Archives for July 2019

Day 933 Saturday July 27, 2019

466 Days until the 2020 election and 548 days until the Inauguration

Dateline Amsterdam

Yesterday we visited Anne Frank’s House.
If you plan on going get tickets two months or more in advance because they sell out.

At 8:30 on the morning of, they release the last 25% for the day. (It’s says 9am but the queue starts at 8:30, by 9:00 am it is several hundred long. You may get dropped too. I did when I was #6. Then again I got timed out. Finally, I got tickets.

Everyone from America should visit the Anne Frank House. It is where she hid with her family and four others. There was a bookcase that served as a door to the secret annex. It is where she wrote her diary, which her father found upon returning from the concentration camps. He is the only one of the eight that survived, 120,000 of his country folk did not. 

It is sad. It is poignant, and it is happening again. It is happening in our country. We are rounding up “the others,” putting them in cages, starving them, humiliating them, torturing them.

What Anne wrote has become the face of the holocaust. The house is the embodiment of the suffering and the hope. How close they came to making it. D-Day had happened. When they were discovered they were put on the last train to what ultimately became their deaths.

It started out slowly. First, they were identified. Then they were restricted. Then they were taken. 

Through all this, as I went from room to room and I listened to the stories, I could see the face of Stephen Miller. He is the new Goering, the new Goebels, the new Eichman – the new face of evil.

466 Days until the 2020 election and 548 days until the Inauguration

Day 931 Thursday July 25, 2019

468 Days until the 2020 election and 550 days until the Inauguration

The Mueller Testimony

I think we should play Mueller Ball!

Take his answers: Yes, No, True, I do not agree with your characterization, I am not going to answer that, if it’s in the report I support it, and silence. Then match them up to the questions.

Most interesting to me was the Republican puffery and strutting, which Bobby three stick listened to and didn’t comment on. Sometimes it was followed by a question, which he answered in one of the ways listed above. He did not offer opinion, only answers, very interesting.

The “clean up” Congressman for the Republicans went on and on about how “after spending millions of dollars” and enlisting people who donated to Democratic campaigns they found no collusion, no indictments, etc. Mueller said nothing. Then the Dem response listed all the indictments, uncovering of crimes, and people sent to jail. I think the Republican clean up guy was very careful in how he worded what he said they didn’t find. 

Much of this is old ground: collusion is not a legal term, Mueller did not believe a sitting president could be indicted, he wasn’t going to talk about Roger Stone, or FISA stuff, he never asked anyone their political affiliations, he got people who were best for the job – period. Apparently, the Republicans were sleeping during his opening remarks or they have very short attention spans and needed to be constantly reminded of these things.

One Republican went on about how many times the Mueller Report quoted The Washington Post and The New York Times. This person then made comment about Fox News, I think in the context that they were never quoted. Hum. Proof, I guess in that person’s mind of bias. But then I never heard that Fox News had investigative reporters, only opinion people and a few newscasters. Well, I guess if David Pecker gave them something or Jeff Epstein then they had investigative stuff, but it hardly would make it into a factual report. FACTS! Damn there’s that pesky concept (concept?) coming up again. 

Then there was the stuff raised about various people on the Mueller team contributing to Democratic causes. Nor did they mention that Mueller is a life long Republican. Interestingly, they did not compare that to Ken Starr and his folks. I’d sure like to know how many of his team were Dems of Repubs. Somehow, I think that Starr’s folks were not only Republican but were vetted with their desire and express purpose of going after the Clintons and dragged the thing out for as long as they could, looking for anything they could find.

Another thing that Mueller kept pointing out was that “It was in the report,” this meant that if you wanted to know what was in the report you would have to READ. The other thing that came out of this was that if you wanted to understand the report you would have to THINK. I know that these two concepts (reading and thinking) are very passé.  I mean if you can’t goggle it or watch a YouTube video is it worth doing?

Let me walk through something that one of the Congress people did to try and help those who are reluctant to do either of the above (ie read and think).

There is a law known as Obstruction of Justice. There are three parts to the law. In other words, three things have to be present for one to be brought up on charges that they obstructed justice.

In the Mueller Report there are not one, not two, not three, not four, not five, not six, not seven, not eight, not nine, but ten – count them TEN cases where one Donald J. Trump met all three of the components of Obstruction of Justice. Ten Times! 

If anyone else was found to have obstructed justice, even if they had not committed a crime they would be brought up on charges and if found guilty go to jail Just ask Martha Stewart.

