Trump

Day 753 Tuesday January 29, 2019    841 Days to Go

I was going to call this post “Tidbits.” Then I thought “Weird and Wacky.”

How about “Weird and Wacky Tidbits”?

The problem is that what was weird and wacky has now become normal. 

In Shakespearean time there was the idea of a world order. There were seven spheres and they were all perfectly round. A comedy was when something got out of order. Like when a person woke up and fell in love with the first thing they saw. In Columbus’ time the belief was there was a giant mountain at the southern end of the world and from it flowed four rivers. When people look back at our time what weird belief will it be that we held? What things will seem a comedy because they are so out of order?

There were so many little things, that are actually big things but we don’t have time to do all of them justice. They were tumbling out on the news yesterday that upon reflection it’s hard to know what to make of it all. Much like Galileo and Leonardo, who did not have the benefit of scientific rigor; they just reported stuff. Jupiter has seven moons, water swirls in odd ways, etc. I too will report, but it’s hard to make sense of it all, to put it in a framework that comports with sense. In fact there seems little sense. It is without sense. There must be a word for this? This non-sense. I’ve got it! Nonsense! I’ve invented a new word! Nonsense. Wow. It’s already in the dictionary. That was fast.

And so it goes.

I’ll try to categorize where I can.

First, there’e DeWhiteGuyz Party, or DWG for short. It is made up of – you guessed it – white guys, and a token OGs (Other Guys) as well. Maybe some HCs (Hot Chicks) as well. (Okay, I’m really stretching here.)

But the world has gone mad, I tell you. Things are not as they seem. The order as we knew it is in chaos, and there are no super heroes around to save us.

Remember Paul Ryan? I love that guy. Looks like Eddie Munster all growed up. Says really vacuous things with a straight face. That’s okay. What gets me is he expects someone to believe him. And he keeps finding suckers, or he did. Maybe they knew all along that he was saying BS and didn’t care. That would make them cunning and smart. However, the evidence is piling up that that is not the case. It’s a case of the stupid and the blind chasing each other in circles. Maybe, there’s a cabal that rules the world that is directing everything from behind the green curtain? That may be true. At least, it’s more plausible than what has been going on out in the open. I mean when we are debating, like we are, if something is no longer a crime because the actions taken are done so right out in the open then we are in new strange territory, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

Remember the tax cut? The one that was going to power the economy? The one that was going to keep the economy going by giving money to the rich – Sorry, to industry – so they could reinvest in America? The one that was going to keep the Obama economy climbing ever upward? The one that Paulie Ryan with his simplistic economic view and his hesitant pursing of the lips before he started babbling a bunch of fake Ann Randian philosophy and supposed government statistical data? Yeah. in essence the idea was give the rich more money and it will trickle down faster, remember that? Did it sound like BS to you at the time? Well, if so, you were right. 

Okay, here’s the deal, or here was the deal: “Give us $1.5 trillion, that’s $1,500,000,000.00, and we’ll revive the economy by investing in America. Didn’t work. Sorry. Well, at least we got $1.5T, see ya.”

Recent data by credible sources (ie not Fox Business) has shown that the tax cut had little or no effect on the economy. Huh. I wonder why giving companies that already had boatloads of cash and weren’t investing it in America more money didn’t work? 

Okay, here’s where it gets really really weird. Politicians are talking about taxes in an election season. First, rule number one, never talk about taxes in an elections season. Mention it only in passing after the election is won and you are trying to slip a little sumptin’ sumptin’ through the committee for your buds. This is standard operating procedure (SOP) for the DWG. Whoa! What happened? There’s not one tax plan being talked about, not two, but three? Three tax plans! WTF? Oh, they are all being discussed by women. This is really weird. And hey, none of the women can claim to be all white. WTF? WTF? Indian, Black, Latino, Indian. Wait that’s four. Yeah, Kamala is a twofer, and her Indian is different that Warren’s Indian so ya gotta put Indian in there twice.

