Archives for December 2019

Monday December 30, 2019

314 Days until the 2020 election and 395 days until the Inauguration

That’s the question asked by some of my conservative Republican friends via facebook memes. 

On the surface it seems like a logical fair question, and it is – on the surface.

Let’s dig a tiny bit deeper.

Imagine you show up at your polling place, the one you’ve come to for decades, you present your ID, the same one you’ve always presented and you are told it’s no good. Just imagine that.

Now, for the sake of truth, honesty, and the American way you ask why not. Why isn’t the ID I’ve always presented for decades to show who I am no good? 

Now, for the sake of truth, honesty, and the American way let’s say the poll worker knows and tells you, “Well, you see the Governor and the Republican Party wanted to figure out how to cut down the Democratic vote so they asked repeatedly what ID poor and black people used to identify themselves at polling places. Once they had that information they passed laws and or regulations saying those IDs were no longer acceptable.”

Now suppose, for the sake of truth, honesty, and the American way, you find that unbelievable. Why would the governor do that? He’s the governor. He’s supposed to represent all of us. But the poll worker reassures you that it’s true. Not only is it true but he went back after the law and regs were passed and asked again to make sure.

By the way, quiz question, “What state are you in?”

Not confusion, although that may be true. Welcome to North Carolina! Where the governor Pat McCrory and his Republican henchmen are working assiduously to screw over the poor and African American voters. Why? Well, they don’t vote Republican. 

But don’t worry a judge struck down that dastardly trick. The judge also had to strike down the gerrymandering that the Republicans tried to pull off – not once, but at least twice. I think the Republicans finally came up with an acceptable gerrymander so they could keep the state Republican despite the popular vote being Democratic. 

And it’s been ruled okay by the Supreme Court.

You want justice? You want fairness? You silly person.

This is just the tip of the spear. This is old news. Now, we’ve got Georgia and Wisconsin where hundreds of thousands of voters have been thrown off the voting roles. Go ahead and register, but when it comes time to vote you won’t be on the rolls. Why? Didn’t you return that crappy little postcard they sent you? The one that looked like junk mail? Oh you moved? Too bad, so sad, loser.

Yup, poor people move a lot, but they stay in the same area. So when they go to vote they’ll learn that their name no longer appears on the voting rolls. Welcome to Kansas or any of 17 states where this trick has been played.

But just in case a voter may sneak through there’s another one. See it’s called “cross check.” It’s based on the idea that if there is a name that appears on voter rolls in two states and it’s the same name it must be the same person. What to do? Why, take them off of both rolls. Sorry, John Smith.

Recently, hundreds of thousand of voters were taken off the rolls in Wisconsin and Georgia. Why? Well, they said they were trying to clean up their records. So what if it was mainly Stacie Abrams voters that she had registered? Just a coincidence. Well, yeah, the guy in charge of the voter rolls was her opponent, and he did squeak out a victory. Guess it was a good thing that during that election he forgot to register those 50,000 voters that had applied. Maybe, he didn’t forget. I mean he was head of the election and the applications were in his desk. But he’s gone ahead and gotten even more voters purged. 

To be safe he’s got voting machines that the Russians or anyone else can easily hack. Remember the eleven year old kid who did it with a Word doc telling him how to do it and he did it in what? Five minutes? Yeah. Well, don’t worry because you’ll never know because Georgia doesn’t keep paper records and their man makes sure to erase the votes before anyone can get a look at them. A law to make it required to have paper back up failed to come to the floor of the Senate. Way to go Mitch!

In Wisconsin the case got struck down by a judge saying they hadn’t shown sufficient hardship or made their case or something like that. It was partially based on a Supreme Court ruling penned by that great (tongue in cheek here folks!) Constitutional scholar Anthony Scalia who ruled that people with photo IDs in place of driver’s licenses could get a new ID by going to the place where they handed out the IDs and that it wasn’t a hardship to go 17 miles to do that. 

Think about that. Ask yourself, why would a person not have a driver’s license? I’m guessing because they don’t have a car. Why don’t they have a car? I’m guessing because they are poor (or the new urban elite that live in a city.) So how are they going to get to the place handing out the new IDs? I’m guessing taxi or walking. Is it a hardship for a poor person to take a 17 mile round trip? Heck you can walk it in six or seven hours if you’re healthy. What if you aren’t? What if you have to depend on a walker? Take a taxi, how much does a seventeen mile taxi ride cost? Oh snap, you’re poor. You don’t have the cash. Not to worry, once you got there they would have told you that the copy of your birth certificate was good enough, or that you marriage license was needed to show you had changed your name. They would have thought of something to make you have to come back. Hey, it’s the law! Sorry (ha ha).

