The Drug-Induced Highs of a trumpian White House

Studio producer: Boys! Are you buzzing?
Beatle John: No thanks! We've got the car! 

-- from "Help!"

Having survived - barely - the insanity of donald trump's presidency - in which the madness of the Far Right wingnut mindset converged on our nation's capital and didn't let us relax for a single moment - there was this oft-asked question "Are you fucking high or something" during those years that never really got answered because not a lot of people wanted a serious confirmation.

There'd been rumors for years that trump himself was thriving on an Adderall addiction - or at least some variation of it used to treat ADHD - and it'd been something deserving of a full investigation to ensure our leader on the global stage wasn't as high a fooking kite half the time. Considering the many crazy things that came from the trump years - not just the constant barrage of insane statements - such as trump's open musing about using NUKES to combat hurricanes as well revelations the staff couldn't figure out light switches, this was not an unwarranted concern.

It turns out the concern did lead to a formal investigation by an Inspector General's office, which finally released a full report which documented how the White House's internal clinic had turned into a pill-mill dispensary that would put a South Florida pharmacy to shame:

In 2018, the DoD Office of Inspector General (DoD OIG) Hotline received complaints alleging that a senior military medical officer assigned to the White House Medical Unit engaged in improper medical practices. Additionally, several of the Hotline complaints were regarding the pharmaceutical practices and eligibility for care of some patients treated at DoD executive medicine facilities within the National Capital Region. In May 2018, the DoD OIG initiated an investigation of the allegations about the White House Medical Unit senior military medical officer.

In September 2019, the DoD OIG announced this evaluation to determine how executive medicine facilities within the National Capital Region, including the White House Medical Unit, implement internal controls to ensure safe pharmaceutical practices and patient eligibility. We conducted site visits to meet with key officials and observe executive medicine eligibility and pharmaceutical management practices. We interviewed over 120 officials, including interviews of hospital administrators, military medical providers, and pharmacists. We analyzed the transcripts of 70 interviews conducted by the DoD OIG Administrative Investigations (AI) Component of former White House Military Office employees who served within the White House between 2009 and 2018. This evaluation incorporates direct quotes from the testimony of these witnesses. We reviewed over 200 documents, including Federal criteria, DoD guidance, military Service policies, MTF internal standard operating procedures, and pharmacy procurement and inventory records...

We concluded that, except for the White House Medical Unit, the National Capital Region executive medicine clinics that we visited did not procure, store, or dispense controlled substances or other prescription medications; rather, they relied on full‑service military treatment facility pharmacies for all pharmaceutical support. The National Capital Region executive medicine clinics relied on full‑service base or post pharmacies for all pharmaceutical support. Additionally, other than the White House Medical Unit, the Joint Commission, an independent health care accreditation agency, accredited all National Capital Region pharmacy operations, as required by DoD Manual 6025.13.

Conversely, the White House Medical Unit’s pharmaceutical services included the full scope of pharmacy operations, including storage and inventory, prescribing and dispensing, procurement, and disposal, and was not credentialed by any outside agency. We concluded that all phases of the White House Medical Unit’s pharmacy operations had severe and systemic problems due to the unit’s reliance on ineffective internal controls to ensure compliance with pharmacy safety standards. In addition, the Military Health System senior leaders did not oversee the White House Medical Unit’s pharmacy operations.

Without oversight from qualified pharmacy staff, the White House Medical Unit’s pharmaceutical management practices may have been subject to prescribing errors and inadequate medication management, increasing the risk to the health and safety of patients treated within the unit. Additionally, the White House Medical Unit’s pharmaceutical management practices ineffectively used DoD funds by obtaining brand‑name medications instead of generic equivalents and increased the risk for the diversion of controlled substances...

The IG report added a footnote that "diversion of controlled substances" is unlawful.