 

Warren wants to tax the rich. Radical baby. No, that’s not the radical part. She wants to tax there total wealth, not just what they “earned” this year. Why? Well, she’s trying to help them. See 1/10 of 1% have as much wealth as 90% of us. That’s a ratio that says 1/1000 of X is equal to 900/1000 of X and that means if X is the pie there isn’t much pie left. Somehow that example really muddles the point. But we’ve all seen the movies where the rich become too rich and it takes a kid (girl, young person, guy wearing a spiffy aftershave) to overturn the tables of the money changers and rock the world (okay, maybe a dirty bare foot Jewish guy yelling he’s the messiah) to set the world on a new course.

So Warren has a tax plan. Harris has a tax plan, and AOC* has a tax plan. 

*Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez 

Two are running for president and one isn’t old enough to run, but in six years she will be! Hey listen, a bartender from Brooklynn has a better tax plan than a real estate developer from Manhattan (or is it the Bronx?) Oh wait he has no plan – forget him… or a white guy from Wisconsin.

Yeah, we are going to be talking about tax plans this election season! Pretty exciting. I think we should call it “rich welfare.” In that if you have too much money it is bad for you. You’ll do stupid things, think crazy thoughts and generally get yourself in trouble as you desperately try to hang on to every nickel. 

Let’s play Putin’s favorite movie for you, the end of Ghaddafi. The part where his fellow citizens literally rip him a new asshole. Or how about Sadam? Hey, that won’t happen here in America. Did you see the photo of Mussolini and his mistress hung by their heels in the town square? Or what about the hunting lodge of a guy named Frederick? Lots of antelope heads mounted on the walls. That didn’t stop some pissed off guy from shooting old Frederick in the back and starting World War I. Think of the children. I mean if you are so filthy friggin’ rich that the American dream of struggling to make it is a joke because you’ve already got more money than you can blow on crack and sex in one hundred lifetimes why bother? So reducing that amount of money for the little shits would be a good thing.

Dick Moves and Movies: 

It seems there is no end to the outrageous dick moves that the Republicans will resort to to try to screw things up. I love their chest pounding whining when not in power and their phony patriotism with their little cloisonné American flag lapel pins (Made in China) when not in power and Mitch’s “the American people won’t” whatever when he’s trying to gum up the works. 

But now we got a new one. Don’t seat any members on a committee so the committee can’t get to work and therefore can’t hand transcripts over to the Special Counsel, which might show the president is the lying, cheating, commie asset he appears to be. Great idea. This is a new one. The old ones of robbing the middle class, voter suppression, poll place closing in poor and black area, packing courts with right wing out of touch white guys, that’s your typical dickishness, but this? This is new. Like Trump, every time you think they’ve reached the bottom you find the barrel to be a bottomless pit of swill.

Now onto the movies! The President of the Untied States is reputed to have access to some of the best intel in the world, Heck, he’s got seventeen agencies that do that kind of stuff. They send him a report everyday. Wow. 

Did you know that women were getting bound with tape and thrown in the backs of cars to be driven across the border?

Did you know that these cars are super fast and can out run whatever our pathetic border patrol agents have?

Did you know that our agents have found prayer rugs in the middle of the desert?

 No?

Well, neither did any of those 17 agencies.

But the movie Sicario does! Here’s part of the promotional blurb:

critically acclaimed thriller filled with pulse-pounding suspense. After an idealistic FBI agent (Emily Blunt) is recruited by a government task-force official (Josh Brolin) to pursue a drug lord, she begins a perilous mission that forces her to question everything she believes—and pits her against a shadowy consultant

Right. Okay then. This is the only known place – this film – where women are bound with tape and thrown in the backs of cars, and where said cars can outrun the drug enforcement people at the border. and where prayer rugs were found in the middle of the desert.

My question is “How did our border patrol folks miss the prayer rugs?”

To think that the president of the United States is referring to events in a movie as if they are really true beggars the imagination of even the most cynical jaded script writer in Hollywood. I mean if you went to some producer with the “Hey, I got an idea” pitch and you told him (or her) “Imagine the President of the Untied States …” you wouldn’t make it too far. (“Believe me. “, “Why? [should I believe you?}”, “Believe me.” {old boy trick – keep repeating whatever] )

Then there’s Roger Stone, Jerome Corsi, Randy Radico, Paul Manafort, and I can’t remember who else in a circular firing squad of BS.  OMG! Gag me with a monkey wrench. Okay, Roger did nothing wrong. Except, for everything he’s done for the last forty years. And now there’s this indictment which lays out the very things he, Roger, says he didn’t do. I mean, really? We’ve got a bunch of chuckle headed conspiracists that will do or say anything and these are the people linking Trump and the rest of his crew to the Russians. Not that Trump hasn’t done his own linking with the Russians: in plain sight, behind closed doors, in hotel rooms, on TV. You name it Trump and his family members are awash in Russian oligarchs, bit players, spies, and Putin.

