An Observation Concerning The “Occupant”

Never has been “President”.

Ought to be be called, and is by some the “Occupant”.

As his “occupancy” becomes tenuous and his twitter outbursts  become increasingly irrational and strident (“how could that be?” I thought I heard someone say) – one wonders how anyone could have ever thought that that creature could possibly claim to be President of the United States.

I mean, seriously; here are some hot-from-cyberspace examples (quoted from The Hill):

"Like every American, I deserve to meet my accuser, especially when this accuser, the so-called 'Whistleblower,' represented a perfect conversation with a foreign leader in a totally inaccurate and fraudulent way. Then Schiff made up what I actually said by lying to Congress," Trump said in a series of tweets.

"His lies were made in perhaps the most blatant and sinister manner ever seen in the great Chamber," he continued before adding that he wants Schiff, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, "questioned at the highest level for Fraud & Treason."

"In addition," he added, "I want to meet not only my accuser, who presented SECOND & THIRD HAND INFORMATION, but also the person who illegally gave this information, which was largely incorrect, to the 'Whistleblower.' Was this person SPYING on the U.S. President? Big Consequences!"

If the guy sitting next to you at Sonny’s Bar and Grill started in like that you would ask the bartender to call the men with the net so the guy could be put somewhere where he could be restrained from hurting himself.

Or the rest of us.

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A Respite From donnie

Having spent the morning listening to the Democrats spoon up a rather thin gruel – beyond the obvious fact that donnie is guilty of international extortion – of why they need to impeach the president, and listening to the delusional scenarios of republican riposte I just got tired.

Most of that listening had occurred as I rode my Rocky Mountain bike on a trainer.

Twenty miles; not too bad.

Maybe that’s why I was tired.

But I doubt it.

Twenty or so miles usually wake me up and drive all the nasty chemical residue that gathers overnight in old people from me and leaves me ready to pick tomatoes or something.

But after all the sham, sturm and drang of the NPR morning stuff  I was just tired and was pretty sure that the content – noted above – was at fault; I was ready for something else.

So I had two bloody marys as I fixed my BBC News Hour – 1300 out here – breakfast.

It was an English muffin with melted butter on its halves and two eggs scrambled with some almost forgotten in the back of this cavernous Liebherr, scorched previously on the barbecue grill, red peppers.

It was good.

I finished the second bloody as I finished the eggs.

Then I had to face the real mission for the day: vacuuming the cat hair off the two massive couches in the living room.

So I touched MUSIC on my iPhone and invoked my five album Garth Brooks playlist.

Things were going swimmingly.

The BeatsPill that Joe gave me can crank out music loud enough to be heard even over the whine of a vacuum cleaner.

I got about halfway through the first couch when I remembered that I had finished a great little book the previous evening, after which I had watched episode seven of Country Music.

The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett is one of the most unexpectedly delightful things I have ever read.

If it weren’t for the fact that next in the pile is Sarum, Rutherfurd’s prequel to London I would be lapsing into a semi-suicidal state; I do that when I finish a great book.

If Sarum is as good as London, I may be able to live without The Uncommon Reader.

But then I just recently had to go through that same transition when I had finished Churchill’s Marlborough.

I read that because I had previously finished Macaulay’s five volume History of England.

Sir Winston had felt it necessary to write four volumes in defense of his ancestor against the “lies”, as Churchill called them, perpetrated by Lord Macaulay against the Duke of Marlborough; a trans century spat seemed to me to be the basis of some good reading; it was.

In amongst all that I read The Soul of an Octopus: good story; I totally agree with the underlying premise that many, or probably most, of our fellow creatures are pretty much like us in all important ways: memory, fun, fear, love, hunger and the desire to be heard and taken seriously; I live with three cats who epitomize that basic truth.

Garth just sang my favorite Garth song: That Summer; the bass solo in that song – I think it’s his sister playing it - is one of the great guitar solos I have ever heard, up there with the ones in Poles Apart and Comfortably Numb.

I also, just before all of that, read The Lion in the Living Room.

Anybody who cares at all about how all of us creatures might get on together ought to read that book.

Abigale is a brilliant writer,

I guess I’ve killed all the time I can; I need to get back to vacuuming.

But at least I forgot about donnie in lieu of something tangible, true and meaningful – to me at least – for awhile.

I should mention, as I fire up the vacuum again, Nancy Mitford's biography of Louis XIV is so good it ought to be part of every grade school curriculum: learning about really interesting “historical” characters when one is young enough to still believe in magic might make a better country for all of us.

I doubt if it would do any damage.

donnie’s Unhinged Afternoon

Based on what donnie said this afternoon, and how he said it, it is obviously time for the Twenty Fifth.

I think he has given up but intends to keep twitching as long as his traitor republican sidekicks will allow himto remain on the World Stage twitching..

Twitching is a sad thing to watch.

Particularly in a large orange blob.

High Risk Tactic

I had assumed that the “transcript” that donnie said he would release of his phone call or calls to downtown Ukraine would be a work of fiction.

Probably written by Fat Billie.

Apparently not.

Editorialized and edited it is; fiction it seems not to be.

I have heard enough analysis this morning to believe that the transcript has some basis in truth – a first for donnie.

Also, I have heard lawyers say that what is documented in the transcript is indeed a crime, and that all the peripheral machinations – saying Rudy would call, and Fat Billie would call, for example – open all sorts of parallel paths of potential malfeasance.

So why would donnie do this?

After all, he may be stupid, but he is cunning.