Am I against photo ID? Naw. But I would like to see the playing field leveled. Let’s start with a simple little change – the only ID allowed for you to identify yourself at a polling place is your picture ID and the only acceptable ID is your SNAP ID. (SNAP is the welfare ID for you to get food cheaply or for free.) Don’t qualify for SNAP? That’s okay, we’ll set up a SNAP card for people who don’t qualify. Naturally, you’ll need to bring lots of paperwork to prove who you are and why you don’t qualify. We’ll even move the office to a place you’ve never heard of, and we’ll put in wacky hours, so even if you show up, it will be closed. When are you available? Uh huh. Uh huh. Sorry, they aren’t open then. In fact, we have a new procedure. It’s called “When we see you coming flip the ‘OPEN’ sign to ‘CLOSED’.” Yeah, I know. Too bad. But that’s the law.

And just in case you want to take it to court, we’ve been working to put people who agree with us on the bench.

But don’t give up. This is America! Everyone has a chance. We just want to make that chance as narrow as possible for you. God Bless.*

*Reminds me of a thing my buddy told me. He said when you’ve really screwed someone at work you reach across the table, put your hand on his shoulder and say, “What’s best for the company?”

314 Days until the 2020 election and 395 days until the Inauguration

PS One of King Tut’s boxes** he was buried inside of. At the old Cairo Museum. 

** Sorry “shrines.” Okay to the tune of “What my true love gave to me”

“One granite sarcophagus, three gold coffins, four wooden shrines, and a pure golden mask!”

(Hum, doesn’t quite rhyme.)

Sunday December 29, 2019

315 Days until the 2020 election and 396 days until the Inauguration

I started to title this screed “What happened to the Grand Old Party?” but I realized that was overused and trite. It’s easy to say, “It’s Trump,” but I think it’s more than that. True, Donald has a way of bringing out the worst in people, but has this been what the GOP has been all along and were better at hiding it?

Have they always been racist and capitalist criminals? I use the term capitalist criminal because many of the strategies that some of their richest donors used to become rich, while not illegal are certainly unethical. Perhaps, that’s to light a way to put it. Maybe they are illegal, but it’s hard to get caught. Or maybe it’s illegal, so what? Get over it.

I was reading the Forbes list of the richest people in each state. There’s a guy who heads up a hedge fund that basically extorts companies to do things to give shareholders more money short term, but leaves the company in worse shape than before. Money that one could argue could go to building the company’s infrastructure is instead funneled to shareholders. This was the sort of thing I didn’t like about Mitt Romney. What he did was to take over a company, sell off its assets, re-bundle the stock and shove it off onto someone else. Either that or after stripping the company hand it over to the government as a problem child. He did that with a steel company. His buddy did a similar thing with Dunkin Donuts, leaving Dunkin with a massive amount of debt. It didn’t help the company sell more donuts, but it made him rich. 

My father’s generation, known as the greatest generation, were people that seemed focused on doing a good job, on making things, on accomplishing something. These folk? The Trump’s and the Forbes 400? Many of them are fore flushers and con artists. They aren’t building anything, just ripping off people. How did we come to this?

If you’ve listened to the Republican arguments as to why Trump should be impeached they don’t make sense. I’m not talking about a fallacy of logic. Well, maybe that. I’m talking sentence construction. Basic grammar. I mean to make an argument you have to start with sentences. Grunting, saying random words, doesn’t count. Yet, in some cases that is what they are doing. When they do form sentences it’s usually, “I haven’t seen anything which rises to the level of impeachment.” Okay, then I have to ask, “Have you bee to an eye doctor recently?” I mean, “What’s wrong with your vision?”

You were perfectly happy to have Ken Starr wander around for years looking for something on Bill Clinton. You had how many hearings about Hillary, be it on Benghazi or her emails and yet when you have criminal conduct and flagrant flaunting of the Constitution and Congress you see nothing? 

What happened?

There is a white supremacist in the White House running immigration policy. Every agency in the government seems to be run by a fox guarding its chicken house. The president is willing to take the word of our biggest opponent rather than our intelligence or military community. The president’s attorney and AG and Secretary of State are running around the globe trying to get evidence on things that don’t exist. We look like fools and yet I see ever week people I know cheering Trump on.

The Republican Party used to be pretty good at hiding that it didn’t give a damn about the working person. Now? Now, they are carrying out a campaign against common sense. The scary thing is it’s working. The even scarier thing is that structurally they could hold the Senate for decades and block any progress for the foreseeable future. Trump like to say “the do nothing Democrats.” Yet, the House has passed over 400 bills and the Senate has yet to take up any of them.

