Day 848

Day 848 Saturday May 4, 2018

548 Days to the 2020 election and 626 Days to Inauguration Day

Well as Rachel Maddow is wont to say, “We’ve got a lot to get to.” (One day, just one day, I’d like to hear her say, “Eh, not much happened today.”

We’ve got a Wildwood, New Jersey update; everything (not everything!) you need to know about the Mueller Report, and something else, which I’ve forgotten.

Let’s start with Wildwood. This is a first. I got a hot tip. You won’t hear this anywhere else. So listen up. (Read on?) Philadelphia has this statue of Kate Smith and it’s their hockey team’s good luck charm – kind of. It turns out whenever the hockey team plays Kate Smith’s “God Bless America” before they play the National Anthem – they win. Or so the story goes. Or they win the series. Or something like that. Well, it turns out back in the 1940s Kate Smith recorded some songs that were very popular but very racist. Now nobody wants to know Kate and they’ve put a bag over the statue. 

Enter Wildwood. If you’ve never been to Wildwood then this won’t make sense really without further explanation, fear not, here comes the “what you need to know” stuff. Wildwood is a beach resort town on the Jersey coast. It way down south (for Jersey) near the little tip. That little tip is known as Cape May and it is famous for its gingerbread design trim and oh so perfect gay (as in 1890s gay) look and feel. It’s a summertime posh and restrained elegant look. Wildwood, which is fifteen minutes up the road has none of that. It’s more the redneck version of a beach town. Cheap motels and sub shops with liquor in bags is more its look and feel. It’s where we’ve had kite festivals for decades. These are the more raucous kind of festival. 

It turns out, and this is a little known fact even among the kite intelligentsia, that it was I who started a tradition at the Wildwood Kite Festival. On, I believe, the fourth year of the event I brought a cassette (which give you some idea of how long ago that it was!) of various bands playing “Louie Louie” (If you don’t know the song then stop reading right now – go look at your iphone and take a selfie or something because 1) you won’t understand anything after this and 2) even if it’s explained to you, you won’t care; and there’s nothing like an unenthusiastic “oh” from some little twerp who takes three seconds to look up from their screen to utter that half phrase that can lead to unmentionable things happening to them, which I don’t want to be responsible for. (and just because you’re reading this doesn’t mean you are free from approbation and pain. Voodoo works! Trust me on this. (Egad, how did I get here?))

So I gave the tape to the organizers, challenged all the dual line kite fliers to a giant group fly (There were no stinkin’ four line kites at the time and no one had come up with the term “mega-fly” or “Haut-man” which I think the Brits call it.) I then promptly left town and didn’t wait for the event I had created to happen. (I had to get the Corey-Lama to the airport.) 

Turns out the event was a big success and next year they made T-shirts with the words “Louie-Louie” on the back (along with a bunch of other stuff) and it became part of the Wildwood Kite Festival permanent event schedule. ) ( I was also in on the founding of the American Kitefliers Association as an association, one of the first kite announcers in the country, and one of the first kite auctioneers in the country, and the co-founder of the most successful and longest running Rokkaku kite battling team in the history of the sport, not to mention I am the undefeated national kite reeling champion – but who’s boasting? )

Okay so Wildwood is this crazy insane fun event (less crazy and insane as we’ve aged) but still…

So I get a call, from an unnamed source that the mayor of Wildwood wants the statue. What statue? The statue of Kate Smith. Pay attention, it’s the only statue mentioned.

So if you want to see Kate Smith and pay homage to her you may – may – have to go to Wildwood. I’ll keep you informed as I get more information and updates.

Not much else has happened except for The Mueller Report which outline behavior which threatens our democracy like nothing this republic has ever witnessed and makes one wish they had paid more attention in civics class.

So I was in this very dangerous place yesterday, Quail Ridge Books in Raleigh, North Carolina. If you get the chance don’t go! You can’t get out of there without dropping some serious cash (or credit.) It’s a real bookstore with competent staff who know where things are, and – get this – willing to help you. OMG. I had paid and was leaving when I saw a stack of Mueller Report books. Two of the three different versions available. I got the biggest print size (not large print, just big book size) for $15.00. I then wandered over to BarTacos (another dangerous place) ordered a beer, and tacos. I sat down and started to read. First the table of contents to Volume I, then I read the table of contents of Volume II. I read the executive summaries of both volumes and the part where Mueller lays out his reasoning for not charging the sitting president, and why he didn’t exonerate the president. 

If you read that far and don’t come away with the impression that I did, which is “Donald Trump is guilty as shit” then I would guess you scored below 100 on your English SATs. Either that or you are so in the bag for this sociopathic president that there’s no hope for you.

Volume II was interesting. I skimmed much of both volumes because the report brings up lots of stuff we’ve heard in the news. Volume II outlines the evidence for obstruction of justice. It’s the more interesting and the more frustrating. Frustrating because we are used to having conclusions at the end of whatever we read and Mueller did not do that. He didn’t draw conclusion because, as he pointed out elsewhere and in multiple instances because he

believed a sitting president could not be indicted and that it was not his job to indict the president he thought it incorrect (unlawful?) to charge someone who couldn’t clear their name in court, therefore he drew no conclusions about the evidence. He merely presented the evidence along with an intro to each legal possible charge. This intro spelled out the terms, definitions, and caselaw underlying any possible charges. Then he wrote the evidence, which could be applied against those terms, definitions, and caselaw. But drew no conclusions! He just stopped.

And went on to the next example.

Very frustrating.

So imagine if you will an example like this:

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Murder is when you intentionally kill someone.

The person in question had phone calls, wrote notes and said in public “I’m going to shoot that son-of-a-bitch.”

Later that day the person in question in front of ten witnesses drew his gun held it to the man’s head and pulled the trigger. This resulted in a bullet entering the right temple and exiting through the left side of the head making a four inch exit wound. The shot man was declared dead at the scene.

In our next example the person in question was …

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Hey, wait a minute. What about the dead guy? What about the shooter? Was he charged with anything? What happened?

I’ll tell you what happened. Nothing.

That’s the end of the story.

For now.

548 Days to the 2020 election and 626 Days to Inauguration Day

PS The Mueller Report and “WTF? Are we having fun yet?”