We found that the White House Medical Unit provided a wide range of health care and pharmaceutical services to ineligible White House staff in violation of Federal law and regulation and DoD policy. Additionally, the White House Medical Unit dispensed prescription medications, including controlled substances, to ineligible White House staff. In analyzing the testimonies of former White House Military Office employees, we found that White House Medical Unit senior leaders directed eligibility practices that did not comply with DoD guidance. This analysis also found that several former White House Medical Unit military medical providers stated that they were unable to act outside of the White House Medical Unit’s historical practices and that they were not empowered to deny requests from senior White House Medical Unit leaders...

The report itself is about 80 pages long and includes a full list of the types of drugs getting doled out by the Medical Unit, you can see a list on p. 24 that happens to include a bunch of mood-altering meds and stuff like Fentanyl that can get you arrested if you were carrying this stuff down the road to Anacostia.

Why fight a War on Drugs when your in-house pharmacy
can order it all for you? Avon and Marlo can keep their corners...

The original news coverage on this story focused on the IG's complaint that the White House was wasting thousands of dollars prescribing brand-name medications when government policy is to order the cheaper generics. But the mainstream media needs to wake up and recognize that they've been sitting on this story since reports got out in 2018 that the White House pharmacy had turned into a "grab and go" dealer's corner.

There are serious questions coming from this report that need answering here:

• Who was in control at the White House Medical Unit that allowed this situation to spiral out of control? (Hint: Ronny Jackson has a lot of fingerprints all over this)
• Who are the unauthorized people at the White House getting all these meds? Did they abuse these drugs in any way, or worse were they reselling it to other staffers or people on the outside?
• Were any of these questionable mood-altering medications going to White House personnel without proper approval or oversight from actual doctors? Considering the "authorized" persons would be the President, Vice President, Cabinet-level Secretaries, Joint Chiefs, and close family members, we need to know if trump or VP Pence were downing Ambien like M&Ms (seriously, I doubt Pence is a pill-popper here. It's the other guy who has that rep). 

This is a serious scandal. Our leadership up and down the chain of command needs to be clear-headed as much as possible. If enough people were doped out on stuff that would inhibit thought - or worse promote impulsive dangerous behavior - we would have had major crises that would have caused pain and suffering across the b--

(re-evaluates the insanity of how trump's administration triggered tariff wars, those immigration policies based on cruelty and racism, the flubbed responses to COVID pandemic and other emergencies, and trump's utter failure using Sharpies to redraw maps)

Yyyyeeeeeeaaaah, holy crap a lot of that makes more sense now.

In the meantime, don't look at me when it comes to drug abuse. I don't even get drunk (much). Always Sober and Never Sane is my motto. 

I get high on life. And America!!!

And to everyone caught working at trump's White House back in the day:

Beatle John: It WAS you buzzing! You naughty boy!

How the Year 2019 Ends: In Fire

I woke up this morning to reports of the US Embassy in Baghdad under siege by protesters angered up by recent military strikes on Shiite strongholds in Syria and Iraq.

For almost a month now, the entire continent/nation of Australia has been on fire due to prolonged drought, rising ocean temperatures, and an ungodly heat wave (it's Summer on that side of the Equator) that are all part of the climate change nearly every scientist has been screaming was coming to kill us all. Those eco-disaster movies from ten-twenty years ago? THEY ARE HAPPENING NOW IN REAL LIFE.

India is on fire this month due to their nationalist Hindu government pushing a citizenship law that would specifically exclude Muslims. It doesn't help that the nation is roiling from a growing rape gang crisis threatening the safety of every woman who lives there.

Over the past ten days the number of antisemitic attacks in America have gotten worse, ranging from vandalism to street assaults to someone with a machete stabbing Orthodox Jews at a rabbi gathering in Brooklyn.

Boris Johnson has cleared out nearly every obstruction in his quest to fulfill a Hard Brexit pullout from the EU, which is now including efforts by the Tories to privatize their National Health Service and make it more like the United States (welcome to medical bankruptcy, Brits!). We are looking at a January 31 2020 where a No-Deal Brexit will happen because the EU won't cave on any of Boris' demands.

Israel is forcing itself into yet another general election because the last three tries failed to form a unified government. It does not help that current PM Netanyahu is facing corruption charges... but refuses to leave office and indeed got an overwhelming vote of confidence from his own party meaning that unless enough voters break with their own parties to support an opposition majority they are stuck in gridlock.