It’s not the Democrats who are do nothing. The Republicans have been busy too. In the Senate they have rammed through lots of judges. Many of them unqualified. In fact, the Senate no longer wants the opinion of the American Bar Association. I guess they got tired of hearing that the people they were nominating to lifetime positions were idiots. Meanwhile, clean air and clean water standards are being thrown out the window. Basic safety regulation are also being eliminated. Last week the inspection of pork has been sped up. This is basic stuff. What’s the attitude? “We don’t need it,” I guess.

Measles outbreaks and Mumps outbreaks are happening.Why? We don’t need vaccinations anymore is the argument. Yeah, how many have died due to that stupidity?

Stupidity and a lack of sense – common or otherwise are the order of the day. Trump and the Republicans are leading the charge.

If you support Trump or are a Republican ask yourself this, “When have either Trump or the GOP helped you?”

The Republicans have not put forward a health care bill in over 25 years. That’s not me saying it that’s the former Republican Speaker of the House. How many times do you need to see a graph or chart showing you that from Reagan on the average worker has not had any meaningful raise? 

The only time they have gotten relief is when a Democrat has been in office, but any real relief has always been blocked by Republicans.

And when it comes to spending your money? The champs are the Republicans. They outspend Democrats on a phenomenal scale. Yet, the Republicans keep harping on how wasteful the Dems are. Why not? People stupidly believe it, despite the evidence.

Remember the Republicans have cut taxes, not on you, but on the super rich. They have spent more on programs that don’t benefit you, but are happy to chop away on the ones that might give you a leg up. Pre-existing conditions? Yeah, don’t need that. It only affects 130,000,000 Americans – vote for them. Vote for your own poverty! Helping people who are starving? Screw that. If you don’t give them food it will incentivize them to find a job. Oh, they have a job, but it doesn’t pay the rent because the basic ratio of how long you have to work to pay rent has changed drastically? Too bad. Lazy.

Meanwhile, I read about hedge fund managers who are in the business of blackmail. I’m sorry, when Carl Icahn was doing it they called it Greenmail. Did you know the IRS has a separate form for Greenmail? (Form 8725 in which they define the term “Greenmail” and tax it.) See, it’s okay to hold up a company as long as the IRS gets its due. 

This is the “it’s not illegal” argument. I’ve recently seen memes that point out just because it’s legal doesn’t make it’s moral.

I guess that’s the point. As long as it’s not illegal it’s okay to do. Trump has taken that to a new shocking level. Not only does he commit illegal and immoral acts, it is reported that he has no shame. He could care less if something is illegal, immoral, and doesn’t carry if it’s shameful. The only question in his mind seems to be, “Will I get caught?” and if so “Can I get out of it?”

Welcome to the land of Donald Trump and the real Republican Party.

Now to important stuff – football.

If you didn’t watch the two college games yesterday you missed two phenomenal performances.

In the first game LSU scored seven touchdowns – in the first half. Their quarterback, the Heisman winner, showed why he deserved to win it. He completed passes that were crazy, and he did it over and over again. Not that Oklahoma was a slouch team, but they couldn’t compete.

In the next game Clemson’s quarterback experienced something he had never experienced before, being behind in a game. Clemson showed in its last drive, and final defensive stance, why they are National Champions. This sets up one of the most interesting championship games of all time. The phenomenal Heisman Trophy winner against a player that has never lost a game. My son went to Clemson. Therefore, I’m rooting for Clemson, but LSU? Wow. I have no prediction.

315 Days until the 2020 election and 396 days until the Inauguration

PS The old Cairo Museum

Day 1189 Where’s Jared?

Saturday December 28, 2019

316 Days until the 2020 election and 397 days until the Inauguration

That’s where I started this morning, lying in bed wondering why Jared Kushner has been so quiet recently. I gotta hand it to him, he manages to stay quiet while the rush of oxygen being sucked out of the room is going by him. Let’s not forget that Donald put him in charge of the whole domestic agenda, and he took on solving the middle east. I think it’s time to take a look at how he’s done. Well, if he’s in charge of the domestic agenda then he’s the one responsible for the stock market rise, the low unemployment, and all the winning our economy has been doing. (That ought to get him tweet savaged by the orange one.)

Okay, seriously, what has he done? Well according to headlines I’ve seen he got a security clearance when the intel community was screaming don’t give him one. What has he done with that? Apparently, he gave intel to MBS, which MBS used in part to find, kill, and dismember Khashoggi. He and sweet little Ivanka have made $60-80 mil this year. Doing what exactly is not clear. We know that Ivanka had a crappy jewelry line that was being made in China and when retailers could sell the sh*t she decided to close it down and concentrate more on her duties in the White House. What are her duties? When I’ve seen her being interviewed she seems lost. Like big words seem to not register in her brain. So Jared seems to have done nothing of any good and Ivanka has done slightly less. Next topic.