The evidence against Trump is not only a slam dunk, it is a slam dunk with eyes closed and one arm tied behind the prosecutor’s back. 

One can only hope that on the day Trump leaves office as he gets ready to board Marine One (that’s the President’s helicopter) that he will be arrested and charged. 

There are two other remedies: Mike Pence could get the cabinet to rule Trump is incompetent, or Congress can impeach Trump and the Senate could vote to remove him from office. Both of these options require people to do what’s right, to have courage of their convictions and a love for the country over personal and political affiliation. Anyone want to take that side of the bet?

Okay then. Get the rhinestone encrusted handcuffs ready.

468 Days until the 2020 election and 550 days until the Inauguration

PS Bansky

Day 928 Monday July 22, 2019

469 Days until the 2020 election and 551 days until the Inauguration

A week or so ago I heard that Megan Rapinoe’s brother had been in jail for years for drugs. Maximum security, tattoos, heroin, the whole bit. I had to ask myself, “Is this what he wanted? Is our approach to drugs in this country working?”

I remember seeing a picture in Time, in their issue on the new drug crisis, a woman was shooting up under a porch and the caption said, “No one growing up says they want to be a drug addict.” (or something to that effect.)

Years ago I remember reading that England was treating drug addiction as a sickness, not a crime. I haven’t heard much about how that program is doing.

I heard an interview on Public Radio. The woman who’s book was taken as the basis for “Orange is the New Black” wrote a memoir of her taking money to England for a friend. The money was drug money. She knew it. Ten years later there was a knock on her door and she spent a year in jail at Danbury (up the street from where I grew up.) One count of money laundering – one year? Wow, I wondered, If that holds for the president he’s looking at a long time in jail just for his money laundering activities.

How long can this charade go on? How long can Trump and the Republicans ignore, cheat, lie, steal, and rig? Is there an end to it or is this the end?

Some don’t like that Rapinoe wouldn’t stand for the National Anthem or didn’t want to go to the White House. That it didn’t show respect. WTF? Show respect? Look at who is in the White House!!! Respect? (Remember that NFL ad where a coach is at a press conference and says, “Playoffs?” Like “Are you kidding me?”) Respect?

I’ll say this I would guess that Melanie’s parents, who became U.S. citizens on a “we need these people because they are so valuable to our country’s well being” program, know more about the U.S. Constitution than the current president.

The four women in Congress that Trump has attacked certainly know more than Trump.

I think what is playing out in this country right now is a discussion, a dialogue, which asks, “Is this what you want this country to be? How’s it working out for you?”

There seem to be three sides to the discussion: modest changes and tweaks, real change, and “Let’s go back to the way it never was.”

Some might say real change is radical change and they’d be correct in so far as the little things haven’t helped. Is it time to really do something? I think so. Under Trump we’ve seen the conservative, right wing, business establishment Republican vision for this country. “How’s that working out for you?”

Not so good? 

Okay, so what are your choices? Cop out (Libertarian, Green, etc.), Democratic establishment, Democratic progressive. The establishment view is “play it safe.” I ask, “How’s that worked out in the past?” I’d say – not so good.

What would the last alternative be? Progressive ideas. The ones that Franklin Roosevelt championed. He wasn’t a progressive as much as a scientist, a political/social scientist. He twiddled. He tried things. Some worked; some didn’t. Isn’t it time to try some things? I mean, playing it safe hasn’t worked out so well. Neither has letting the Russians, I mean the Republicans,  done much.

Speaking of not doing much. I had quoted John Boehner as saying that in his twenty five years in Congress he never saw the Republicans put forward a health care plan. John Dean had responded to a Republican Congressman who was trying to make fun of him that Nixon did have a health care plan. This is true. Nixon’s plan moved us from doctors ripping us off to HMOs ripping us off. 

So? When I look at the play it safe crowd, I don’t see a hue and cry from the land for it. Republican Lite is what that has sometimes been called. I don’t think it’s where the country is at, nor do I think it is what we need. We need to get back to solving problems. We’ve got a big one staring us in the face and it’s called climate change. 

The Squad, the four Congresswomen that Trump attacked, understand this. Trump does not, or doesn’t care enough to do anything about it.

Dealing with that issue alone is not going to be easy, and baby steps isn’t going to cut it. We need big bold action. That isn’t called playing it safe. It is called “Dealing With Reality.”

469 Days until the 2020 election and 551 days until the Inauguration

PS The author with some of his “new friends” the Barong Puppets.