Day 827 Saturday April 13, 2019
569 Days to the 2020 election and 647 Days to Inauguration Day
And the hits just keep on coming!
It’s weird times. We have a president who has the ability to infect everyone around him with whatever it is that makes people do illegal or practically illegal things. He encourages it. He’s a sociopath by any definition. He has no sympathy or empathy, etc. etc. etc. Look up the traits of a sociopath and I’ll bet you will find every trait describes Donald Trump.
It’s sad for us to watch him, and it’s dangerous for the nation to have him in charge. The amount of harm he has done to the nation, the world, and the environment is enormous.
There was a clip being played earlier this week of John Kerry on Capital Hill. A Republican Congressman who has two degrees from MIT in engineering was putting down Kerry because his degree was not a science degree and therefore his reasoning was he wasn’t a real scientist and therefore shouldn’t be talking about climate change. They got into a discussion about parts per million of carbon. This guy said to Kerry that John had picked 800,000 years and the parts per million because it bolstered Kerry’s claim about lower carbon ppm, but if you went back further the ppm was much higher. To which I immediately thought, “Yeah? And if you went back even further the planet had no free oxygen and none of us would be able to breath.”
It was a bogus argument, based on a fallacious assumption (because you don’t have a science degree doesn’t mean you aren’t a scientist.) Neil deGrasse Tyson put it best I think, “Science is in search of the truth.” If you are in search of the truth you might be a scientist, and if you use the scientific method, which has proven to be the vest way of getting at the truth you are a scientist. Q.E.D.
Scientists collect evidence and postulate why it is. They then try to prove that what they postulated is correct. That is what Kerry was doing in that hearing. Saying here’s the evidence, therefore …
What the Republican Congressman was doing was an ad hominem attack on Kerry. To which Kerry responded, “You aren’t serious?”
But of course he was. I have to wonder, “How does a really smart engineer (this guy has the bon vides to be called that) make such an ass of himself?” He has joined the Jim Jordan club of idiotic verbal self immolation.
Then we get to Bill Barr. A man whom some say is a good lawyer. I never thought so. Not after he recommended to Papa Bush to pardon everyone in Iran-Contra (Except the guy who ran the arms, played in the movie by Tom Cruise. His picture was plastered on national TV by Reagan, thus letting Pablo Escobar know exactly who had betrayed him and thus signing that fellow’s death sentence. He was machine gunned down.)
Barr besides not releasing the Mueller report has now claimed there was spying on the Trump campaign, which is exactly what Trump, Fox News, and Sean Hannity have been saying.
Where is that Congressman who was interviewing Kerry? Why isn’t he grilling Barr? “Where Mr. Barr is your evidence?” (“Oh it’s your belief? Not the FBI, but the intelligence community more broadly? What agency or agencies? Do you believe court ordered wire taps is spying? What exactly are you saying? You are a lawyer aren’t you? Do you consider making unfounded claims to the Congress under oath a good idea?” etc. etc. etc.)
The really frightening thing about all this is that the things Trump is saying and Barr is saying can be traced directly to right wing talking points, which lemme tell you – ain’t based on fact, evidence, or anything else of substance.
Then we get to Sam Patten. A minot player in this criminal activity, but a very connected one. He’s pals with Roger Stone, Konstantine Kiliminik, worked with Paul Manafort on the shady Ukraine stuff with the Russian backed dictator of that country, funneled illegal foreign contributions to the Trump Inaugural Committee, didn’t register as a foreign lobbyist, lied to the FBI and to Congress. He got sentenced. He got three years probation.
Why? Because of his great cooperation. What cooperation? Well, we don’t know. It’s all secret. It deals with “on-going investigations.” What investigations? We don’t know. They are secret. What? (Rinse and repeat.)
I hope this is a response to Trump’s “Don’t worry, I’ll pardon you” tactic (Did you see he told someone in DHS to go ahead and break the law and he’ll pardon them?****)
**** WTF? As one of the talking heads pointed out yesterday, for Trump the law is just an inconvenience, and impediment to what he wants to do. It doesn’t mean he won’t do it. It means he has to figure out a way around the law.
Then there is the overall effect of Trump playing “box of chocolates” with his appointees. He likes “acting” folks because he can move them around without Congressional oversight. The problem is that acting folks don’t get staffs and stuff that appointed people do. In this administration you don’t know when you’ll be fired or moved, so you keep your head down. Also, if you are stupid enough to do something, like what the president said, you realize that if there’s outrage (especially from Rush, or Fox and Friends, or Sean), he’ll hang you out to dry. So what happens? What is the result of this? Well, the heads of agencies are acting, the second in command is acting or not there, same with the third level. This means the agency is really being run by the career people who have been there for years and years (and know what they are doing.) This is exactly what the Steve Bannons of the world say is “the Deep State.” So Trump in his game of pawns has strengthen the Mandarins that make the government work. Except for the wall, that he’s making his mess.
Speaking of the wall, Trump is trying to figure out a way to have the military do stuff at the wall. He told the DHS guy to go ahead and do something illegal and he’d pardon him. How would you like whether or not you go to jail dependent on this sociopathic liar telling you he’ll pardon you after you commit the crime? Ask Mikey Cohen? What if Fox and Friends don’t like it?
The struggle continues.
569 Days to the 2020 election and 647 Days to Inauguration Day
PS What side of history will you be on?
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