China has entered its umpteenth month (since June at least) of Hong Kong protests over the city/region's autonomous status, which is a serious civil/human rights fight that China will never recognize. Not to mention the ongoing human rights abuses of concentration camps punishing millions of Uyghurs for their religious/ethnic differences.

We're still coping with the ongoing Impeachment of President Loser of the Popular Vote and Eternal Shitgibbon donald trump. With additional evidence showing that members of his foreign policy team - Sec of State Pompeo, Sec of Defense Esper, and NSA John Bolton (!) - confronted trump in late August (before the Whistleblower concerns got to Congress) to convince him to release Ukrainian military aid (trump refused). Not only reaffirming other evidence of trump's extortion racket but that key members of his administration have evidence they still need to present for the Impeachment proceedings.

Everything is chaos.

Everything is on fire.

Welcome to 2020.

It's going to get crazier from here.

Sharing Vagabond Scholar's Jon Swift Memorial 2019

Every end of the year, Batocchio hosts a blog round-up of recommended reads in honor of political blogger Jon Swift.

I am honored to be one of the handful offered an opportunity to share, and so I placed "A Cruel Month" article as my submission, of which I hope the readership enjoys.

I encourage the seven followers of this blog to take the time to visit the Jon Swift page and read through the other links, check up on fellow like-minded bloggers raging against the trumpian storm of corruption, and keep yourself informed for the coming year of madness that will be the 2020 general elections.

I hope to blog a few more things today, keep an eye open.

Tis The Season 2019

Just saying IO SATURNALIA and that hopefully I'll be posting some thoughts on stuff soon.

It's been a hectic week and the need to nap on Christmas morning all too powerful...

trump Writes A Letter. It's Predictably Insane

trump, for some reason encouraged by people other than his lawyers, sent a six-page letter to Speaker Pelosi which can charitably be called an insane rant that's more unhinged than a barn door during a tornado. I'm not linking to it because I don't want to promote any further exposure to a plague of madness, but that Balloon Juice article I link to does have the link and you can risk it yourself.

In short, trump accused Pelosi of presiding over an Impeachment process he still publicly decries as a "Witch Hunt" (considering no one has dunked trump in water as a test nor pressed his chest with stones for a confession, is an insult to those who were officially tried and killed during the Salem Witch Trials). trump accused Pelosi of going after him in order to destroy trump's success with the economy, and also accused her of "attacking democracy" while trump and the Republicans themselves are pretty much openly voiding the 2020 elections as he wrote dictated this missive.

In a sane and logical world, Pelosi's response should be this:

I'm not even going to get into how the letter contains spelling and grammar errors.

If trump wanted to impress us with his epistolary skills, he could have simply typed up a one-page letter with a simple sentence "I donald j trump do hereby resign the office of President Loser of the Popular Vote effective immediately." A ton of Americans would be thrilled if he did.

Tomorrow is the offical Impeachment vote in the U.S. House. I doubt Pelosi will be bullied by trump's letter to cancel it. The only thing left after that is seeing how quickly McConnell violates his oath of office by refusing to hold a fair and impartial trial - oh wait he already has.

This still matters, America. We are witnessing trump and his Republican allies fall into hysterics and madness for all to see.

This is why every honest patriotic American needs to vote every Republican out of office in 2020. End the foolishness, end the madness.

Otherwise may God have mercy on our souls.

All I Want for Saturnalia 2019

An honest-to-Saturn Impeachment process that forces an obstructionist Republican Senate to sincerely consider the reasons to remove donald trump from the Oval Office for the common good of the United States of America.

Well, that and a winning Mega Millions or Powerball lotto ticket.

Help a Unitarian out, Minerva, I may not be a citizen of Rome but I am a citizen of a federal republic modeled on the Roman system of checks and balances.

