I dropped Part Four of A Future Tale, the dream/nightmare series that I've been trying to get my arms around for a while now. Pere are links to Parts One, Two, and Three, if you want to see why our narrator was trying to deal with an old revolving door - in an alley.
I put my hand on the brass plate and gave a little push, to see if there was even a chance I could get out this way. At first, there was quite a bit of resistance. That wasn't surprising; who knows how long it's been since anyone else was in this alley? I gave another push, thinking how much this was like pushing the gate at the other end of the alley. When was that, anyway? How long have I been in here? I have no idea.
Finally, on the third push, it actually moved noticeably, if slowly, with a bit of a grinding noise, as if it needed to be oiled. Or, thinking back to when I was a child, maybe it just needed some kids to push and push and keep pushing, going round and round in their little cages within the door, like I did, chasing my older brothers... or, were they chasing me?
Thoughts of anything chasing me right now were unwelcomed, and I pushed those memories aside, focusing on the task at hand: getting this darn thing to move and, hopefully, finding a way out on the other side. I leaned in a bit, putting some oomph into it, and finally, the door moved, with purpose.
I think I've almost figured the whole thing out - almost - and will have the Epilogue soon.
For Sunday School, one of the classrooms I sat in on was Face the Nation, where Ed O'Keefe interviewed Rep. Mike Turner (R-OH) on the Mar-a-Lago stuff. One of his questions? "What use could a former president have for classified or top-secret information once he's left office?" Turner was unsure.
Well, I don't know. I mean, you would have to ask him. But certainly, we all know that every former president has access to their documents. It's how they write their memoirs...
Have any used Top Secret/SCI documents for that, I wonder? Turner seems to doubt the classification of what was found. He said the FBI said "they were identified as marked classified," and, he said, Trump said he declassified them. He thinks the important thing is the "abuse of discretion" on the part of the FBI.
...we have evidence of the FBI abusing that discretion, and of misconduct on behalf of the FBI...There are real questions as, what is the FBI doing here? ...the rank-and-file FBI agents, everybody agrees we support them. We have great faith in them. But the leadership of the FBI, when they undertake a raid against the current president's political rival, you have to ask these questions.
Turner's right: there are real questions here, but he and all the other Rs seem incapable of asking the most important ones: What the hell was Trump planning to do with all of this stuff? Why did he keep it, knowing as he since before he left the White House that the information is not his? And, my favorite, what would the Rs be doing if the person stashing this kind of stuff insecurely was a Democrat?
In the State of the Union classroom, Jake Tapper talked with Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) on all of this, and even gave Crenshaw some breathing room on 'skepticism' but pointed to law enforcement and asked if they weren't innocent until proven guilty.
Yes, again, people signing off on it doesn't mean it's -- it doesn't -- that it has precedent. It doesn't. This is a very unprecedented measure. And you know that when you're going after an ex-president who may run again, that this is -- this is automatically political. You can't -- you cannot separate the legal aspects of this from the political aspects of it. You can't. And it doesn't seem to me like they have acted responsibly as a result of that. And look, again, why not just ask him? Why not just ask him?
OK, the "why not just ask him?" is a barnful of Texas longhorn bull shit (two words on purpose) and either (a) Crenshaw hasn't read any of the news on this issue, (b) he's covering for Trump out of fear, or (c) he's an idiot.
Remember, everything is unprecedented until someone does it. In this case, how many ex-presidents who may run again have allegedly taken TS/SCI and other classified documents with them after losing an election, have lied to the government about it, have paid liars to lie to the government about it, have a record of cavalier handling of national security, including in the very place that was searched, and of destroying documents?
The idiocy only increased as the week went on, but I turned to a different subject for Wondering on Wednesday, mostly because I couldn't take it any more. Much of the post was about primaries in New York, one of which garnered a lot of attention in the national media and tea leaf-reading parlors: the race to fill the seat of former Rep. Antonio Delgado, who resigned to become our Lt. Governor. Democrat Pat Ryan
won the "bellwether" race, as multiple media outlets referred to it, campaigning on a woman's right to choose being a national issue, not a state issue, while Marc Molinaro, the Republican, ran on crime and inflation. How much does this matter in the overall scheme of things, I wonder? I'm not convinced it's indicative of anything, really...
It's funny how so many media outlets jumped on the Ryan win, and how many have been so keen on interviewing him since then. Another race got less national attention, but may have deserved more, I'm not sure. It's about the power of a huge Trump supporter, endorsing a horrid fellow New Yorker and a smarmy fellow New Yorker - and losing both races.
I can't help wondering how Rep. Elise Stefanik, the number three RINO in the House is feeling today. (A RINO, in these pages, is a MAGA Republican). Stefanik strongly supported the deplorable Carl Paladino in the primary for NY's new 23rd district; Paladino lost to NYS GOP chair Nick Langworthy. Stefanik also strongly supported Steve Wells in the primary for NY's new 22nd district. Wells lost to Brandon Williams.
House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy might not have had a great morning, after the Paladino loss. It's been reported that McCarthy and Rep. Steve Scalise, his Number Two, weren't happy with Stefanik 'going rogue' with her endorsement. I wonder how today's leadership chat went?
The stuff that I didn't let out of my head? It was more Mar-a-Lago stuff, the RINOs reactions, student loan forgiveness, the RINO (and the Dem) reactions, and stuff like that. There's already so much noise out there, I decided to hold back. We'll see how long that lasts...
See you later for Sunday School, if not sooner.
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Thanks for sharing your thoughts!