The reason is obvious and the deployment of this tactical approach to the strategy of winning the 2020 election was already underway even before the “transcript” was released.

Various republican factotums were already fanning out across the airwaves on message.

And the message is simple:

“donnie didn’t do nuthin’ wrong.

But Joe Biden is a criminal, and his son got rich to the tune of fifty grand a month”.

An they will grind that message into the national consciousness.

(The apparent facts, directly in opposition to the republican message, are that corruption had become a huge issue to the EU and the US by 2015 as they tried to help Ukraine fight the Little Green Men from Russia.  They were adding lots of money to their moral support and lots of that money was disappearing into various corrupt Ukrainian pockets.  There was a chief prosecutor who was supposed to be going after corruption in general and one gas company in particular.  He wasn’t.  Two things were done by the United States to ameliorate this situation.  Hunter Biden was appointed to the board of that company because, as the son of the Vice President of the United States it was thought that he could bring some respectability of that company.  The Chief Prosecutor continued not to pursue corruption however. So Joe Biden, acting as Vice Roi at the direction of President Obama, and in co-operation and agreement with the Allies, went to Ukraine and got the chief prosecutor fired.  It was hoped that a new one who was more attuned to the mission of rooting out corruption would be appointed.) 

By re-arranging the time line and spinning the facts on their axes donnie and the republicans have concocted their 2020 campaign message. Given the quality of the “electorate” who are the target of this message, its success is guaranteed.

There is risk in providing evidence that donnie is blackmailing the president of Ukraine, but since there is no way in hell that donnie will be found guilty in the senate, donnie will proceed with his re-election campaign unimpeded, and armed with the hefty red meat replete message that Biden is a crook, augmented by the post trial addition of “I have been subjected to the greatest persecution since the early Christians”.

If “The Base” can be expanded to include just enough additional ravening idiots – and the “Biden is a criminal” message, the republicans believe, will facilitate this - the election will be a slam dunk.

I am not sure how all that will play if Elizabeth Warren ends up being the Democratic Nominee, but I’m sure donnie and the crowd have a plan.

All that said, the transcript is only what donnie has chosen tactically to put at risk in support of the 2020 strategy.

We need to know what really happened.

That, of course, is not possible, because the republican traitors aid and abet donnie in his criminal acts.

There is no way to penetrate the shroud of silence that the republicans will deploy to avoid the truth – truth that might cause them to lose power.

The Problem We’ve Got …

Is not donnie the dildo.

Or donnie the traitor;

Or donnie the mafioso bullshit artist;

Or his legion of stumble bums, Ruddy Giuliani chief among them.

Our problem is that the other side of America’s political apparatus, the republican party are all complicit in the currently ongoing coup d'état.

They can’t all be so stupid as to think that trump has anything like a president in him.

They can’t all think that all of donnie’s attacks on average citizens, the opposition and the free press are normal presidential behavior.

But they have all bowed and scraped and said “sounds good to me”.

The problem we have is that we are in need of a mass impeachment of the republican members of both houses of the United States Legislature for treason; and that, obviously, will never happen.

I would happily accept as a sacrificial offering, having ol’ Mitch sent to the Tower for life; and I would cheer as the ravens ate his sorry ass carcass after he finally died in chains.

But this is America, not Britain in 1686.

Too bad for me and my hopes and dreams.

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I Would Have Called It A Strong Speech

But since she is a young woman, some man in the press decided to characterize it as “emotional”.

So that’s all we’re gonna hear about it.

I disagree, but I guess I have to deal with the hand I have been dealt.

So here’s what think about that “emotional” speech.

I think it is amazing that a human being can say in so few words, in a language not her native tongue, something as eloquent as what Greta Thunberg said at the United Nations today.

I especially liked her use of the term “Fairy Tale”.

She is the real deal.

I hope there are a lot more like her here and there across the globe just waiting to pounce and bring the sham we are living to an end and lay the groundwork for something – something different from this millennia spanning catastrophe  – that can be tried, modified, perfected, and, perhaps, that can bring the human race into compliance with its responsibilities and potentialities.

But that’s too emotional.

Boeing And donnie

At the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis Adlai Stevenson, who was America’s Ambassador to the United Nations, fanned out over Western Europe to meet with our Allies and brief them on what had happened and what we were going to do about it and why.

First on the list was the President of France.

When Stevenson started to show the President the satellite image evidence, De Gaulle brushed it aside and said something like “we don’t need any of that; the word of the United States of America is its bond”.

I laugh/cry when I hear about donnie and all the other stumble bums lying about Iran to the same Allies.

As a side note, it is amusing or disheartening – or both –  to witness the deployment of other of donnie’s stumble bums in defense of donnie’s conspiracy (we’ve seen this all somewhere before) to have Ukraine interfere in the 2020 election.

Rudy’s best line in donnie’s defense is calling former Vice President Biden “slimy Joe”.

But back to the Europeans and the first-string stumble bums: luckily those Allies are too smart to be conned.

Recently someone from the FAA tested Boeing’s now multi-month-in-the-producing “software tweak” in a flight simulator.

“Looks good” chirped the FAA.

“Not so fast” said the FAA’s counterparts the world over.

I have to side with the Counterparts: most of my small amount of air travel is international.

I am happy not to need to factor aircraft avoidance into my travel plans.

And I hope that the Counterparts take years and years to stress test the “tweak”.

I guess it’s sorta sad the abyss into which American credibility has plummeted.

But it plays great with “The Base”.

Another Paris Crow

In le Jardin des Plantes:

donnie's Mid East Peace Plan

Hi! I just jumped out of a hat.

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