A hat tip to my guest writer, Snoopy. It looks like after months (years?) of endless investigations and speculation, a grand jury in New York is going to criminally charge the ex-POTUS Trump for violations relating to an alleged affair (and subsequent hush money payments and record keeping) involving the porn star Stormy Daniels.
Sweet Maria!
Melania must be so proud.
I digress.
In any event I doubt that this case against Trump, which appears to hinge at this point on an untested legal theory involving campaign financing record keeping, is the strongest indictment that can be made against the ex-prez. But the fact that Stormy Daniels is involved guarantees maximum media coverage. Go figure. The only thing that could top that would be if Megan and Harry were selected to serve on the jury if a case ever goes to trial. Seriously, I doubt that other criminal investigations—such as his alleged involvement with the attempted January 6 overthrow of our government, financial corruption at the Trump organization, and election fraud in Georgia—will attract enough interest to warrant an episode on the Judge Judy show. Only the talking heads on MSNBC are giddy with excitement about those developments. But with Stormy the ratings sky is limitless. I digress again.
Okay. If and when Trump is indicted this will be a shit show from beginning to end. Here is why.
One, Trump believes he is still president and therefore somehow above the law.
Two, he still has plenty of support among elected and non elected Republicans.
Three, his legal team attracts attention but doesn’t exhibit much expertise.
And four, Trump never appears to stand on the moral or ethical high ground. Consequently, even if convicted, he isn’t going to lose support among the Christian Nationalists who now control the Republican Party.
If you have read any of my previous brain droppings on this site you know that I am no fan of Donald Trump. In my humble opinion, the former Prez is an incompetent narcissist who would go bankrupt running a whorehouse located adjacent to a Naval base. And he would blame the sailors.
But hey. That’s not just my view of the world. Trump these days is being rightly bashed for costing Republicans the opportunity to regain control of Congress. Not even Trump’s cult of Christo-Fascists could stomach the group of losers that he handpicked in Senate and House races across the country. I still wonder if many in the GOP leadership had reservations about letting Herschel Walker carry the ball in Georgia. Probably not.
Oh, well. And I guess Dr Oz doesn’t really count as a GOP loss. Based on his medical acumen I’m pretty sure he was running on the Quack Party.
I digress.
So given Trump’s recent record—devastating loss in the last Presidential election, support for what turned out to be an attempted overthrow of our government, leading Republicans to a disastrous outcome in the recent midterm elections, overseer of the COVID pandemic that killed thousands (millions?) and crippled our economy —you would think he would slither back to Mar-a-Largo and wait for the United States Marshal to deliver an arrest warrant.
But no. He apparently is going to announce tonight that he plans to run for President in 2024.
Oh, mama. Don’t let your babies grow up to be a Republican.
With Trump’s losing record, I guess his intention to run again virtually guarantees that Ron DeSantis, the Florida Gov, will end up as the nominee. And since DeSantis appears to be Trump with a brain, well, anything can happen.
So the time has come to heed the advice of the great American philosopher Sgt. Phil Esterhaus. He routinely cautioned his police colleagues on the hit TV show Hill Street Blues: “Let’s be careful out there.”
One of the many states that no doubt will enthusiastically embrace the Supreme Court’s decision on abortion
Okay. I’ll confess that I really don’t have a great excuse for remaining mute on this platform for the past several months. I figured that once Trump slithered back to his (hopefully) final resting place in Florida we could all take a deep breath and relax, while his supporters concentrated on taking their brown shirts to the dry cleaners.
Wrong.
Recent events are making the depths of the pandemic look like the good old days.
Inflation…record high gasoline prices…an airline industry that can no longer get passengers from point A to point B (or anywhere in between)…mass murders in our schools, churches and grocery stores. To quote the great American philosopher Elaine from the TV show Seinfeld: Yada, Yada, Yada.
But what really has my shorts in a knot and my fingers reaching for the keyboard is the recent Supreme Court decision to overturn a woman’s federally guaranteed right to control their own health and body. And the decision to strike down Roe v. Wade is just the beginning. All of our rights involving privacy, same sex marriage, contraception and so forth are now on the chopping block.
I’m not thrilled about living in a country where conservative religious fanatics (and their elected representatives) care more about an unborn fetus than they do about children who are being slaughtered by high-power automatic weapons in the classroom. I digress.
Go figure.