Trump and corruption – Trump has been investigating corruption. You bet he has. He has had his point man Rudy Giuliani going over to Ukraine to investigate. Because Trump wants to know why he hasn’t been getting more of the gravy train. He wants to make sure he’s being cut in on the deal. That’s the only investigating he’s doing. Well, not entirely, he wants to smear Joe Biden too, but that’s secondary. Drain the swamp? Ha. He want to plug up the pipes and raise the dam. 

Okay, if you’ve been paying attention to the Ukraine stuff there are some simple facts you need to keep in mind. If you’ve been listening to Fox News or reading right wing media sources these facts may come as shocking  revelations that will make your skin crawl and you’re screaming to denounce them as fake news, and folks out to get the beloved president, and want to make you introduce “alternate facts.” But hang with me dear friends because corruption in the Ukraine started way before Donald Trump got involved. See? Clean bill of health on Donald and the Ukraine. So relax. But therein lies the problem. Let me explain.

John McCain once said Russia was a gas station masquerading as a country. What do they have? Lots of gas and not much else. There economy is the size of Italy. Why? Well, they don’t have much developed to sel to others and what they do have gets ripped off by whomever is in charge. Currently, the man in charge is Putin and he has been doing an outstanding job of taking his cut. It has really hobbled the country. There is so much oil and gas in Russia that Exxon Mobil concluded a huge deal with the country,  earning then CEO of E/M, Rex Tillerson, the star of Russia from Putin. Exxon has a reputation for getting oil and damn the consequences. It’s interesting that resource rich countries tend to have some of the most impoverished populations. Why? Well, someone comes in and gobbles up all the resources and don’t give the people living there a cut. That would be socialism or worse communism and we all know that’s bad – right boys and girls? See under socialism the people running the government say platitudinous things to the people while keeping all the wealth for themselves, kind of like the Roman Catholic Church. Better to have a dictator do it. Like that little country in Africa where the son is living the high life in LA and buying Michael Jackson’s glove and having a sable of fancy cars while the people of his country live in corrugated metal roofed shacks, but the money from Exxon for its oil keeps coming.

Okay, where was I? Oh yes. Russia wants to export its oil. Ukraine has a long border with Russia and it’s the easiest way to get oil to other countries in Europe so Russia wants to sell Ukraine oil and put pipelines into the rest of Europe. Russia wants to keep Ukraine addicted to their oil and to extend this dependency to the rest of Europe. How to do this if you are corrupt? Well, first clean up your image, deny you are doing anything like what you are doing, bribe whomever you need to get your way (this extends your circle of corruption – a big win). Okay, let’s look at the score card. Well, if you’re Putin you make sure whomever is running the country is corrupt and therefore your puppet (he did that). Next you make sure whomever is running the gas company in the Ukraine is corrupt and lets you siphon money off to put in a giant slush fund to use to bribe others and extend the corruption (he did that.) Make sure the military and the lawyers and judges are corrupt (he did that.) Bingo! Now you can do things like invade parts of the country of Ukraine. You’ve always liked Crimea – take it. 

Whoops, problem. That guy in the U.S. Obama doesn’t like it. He and the rest of NATO and the EU have come down hard on you. Bummer. Don’t worry, you’ve got a man on the inside, Paul Manafort. He, like Trump, have been laundering money for you for years. Not only that but Manafort was instrumental in getting your guy elected president of Ukraine. Perfect have Paul work on the Trump campaign. Meanwhile Obama is sending Joe Biden over to the Ukraine to denounce the corruption there. How corrupt is it? Well, the U.S. won’t send certain military aid there – like Javelin missiles, because it is so corrupt. But I’m getting ahead of myself. First, you have to understand how the corruption works. Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union and as such had many of the old line corrupt officials. 

One of the corrupt gigs was in the judicial system. There were, and maybe still are, prosecutors who would bring a case against you. They’d throw you in jail. The case was bogus, but what could you do? Well, for a fee the prosecutor would let you go. If you are an investigative reporter and you land on the ground in Kiev, Ukraine it takes – literally – twenty to thirty minutes of asking questions to know who these dirty prosecutors are. This is what Joe Biden was talking about. This is what our State Department under Marie Yovanovitch was fighting.