I Know The Voices Dying with a Brexit Fall

So despite some early hopes that the youth vote turnout would flip enough districts in the UK, the British General Election right now is showing a major Conservative victory: Tories getting an increase of 51 seats for a solid majority, Labour losing 71 seats, the Lib Dems not doing well enough to be a factor, and absolutely everybody on the Remain side of the debate utterly horrified that a No-Deal Brexit is going to happen.

Even though the results of the overall population showing 40 percent support for Labour over 32 percent for Tories, the way each district is Winner-Take-All within that district distorts the final results (like the U.S. Electoral College, an overabundance of voters for one Party in one locale cannot compensate for smaller turnout in others).

It was foolish for Labour under Corbyn to agree to letting Boris Johnson push a new election at this point in time. Corbyn either didn't think his own unpopularity with general voters (and within in his own ranks) would hurt Labour, or else thought the controversies Boris was having with bad Brexit deals would weaken Tory support. There's also the reality that Remain voters - the ones most likely able to NOT vote Conservative - were split between Liberal Democrats and factions within Labour... which could have been positioned to uphold Remain but didn't because even among the Far Left there is a desire to exit what they view as a corrupt (pro-Capitalist/pro-banking) EU.

Either way, how the HELL do you lose 71 seats to the worst Prime Minister in British history? If Corbyn doesn't resign from Labour leadership for his open incompetence, just surrender now and relocate to Finland, my Progressive brethren.

So where does this leave the United Kingdom?

Boris and the other hardline Brexiteers are going to push for votes on the hardest possible terms for leaving the EU... which may not get enough votes in Parliament anyway if enough Tory members are terrified of the long-term consequences. This "blowout" election is no guarantee of the backbenchers signing up for something that a majority of Brits will end up regretting... and they know it.

The Scots may well revolt to get an Independence referendum. Northern Ireland might as well if the border backstop is screwed by Boris' Brexit deals.

The National Health Care system - already under the strain of budget cuts and preliminary reaction of a future Brexit - will face even tougher hardships under a Conservative Party that openly wants to turn their universal health care system into a for-profit model similar to the United States. (Just on this alone, Brits, you should have voted those Tory fuckers out of office. The hell?)

More chaos and bad leadership. That's how bad it's going to get under a Boris majority in the UK.

It's time to bring punk music back, my people.

Gods help you.

Accountability Moment 2019: trump and the Republicans Have to Answer for Their Sins

This is just one step, there are more to come, but the Democrats in the U.S. House announced two articles of Impeachment on President Loser of the Popular Vote donald trump. Via Andrew Prokop at Vox.com:

Both articles are based on the Ukraine scandal, meaning the party decided not to introduce any articles of impeachment solely based on the Mueller report, as some had pushed for...

Articles of impeachment are essentially the “charges” against the president that the House of Representatives is considering approving. The final House votes on impeachment will be a yes or no vote on each article. If even one is approved, Trump is impeached — and the Senate will then hold a trial to determine whether to remove him from office.

Article I, abuse of power, addresses Trump’s general underlying conduct in the Ukraine scandal. It alleges that Trump abused his power by trying to pressure Ukraine’s government into announcing an investigation into the Bidens by withholding both a White House meeting and military aid.

Article II, obstruction of Congress, is about how Trump responded to Democrats’ impeachment inquiry over the Ukraine scandal. It alleges that Trump obstructed the probe by urging witnesses not to cooperate and government agencies not to comply with subpoenas...

Some observations were made that Democrats left several other impeachable offenses - some related to Mueller's findings that are tangent to what trump did/is doing to Ukraine - off the table (for now), and that somehow these two articles may not be enough to sway Republicans either in the House or Senate. Which, of course, will never happen. The Republicans are too far gone into their sealed bubble of disinformation that all of them attack these proceedings as partisan and deny any merit to the facts at hand.

To anyone arguing that Democrats are doing this as a "coup attempt," trying to overturn the 2016 election results or subvert the coming 2020 election, I counter thus: Democrats could have done this to Bush the Lesser after 2006 over mismanagement of the War on Terror and his torture regime or even on mishandling the response to Hurricane Katrina... but they never did. Impeachment may be partisan but it has to be based on provable crimes. If Democrats are making official impeachment articles against trump, it's because trump IS GENUINELY BREAKING THE RULES AND ACTING AGAINST THE CONSTITUTION. Sheesh.