The best defense they have now, and this is openly being talked about is that they, Team Trump, are so inept that they couldn’t have possibly colluded because they aren’t smart enough. 

Meanwhile Mr. Art-of-the-Deal has been discovered to not only be a liar and really bad negotiator and doesn’t learn from the past (mistakes or otherwise) that he is threatening to shut down the government again. Is this more puffery? We have to ask the savant Ann Coulter. If she says it’s puffery then big Donnie will too. The figure are in as to the cost of the shutdown to the U.S. economy $11B. Not bad if that’s all it is. Hey, if it didn’t work before let’s do it again. btw In a closed door session with Republican Senators they told the president that if he tried that stuff again the vote would 70 against. We’ll see.

There’s more, a lot more in the tidbits department, but I’ve already forgotten what they are. It’s just washed over me.

Oh wait One more thing, I love this, from John Brennan:

“Your cabal of unprincipled, unethical, dishonest, and sycophantic cronies is being methodically brought to justice. We all know where this trail leads. If your utter incompetence is not enough to run you out of office, your increasingly obvious political corruption surely will.”

Hum, I wonder how he really feels about this? I hope he’s right.

Oh yeah, then there’s Howard Shultz, the former head of Starbucks. He says he might run as an independent. He’s got tons of money, created a string of coffee shops that over charge for crappy coffee that made him rich and many poor, and with no real political base he wants to spend his millions siphoning off votes from other candidates. His pitch? He’s a businessman. Wow. That’s worked so well. There were three (claimed to be) businessmen that have been president: Coolidge, Hoover, and Trump. How did that work out?

So, to summarize:

Our president can not separate fantasy from reality.

He’s surrounded himself with liars, cheaters, hucksters and third rate talent, and his policies and lack of any effort on his part other than a racist silly idea are ruining our country.

There are people who are rising up and joining together to take the country back.

 841 Days to Go

PS La Grande Odalisque, by Lalla Essaydi, VMFA

Day 751 Sunday January 27, 2019   842 Days to Go

Ann Coulter was on Bill Maher last night and as predicted she brought up stuff that was irrelevant to the conversation and that most people don’t know anything about as a means for justifying her position.

She also used a novel defense for why she was on your side (the other people that make up America, not the new immigrants, but everyone in Bill’s audience.) And she threw in a few alternate facts, which apparently must be true if you keep repeating them and don’t let anyone else talk. Am I right? Am I right? Am I right? Am I right? Geesh.

There was a dichotomy in her argument. Amazing, I know. Believe me on the one hand, but don’t believe that. What is this Meatloaf’s song repurposed? I do anything for this but I won’t do that?

Okay. Let’s get in the weeds. First she said people are pouring over the border. They aren’t. (She they are. No they aren’t, Yes, they are. No, they aren’t. Scaramuc Scaramuc. Wait he’s on the masked singer now right? No? It’s the other idiotic show? Oh. Got it.)

Okay, with no supporting evidence Ann claims “they” are pouring over the border and – wait for it – “they” are taking away your jobs, and, and, this is why your wages are low. To add to this she lathers on that she’s on your side, not the Koch brothers who are trying to let immigrants cross the border so they can employ them to clean out their horse stable or pools. No, sorry, do landscaping. And by the way walls work. Look at Israel. They have a wall to keep the mad Palestinian bombers out and it’s working!!! Yipee Kayay MFer!

Hold on. Wait a second. According to every government statistic I’ve seen no one is pouring over our borders. And as has been pointed out over and over again, most of the illegal immigration, if you want to call it that is from people overstaying their visas. Those folks tend to come by plane. Hey, I got it. Let’s shutdown all incoming flights. Oh, we tried that yesterday? Didn’t work? Hum.