There’s a last piece in this puzzle and that’s Dymtro Firtash. He’s a guy installed by Putin into the Ukraine gas business. More correctly, he was in charge of the gas from Russia that flowed into Ukraine. His job? No one seems very clear as to what he actually did or was supposed to be doing. His only job seemed to be to take a percentage of the money for gas from Russia that Ukraine was buying, and they bought a lot of gas. This made Firtash very very rich. How rich? Well, he was arrested in Europe  and let out on bail for $172,000,000.00. He wrote a check. He’s been fighting extradition to the U.S. for years. His main way to fight this is to hire the faciest lawyers in Washington and to bribe officials outside the U.S.

As I have stated in other screeds old Dymtro admits that none of his “success ” would be possible without the help of Semion Mogilevich, the godfather of Russia’s mafia. Shockingly, each has been linked to Putin.

What was Firtash’s job in Ukraine? It seems his main job for Putin was to bribe officials both inside and outside of Ukraine.

Just to make sure enough money was floating around Putin or someone inside of Russia was giving money to two Ukranians turned U.S. citizens named Lev and Igor. Now they seem clownish, like maybe they were the basis for Home Alone’s bad guys, but make no mistake one has threatened his landlord and carries a number of large unregistered handguns. It was so bad that the landlord had to get a restraining order. What was the problem? Oh, the landlord wanted Igor to pay his rent. Igor’s response? “I’m not going to warn you again.” Then got into to his high end Porsche and drove away. (Just to be clear. In case you don’t understand. The landlord was watching a tenant, who obviously had the money, drive off in a fancy car, and not only did the guy refuse to pay, he refused to get out, and threatened the landlord with physical harm. That’s called “battery” I believe.)

What did Lev and Igor do? They pumped hundreds of thousands of dollars into various Republican and Trump organizations. They pumped millions into the Republican party. When they were stopped at Dulles Airport and arrested they were on their way to Vienna where Dymtro Firtash lives. Rudy Giuliani also had a ticket to Vienna. Now maybe some want to say it’s all a coincidence. That they weren’t going to see Firtash who gets his marching orders from Putin. But there’s the nagging little fact that on Rudy’s last trip to Ukraine he flew back on one of Firtash’s private jets. Just a coincidence.

Why was Rudy in Ukraine? To try and dig up dirt on Joe Biden. Where did he go to do that? To one of the dirty prosecutors of course. I should say former prosecutors. See Joe Biden and Maria Yovanovitch and others had been working to root out corruption in Ukraine. It had been working. It got to the point where the military was cleaned up enough that we could trust them with Javelin missiles. (So despite what Jim Jordan and other nutty Republican congressional stooges claim it was because the military was dirty during Obama that they didn’t get  the missiles sooner. And it was because of the concentrated efforts of his administration that they got cleaned up.) 

Also the Ukrainian Gas Company had gotten cleaned up too. In fact, the head of the gas company was saying they would be able to produce enough gas in Ukraine for Ukrainians and they’d be able to export it to Europe. This must have sent a cold shiver down Putin’s back. (See Ukraine is a big source of money for Russia due to their buying Russian gas. If that was to stop, Russia would be hurting. I know, Fox News doesn’t tell you this.) The Ukrainian gas company is called Burisma and they hired Joe Biden’s son, Hunter. Why? Well, when they were still dirty (I think they were still dirty) they hired Hunter to clean up their image. It’s an old game in the world. Hire someone close to the wheels of power to try and influence that person to go easy on you. It didn’t seem to work. Joe Biden didn’t stop calling out Ukrainian corruption and Hunter did little or nothing to earn the huge monthly stipend he got from Burisma. But he did did something. I mean he is in the business of advising international companies. As for Joe, what do you expect him to do with his son? Tell him he can’t have the gig? In fact, he may not have know about it, at first, or even for most of the time Hunter was being paid. (Compare this to Ivanka and Jared who are making 60 to 80 million a year, most of it for similar gigs.) 

So Trump is outraged that this is going on. You’re darn right he’s outraged. He wasn’t getting a cut. He sent Rudy over to find out why. Where does Rudy go? To the former corrupt prosecutor. I mean it wasn’t enough that he was making millions from the money being siphoned by Putin or Firtash to him via Lev and Igor. Donnie wasn’t getting any of that, except for Rudy’s free legal advise because Lev was paying Rudy.

What we need is Francis Ford Coppola or Roger Stone to do a movie about this.

Okay, let me sum up. Based on the evidence and the facts: Rudy and Trump are pawns of Putin and Firtash. They will do whatever they can to get their cut. Sell out your old prosecutorial group, launder money. lie, cheat, steal, pull out of Syria, whatever they can get away with. They are Russian agents.

You have been told. Don’t say you didn’t know. The facts are impossible to ignore. Unless, you are Moscow Mitch or Jim Jordan and crew.