It's unlikely the wingnut Republican Senate will follow through on any impeachment and remove trump from office: They still have ways to profit from his misrule after all. Which is why this still feels like a half-accomplished thing. The best news about all of this is that it will be on the record: trump committed impeachable acts... and the Republicans refused to hold him accountable. The GOP is going to have to own this vote, and there are far too many people in favor of impeachment who will hold THEM accountable if they fail to hold trump accountable.

Get the goddamn vote out, America. The Republican party needs to answer for their sins.

The Snowflake That Is trump

Didn't know about it until earlier this week that trump was going over to Europe to hang out with our nation's NATO allies, and I also didn't realize how bad a trip it was turning out to be until THIS little tidbit got out there for public consumption. Just consider the headline to Anne Laurie's article at Balloon-Juice:

Late Night NATO Open Thread: They’re Not Laughing *With* Him,
They’re Laughing *At* Him

With links to various Twitter threads like this one:

When even Boris Johnson is getting in his kicks at you, you're clearly not the cool kid at this school.

Via Martin Longman at Washington Monthly:

I’ve been watching Trump since I was teenager growing up in the New York media market. It has been obvious to me that he’s driven by insecurities and resentment toward the Manhattan financial elite who have always viewed him as a mannerless fraud from the outer boroughs. He really wants their acceptance and I think he thought he’d finally get it when he won the presidency. It hasn’t worked out that way, and the only thing that has changed is that people see him now as a threat.

It’s hard to imagine anything that would strike Trump to his core more than being ridiculed by his would-be peers, and that’s why it was predictable as the rain that he’d throw a fit when he realized that he was the butt of jokes at the Queen Elizabeth’s Buckingham Palace reception on Tuesday night...

Trump was particularly angry with Justin Trudeau who was captured on an audio feed sympathizing with Macron for being unexpectedly roped into a tense 40 minute press conference that was supposed to be a brief photo opportunity. Doing his best “Mean Girls” impression, Trump called Trudeau “two-faced” and suggested he was just angry about criticism that Canada doesn’t contribute enough money to NATO.

Then he did this:

President Donald Trump on Wednesday abruptly canceled a press conference that was scheduled to cap a contentious trip to London for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s 70th anniversary meeting.
The presser was scheduled to come after a series of bilateral meetings with NATO members, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte.
“When today’s meetings are over, I will be heading back to Washington,” Trump said in a series of tweets.
“We won’t be doing a press conference at the close of NATO because we did so many over the past two days. Safe travels to all!” Trump said.

The president is obviously wounded. His feelings are hurt. And now he will seek ways to exact revenge. This is such a well established pattern with him by now that I have no trouble predicting that he will repeat it.

This behavior has never won him respect in the past and it will not work in the future.  At this point, I’m surprised that he continues to make foreign trips to Europe since they always end in humiliation...

trump's vanity has always been a sore spot: HE has to be the biggest brightest star in the sky even when he's clearly not. he'd been obsessed with his claims of wealth and power and dealing prowess, even as the business deals collapsed into bankruptcy courts and even as the real rich kids banned him from such cool things as major team sports ownerships.

What will actually happen next isn't entirely predictable. trump can express his impotent rage towards Europe in various ways. Forcing the United States to quit out of NATO altogether is still out there as an option. he's still of a mind that tariff wars are easy to win (he just started them up again versus Brazil and Argentina).

The thing is, when trump does his damage to his perceived enemies, he's not going to do it in the best interests of the United States.

he'll be causing damage to satisfy his own rage.

And that's not how a President should act. Ever.

That's what 62 million of you Americans voted for.

Gods help us.

Turkey Sacrifice Day 2019

There's not much to say this year as we're all preparing for the nightmarish political landscape of a Presidential election cycle.

