Year: 2020

Pens.

That’s what it’s come down to.  That is how desperate the GOP has become.  They’re obsessing about pens.

They are endeavoring to get huge mileage out of the fact that when Nancy Pelosi signed the impeachment documentation, she used multiple pens.

The fact that Trump has spent over $100 million dollars on golf trips, enriching himself on taxpayer dollars in flagrant violation of the emolument clause, that the GOP is fine with.  But supporters of a man who has properties with his name emblazoned upon them in gold are freaking out because Nancy Pelosi has gold pens with her name on it as a souvenir from the signing ceremony.

Never mind that signing documents in DC is such a customary stunt that it was even done on an episode of “The West Wing.”  Never mind that it was done during the Clinton impeachment by the GOP, except because they’re idiots the pens had a typo on them and read “Untied States Senator.”  Hëll, never mind that LBJ signed the Civil Rights Act with multiple pens.  

The fact is that no one has ever complained about it in decades, until now.

Because the GOP is just that desperate.

Because the right wing is just that far out of its collective mind.

It’s really kind of a shame.  The Democrat and Republican parties used to be capable of working together.  They may have had different opinions of how government should be run, but they both believed in the truth and they both were fundamentally patriotic.  They believed that this country should stand for something.  That we should defend our allies because that was what this country was supposed to do, both for their safety and for our own.

But in the cult of Trump, that’s all gone away.  Now it’s every man for himself.  Trump has boasted that he wants to charge other countries for the protection of our armed forces, effectively transforming our soldiers into mercenaries. He has relentlessly lined his own pocket while dismissing the emolument clause, part of the Constitution that he swore an oath to protect, as “phony.”

And this week we watched as Mitch McConnell and Lindsay Graham, who have already publicly stated that they are incapable of being impartial jurors, swore an oath to be exactly that.  And they are on record as stating that they are working in conjunction with the White House lawyers and are loath to allow for witnesses to be called…unless Joe and Hunter Biden are on the witness list.

Basically they want to give Trump exactly what he’s been craving:  hours of the Bidens being interrogated.  Why? Because many Americans are fundamentally stupid.  A sizable portion of them don’t read beyond headlines; hëll, many of them share articles from satirical news sites as if they’re genuine.  Trump knows that the Bidens’ answers will be of no relevance.  All people will need to remember is that the Bidens were relentlessly questioned about corruption, linking it in their minds and proving that Trump was right to be worried about it.  Just as years later Hillary Clinton haters obsess about how she was grilled for hours about Congress and simply breeze over the part about how all that questioning came up with nothing.  Say “Benghazi” and “Hillary” and watch them go off on a rant.

Except we once again have evidence that Trump’s interest had nothing to do with actual investigation.  Rudy Giuliani’s aid, Lev Parnas, has been hitting the talk show circuit, endeavoring to lay groundwork for his own defense, and he’s come up with some gems.  He has made it clear that Trump didn’t care about actual investigation; he just wanted the Ukraine President to announce that an investigation was under way.  Because that was all he needed, since he is well aware of just how stupid Americans are.  He knew that all he had to do was say Biden’s son was under investigation and in our environment of “Guilty and never innocent,” that would be sufficient to condemn the son and taint his greatest presidential rival.  

Meanwhile the Government Accountability Office has finally weighed in, declaring that Trump broke the law when he held up the money that congress had set aside for Ukraine military aid.  Since the $214 million had been allocated by Congress, Trump did not have the power to hold it up just to accomplish his own policy aims.  “Faithful execution of the law does not permit the President to substitute his own policy priorities for those that Congress has enacted into law,” stated the report, which would be genuinely relevant if Trump had ever given the slightest indication that he was remotely interested in faithful execution of the law.

The fact is that we need to get witnesses other than the Bidens testifying before Congress.  We need the Senators to actually keep the oaths they’ve sworn to uphold.  And we need them to grow a pair and make the right decision in the hope of saving not only their political party but the country as a whole.  

PAD

FREAK OUT FRIDAY – JANUARY 10, 2019

The country has spent the last week in a most unexpected and unusual position.  

We have been praying that the Iranian government is smarter than ours.

