All of a sudden the committee chairmen who didn’t want Comey to testify for fear of offending Trump, can’t get to him fast enough. Why? Ratings, photo ops, attention. Comey has selected carefully the senate intelligence committee because they are the only committee behaving non-partisan and are not hostile. The judiciary committee is full of hostile senators trying to show how politically macho they are. He is right to avoid them.
This is merely speculation but fun and not so far fetched. As they don’t say, “you can make this shit up.” The famous certified letter stating that Trump has no Russian income with two exceptions omits one crucial thing. After screwing the banks with his Atlantic City bankruptcies, no American bank would lend him a cent. I guess that Russian banks, which are agencies of the Kremlin, lent him millions which he still owes them. Maybe he has no income but does he have huge debt? That’s why he won’t release his taxes. How much is it worth to Putin to get sanctions lifted? Would he forgive Trump’s loans for such a consideration? Just sayin’
I resent those decrying Obama’s taking 400K for a speech to Goldman Sachs. He has every right, morally and ethically, to take the fee. It would be interesting to see what he says to them, inasmuch as he hasn’t done them any favors while president and can’t do anything for them now. If they want to part with such a fee, he should take it. It’s easy money. And those who say he doesn’t need it because of his book deal shouldn’t count other people/s money. Why should arbitrary standards be set for a black president. W made no bones about “filling the family’s coffers.” Reagan took 3 million from the Japanese after leaving office. Hillary took fees from Wall Street and opened herself up to conflict of interest by running for president. But a black president has to have a different morality. Give me a break!
I am really sick of the newscasters (ha) talking-heads (ha) that try to explain and attribute meaning to Trump’s utterances as if he’s not unhinged. Maybe he’s learning, they say. Hopefully the next 100 days will be better, they say. Please. The man is nuts. We all know that so why do we pretend otherwise. Hey Comey, Burr, Conaway, hurry up and put this guy away.
My wife and I just finished a marathon TV watch of Breaking Bad. I am glad it’s over so that now I can get some work done. Besides the emotional drain, a few things occurred to me at its conclusion. First, It makes Hamlet, as a tragedy, seem like a farce by comparison. I’ll spare you the details in case you want to undertake your own Netflix marathon. You can experience the pain yourself. I wonder just what the Bard would have done it he’d had television and could drag a story on for upwards of fifty hours. Another thing involves the virtual ease with which methamphetamine can be produced. Having a degree in chemistry, I was fascinated how close they came to chemical reality. I understand that a couple of chemistry teachers tried to copy Walter White’s process and got caught. It shows only that while producing meth is easy if you know a little and have the ingredients (which are also commonly available) purchasing them in any quantity is a dead giveaway and would have the DEA on your ass in moments.
It’s been a long time since I was a chemistry student but the show refreshed my memory of how fascinating organic chemistry was. To those who don’t know anything about it, organic compounds are like tinkertoys. The reason is that carbon atoms can connect with each other making molecular chains and rings which have no real limit to their lengths and sizes. The possibilities are literally infinite. New compounds are synthesized all the time by putting these building blocks together.
As an aside, I recall we often worked in the lab on weekends unsupervised, to finish projects. I remember a group of us mischievously making pure ethyl alcohol in the lab (ethyl alcohol you buy is denatured purposely making it unfit to drink, unless of course it’s in wine, whiskey or beer) I took a swig of it diluted with orange juice. To this day I can remember the taste. It was the opposite of “smooth.” It literally burned my throat. The only thing I can say for it is it wasn’t poison.
But the main thing I got as a writer is the answer to the comment, “You can’t make this shit up.” Yes, you can.
It’s bad enough they voted for a know-nothing, lying, lunatic for president. Now, after his failures, lies, and flip-flops, they are in denial. True, some have had voter’s remorse but there is still a core of pig heads. Even with his Russian relationships under investigation for collusion or even treason, they are calling it nit-picking. I know people don’t like to be wrong but what would have to happen to convince them that they were? It boggles my mind. That they considered replacing the ACA with Ryan’s piece of shit an improvement, puzzles me. They are lucky it failed and still don’t know it. Where do they get their “information” from?