Unfortunately members of the Supreme Court—who should be neutral arbitrators of the law and our constitution—are now just political operatives advancing their own agenda. And you really can’t believe a word they say during the confirmation process.
Liar, liar, pants on fire.
Oh, well. If there is a path out of this mess it has to begin at the ballot box. If we want the USA to remain the world’s shining example of democracy then we better start electing officials who share this vision.
As Prez Obama once told John McCain during the debate over health care: Elections have consequences.
That notion will be tested once again in November.
Okay. I’ll admit it. When Trump finally slithered out of office nearly a year ago I figured the adults in government were back in charge and life throughout the land would improve.
Oops.
Not so fast.
About the best you can say is that Biden, unlike his predecessor, has a heart, demonstrates some degree of empathy, and appears willing to at least try to do the right things for the majority of Americans. But saying all that, the fates haven’t been kind to Sleepy Joe. Inflation is out of control, immigrants would have had an easier time scaling Trump’s wall than they are having getting across the border now, the withdrawal from Afghanistan was a disaster, two members of his own party in the Senate are effectively blocking his legislative agenda, and yada, yada, yada.
Oh, and did I fail to mention the pandemic?
Just when we thought it was safe to go back to the grocery store up pops the Omicron variant, which apparently is highly contagious and has the potential to cause thousands of deaths and hospitalizations in the coming weeks and months. In fact, POTUS opined Thursday that “the unvaccinated face a winter of severe illness and death.”
If it were just the unvaccinated at this point then I guess those of us who are vaccinated and boosted could just sit back and hope Darwin was right. After all, if the NFL has to shut down because of Covid we’ll need something to cheer for. Right?
Unfortunately it’s not just the unvaccinated. Everyone is still at risk because those idiots refuse to get a jab (or three) in the arm. And with the death toll passing 800,000 in this country alone that seems pretty selfish and irresponsible to me.
And I guess I take this personally since one out of every 100 adults over 65 has already died from the virus.
I digress.
Anyway I just don’t get it. I don’t get why anyone would refuse to get a vaccine that is safe and will save their own life and the lives of others.
Someone once asked the writer Kurt Vonnegut what he was doing. His reply was that he was busy committing suicide by smoking cigarettes.
Maybe that’s the answer. Maybe those who refuse to get vaccinated are engaged in an elaborate scheme to commit suicide. Outside of sheer stupidity and ignorance is there any other explanation?
Oh, well. Looks like it is going to be a long winter.
Okay. I’m sure that in the days ahead Simone Biles will take some heat from the Internet trolls out there for her decision to opt out of competing in the Olympics for the women’s team gymnastics title. After all, this is one of the premier events at the COVID games and Biles is (dare I say it?) the greatest of all time in this sport.
And Americans can’t agree on much these days—except for our desire to see our Olympians kick ass.
I’ll admit that when I first heard the news early this am (and not via NBC which has pretty much stopped even pretending to have a news organization) I was shocked, surprised and disappointed.
Well, I guess Simone Biles is human like all the rest of us.
And if this development shines some much needed light on the pressures and mental health issues facing athletes and others then good for her.
Here’s from Yahoo Sports describing the scene after her less than stellar performance:
“At the side of the vault her teammates covered their mouths in shock. That wasn’t a Simone Biles vault. It was easily her worst attempt in a decade, at least. What was it? What was happening?
Before the judges even tallied a shockingly low 13.766 — a full 1.2 below her qualifying mark, Biles knew she was done. She couldn’t do this. She couldn’t perform. She could injure herself, sure, but she, the Great Simone Biles, was suddenly useless as a gymnast.
Her score was dragging down the team. It was .540 below any of her teammates. It was 0.700 below any of the Russians. She was the worst one, by a lot.
It was so low it staked the Russians to a 1.067 lead — a huge number in gymnastics. It’s the kind of gap the Americans would struggle to overcome even if they had Simone Biles at her very best.
“I was like, ‘I am not in the right headspace,’” Biles said. “I am not going to lose a medal for this country and these girls because they’ve worked way too hard to have me go out there and lose a medal.”
She nearly broke into tears, consulted a USA Gymnastics doctor, briefly left the arena floor and then came back, pulled the wraps off her wrists she was set to use on the uneven bars and told her teammates to go win a medal.
Simone Biles pulled herself out of competition.
“I didn’t want to go into any of the other events not believing in myself,” Biles said. “So I thought it was better to take a step back and let these other girls do the job.
“And they did.”