It’s interesting that Ann points out that the walls Israel has erected work to keep out bombers from Palestine. In fact, what they do is to suppress the Palestinian population period. Most Palestinians work in Israel and they are now put through hell to get to their jobs if they can. When anything happens in a Palestinian area Israel invades and the first thing they do is to shoot out the water tanks on top of all the buildings. Why denying people water is a good idea is beyond me. Also, under various Israeli governments they have seized Palestinian land and since 1967 have been building on that land and kicking the people who lived there, sometimes for decades if not centuries, out. For some reason, this pisses people off. What happens? Well, every once in awhile a guy goes crazy in Israel and starts stabbing people. Somehow, and I can’t explain this, but those patchwork of walls and those shoot out water tanks strategy don’t stop those random pissed off knife attacks.

Why didn’t Ann use The Great Wall of China instead? Oh, it didn’t work? Right. Or how about those walls the people in Central Asia put up around their cities to stop Genghis Khan? Oh right, he built a bigger wall around their cities and then rained arrows and rockets down on them. Hum. Now, granted there are cases where walls have protected people. They are usually in cities, before modern artillery came into play. Role tape, the fall of Constantinople. Boom. One huge cannon and the wall was done.

Hey. Wait. That’s not the point is it? The wall works on our souther border. That’s the point right? Oh wait. There’s a hole that someone blew in that wall and drove cars and trucks through, just recently. No one was watching. Hum. Seems like a problem. Do we need a bigger better wall, or someone to watch the wall? 

Then there was no discussion of the damage this shutdown to protect us by building a wall causes to the country at large, but there was the comment that Trump ran on the slogan of building the wall and Mexico was going to pay for it. Coulter’s point was he should do what he promised. When asked about the Mexico paying for it she demurred and said he didn’t say they were going to pay for it right away. Then she mumbled about tariffs and indirect ways they would end up paying for it. Yeah. Right. But here’s where the argument gets bizarre. Not that it isn’t already, but hey, it can get bizarrer. When she was asked about the other things Trump said that were lies, fabrications, and wacky. They were dismissed as “puffery,” and “no one was seriously believing him.” Wait? What? It’s like the problem of the thermos bottle. It keeps cold things cold and hot things hot. How do it know?

Okay, so I guess we have to depend on the Ann Coulter of the right wing world to tell us which things are puffery and which we should shutdown the government for until we get them?

Meanwhile, we can consider the question of Trump and whether or not he’s a Russian asset. Given his behavior towards Russia and Putin, what else could one conclude? (Ann says the Soviet Union is gone so they aren’t a threat anymore. Okay. Case closed.)

There are also stories coming out that Mike Pence lied. When has he not? I mean is there anytime you can remember that anything Pence said was shown later to not only not be true but to be shown that he knew at the time he was saying this BS that it wasn’t true? It’s one thing to not tell the truth and not know that is isn’t true. That you can claim you were misinformed (He’s used that one.) Or that you didn’t know at the time, (I think, he’s used that one too.) But when you tell something that isn’t true and you know at the time it isn’t true, it’s a lie. Mike seems to excel in that department. This time it’s about Russia and his involvement, his lying about Mike Flynn, and Pence’s ties to Russia.

Oh yes, and there is the question about Roger Stone and WikiLeaks. This Coulter dismissed by asking how do we know it’s the Trump campaign he was helping and not his digging as an investigative reporter for InfoWars? Well, how do we know, indeed, Ann? How about this? There’s a twenty four page indictment listing the connections between Stone, Trump, the Trump campaign, Julian Assange of WikiLeaks, Guccifer 2.0 of the Russian GRU, and the go betweens Stone used to try to hide what he was doing? Nowhere in the indictment does it say that Stone was doing investigative reporting for perineum ass wipe promoter Alex Jones of InfoWars. I wonder why? Oh, I got an idea. Maybe, that’s because that wasn’t what he was doing? Because there is no evidence that he was being an investigative reporter? Because the only time he might have claimed to be an investigative reporter, and I don’t know if he has, is because he was trying to cover up what he was really doing?

