Trump

Day 739 Tuesday January 15, 2019    852 Days to Go

This is one of those times that I see correlations in many different arenas. Notably: Ancient Rome, Modern Medicine, and the Iranian Revolution. Maybe, I don’t need to go any further because it is intuitively obvious what the connections are, but just in case I’ll continue.

But first, an observation. It seems that the news is six months or so behind me. Somehow, what I say seems to catch on half a year later. (I am a man among men!)

Okay, moving on. Wait. I have to run something through the Trumpolator. That is the device I use to take what Donald Trump says and translate it into what it actually means. Here we go:

“I did not work for Russia.” => “I worked for Russia.”

“I am insulted that you even asked me that.” => “I’m still working for Russia.”

“In fact, that is the most insulting question I have ever been asked.” => “I am Putin’s, and Russia’s bitch.”

That wasn’t too hard now was it?

Okay, onto the correlations:

Ancient Rome – There was a professor on NPR who has taught Roman history for over twenty years he said that he used to get questions about how the empire fell. However, recently, in the last few years, he’s been asked about the Republic and how it ended. It ended in tyranny and then the empire. He said that there were signs of its demise. That its end was coming. One of those signs was the fact that the outlandish or unthinkable became commonplace. People were no longer offended by outrageous acts. Another thing he pointed to was the willingness of people to chip away at the foundations, just a little bit, in order to enrich themselves. HUM???

I’ve often thought that the governing foundations of Rome were a problem: 50 families, 2 pro-consuls each with a one year term. That didn’t leave any room for upward mobility or representation of others. It did allow for hubris, greed, and jealousy, which eventually did in both the Republic and the Empire. I would also note that Carthage fell to Rome because the government of Carthage would not resupply Hannibal because those in its governing body were jealous of him and his family. They let him flounder and eventually Rome got the better of Carthage and burned it to the ground, and put salt in the fields. I wonder at what point the Indians who allied themselves with Cortes to defeat the Aztec realized that it wasn’t going to work out well for them?

There’s an article in Wired magazine about a guy who says there is evidence that taking Metformin will extend your life. The problem he has is that the FDA doesn’t have a category for anti-aging. It’s not recognized as a disease, or a condition, or something they could approve. This guy says that the problem modern medicine has is that it is chasing the wrong goals. It is trying to cure cancer or Alzheimer’s, but it’s not trying to make you healthy or extend your life. In other words, it’s playing wack-a-mole with disease. It’s not working on anti-aging. Yes, you will die from the same diseases he says, but they will come much later in life. The other problem with Metformin is that it’s been around since the 1600s and no one is going to make a boatload of money off it so there’s little interest by big pharma to do anything. Hey, I’ve got an idea. Why not have the government step in? Oh no, socialism! Besides, when was the last time Mitch Mcconnell did something to help the American people, or anyone? 

Lastly, let’s look at the Iranian Revolution. I remember reading an article that told of a guy jumping in a truck and driving it somewhere to help the folks overthrowing the Shah. “Why?,” he was asked. “For the Ayatollah,” was his response. He didn’t do it for himself, but to help the common cause. 

We need to stop chipping away at our principles and foundations and get back to making this country great again. We need to do that by embracing the things that made it great. Those are not the things Donald Trump and his band of Russian enablers, neo-con money grubbers, or alternate fact idiots are espousing. They are the words of Hamilton, Henry, Roosevelt, Kennedy and the like. It’s time to save the country and the world.

852 Days to Go

PS What a croc!

Day 735 Friday January 11, 2019    856 Days to Go

There’s an old joke about various parts of the body wanting to be in charge. The brain said it should be because it’s the smartest; the heart because it pumps life giving blood; the lungs for air, etc. The sphincter valve said it wanted to be in charge and all the rest laughed. The sphincter got mad and shut down. After several days things started to back up and the body was going into a state of decline and near certain death. The other organs relented and said that the sphincter could be in charge. The moral of the story is – obviously – that even an asshole can be in charge. And so it is with our country.

From his very first utterance when he declared he was running it has been true, and obvious to those who pay attention to the facts, that there is no crisis at our southern border, that drugs and criminals are not crossing our border in huge numbers at random places that a wall would stop. Yet, here we are.

The obvious outright criminality and gall to commit, if not outright crime, then to do things that are not in the interest of the country by this man and his band of sycophants, swindlers, and con-people is something we have never seen before in our history. At least not to the degree that it is happening. 

Comparisons to a man transcribing a book by hand versus using a copy machine or a person crossing a frozen land on snow shoe versus snow mobile come to mind. A petty smash and grab thief versus an organized syndicate, etc.

The absolute gall that has been displayed in the last week is amazing to me.

Here we have a man, Andrew Barr, who has applied for the job of Attorney General by sending a letter to the administration saying he thinks the Mueller investigation has gone too far. He was AG under Papa Bush and he was the one that made the case to George Herbert Walker that everyone in the Iran Contra scandal and crime spree should be pardoned. This led to traitors to the Constitution like Ollie North being allowed to parade around for years on right wing TV with silly shows about patriotism and guns, instead of being in a 9×12 foot cell.

But let us not forget that it was Papa Bush who helped Nixon try to stop the investigation into Agnew by having him run as errand boy to the Maryland Senator to try and get his brother to stop investigating Agnew. I mean what did Teddy A. do? It’s only listed in a forty page memorandum. How bad could it be? He only took scads of money to support a hidden lifestyle of fancy cars, jewelry to women, and lavish parties. And he only did it in every political office he ever held, including the Vice Presidency. That seems like child’s play compared to the current crop of crooks.