Except to note that trump and his Fox Not-News allies are making noises this year that libruls are waging a War on Thanksgiving. Wait, seriously? Yes seriously, because GOP fearmongering about ALL the national holidays is required to scare the voters into submission (I can't wait to see how they complain about National Donut Day (June 5 2020), you craven bastards).

So travel well, my fellow Americans, because on THIS national Turkey Sacrifice Day, we must make sure to eat every bit of the sacrifice for the rituals to work.

And as always, this day is best honored with this, this epic punchline to the best Turkey Sacrifice Day episode ever:

Stay healthy, kids!

Coming Soon to the Federal Penitentiary System: The Roiling Stone Ten Years to Life Tour

Ahhh, SCHADENFREUDE is the tastiest freude. Via Emptywheel:

During the break in Yovanovitch’s testimony, the jury in Roger Stone’s trial came back with a verdict. They found him guilty on all seven counts. That includes a witness tampering charge for Stone’s efforts to dissuade Randy Credico from testifying before the House Intelligence Committee, the very same committee leading this impeachment hearing.

The courts are just now imposing consequences for Trump’s efforts to cheat to win the 2016 election, even as he attempts to prevent the one court that can try him for imposing consequences for cheating to win the 2020 election.

To the official records well okay reporting from Spencer Hsu, Rachel Weiner and Matt Zapotosky at the Washington Post for the full count.

The panel of nine women and three men deliberated for less than two days before finding Stone, 67, guilty on all seven counts resulting from his September 2017 testimony to the House Intelligence Committee, which was investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election and the Kremlin’s efforts to damage Donald Trump’s Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton...

U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson set Stone’s sentencing for Feb. 6 and allowed him to remain free until then. Stone faces a legal maximum penalty of 50 years in prison — 20 years for the witness tampering charge and five years for each of the other counts, although a first offender would face far less time under federal sentencing guidelines.

Stone’s indictment was the last brought by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, revealing important details about the Trump campaign’s keen interest in computer files hacked by Russia and made public by the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks. He was accused of lying to Congress and tampering with a witness, an associate whom prosecutors said Stone threatened in an attempt to prevent the man from cooperating with lawmakers...

The primary thing you need to realize is that Stone is one of those rare special Republicans who's been at the dirty tricks game for decades and thus deserves every inch of hard karma about to get shoved up his keister (via Andrew Prokop at Vox.com):

Stone has had a reputation for political shenanigans since he was a 19-year-old volunteer carrying out dirty tricks to embarrass Richard Nixon’s 1972 Republican primary opponent — something that earned Stone a minor role in the Watergate hearings...

Some guys go to college to get a reputation. Stone had to go to impeachment hearings (oh the irony) to earn his.

As a Republican campaign operative, he worked for Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and Bob Dole; as a highly paid lobbyist, he worked alongside his friend Paul Manafort for a host of seedy clients. And he’s long been known as a colorful character who rejoices in the dark side of politics: scandals, smears, division, and negativity. Journalists have called him “the state of the art Washington sleazeball” and the “boastful black prince of Republican sleaze.”

He's been at this game of dirty politics so long that at his age now - late 60s - even a ten-year stint in jail screws up his retirement plans, and he risks the odds of dying in a jail cell of old age. If only they'd arrested him when he was younger, like when he stirred up that Brooks Brothers Riot in Miami during the 2000 Recount. But then he never would have reached his greatest achievement: Fucking over the United States by giving us the Eternal Shitgibbon, trump himself:

Stone also, incredibly enough, spent nearly three decades trying to get Donald Trump for president before Trump actually went through with it. The two met in the mid-1980s, as Trump hired Stone and Manafort’s firm to do lobbying and PR for him. After Trump released his book The Art of the Deal in 1987, Stone urged him to consider running for president the following year, but Trump demurred. In 1999, Stone ran a presidential exploratory committee for Trump — but Trump again ended up not officially running...

trump finally bought into what Stone was selling him - noticeably around the same time Obama publicly humiliated him just before Obama gave the order to take out Bin Laden - and from there Stone was both front-office and back-room dirty operative for his boy.