And more from Yahoo Sports:
She tried to describe what she had gone through. She wanted these Olympics to be for her and her teammates, not for her sponsors, not for USA Gymnastics, not for the U.S. Olympic Committee, not for the expectations of the world.
“I felt pretty comfortable coming into the Olympic Games and then I don’t know what happened,” she said. “ … You wind up in a stressful situation and you don’t know how to handle all those emotions.”
Suddenly, it all crumbled and there was nothing she could do to stop the slide. Even if it didn’t make sense, even as everyone told her otherwise, she couldn’t shake her feelings, couldn’t beat back the demons.
“These Olympic Games, I wanted it to be about myself,” Biles said, her voice suddenly catching and tears rolling out of her eyes. “And I came in and I felt I was still doing it for other people, and it hurts my heart that doing what I love has been taken away from me to please other people.”
Her teammates put arms on her shoulders. They tried to prop her up, but here she was, one of the most famous and popular and celebrated people in the world, standing raw and vulnerable and honest.
She knows plenty of people won’t understand, but that’s what got her here in the first place.
“You are still too concerned about what everyone else is going to say, the internet,” Biles said.
So she decided she would have to be more than a gymnast, even here during the biggest gymnastics meet of them all. She had to take care of herself.
She didn’t quit on her team. She quit, she said, and saved the team.
“What was best for me was what was best for the team,” she said.
She was set to talk to professionals on Wednesday morning. After that, a day off from training that she seemed to covet. Will she be back Thursday for the all-around competition? What about the four individual finals she qualified to be in? Will she be back, ever?
She couldn’t say, for sure. At that moment, it wasn’t important.
First things first.
“Fighting,” Simone Biles said, “all those demons.”
Let’s be honest about this. There are only a handful of people in the world who can relate to what Biles and others like her (think Naomi Osaka) have to face. For instance, I’m pretty good at sitting on my couch every afternoon and taking a nap. But the greatest napper of all time—hardly.
So the Olympic Games will go on, and it’s possible that Biles will return for the individual medal events later this week.
But regardless. If her actions in Tokyo help athletes—especially younger ones—face and overcome all those demons, then for the GOAT, this might be her greatest victory ever.
Okay, I’ll admit it. I’ve been pretty much mute on this site for the past few months. Without Trump and his cadre of dimwits mucking up just about everything foreign and domestic it’s hard to get all that worked up about the by comparison minor problems we all face.
Gee. And I’m not convinced that Uncle Joe is playing with a full deck, but after more than a year worrying that you might catch a deadly virus just by leaving the house in a futile search for toilet paper, it’s kinda nice to be able to return to public venues such as supermarkets without having to wear a mask. I imagine that for many shoppers this brings the same level of joy and excitement that one would experience visiting a nude beach. I digress.
But whoa Nellie. It might not be totally safe to dip your toes in the water just yet.
Here’s from a story published by CNBC:
The World Health Organization on Friday urged fully vaccinated people to continue to wear masks, social distance and practice other Covid-19 pandemic safety measures as the highly contagious delta variant spreads rapidly across the globe.
“People cannot feel safe just because they had the two doses. They still need to protect themselves,” Dr. Mariangela Simao, WHO assistant director-general for access to medicines and health products, said during a news briefing from the agency’s Geneva headquarters.
“Vaccine alone won’t stop community transmission,” Simao added. “People need to continue to use masks consistently, be in ventilated spaces, hand hygiene … the physical distance, avoid crowding. This still continues to be extremely important, even if you’re vaccinated when you have a community transmission ongoing.”
The health organization’s comments come as some countries, including the United States, have largely done away with masks and pandemic-related restrictions as the Covid vaccines have helped drive down the number of new infections and deaths.
Say what?
So in literary terms we can paraphrase the Bard: To mask or not to mask? That is the question.
During my working life I spent around 40 years in various communications related jobs. And I can say without fear of contradiction that the messaging throughout this pandemic has been a fiasco.
Here’s the advice from the CDC: Everyone should wear a mask and social distance. Well, maybe that’s not really necessary. But if you are inclined to wear a mask, maybe one isn’t enough. Why not try two or more. And so on.
And getting vaccinated is really the only way to protect yourself and others. But if you don’t want to get vaccinated (hat tip here to the former POTUS) maybe a shot of Clorox is all you need.
So it goes.