Whether or not I agree with Trump’s Syria incursion or not is not relevant. I disagree with everything he says or does. It’s not only general principle. it’s also the fact that he is so volatile that agreement with him will no doubt become a disagreement. I don’t want to give him any support. I follow the McConnell rule. I don’t want a nut in the White House so I will say “No” to everything even if I support him. To agree with him will be a distraction from his criminal activity.
Unfortunately we are frequently judged, sometimes even incriminated, by the company we keep. Joe McCarthy taught us that. My question for Devin Nunes is what did he expect to gain kissing Dimwit Donald’s ass? Did he really expect to get away with what he did i.e. go to the White House sub rosa to get secret info and then return to the WH the next to give it back to them? And for what? Dimwit Donald can’t really do anything for him and he has essentially destroyed his political career. He must be incredibly stupid or promised something that cannot be delivered. Had he done the right thing, instead of the stupid one, he would have been a hero and his rep would have soared instead of soured.
It has now become blatantly clear to me that the republican intense overreaction to the Affordable Care Act through the years has been a repetitive political photo-op to discredit the first black president and remove any positive legacy he might leave. I have been reluctant to consider it a racist plan and consciously forced myself to think otherwise,.but I no longer have any such reservation. The multitude of votes in the House to repeal it was a quixotic waste of time to reinforce the big lie that it was a disaster, legislation that went against American core values and the so-called free market. Replacing it was never in the republican plan. They’ve had seven years to develop a replacement and did nothing until Ryan and his ilk seemed to have scratched something out on a roll of toilet paper over a weekend. Ryan is no Kerouac. The AMA, hospitals, doctors, AARP, insurance companies, republican governors, the republican right wing, republican moderates, democrats and most of those insured by it were opposed. The bill had a 17% approval by the public. The gall to put this bill forward as a replacement for Obamacare was without parallel. Not only did it fall short of Trump’s promises for a healthcare plan that is better, cheaper and covers everybody, it was a farce. It removed people from its rolls, removed necessary coverage, did nothing about rising premiums or the pillaging by big pharma. And the coup de grace was a huge tax cut for the rich at the expense of those on the other end of the financial spectrum. Trump’s claim that the bill is doing democrats a favor was classic Trump and bizarre at best. The great irony is that Ryan’s joke, had it passed, would have had disastrous effects on precisely the people who supported Trump. If any saving was done, it was by those in opposition to the bill who did a mitzvah for the people who have a habit of voting against their own self-interest.
Ryan has reinforced his reputation as a an incompetent, glib, bullshitter. Trump, supporting a bill that he probably has not read because his reading ability is questionaable and his attention span is limited to 140 characters, Fox news, and admiring himself in the mirror, has proven himself to be a stupid, mentally unhinged incompetent and a pathological liar who has no business in the oval office. We shouldn’t have to wait for the FBI investigations to be completed to impeach him. Just being in the oval office by Trump is a high crime and misdemeanor.
One of the things that came out of the Comey/Rogers hearing was that the republicans, that anti-patriotic bunch, has no concern about Trump’s lies and corruption., no concern about the country they live in as long as they have their power. They are clearly more concerned about stopping the information i.e., the truth, from being made public. Trey Gowdy, that bastion of bullshit from Benghazi is so partisan and anti-American that he should probably be deported. We can only hope that Comey’s redemption for giving Trump the presidency can come to fruition. I strongly doubt it. Despite the obvious political disaster for Trump if he fires Comey, he will probably do it anyway and lie about why. We do need a special prosecutor. Trump is many times more corrupt than Nixon. Nixon’s guys went to jail and Nixon probably would have if not for Ford’s pardon. So should Trump’s and Trump himself unless Pence, that self-deluded creep, pardons him after Trump’s inevitable impeachment.
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