On to Mike Pence. Mikey might be in trouble. Everyone seems to have forgotten that it was reported that Mike Pence was argued for as a running mate by Paul Manafort. Why? Not sure. There’s also a lot of “what did Mike know and when did he know it?” stuff. The second biggest liar in Washington after the president is the vice-president. I can’t think of a single time Mike has spoken on any substantive issue and not lied. 

This follows a trail of dirty dealing going back to his time in Indiana as governor. He and Kasich both used subterfuge, force, and underhandedness to close abortion clinics inn their states. Any All-American “gee I’m just a regular guy” stuff is bull shit. Now it’s come out that the state of Indiana had to spend twenty million dollars to clean up the old gas stations that the Pence family left behind. Hey, I’m sure it’s all legal. Nothing to see here.

In truly good news I turn to science. You know that wacky “belief” system that has revolutionized our lives. Alzheimer’s disease is a scourge that affects brain function, mainly in older people. A few weeks ago I read an article about a scientist who has not been able to get funding for the research he wants to do related to Alzheimer’s. In the scientific community the thinking is that a build up of plaque in the brain causes Alzheimer’s. There has been twenty or thirty years of research done with this as the underlying premise. This scientist asked himself if there might be some other cause because after all this effort there was little to show in the way of progress. He discovered that the brain seemed to be throwing a web over itself to defend itself from a bacteria and that the resulting plaque was left after the web went away, and presumably the bacteria had gone too. He couldn’t get funding because all the limited funding went to plaque research. Yesterday I read an article that said that gingivitis, the stuff that causes gum disease, is a bacteria and that researchers have found a similar bacteria in the brains of people with Alzheimer’s. They also have correlated that lab rats with gingivitis have a higher incidence of Alzheimer’s or is it the other way around? Or as our president would say if he read: Healthy Teeth – Healthy Brain.

Maybe we should check the White House staff for gum rot.

Just sayin’.

842 Days to Go

PS Temple of the Seven Dolls, Dzibilchaltún, Yucatan, Mexico

Day 750 Saturday January 26, 2019   843 Days to Go

Wow. Wow. What a day yesterday was. I was watching the news in the middle of the day and Hallie Jackson was bouncing between three different stories: The Shutdown, Roger Stone, La Guardia Airport being shutdown to incoming flights. She didn’t even have time to report on another story and that was that Paul Manafort was back in court.

So what does it all mean? One, and this is very important, watch The Godfather again, because there will be unending references to that movie until Stone is sent to jail for the rest of his life. Is he Luca Bracci or is he commenza? Or something like that.

Stone was in business with Manafort in the early days and is pictured years ago with Lee Atwater, before Lee found out he had brain cancer and began to repent. Manafort and Stone never repented. They liked doing dirty deals and unseemly things, and they each got rich doing it. Now the bill is coming due.

Other than that? I want to see the Nixon tattoo. Supposedly Stone has one on his back. How big is it? Is it the little one or is it huge and between the shoulder blades?

The indictment is what the legal commentators called “a speaking indictment,” which means that there is a lot of stuff in there to lay out a story of what happened. Why do it? Seems the reason is to lay the groundwork for other things to come and to make sure that the story is told to the public if perchance the Attorney General doesn’t release Mueller’s final report.

Stone says he’ll fight. That he won’t bear false witness against the president. blah blah blah. Hey. I got news for you Roger. You don’t have to. It’s all in your indictment. 

Whoa! The news just showed his tattoo.

Bill Maher said Ann Coulter will be on his show this week. She called Trump a wimp for caving. Yes, what a wimp. He gave in to reality. People like Coulter live in a self absorbed universe where they talk to each other and convince themselves of things that just aren’t true. I’ve talked and texted with people like this. It’s always the same: “You don’t understand,” they tell me. “Here are the facts,” as the point me to some article written in some publication I’ve never heard of. Then I google said publication and it’s a right wing conspiracy theory place or it’s owned by someone like that. If I try and show them something factual it’s “fake news” written by some liberal.

In essence what the argument comes down to then is a racist type of thing. By liberal they mean someone they don’t agree with and thus they need to attack the person, not the argument or the facts. The facts are also dismissed as being not true.

