Wondering on Wednesday 7/13/22

 

Ready... Set... Wonder!

So, we had another January 6th Committee hearing this week. I'd love to know if folks are still watching, or if everyone's over it by now? 

I'm not over it yet - not by a long shot, although I was multi-tasking a bit yesterday and missed the part about the "unhinged" meeting with Sidney Powell, Rudy Giuliani, Mike "The Traitor" Flynn, and Patrick Byrne, the Overstock.com guy -who, according to something I read today, 'overstocked' on meatballs at the meeting. 

After watching replays today, I can't help wondering how much worse things would have been on January 6th if there hadn't have been any adults in the room on December 18th. 

Another thing I can't stop wondering about is if the Committee's going to do anything about the comments from Rep. Debbie Lasko (R- I Didn't Mean to Say I'd Kill My Grandkids). I don't think it was fully explained how the Committee got hold of the tape, but here's what Lasko said "on the eve of January 6th." 

I also asked leadership to come up with a safety plan for members. I'm actually very concerned about this because we have who knows how many hundreds of thousands of people coming here. We have Antifa. We also have, quite honestly, Trump supporters who actually believe that we are going to overturn the election. And when that doesn't happen, most likely will not happen, they are going to go nuts.

First, I'm wondering who Lasko spoke to. If I had to guess, I'd think it was Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, Rep. Steve Scalise, and/or  Rep. Elise Stefanik - they're the top three Republican 'leaders' in the House; but what if it was House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, or anyone on her leadership team? 

Second, I'm wondering what response she got from whomever she spoke with, and whether the Committee's spoken with anyone involved in those conversations. 

And finally, I'm definitely wondering about her saying "most likely will not happen." Did she actually think there was a chance all of this nonsense would work??

Much of my wondering is centered on the horrific story about the ten-year-old Ohio girl who had to travel to Indiana to have an abortion because she was a few days too pregnant to get one at home; this was a hot topic  in last week's Sunday School. 

Since the story first hit the headlines, many have suggested it was a fake, something someone made up to get people all riled up for the primaries and the mid-term elections, or just riled up in general. Among the folks saying it was a made-up story? The editorial board of the Wall Street Journal.

Here's a tweet with more information from the editorial. 

Reporters at the National Review questioned it. The Washington Post tried to fact-check it, and failed. 

And none other than Ohio's own Rep. Jim Jordan, who also controls the House Judiciary GOP Twitter account, determined it to be fake. Jordan's comment is below. 

I wonder how shocking it must have been for them to find out that, this morning, a man was charged for raping the little girl? And I wonder, too, what would have happened if the media had identified the girl or found our where she lived? Would they have staked out her home? Attacked any males in the house as potential rapists?  Would they have followed her to Indiana? 

I also find myself wondering if we've become so jaded by things like the Jussie Smollett case, and fake Go Fund Me accounts and all the rest, that the first thought when something horrible is reported is that it's not true? 

And if that's the case, I wonder how we recover from that level of distrust?

What are you wondering about tonight?

Trump in Transition (v48)

Watching people argue on Twitter about which presidential candidate won more counties - not more votes, more counties - is both comical and disheartening.

The self-proclaimed "proud supporters of the Constitution" seem to believe that counties vote...? And, without irony, they also believe that counties - particularly counties in red states - cheat, make up ballots, and round up dead people to vote against Trump.

The same people believe that wearing a Black Lives Matter t-shirt when observing ballot-counting is both a crime against humanity and indicative of cheating, while wearing a MAGA hat is indicative of patriotism and truthfulness, which is itself untruthful, if the judges who've reviewed the 'evidence' from said 'red heads' are correct.

And, it would seem, many of them apparently think that a mythological Scandinavian sea monster is going to save the Trump presidency. That would appear to be a completely un-American approach, don't you think? An illegal immigrant from a country governed by a monarch swimming in to save the American republic? Stop it.

Donald Trump feeds off the people who idolize him and can't imagine that someone wouldn't; it's impossible for him to believe he is unlikeable. Even in the face of evidence that people dislike him, he denies the possibility.

To sit where he sits - he acts like he's in a booth in the back in the corner in the dark, except he's in the White House, and we can see him - and repeatedly tell us and the world that he won, that he got more votes than Obama!! and more votes than any sitting president ever!!!, and that there's no way anyone could have gotten more votes than him since he got more than anyone before him!!!!! is insane. It's delusional. It's narcissistic.

And, sadly, it's completely consistent with what we have been forced to put up with throughout his presidency. He has not transitioned an inch, not even a hair. He is now who he was then, who he has been and will be forever, except that he was elected president. Once.

He denies my existence, and the existence of millions of people like me, over 81 million of us, who did not vote for him. He denies the existence of people who had the audacity to like someone better, or to dislike his opponent less than they dislike him.

The millions who showed our displeasure, our distaste, our dislike, he cannot or will not comprehend. Our exhaustion, he cannot comprehend. How annoyed we are, how sick we are of his constant self-promoting, the embarrassing tweets, the grifting, the cast of characters by whom he is surrounded, that he foists upon us, that he honors and celebrates, he cannot comprehend.