Will the Senate stand up to the Russians and Trump or will they cave. Lord knows they’ve gotten a ton of money from the Russians. Was the bribe big enough? We’ll have to wait for the impeachment trial to see how many traitors to the Constitution there are in the U.S. Senate.

I hope, I’ve made the case clear enough. It’s hard to say given the overwhelming noise from the far right and the Russian disinformation campaigns.

316 Days until the 2020 election and 397 days until the Inauguration

PS The Step Pyramid of Djoser at Saqqara. Saqqara is an area of the Egyptian Desert, like the Giza Plateau. It is slightly south of The Giza Plateau, about twenty miles. I use the term Giza Plateau to differentiate it from the city on the west bank of the Nile River called Giza. The east bank city is called Cairo. Who knew? (I didn’t until I visited.)

Day 1188 More Insanity, More Treachery, More Stupidity – Welcome

Friday December 27, 2019

317 Days until the 2020 election and 398 days until the Inauguration

I wrote a few days ago with a closing comment that I would sum up my thoughts the next time I wrote. That didn’t happen. Since then more wacky information has come my way. I will incorporate that info and my summation into this screed. At least, that is my intention, I’m never sure where these writings will end up. But first I’d like to thank those several people who recently have encouraged me to keep writing. Whenever I hear such praise (encouragement?) I can’t help but think of Dr. Frankenfurter in the Rocky Horror Picture Show where he turns to someone as they look at Rocky on the slab and Frank says, “I didn’t build him for you.” Likewise, I didn’t write this for you (well, okay. Maybe a little bit.) I write (long dramatic pause here, Hand to chest, Turn looking toward the horizon) I write…I write for me! Actually, I write to get rid of the thoughts. To get them out of my brain. I guess it’s a kind of therapy. (Trump Therapy! Why hasn’t he gone into that? “I know the best therapists.” …)

But first the research and discoveries. The Bad Boy Mower Gasparilla Bowl – This is not it’s first year. Who knew? The score this year was 45 – 28. The team in the kind of gold, black, and tan won – Wake Forest? Maybe. Who knows. Listen, we are into bowl mania and there is no time to remember what teams were playing in the bowl you just watched. Ya gotta move on. 

I was curious as to what Gasparilla was. I assumed it was some sort of soda, rhymes with sarsaparilla – obviously a fruity drink I’d not heard of, or a fruity drink I had heard of but masquerading under a name I never heard of. Obviously. Turns out I was wrong. Turns out there was a guy named Gaspar who was a pirate and he terrorized the west coast of Florida in the late 18^th and early 19^th centuries. Tampa has a Gasparilla Pirate Festival every year. Who knew? The people around Tampa obviously. The question was rhetorical – shut up. So now they have a festival honoring this maniac, which I think gives hope to Donald and his supporters that someday he too will be honored for his attempts at destroying everything this country stands for.

Stay tuned as I’ll investigate further and find out what Bad Boy Mowers are all about. 

Moving sideways there was the Walk-On Bowl, which it turns out is a bar. ( Yeah, someone’s going to come back with “No it’s not! Actually it’s …” Go ahead. ) But this brings me closer to my dream bowl name – a bowl named after a sex toy. I think we may have had a bowl named after a condom or lube, but a sex toy? Not yet. “Ladies and Gentlemen, Welcome to the FleshLite Friction Bowl!” At the end the winning team gather around the trophy, which is a giant phallus looking thing and they hoist it aloft in victory. Of course, there could be the Maidenform Bowl and that would be a heck of a trophy too!

Moving on. There’s been a lot of speculation about the impeachment trial in the Senate. The smart money says Trump won’t get convicted because the Republicans hold the majority and there’s no way that enough of those chicken shits will actually stand up for the Constitution. I’d like to see Donald Trump march into the Senate and shoot someone. Not kill them just shot them. Maybe maim them for life – that’s all. I’d like to see him do it right in front of Mitch McConnell and the Republican Senators, maybe an intern or page gets shot, maybe one of the Senator’s grandkids. And I’ll bet McConnell would say it’s not impeachable. Yeah, it’s a crime, but not a high crime. I mean the person didn’t even die. How can it be a crime if they didn’t die? 

Lisa Murkowski said she found McConnell’s comments “disturbing.” OMG! Really? Then the press shows pictures of Susan Collins, Mitt Romney, and Cory Gardner – will they break ranks? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blahblahblah blah blah. Listen, Susan Collins will say a few things and then be tricked by McConnell into voting for whatever Mitch wants. Romney will say he doesn’t like it, whatever it is, and then vote with them. Gardner? Who cares? Same shit, different day. After you trot out those four names, you’ve only got 49 more to go.