In the case of Stone, well, there’s this indictment. He says he did nothing wrong. Really? What do we know about Roger Dodger? Aside from having a lifelong career as a dirty trickster? He’s the only person in America that was talking to Russian GRU agents in the form of Guccifer 2.0 and Julian Assange. According to the indictment Stone was doing a lot more than just talking; he was coordinating. Not only that, but he was being asked “by a senior Trump campaign official” to find out what else Assange had and when it was going to be released. That senior campaign official was being directed to ask. The list of people that are senior campaign officials in the Trump campaign is pretty small. The list of people who could direct senior Trump campaign officials to do something is even smaller. I’d go out on a limb and say that list is one. Okay, at most three, and they all have the name Trump. Stone was using intermediaries to talk to Assange. Fellow conspiracist James Corsi and a guy named Randy Credico, who is a radio host, political gadfly and god knows what else. Corsi is known for his wacky books that make claims that there is a deep state, Obama wasn’t born in America, etc. You name the conspiracy and Corsi has written a book about it. Stone is in a similar belief system. When Corsi was confronted about this stuff, he’d say things like, “I never said that, what I said is there is a possibility that …” etc. etc. etc. (Look for Ann Coulter to say similar type things on Maher’s show – btw. And to wave “some facts” from a report or paper no one has heard of or seen before.)

So who ya gonna believe? I mean on the one hand we have a guy whose career has been dirty tricks, lying, and conspiracy theorizing and on the other you’ve got a former Marine, former head of the FBI, and lawyer who has settled some of the biggest cases in the last decade, who is heading up a group of the top lawyers in the country that write indictments and supporting evidence that is fact upon fact, and carefully written? For instance in the case of Paul Manafort’s legal brief why that laid out they were pulling out of the deal with him – it ran to 800 pages. Most of it was redacted, and they didn’t want Manafort to serve any extra time for it. Eight hundred pages! 

What is Stone betting on? Nothing. Maybe a pardon. 

Let us not forget that as a young man Stone was part of the plot hatched by Chuck Colson to kill or maime Daniel Ellsberg.  Colson hired the same guys that later broke into the Watergate to try and get close to Ellsberg as he spoke at the Lincoln Memorial. Stone was a young man and part of a fake protest designed to siphon off police from the Lincoln Memorial.

“Here we stand or here we fall

History won’t care at all

Make the bed, light the light

Lady mercy won’t be home tonight yeah”

Queen “Hammer to Fall”

844 Days to Go

PS Roger’s tattoo of Tricky Dick.

 

Day 749 Friday January 25, 2019   844 Days to Go

Defiantly, my countdown count is wrong. I must look at that, but other stuff awaits and must be dealt with.

Let us start with a raft of political insanity and intrigue. Why is the shutdown going on for so long and what is the long term danger? The biggest problem of the shutdown long term is the thought that this is normal, and that our institutions can survive. The Romans thought the same of the Republic until it was gone. I spoke with a fellow last year whose grandparents grew up in Germany in the 1930s. “They all knew Hitler was crazy, but by the time they were ready to act it was too late,” is what he said about that.

While I was growing up Franco ruled Spain. A cruel and despotic man, he ruled with a iron fist. He won the position via the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s. Fascism was quite popular at the time and Franco was a Fascist, as was Mussolini in Italy and Peron in Argentina. It was said of Mussolini “that he made the trains run on time.” Things were bad in Italy and Mussolini did help to fix some of those problems. The idea of a strong man that would come in and clean things up is appealing. The pitch being that once done they would return power to the people. The problem is, as Frodo learned in Lord of The Rings, power is intoxicating. Once you have it you are loath to give it up, and in most cases it must be ripped from your hands. We can look no further than Susan Collins. A woman who said she would serve one term in the U.S. Senate. She is now on term number 3.

Franco was aided and abetted by the very rich in this country, notably by the Koch brothers’ father and by Texaco. Texaco used its considerable resources to provide not only oil and gas to Franco but also intel via its world wide connections. While Hemingway and others fought to free the people of Spain the rich were backing their man. Franco also got help from Hitler who wanted to try his Blitzkrieg tactics out. Hitler’s Luffwaffe, his air force,  wanted to try their tactic of quickly hitting a target. Franco was having problems with the Basque people and therefore their cultural capital of Guernica was chosen for this experiment. Early one morning heavy bombers appeared on the horizon and began a systematic bombing of the town. It had no strategic significance. As women and children ran from the market places they were machine gunned in the back with 50 caliber bullets.  