We’ve been praying that they realize the actions of our president do not reflect the will of the majority of the citizens of the United States.  That as much as they shout “Death to Americans,” they come to the realization that most of us not only do not wish death on Iranians, but truth to tell, we don’t really give much of a crap about them.  We don’t advocate attacking them.  They haven’t launched terrorist strikes against our country directly; haven’t blown up a skyscraper or assaulted a mall or whatever.  On an average day, most Americans don’t give Iran a second thought.  

And absolutely none of us knew who Quassem Soleiamani was.  He may well have been a national figure, and people wound up getting stampeded on his funeral, but the average American didn’t know his name, and even now can barely pronounce it, let alone spell it.  Whatever plans he may have been scheming, it had zero impact on our daily lives.  We didn’t give the slightest of dámņš about him, and I can assure you that even the most advocate of Trump supporters wasn’t interested in launching World War III in order to take this guy out.

Yet the idiot joint chiefs presented the prospect of killing him as an option to Trump in order to make the other options look more palatable.  Yeah, I’ve done the same thing.  One time Pocket needed me to come up with three concepts for a Trek novel.  I came up with two really good ones and a cliché-ridden rehash of previous episodes in order to make the other two look better.  Naturally Paramount selected the rehash.  So that stunt doesn’t always work when you’re dealing with people of limited intelligence.  And Trump certainly falls into that category.

So for the past week we actively rooted for the Iranian government to display more restraint than we would in such a situation.  Especially considering that, whatever Soleiamani may have done in the past, we have seen zero proof presented that he was an “imminent” threat, despite all of Trump’s claims that he was.  We automatically know Trump is lying because Trump always lies, and the further proof of those lies was that in subsequent briefings, his people provided no evidence to back up the claims.  When both Republican and Democrat senators are saying the briefings were BS, you know that they most definitely were.  Not to mention that seventeen years ago we saw George W. and his people launch an invasion based upon a series of lies that Saddam Hussein presented a threat with weapons of mass destruction that he was discovered not to have.  

Yet here we were now hoping that the Iranian government wouldn’t launch World War III.  Because let’s face it:  if they had retaliated by killing, I dunno, Colin Powell, Trump’s response would have been scorched Earth.  Despite the Geneva Convention, he would have targeted cultural centers, day care centers…hëll, you can’t convince me he wouldn’t have strongly considered just dropping nuclear weapons on them.  

Yet Iran’s response was remarkably restrained, lobbing some missiles at a military base and killing, as near as we can determine, no one.  Considering what they could have set into motion, we’re left breathing a sigh of relief and pray that Trump will not provoke further response.

Which of course we can forget about, because he’s busy hitting them with sanctions.  Even more ludicrous, he’s actually blaming President Obama for the missiles.  And for anyone reading this who only gets his news from Fox and Trump’s lying mouth:  No.  Obama, in a move that was coordinated with other countries, unfroze money that was already Iran’s in various banks.  And he reimbursed them for the purchase of weapons they bought in the 1970s that were never delivered.  

Yet, of course, Trump has to find yet another reason to blame Obama for things.  It’s become as reflexive as Trumpies crying “But Hillary’s emails!” every time Trump is criticized for some new outrage.  It’s expected from his blind followers, and is typical for Trump who is psychologically incapable of admitting or accepting blame for anything. He continues to blame his impeachment woes on Pelosi and the Democrats even though all of it is as a result of his own actions, phone calls, and duplicity.  He constantly presents himself as the most victimized president in our history.  No one has been treated worse! Declares the occupant of the office where others have been prosecuted for lying about sex or been shot or been killed.  He cries “witch hunt,” apparently oblivious to the fact that witch hunts went after innocent people as opposed to the investigations that have jailed and fined several dozen people.  

Meanwhile Mitch McConnell continues to protect his ášš while the GOP completely abrogates their oath to support the Constitution and instead fall in line behind a bullying narcissist.  Oh, but don’t dare criticize the fact that his assassination of the Iranian General was ill-advised and poorly thought out, because then you’re on the side of terrorists.

You know what?  Assassinating a representative of a foreign government with which war has not been declared and then stating you’re going to blow up cultural centers?  Those are the acts of terrorists.  So if you’re on Trump’s side, you support terrorism.  Simple as that.

PAD