So for all that, absolutely no sympathy for him. Stone was running around shouting "Lock Her Up" for the last four years. Now Hillary can visit him in lockup and just stare at him with a big shit-eating grin for hours on end.

Today's malicious delight out of all the other scandal coverage - trump's Ukraine impeachment inquiry is digging up serious allegations of extortion and bribery - makes me nostaglic, it brings back a lot of fond memories from January of this year when I honored the moment of Stone's arrest with a sweet little ditty "Stone In Jail."

Tweeted this earlier:

Nice to see he's finally getting there.

Save a cell next to him for his boy donald. Given all the exposure trump is getting now for his crimes, it shouldn't be long to wait.

Impeachment Day From the Sidelines

(Update 11/15/19): A big thanks to Batocchio for linking me again to Crooks & Liars' Mike's Blog Round-Up! If any of you are busy on NaNoWriMo I wish you luck, please check out my blog, do try to leave a Comment below (I know it's restricted, I've had issues with spam, if it's not working for you tweet me @PaulWartenberg danke)

Today was a big day on Twitter, as #ImpeachmentDay was a huge hashtag to follow.

And while big revelations were plenty - we heard public testimony, some of it repeated from earlier testimony given in closed sessions - about how trump abused the powers of the office to withhold military aid from Ukraine in order to force their government to begin sham investigations into Joe Biden's family, the hearings still won't mean much because of one thing.

The Republicans in Congress and everywhere else don't give a rat's ass that their boy trump broke the law.

Granted, these hearings are necessary for historical matters and for legal ones. It has to get out there that trump is this crooked, and that the Republicans are just as corrupt for defending every last thing trump has done - continues to do - wrong.

But until enough Senate Republicans decide "to hell with it" and put country before party, these hearings will all end the same way. McConnell and his crooked Senate buddies will hold the most perfunctory vote against any impeachment findings the House presents them and walk away laughing. It would be nice to think otherwise, that reason would prevail and trump removed from office before he can do any further harm, but partisanship dominates the GOP now and they will ignore this reality to revel in their fantasy.

Except they shouldn't.

When the Congressional Republicans ignore the evidence and "exonerate" trump, they will have to answer to every non-Republican voter across the United States. Not just the Democratic voters who already know they HAVE to vote the GOP crooks out of office, but the non-party voters who will hold those Congresscritters accountable for their folly.

Back in 2016, trump eked out an Electoral College win by getting just enough of the Non-Party Voters - 46 percent over Hillary's 42 percent - in key states to choose him. Funny thing about Non-Party voters: they DON'T drink the Kool-Aid the way party voters do. They tend to retain enough independence to know when one party or the other is pissing on them and switch sides.

Last I saw, trump was polling in the mid-30s with independent voters. He's not looking to get the 42 percent total votes he had in 2016. These impeachment hearings ought to make those numbers go lower.

And with any reason worth considering, the disapproval for trump should translate into disapproval for Republicans lying for him.

Get the goddamn vote out, America. And for the Love of GOD hold Republicans accountable for the shit they're doing now and have been doing for years to violate every ethic in the books.

The Republicans Train Their Crooks Young: Just Look to the UF Student Getting Impeached Already

Oh man, trump's only been in the Sunshine State as an official resident for less than two months and already his crooked family is f-cking over my alma mater (Journalism 1992). To wit, there's an impeachment process underway in Gainesville (via Megan Reeves at the Tampa Bay Times):

Last month’s visit to the University of Florida by President Donald Trump’s oldest son is still reverberating through campus, with some student leaders pushing to oust the student body president who invited him.

For only the second time in the school’s 115-year history, a student president faces impeachment — and this time it’s happening with a U.S. president under the same threat...

Michael C. Murphy received a formal resolution for his impeachment Tuesday afternoon, which was signed by more than 100 students and alumni. It was delivered to his on-campus office and sent to his UF email. Student senate president Emily Dunson, received a copy, too, in accordance with student government rules...

Those behind the effort say Murphy conspired with an official for Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign to bring Donald Trump Jr. and Trump campaign adviser Kimberly Guilfoyle to campus for speeches on Oct. 10.