Equally incomprehensible is that, as he pretends all of this isn't happening, didn't happen, isn't true, he continues to roil the waters in which his devout supporters swim, working them into a frenzy of martial-law supporting, havoc-wreaking, our-country-has-been-stolen fanatics. They are insisting he will be president, he will have his second-term inauguration come January 20th, and they don't care what it takes to make that happen.

• Let's send separate slates of Trump electors. Let's have a nationwide recount - in the states he lost this time that he won last time, because that is the nation, that handful of states. That is the height of the resistance against him, and against which devout rage must be directed.

• Let's have a separate inauguration for him, at noon on January 20, 2021, an online inauguration. It'll be the biggest crowd for any online inauguration in history, it surely will - the zoomiest Zoom call EVER! We'll bring Sean Spicer back, grab him from the studios of Newsmax and have him count all the little faces on the screens to validate the count! Obama never had a zoom inauguration this big - we'll show him, that Muslim race-baiting worst president ever- we'll SHOW HIM!

• Let's fight the acceptance of the Electoral College vote! Let's dispute it on the floor during the Joint Session, and make the Vice President deal with that! (Insert Howard Dean scream here.)

And Trump sits in our house, huddling with the China-loving fraudster Steve Bannon; with the indescribable Sidney Powell, the lawyer who's not his lawyer, but who spends an awful lot of time at the White House lately; with Rudy Giuliani, the lawyer who IS his lawyer but who spends a lot of time telling people that Sidney Powell is nuts; with twice-confessed lying pardoned disgraced General Michael Flynn, and his other usual suspects - RINOS one and all - because these folks are not representative of the majority of Republicans. They cannot be.

Trump and his followers would have you believe that Republicans in charge of elections in red states are RINOS for not declaring him the winner, but they are actually Republicans, sharing their disappointment at the outcome of the election (however misplaced that disappointment is, in my opinion) and at the same time supporting the rule of law and the processes that are in place.

They are being turned on (no, not like that), the Republicans are, by the man they chose, the one they said was a lunatic, unstable, a racist, not like them, not good for the country, a con man, and more. He is turning on them, not just privately, but pitting one against the other, pitting the many against the one, whoever the one is that is drawing Trump's ire at any particular moment.

The majority of Republicans don't have the cojones to put themselves in the Stevie-Rudy-Sidney-Mikey crowd, right? They prefer to cower in the face of these folks. Complicitly, most of them silently, but still cowering, instead of using their precious microphone and camera time talking about what their constituents need, regardless of what Trump wants, or heaven forbid, talking about what the country needs.

And they surely don't have the cojones to stand up to Trump, unless it's on their way out of office. That seems to be the time when courage, and cojones, are found aplenty. (Well, a couple, maybe; not really aplenty. I mean, they're not hanging like ornaments on a tree or anything.)

All of this - the ignorance, the insistence, the convincing, the convicted, the complicit, the true believers, the treasonous - all of this creates a giant, flaming bullseye showing us exactly where we are, and how far we need to go.

We don't need a cult leader, raking in money hand over fist from the faithful. We don't need a grifter, enriching his businesses and his family off the taxpayers. We don't need a liar, a tweeter, a shouter, a screamer, a cranky two-year-old having a temper tantrum.

We surely don't need more people coming to the White House wearing their criminal convictions on their sleeves; we need people who have the courage of their convictions, their principles, their ethics, their love of country.

We don't need a person, we need a plan, for the entire country.

The 'real' transition cannot happen soon enough.

Wondering on Wednesday 10/14/20

 

Ready... Set... Wonder!

Where to start with this week's wondering? Well, there's the Amy Coney Barrett hearings in the Senate, where (at least yesterday, anyway) many of the questions were silly (what's on your notepad, young lady? And whatever it was that Sen. Mazie Hirono was talking about, for example). Today, many of the questions from both sides were about the Affordable Care Act, which several Republican state Attorneys General sued to toss out. One of those states? Indiana, Barrett's home state. 

I mention that, because according to a few reports, she said she didn't know that Trump ran on, and continues to run on, getting rid of the ACA. I wonder how anyone in a state that's part of the suit to kill it can pretend to be unaware of his position, certainly not someone who was just appointed to the bench in 2017 - during, of course, the Trump administration... How stupid do they think we are, I wonder?

If you're of a certain age, you probably remember the threat of things being put on your permanent record...And today, with a particularly insane tweet from the president mocking the elderly, the infirm, residents of senior housing, nursing homes, rehab centers, and, of course, Joe Biden, I thought of the old 'permanent record' thing. And I wonder what it will be like for folks in the future to read through our history, from Bush to Obama to Trump, and wonder what the hell happened to our country? And I wondered how weird it would be to look at that permanent record, at some point in the future, and find out what happened to the person who added all this crap to it.  

 

I also have to wonder, only for about three seconds or so, why the powers that be on the peacock network decided to host a town hall meeting with IMPOTUS at the same time Joe Biden is doing a town hall on another network. Three, two, one, money. Simple, right?  I mean, it's not because they feel a compelling desire to have Americans hear from Trump, the man who never shuts up. It's not that they are at all interested in having people hear from Joe Biden, because they don't care about that, either. On the plus side?  Nah, there is no plus side. 