50 caliber bullets are roughly half an inch in diameter and the cartridge varies in length but a small 5o caliber bullet is about the height of a dollar bill, but the usual one we see is almost twice that height. These bullets can pierce battle hardened steel plate 3/4 of an inch thick at 100 yards. In a human body they tend to tumble blowing an exit hole over six inches in diameter. That was what was used on the population of Guernica for three days.

So horrible was this atrocity that both Hitler and Franco denied that it happened or that they were involved. The truth did not come out until the 1960s.

Pablo Picasso painted his most famous work to memorialize the event and gave the painting to the people of Spain. It was not to be returned to Spain until after the death of Franco. I saw the painting as a freshman history of art student in 1970 as it hung in The Metropolitan Museum of Art awaiting Franco’s death. There is a series of photographs showing Picasso’s thoughts and experiments as the painting progressed. The painting is now in the Prado.

Realize that the people who backed Franco are the parents of the people of the rich far right, not only in this country, but around the world. 

The people of Rome thought the Republic would never fail, because for them at the time – it had always been there. Democracies in history have a very short time span. Empires and dictatorships last far longer – on average. In fact, many historians consider democracies periods of transition. Two to three hundred years is typically the length of time a democracy survives. It often gives way to either revolution or tyranny, which leads to a strongman taking power, which leads to despotism.

Our country is unique in that it has been a democracy for as long as it has and that it’s founding principles are still in tact, but they are under assault from the same sort of forces the besieged Europe and Latin America in the 1930s. After World War II a military alliance was formed to stop the fighting in Europe, and it has worked. NATO has kept the peace in Europe. There is also an economic alliance that has formed, which hasn’t worked as well, but is better for Europe than the alternative, which would be a bunch of smaller economies all fighting amongst themselves. Britain is being torn apart by a vote to leave this economic union based on some people’s feelings that they didn’t want people outside of Britain telling them what to do, and by the Russians and the very rich fascists who saw profit in divvying up the country and Europe. These are the same fascists who were at work in the 1930s promoting racial and religious hatred and national identity as loyalty. 

There are a series of things that I have witnessed recently that show the changing resistance to these people that influenced our 2016 election and who have been controlling parts of our political and economic structures and institutions. One is their total cluelessness and lack of compassion. They are now being called out more vehemently by not only the people but by other politicians. Their is mounting evidence that Trump is a tool of the Russian government. The interesting question I heard yesterday was, “If Trump is not acting like a tool of the Russians and being complicit in aiding their agenda then what would a person who is conspiring with them look like?” The point being that even if you believe Trump is not a tool of the Russians it is hard to see any daylight between his actions and those of a person who is.

Trump is now not only being called a liar but a traitor by the people and by elected officials. The fact that so many Republicans in elected office are going along with him how corrupt they are. 

Then there is the total tone deafness of these people:

Wilbur Ross, the friggin’ Secretary of Commerce, doesn’t understand why people can’t miss a few paychecks because all they need to do is to go to the bank and get a bridge loan.

Donald Trump who thinks if you don’t have money for food that you can go to “local people” and “work something out.” This is being interpreted that he believes that the grocery stores will give you food if you can’t afford it. After I guess showing your picture ID because he also believes you need to show your driver’s license to get cereal.

Then there’s Ted Cruz who now is sporting a beard that makes him look like Colonel Mustard from the game of Clue. He was on the Senate floor yesterday saying some slimy thing, “if only my Democratic colleagues would …” It was too much for Senator Benett from Colorado. Benett a mild mannered and quiet man rose to speak, he forgot his microphone, which usually tethers you to stay close to your desk, but he didn’t need it. He reminded Mr. Cruz that the last time Cruz shut down the government in 2013 his state of Colorado was underwater and people lost their lives, their homes, and their businesses. Those people never recovered. And why are we shut down now asked Benett? Because the president made a campaign promise that he can’t keep. It has come to this he said. 

So Mr. Green Eggs and Ham whatcha gonna do?

