We said we’d defund Planned Parenthood
• We said we’d cut spending
• We said we’d reform welfare
Yet none of these things have been accomplished.

We have an obligation to the voters who elected President Trump and the Republican majorities in the House and Senate to DELIVER.
####################################### END ##############

They have accomplished nothing!
Not the things above and not much of anything else; except putting our country deeper in debt, giving a huge tax break to the super rich who didn’t really ask for it, or need it.
To pay for it they took away the two tax breaks most middle class Americans use and count on: the home mortgage deduction and the deduction for state and local taxes.

Let’s review the things Jordan says they want to accomplish and ask yourself, “Do you want them to do these things?”
– Do you want them to repeal Obamacare? They’ve tried to repeal it 70 times. They’ve done everything they could to make it more expensive and harder to obtain, yet, people like it.
– They said they’d secure the border. What does that mean? God knows. It’s been pointed out time and time again that the problem isn’t the physical barrier at the border. But hey, Trump said Mexico would pay for it. Yeah, cut through those ranches of good red Republicans what the heck.At any rate this remains ill-defined and is only a talking point to stir up hatred.
– They said they’d defund Planned Parenthood, but they didn’t. Why? Apparently, women like to get health care services. It’s cheap and effective. Oh right. It allows women control over their bodies. Can’t have that huh Jim? This comes down to a simple question – abortion. And I ask you Mr. Jordan, “who ya gonna kill?” You’ve decided to play judge and kill the mother.
– They said they cut spending. that means they want to cut the safety net programs the poor and middle class depend on. Why? Their rich donors don’t need it so fuck the everyone else, that’s why.
– They said they’d reform welfare. You mean like stop giving handouts to corporations? Oh no you mean – Their rich donors don’t need it so fuck ‘em.

Gee, why haven’t they accomplished any of these things?
It’s really simple.
People don’t want them to do these things.

Of course Jim Jordan doesn’t care. He was elected from one of the most gerrymandered districts in the country. A tiny strip that runs north and south through the state of Ohio. It’s very red Republican.

This is the land of conspiracy theories and scares.

The odd thin is that these are just the people who need all the things Jordan is trying to eliminate.

916 Days to Go

PS Here’s Jimmy!