In the most recent round of crookery we have the foreclosure king of California now Treasury Secretary wanting to let off the hook the Russian oligarch who the president’s campaign manager was handing over political data so that the Russian GRU could use it in a disinformation campaign against political opponents of Trump. Old Steve went to Capital Hill where he said exactly nothing and pissed off the Congress people and now is acting like, “What did I do? I spent a hour of my time …” 

Meanwhile the guy proposed for AG is refusing to meet with the Democratic Senators. Why should he if he’s got the votes on the Republican side? 

Is there any Republican Senator who has a sense of right and wrong? Are they all bought off?

But let’s review the stream of criminality and lost opportunity in the presidency in the modern era under Republican leadership:

Eisenhower received a letter from Ho Chi Min expressing his desire to have a democracy and he used much of our Constitution and Declaration of Independence to form what he proposed as the basis for the new country of Vietnam that he wished to create. Eisenhower never responded and without the help of the United States Ho went elsewhere and embraced the principles of Communism to keep his fight for a nation alive. Then Eisenhower opposed that and started what became the Vietnam War.

Kennedy saw the error of getting mired down in a war in Asia and was going to pull us out of that war after the 1964 election, but got killed in November of ’63 and it didn’t come to pass.

We got mired down in Vietnam. It expanded to Laos and Cambodia. Let us not forget that we had allies in the Hmong people living in the mountains of Laos. We completely abandoned them as soon as they weren’t of use to us. This is similar to what we have done to the translators in Afghanistan.

After Johnson didn’t run in ’68 Nixon came in, but not before committing treason by conspiring with the enemy. Oh, I’m sorry, maybe, it wasn’t treason because there was no formal declaration of war, and really he went behind the back of Johnson and asked our Vietnam allies not to accept the peace proposal that Johnson was offering.So technically it wasn’t the enemy he was conspiring with. Johnson knew about it and spoke to Nixon. Nixon lied to Johnson. Outright boldfaced lie, it’s on tape. It is, like tricky Dick himself, disgusting.

Then Agnew went down, ten days later Borke carried out dirty Dick’s wish and the Saturday Night Massacre happened, within a year Nixon “I’m not a crook” (Yes, you are) was gone, and we got Gerald Ford. A tough House leader completely overwhelmed in the Presidency, but he pardoned Nixon!

Ford lost to Carter, and Carter tried to do things like move our country to solar. He also funded money to create a Navy that would go 96 knots, instead of the still current 28 (or has it reduced to 22?)

He lost to another traitor, Reagan. Excuse me, we weren’t at war with Iran so when Reagan told Iran to not release the people they had seized in our embassy it wasn’t technically committing treason just, you know, carrying out American foreign policy as a private citizen – also a crime, just not as big a crime. Reagan immediately scrapped the solar projects of Carter. Remember, when Carte was in office the U.S. was the world leader in solar.

Reagan gave us Bush, a man with a great resume, who had no idea what he wanted to do as President. Remember it was Bush who hired a young dirty trickster named Roger Ailes who ran those despicable racist ads about Willy Horton. When you get right down to it, when push comes to shove, old Papa Bush would do what ever dirty little thing he had to do to win. Run racist ads? No problem. Carry secret messages to a Senator asking his brother to stop investigating a crook? You bet. 

Clinton came in and the Republicans went to work to do everything they could to inhibit his presidency, including a four year investigation into a land deal that went bust and that their partner in that deal did crooked stuff long after the Clintons weren’t involved with him. This was well known before a special prosecutor was appointed but it didn’t stop Ken Starr from wandering around for years looking for something. He finally found it in six blow jobs by a 21 year old intern who was only close to Bill due to a Republican shutdown of the government. 

After Clinton came W, who only won the election because of his dad’s hit man, Jim Baker, who did everything they could to block the legitimate counting of the votes in Florida. Well, that and the fact that the head of elections in a heavily Democratic county in Florida insisted on making all ballots prepunched so that they would not count properly when run through machines, thus leading to “the hanging chad” problem. BTW it was later learned, too late, that Gore did get more votes than Bush in Florida and should have been President, but hey.

W did so many things: introduce torture into our lives, outed an undercover CIA operative because they didn’t like the report her husband gave, which was factual, but didn’t comport with their alternate view of reality. BTW had this agent been outed while overseas it would have been treason but they waited until she was reassigned to Washington. I’m sorry. I attributed these things to the president; it was really his vice-president who did those things. The president just went along with them. He, the president, was busy having a book reading contest with Karl Rove. He was doing that instead of his job. Seems like little stuff now.

Oh yes, that’s right W tanked the economy and left it for a Democrat to clean up. He was given a surplus, but rather that use that surplus to do something useful, like say pay back some of the money the Republicans under Reagan stole from the Social Security fund, he gave it all away.

Obama came in, spent a lot to prop up the financial institutions around the world, saved GM and therefore the auto industry in the U.S. but wasn’t able to get the Republican congress to actually help regular folks. He did manage to get a health care bill passed that the Republicans were for until he wanted it, then they were against it. (It’s interesting the things the Republicans have opposed in the health care package are the very things they insisted be put into it. Then they wouldn’t vote for it even with their stuff in it.) However, Obama put in place a solid economic pattern of growth that took this president two years to wreck, but Donald did it!

In other news Michael Cohen on his way to jail is going to stop by Congress in February and tell them all the dirty stuff he did for Trump that doesn’t impinge on the Mueller investigation. Surprise! That constitutes a lot of stuff. I hope Cohen is getting protection. 

856 Days to Go

PS Once again the football is being yanked out from under us.