Then we get to the “Who will the Dems pick?” Looks like it will be Joe Biden. I heard a persuasive argument for it. He’s safe. He’s a return to normalcy. People are exhausted. I liken it to the “Pick a Number” game strategy. Let’s say you are asked to pick a number between 1 and 100. Your opponent goes first. They pick “1.” What number should you pick? If you pick “100” then you split all the numbers between 1 and 100. If you pick “2” you block your opponent and get all the numbers from 2 to 100. Joe would block Donald from all the moderate and independent voters. Warren or Sanders are more like picking “100.” Pete or Amy are kind of like picking “5” or “7,” not a bad choice but you could have done better. I’m not saying I agree with this, I’m thinking that is the way it might go. 

I think Biden has the same problem Warren or Sanders will have against Trump only worse. He will be savaged, and he will make some gaffs and the right will go crazy publicizing them (along with the Russians.)

Personally, I’d like to see Warren. Yes, she has more radical plans than a lot of candidates, but let me ask, “how well have those moderate plans worked?” Yeah. Thought so.

Let’s review a few basic truths:

“The Republicans had not come up with a health care plan in the twenty five years I was in the House,” John Boehner. (I’m paraphrasing.) The point being if you think the Republicans are going to fix our health care system you are smoking way too much weed. 

“The economy is doing great!” Really? The stock market is hitting new highs, unemployment is at record lows. We’ve got a new trade deal with Canada and Mexico – what’s not to like? Well, let me ask you, “if all this indicates a strong economy why hasn’t the average working person felt it?” Hum. Good question, huh? Okay, let’s dig a bit, a tiny bit into those “facts” I mentioned and let’s look at a few others.

Why is credit card debt so high? Higher than it’s ever been. (Great for banks, bad for the average person, because they are going deeper and deeper into debt, which means more and more of their money is going to finance charges. Great for bankers, bad for people.) 

Unemployment is low because people have stopped looking for a job and aren’t counted or they have a crappy part time job (or two or three) and are counted double and triple. However, they don’t have health care and they aren’t making enough money to stay out of debt or out of poverty. Many college graduates find themselves overqualified for the jobs they have. Like running a cash register at the drive thru.

The trade deal with Canada and Mexico? Well, it can be summed up by what has been said about it before and now, “It’s the same deal we had before, just with the added pain, hardship, and debt.”

How about those small farmers in the mid-west? Or the dairymen in Wisconsin? Or the manufacturers throughout the country? They are all hurting or out of business because of Trump’s trade wars and tariffs. 

In recent news, the federal government has failed to collect taxes it could have had. This is due to the tax cut bill passed by the Republicans. This has led to an extra $1,000,000,000,000.00 added to the national debt every year since Trump has been in office. The excess money has flowed into the stock market, so yeah it’s booming, but not on good fundamentals but on lots of extra cash that no one knows what else to do with it.

We are entering the 20s. Last time we were here it was called the Roaring Twenties. Flappers, and champagne, the stock market was going crazy. How did it end? Black Friday.

Speaking of black, Lindsey Vonn announced her engagement. The lucky man was or is an NFL defensive player. I think we should all send a picture of them to Stephen Miller and ask he wish them well.

Speaking of Stephen, he’s still at it. Down in the bowels of the White House hatching more ways to hurt immigrants. Yeah, now he’s trying to get ICE to infiltrate and snitch on immigrants. That didn’t work out so he’s dreamed up getting data on folks trying to claim their children and seeing if he can have those folks deported. Hey, did you see the picture of a soldier returning from duty, saying good-bye to his wife as he was getting deported? Nice huh? And now it turns out ICE agents are putting down the wrong address on the paperwork for immigrants seeking asylum so that those people will never get their notices of when to appear in court. Just another way that Trump and his minions are trying to be as hurtful as possible to people they perceive are not like themselves. 

But I saved the best for last and it’s goes back to my earlier piece where I wrote that I’d bring it all together. There have been recent articles, and not so recent ones, that look at Trump’s mental state. The latest round is based on Trump’s six page letter to the Speaker of the House. Turns out therapists that read it find the writings of a delusional con man bully. Surprising? Not at all. The impeachment is really unnerving him. Headlines say it’s the first time he’s been held accountable. Maybe so, but it’s not the first time he’s had to face reality. There was the time at the U.N. where he made a huge bogus claim and they laughed in his face. Remember his look? He said, “I wasn’t expecting that.” Yeah, what were you expecting? “Oh yes Sir Donald, you are the greatest.”? 

I’m still trying to understand how a person found guilty of two major frauds: Trump Charity and Trump University isn’t spending time in jail.

But first I’ve got to look into Bad Boy Mowers.