In any event, at a time when most people in the USA would rather die than continue to wear a face mask, WHO officials are encouraging people to cover up. Good luck with that. Many people, for whatever irrational reason, have decided they aren’t going to get the vaccine. And even getting a shot at a million bucks via a state lottery ain’t going to change that.
And it would be nice if someone in charge actually provided some guidance that met the test of time.
Oh, well.
Unfortunately, I don’t have any answers. So I guess like most people I’ll continue to rely on the Internet for medical advice.
Well, I’m sure that many of us would like to pack our suitcase these days and get away for a quick vacation. And I’m equally sure that thousands (probably more) of people living (barely) in Texas these days would be the first to hop on a plane for just about any destination offering warmer temps and drinking water.
In case you missed the story while still hunkered down trying to avoid the Trump virus, the entire State of Texas is basically out of power, short on electricity, and without water to drink or even flush toilets. A cold snap zapped the resources of the Republican designed and managed power grid — and like just about everything else the GOP touches these days, the situation quickly became a deadly shitstorm.
And then there is Ted Cruz, a Republican Senator representing The Lone Star State.
Rather than try to stick around and help during the crisis, Cruz apparently decided it was better for him to take a road trip to Cancun.
Sen. Ted Cruz said that flying to Cancun, Mexico, as a winter disaster in his home state left millions without power or water “was obviously a mistake” and that “in hindsight I wouldn’t have done it.”
Cruz, a Texas Republican, spoke to reporters after returning to his Houston home Thursday evening from a trip that has earned fierce criticism on social media and in his own backyard. “I started having second thoughts almost the moment I sat down on the plane, because on the one hand, all of us who are parents have a responsibility to take care of our kids, take care of our family. That’s something Texans have been doing across the state,” said Cruz, who had said in an earlier statement that he flew to Mexico because his daughters had asked to take a trip and he was trying to be a “good dad.” “But I also have a responsibility that I take very seriously for the state of Texas and frankly, leaving when so many Texans were hurting didn’t feel right and so I changed my return flight and flew back on the first available flight I could take,” Cruz continued. With protesters audible outside his home, Cruz said he understands the anger many Texans feel toward his decision. “Of course, I understand why people are upset. Listen, we’re in a strange time where Twitter’s been going crazy and the media is going crazy and there’s a lot of venom and vitriol that I think is unfortunate frankly on both sides,” Cruz said. “I think everyone ought to treat each other with respect and decency and try to understand each other more particularly at a time of crisis.”
Granted, Cruz is an asshat. Still, while he appears to have no shame and displays no ethical behavior, you would think that to be elected Senator you would have to demonstrate at least some degree of common sense.
In Texas, apparently not.
Unfortunately, Cruz is one of the weekend GOP “patriots” who will be in the queue for the Republican Presidential nomination in 2024. Sheesh.
And since that is the case, Cruz might want to take the advice of the former POTUS before he plans anymore getaways.
I guess Cruz was fortunate that Trump wasn’t able to build his wall. Otherwise, he might have become a permanent resident of Mexico. I digress.
And then for the people in Texas who couldn’t leave on spring break:
John F. Kennedy, before he became President, wrote a widely acclaimed book, Profiles in Courage. In the book, Kennedy profiled eight U.S. senators, describing acts of bravery and integrity.
I watched last week as the Senate moved ahead with the second impeachment trial of former POTUS Trump. And as far as the Republicans in the Senate are concerned, if Kennedy tried to write a similar book today he would be hard pressed to fill an abbreviated Cliffs Notes.
Clearly, there wasn’t much bravery or integrity on display in the Senate chamber last week as 43 Republicans voted to acquit — and then many, including Moscow Mitch, took to the airwaves or social media to proclaim that yes Trump was responsible and should be held accountable.
Ah, can’t have it both ways, dudes. I digress.
Anyway, it appears that Trump’s defense and the Republican position came down to pretty much this:
Okay. Maybe a more detailed explanation is in order.
So it goes.
Like I said, the update to Kennedy’s book will be titled, Profiles in Cowardice.
And for the leaders of the Republican Party, I guess in this case their strategy did pay off, as predicted by another author, George Orwell, in his book, 1984.
Like millions of others I had my fat ass planted squarely on the couch for most of the day yesterday as I watched the inauguration of President Biden and Vice President Harris.
And I admit that I would still have rather seen Bernie standing there with his hand on the bible instead of sitting by himself in the back row bundled up in a winter coat and sporting some classic mittens.
I digress.