Lest we forget since the Tea Party candidates and the Freedom Caucus have ridden into power on a platform of fiscal responsibility and fiscal conservatism they have added almost one trillion dollars a year to the national debt.

What is the president doing? Apparently, not much. According to those who follow his daily schedule he arrives at the office on a good day at 10:30, but usually it’s 11:00 am or later. He then has “Executive Time,” which means he watches TV and tweets. Some days his schedule has “lunch with the Vice President,” and that’s it.

The House Oversight Committee is now wanting some answers. Imagine that?

Let’s take a look at some of them:

Why or how did Jared Kushner get a security clearance?

Why did he have to amend his financial disclosure form forty times? That’s right – FORTY TIMES!

And he still wasn’t cleared. Yet he got a clearance.

What about the other 150 people in the White House that couldn’t get permanent clearances after a year and a half?

What was John Bolton doing giving commendation to Martina Butina’s Russian phony gun rights group while representing the NRA?

Then there’s the four soldiers killed in Syria this past week as Mike Pence was saying ISIS in Syria is defeated and it’s time to come home. Really? Yet here four soldiers were killed and ISIS claims responsibility. Seems to me that when four diplomats were killed in Libya you and your party had a much different reaction.

Then there’s Fox News reaction to the news of the four soldiers killed, which was none for a long while. As all the other major news organizations were reporting on this event Fox News was silent. Finally, hours after the attack they ran a small bullet item, lower right corner, saying that some politician was reacting to the attack. This in sharp contrast to what they did about Benghazi, where they ran story after story attacking Hillary Clinton. 

Come to think of it, all the major news papers ran stories about her being weak and having bad hair, etc. 

Well, in fairness, those newspapers did say Trump had bad hair, but they didn’t call him weak. Now the White House has professional airbrushers and photoshppers touching up the pres, sliming him down and taking away a few wrinkles, stretching his pointing finger a bit. It has come to this.

Oh, and then there are the people who attacked Nancy Pelosi. Now the news is saying she’s tough and Trump tired to intimidate her and couldn’t. 

Let me tell you something about Nancy Pelosi. She grew up in Baltimore. She is a D’Assandro from Little Italy in Baltimore. Her dad was mayor of Baltimore as was her brother. She grew up in a house where people came all the time looking for help. It’s a political family of the old school type. 

Little Italy in Baltimore? Lemme tell you about Little Italy. There was a parking lot there that said no parking except for people patronizing a certain restaurant. A guy parked his car there when the restaurant was closed while he ran an errand. He came back to find a tow truck had hooked his car. Turns out there’s an old guy who watched that lot constantly. If you screwed up by doing something stupid in your car you’d find someone chasing you down the street banging on your car, “Hey you! Get outta the car!”

Yeah, that’s where Nancy grew up. Intimidation? Please. 

When I was working at the Western Electric factory in Baltimore the story circulating around the plant about Little Italy was that three guys tried to rob on of the restaurants. By the time the police got there the crowd had gathered and they were throwing ropes over tree limbs to hang the fellows. They told the police to come back in an hour and they’d tell them where the bodies were.

Yeah, Trump is going to intimidate Nancy Pelosi?

Please.

“Hey You! Get Outta that house. We need to talk!”

Nancy own kids, what do they say? It’s something like “she will fillet you and you won’t even know it.”

Someone asked her about the wall. Very quietly she said, “I don’t want a wall. I don’t want a wall” ( a little bit quieter now) “I don’t want a wall.” (Got it?)

She was asked about Trump statement about a down payment on the wall and what did she think about that?

“I don’t know what he’s talking about and I don’t think he does either.”

Got it?

Come back in a little while and you can find the hung filleted bodies.

You think New York real estate developers are tough? You think punks like Michael Cohen are tough? Fugget about it. Hey, I know a great place to get a cannoli. 

 844 Days to Go

PS Guernica and Roger

PPS Breaking News! Roger Stone just demoted to coffee boy. This after Federal indictments in the Mueller probe. Seven counts: 5 false statements, 1 obstruction, 1 witness tampering. It is being said that if this doesn’t persuade Roger to cooperate they will “back up the dump truck and unload” on him.