Reporting live from the front. I remain. 

Bryce Holliwell, man of action and adventure.

317 Days until the 2020 election and 398 days until the Inauguration

PS Hob Nob’s Wicked Red with the 2019 Day of the Dead skull. How else would you promote a French drinking wine? (Note to self: better store up, might be a tough year ahead.)

Day 1187 Happy St Stephen’s Day

Wednesday December 26, 2019

318 Days until the 2020 election and 399 days until the Inauguration

December 26^th is St. Stephen’s Day. How do I know this? I went to St. Stephen’s Church in Ridgefield Connecticut for years, that’s how.

Moving on. There’s a solar eclipse. It’s in India. I won’t catch it. Bummer.

There are a lot of wrap up shows going on. One that caught my attention was a show that highlighted news items you may not have heard of due to the impeachment and Trump in general taking up all the oxygen in the news cycles. However, lo and behold there’s still more Trump, even in the “stories that don’t get much press coverage.” 

Like the emails of Stephen Miller being published that show he’s a staunch died in the wool white supremacist (died white, I guess.) These emails show he’s referencing all kinds of nutty white supremacist BS. Like “Camp of the Saints” which I had never heard of before. It’s an idea, popular in white supremacist circles, that non-whites are going to infiltrate and subsume white nations so one must restrict these people coming to the shores of the white nations. The last time this kind of thing came up was when Calvin Coolidge signed a white racist idea into law, which prevented the Jews of Europe from escaping Hitler. This is apparently why white supremacists like Coolidge, and natch, Miller refers to him heroically. There’s lots of these kind of weird white supremacist references in Miller’s emails. This is the guy Trump has in charge of immigration. 

Then there’s the money Trump has been forced to pay out for various frauds he’s been convicted of: notably, Trump University and The Trump Foundation. What I don’t understand is why he hasn’t had to serve time in jail for these crimes. 

Then there’s the impeachment. Turns out Trump has given money to four Senators. Isn’t that bribery? There’s also a Senator implicated in the crimes of Trump. There’s McConnell who says he’s working with The White House on the impeachment and he will deliver a quick acquittal, and there’s Linsey Graham who has said he doesn’t need to see any evidence – he’s going to acquit. This is all in stark contrast to what they said during the Clinton impeachment. Then they puffed out their Constitutional chests and spoke of wanting to see all the evidence and “let the chips fall where they may” etc.

Several people I know post things that have these lurid headlines, accusing the Democrats or the Clintons, or George Soros, or the New York Times, of some dark conspiracy or hidden agenda when in fact the sources they usually quote have the hidden agenda. Well, it’s not even hidden. All you have to do is do a basic google search. The sources are “conservative” or Republican operatives, or alt-right and I ask my friends “what do you expect?” or “Have you ever seen this source publish something positive about [fill in the blank]” Of course you haven’t because they are bent on making stuff up or showing it in the worst possible light for their target. Yet, they want to accuse the New York Times of some terrible bias.

It’s interesting to me that Roger Stone has had to admit in court that he lied. Typical of these sidekicks to bullies is that they then play the victim card. Stone claims he was mislead by InfoWars. What? InfoWars is in the business of misleading. You were a willing victim. That’s the problem with these people who post this stuff saying basically “well they do it too.” The they being the New York Times, the Clintons, the fill-in-the-blank. To which I say, “No they don’t.” Yes, you can make a case that someone said something incorrectly or what they said turned out not to be true or they took it right up to the line (while their right wing counterparts trampled the line) but there was not the drumbeat of “out to get” someone or something, or some dark conspiracy.

Recently, when someone posted an article about Trump lying the rejoinder was “Well Obama did it too. He lied about being able to keep your health care!” Wow. Really? Or was it that the bill he introduced would have allowed you to keep your health care but the Republicans fought and mangled it in the Senate and the final bill was different, and oh yes, if you had a health care plan that was ripping you off the insurance  companies were forced to provide a better plan? That’s a far cry from what Trump has done for health care. Currently, he is being fought in the courts to try and allow 130,000,000 to keep their health care, which he is trying to take away.

This brings me to bullying and what happens when bullies are confronted. It seems that the first thing they do is to gaslight (ie deny that what they are doing is what they are doing.) When that doesn’t work they play the victim. When that doesn’t work they may begrudgingly do whatever they are ordered to do.

It’s true with Trump. It’s true with Stone. It’s true with bullies and their sycophantic followers.

Hopefully, “We’re better than that” to quote Elijah Cummings.

Hopefully.

318 Days until the 2020 election and 399 days until the Inauguration

PS The Dog, The Child, The Nose – Memories of Christmas Day