Yet the inauguration was a reaffirmation of the values and traditions that make America a shining example of democracy to the rest of the world. It had pomp, circumstance and substance. And after an attempt on January 6 to overthrow the government (initiated by you know who), we witnessed (thankfully) a peaceful transfer of power.
Still, I think Trump got away easy by heading out of DC at the crack of dawn instead of doing the right thing and attending the swearing in of POTUS 46.
In these circumstances in the future (God forbid) I suggest that we have a swearing out ceremony.
It doesn’t have to be anything elaborate. Just some flunky like Moscow Mitch standing by the stairs to the helicopter and saying:
“Trump, you douchebag. Get the fu@@ out of here.”
Oh well. I digress again.
But in any event, I’m pleased that Biden is at work today in the Oval Office. He appears to be a decent person who is more than qualified to end what he called our “uncivil” war. And he seems to be more interested in fixing the many problems that face our nation rather than spending his day on twitter, watching TV and stroking his own ego.
Except for those sitting in their mommy’s basement rapped in a Trump/Nazi flag, I think you have to admit that the inauguration yesterday presented an opportunity for all of us to feel good about America again.
And the person who put the exclamation point on the whole affair was the 22-year-old poet Amanda Gorman.
Here’s from the BBC:
Amanda Gorman has become the youngest poet ever to perform at a presidential inauguration, calling for “unity and togetherness” in her self-penned poem. The 22-year-old delivered her work The Hill We Climb to both the dignitaries present in Washington DC and a watching global audience. “When day comes, we ask ourselves where can we find light in this never-ending shade?” her five-minute poem began. She went on to reference the storming of the Capitol earlier this month. “We’ve seen a force that would shatter our nation rather than share it, would destroy our country if it meant delaying democracy,” she declared. “And this effort very nearly succeeded. But while democracy can be periodically delayed, it can never be permanently defeated.”
Wow.
…”while democracy can be periodically delayed, it can never be permanently defeated.”
Somebody should have shared that line with Trump during his swearing out ceremony.
Okay. I wasn’t sure I was going to opine on what happened in DC earlier this week, since I don’t really have any new insights. But hey. How often does a retired senior citizen with access to a computer and the internet have the opportunity to sit on his couch and watch a gaggle of domestic terrorists attempt to overthrown the government of the USA?
Fortunately, not often. In fact, the last time the Capitol was breeched by a group of armed thugs was during the War of 1812. And the British didn’t even have Twitter or Facebook to mobilize the dim-witted masses.
This assault on our democracy — and our elected leaders — is clearly nothing to laugh about.
I digress.
I don’t think it is too much of a stretch to believe that Trump helped incite this riot via his tweets and other comments that launched a host of conspiracy theories and gave rise to the notion that the election was stolen, even though no credible evidence of voter fraud has surfaced.
Still, Trump supporters — who now constitute the white nationalist wing of what used to be the Republican Party — believe it is better to trash the Constitution rather than abide by it.
Fortunately, those who stormed the Capitol on Wednesday are not the sharpest knives in the drawer.
And then there is this guy who must have either taken a vacation day or called in sick to join the mob.
Oh well. I heard this morning on MSNBC that his employer terminated this douchebag. And that’s probably a good thing. I expect that he will soon be joining many of his comrades in prison — and I assume that would create a conflict for showing up to work every day.
I also worry about whether Wednesday’s assault on our country was the end of a tragic episode (read that to mean Trump’s presidency) or the beginning of a new chapter in our nation’s history marked by violence and God forbid, political assassinations. If what we witnessed at the Capitol was a preview of how we are going to live as a Banana Republic, then I would prefer not to see the main feature.
So, I guess we need to do at a minimum a couple of things:
One, Congress has to investigate how an armed mob was able to take control of what should be one of the most secure facilities in this country. And we have to make sure that nothing like this can ever happen again. Without putting too fine a point on this, what we witnessed was a catastrophic failure of the police and armed forces.
Two, social media outlets like Twitter and Facebook have to be held accountable for making it easy to spread lies and disinformation. They aren’t just innocent bystanders to this type of train wreck.
Three, we need strong national political parties that represent the views of all Americans. It is time to move on from the Republicans if they have morphed into the American Nazi Party.
Four, Trump needs to go, sooner rather than later. And if that means impeachment or invoking the 25th Amendment, then so be it.
Trump and his enablers provoked this assault on our democracy.
It’s time to close the book on this ugly chapter in American history.
Writing Above The Clouds 