My Sweet Baboo and I went for our third and likely final fall foliage road trip of 2020 today, and there came a time when finding 'facilities' and food was more important than looking at pretty stuff. We stopped at a diner we've driven by without stopping at least a couple dozen times over the years. I don't have to wonder anymore about the food - it was delish. The facilities? Clean, well appointed and not in use when we arrived - a huge plus.  

Two gentlemen and  'face coverings required for entry' signs attracted my attention.  Gentleman A came in with who appeared to be his wife and two kids, fully and appropriately masked. However, his mask was tucked firmly against the underside of his nostrils. Gentleman B, one of two who arrived together on separate motorcycles, apparently didn't have a mask or doesn't wear one, but he tried to rise to the occasion today by holding his t-shirt in his teeth and tucking his nose down so it pointed into his shirt. 

And I wonder, first of all, why they thought what they were doing was appropriate and in keeping with the requirement? And secondly, why did the waitress allow them to come in when clearly the potentially dangerous parts of their faces were uncovered? And finally, specifically regarding Gentleman B, how on earth did I keep from busting out laughing? 

I wonder about other stuff too, like what a crushing blow it must have been to the president when Snitty Snitty Bill Barr's DOJ investigation into the 'unmasking' of Michael Flynn ended with no substantive findings and no charges - in effect, a highly awaited "October Surprise" that wasn't. Trump has repeatedly said that Barr is either "going down as the greatest AG in the history of our country, or he'll go down as just a regular guy." I doubt the latter will happen, after his shenanigans and statements and obfuscations and all that, but Trump can dream, I guess. I mean, clearly he does that, right? No need to wonder about that at all.

And finally, we learned today that Barron Trump also had tested positive for the coronavirus, but has since tested negative. I'm happy about that, I really am. I'd wondered about his health during the time that both his parents were infected with COVID. I'd also wondered about Melania's health as well, since we were not hearing about that. Today we learned that she has now tested negative for the virus, and I'm happy about that, too.  

When the president was asked about Barron, after Melania's note was published on the White House website, his answer? "Barron's fine. And Amy's doing a fantastic job, and we're heading out to Iowa, and we have a big rally, a lot of people, as always, but we have a lot of people and we look forward to it. Again, Amy I think is doing an incredible job." I can't help wondering what it feels like to be the person the question was actually about.

What's got you wondering tonight?

TGIF 5/8/20

Another Friday, already? Let's dive in and see what was going on this week.

Right off the bat, we now know that coronavirus has entered the White House, with both a presidential valet and the vice president's press secretary having tested positive. I understand now that the valets will be wearing masks, which makes sense, at least according to the CDC experts. Better late than never, I guess.  Pence's aide, Katie Miller, happens to be married to Trump's immigration policy guru, Stephen Miller. She's being quarantined for 14 days, not sure about him.

The president went to a mask company in Arizona this week, where he wore glasses but not a mask. But that's OK, I guess, because as the song says, Live and Let Die. Also while he was in Arizona, the president did an interview with ABC's David Muir which was, well, Trumpian to the extreme. I'll have more on that tomorrow.

Attorney General Snitty Snitty Bill Barr tried (and failed, it would seem) to convince the Administration to drop their assault on the Affordable Care Act, and he tried (and succeeded) in getting the DOJ to drop the charges against Michael Flynn, who cooperated with the Mueller Investigation. On the former, Barr's concern seems to be kicking tens of millions of people off their insurance, or appearing to, during an election year - which would not be an actual crime, only a political crime. On the latter, Barr said that "people sometimes plead guilty to things that turn out not to be crimes."  As with the Roger Stone case, the line prosecutor on the Flynn case withdrew. Seems things continue to be not so warm and fuzzy at DOJ...

Unemployment numbers for April came out today, and they were not good. I had heard estimates of between 16-17%  but  the unemployment rate came in at 14.7%. All of the job gains over the past 11 years have been wiped out. The 10.3% increase was the largest "over the month" increase in the metric's history.

For a somewhat unusual reason, Andrew Yang is in the news again this week. Last week, Yang sued the NYS Board of Elections for cancelling this year's presidential primary, as there are no candidates still officially in the running other than Joe Biden. And just the other day, a federal judge ordered NY to hold the primary after all. While some saw it as a victory for delegates who still have a chance to impact the party's platform at the convention, others don't feel the same. Ben Adler, writing in City and State New York, disagrees.  Adler said "this is just more proof - as if any were needed after Trump - that "outsider" candidates who run to promote their personal brand or idiosyncratic ideas usually leave politics worse for their involvement." Ouch.

And finally, Joe Biden. Evidence appears to be mounting against him vis a vis Tara Reade. On the heels of a recording alleged to be her mother calling in to the Larry King Show that came to light last month, we now have documents from her divorce, filed in 1996, in which her ex-husband references Reade saying she was sexually harassed while working for Biden's office.

I don't know how anyone looks at this, with a believing or disbelieving eye, and doesn't think it seriously hurts the Biden campaign.

TGIF, everyone.