Questions have been raised about the legality of the visit, as Murphy agreed to pay the pair $50,000 in publicly funded student activity fees and the law says public funds cannot be used to support political campaigns...

I saw this event announced awhile back, and I was horrified that UF was inviting Fredo donnie junior for what seemed to be a partisan speaking tour. Granted, political figures have been invited to the campus - to many campuses across the U.S. - all the time, but those were usually over established debate issues in a public forum. Junior's visit - which came across as a fete instead of a forum - didn't seem to fit that mold. Back to the report:

Then an email surfaced, as first reported by UF’s independent student newspaper, The Alligator (disclosure: I did stringer work for the Alligator back in 1990, just one article about the then-built Harn Museum), showing Murphy worked to set up the event with Caroline Wren, national finance consultant for Trump Victory, a fundraising committee for the president’s campaign...

At the same time, Murphy has come under fire for his apparent ties to the Trump family. Photos on social media show him and Emily Dunson, who leads UF’s Gator Party, together at Trump events in Washington, D.C. Campaign finance records show the student president’s father, Dan Murphy, donated $5,600 to Trump’s campaign this year.

Michael Murphy and Dunson did not respond to calls seeking comment.

“Public records show that Michael Murphy colluded with a member of the Donald Trump campaign,” student senator Ben Lima said during a student government meeting last week. Lima is leading the impeachment charge.

“If this was not a campaign event, then why was the student body president in communication with the Trump campaign to bring these speakers to campus?” he asked.

The whole thing reeks of a campaign rally / fundraiser type event, using student funds to cover the costs, and reaching far past the level of action that the student President should be working. If you read the rest of Reeves' article, you'll notice the parts where Murphy seems more interested in cultivating a future career in politics rather than focus on his job serving the students' on-campus needs.

This is how corrupt conservatives have gotten, all the way down to their college-level rank and file. Wasting other people's money for partisan gains, lining their own pockets and setting up deals to serve themselves further down the road.

By the looks of things, Murphy's not going to last long as student President. But I guarantee you he's going to find fleeting fame among the Fox Not-News crowd as "another martyr" of campus political correction gone amok. Even though Murphy was honestly caught breaking the rules, even though by all rights Murphy is no damn martyr.

Here's hoping UF kicks the bum out. And Go Gators.

P.S. I hope the bum doesn't transfer to South Florida, my other alma mater (MLIS, 1993). Go Bulls.

From the Battlefields of World War I, A Small Red Flower

From Flanders Field, this.

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
    That mark our place; and in the sky
    The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
    Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
        In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
    The torch; be yours to hold it high.
    If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
        In Flanders fields.

poem "In Flanders Field" by John McCrae

If They Boo trump a Third Time, We Call That a MAGA Hat Trick

Oh dear Gods. trump really wants to keep trying this (via Sports Illustrated which apparently can't stick to sports like SOME compromised websites mutter grumble):

BamaCentral has learned that the University of Alabama is making preparations for President Donald Trump to attend the LSU game at Bryant-Denny Stadium on Saturday.
Numerous sources have confirmed his expected visit.

The potential No. 1 vs. No. 2 matchup, depending on the initial rankings by the College Football Playoff committee Tuesday night, will be shown on CBS at 2:30p.m. CT. 

trump has already gotten boo'ed at a game he thought he'd be cheered at with baseball, then got boo'ed at a fight night with a crowd he - and a lot of other people - assumed would cheer him.

Now he's going for what he and his peeps HAVE to think is the safest spot for him to show up: Fritters Alabama, uh Tuscaloosa Alabama. The key point is, it's in a safely Redneck Conservative State playing a safely Redneck sporting event for a safely Redneck college conference.

He's shown up for this type of sporting event before, attending the College National Championship game back in 2017 between Alabama and Georgia. So by some level of logic this might be a safe game for him to show up for the cheers he's been desperate to hear. Given it's a game between the TOP TWO programs in the nation with guaranteed viewership, and trump is hoping to get big cheers and adulation to please that toxic ego of his.

Except, well... it might not be that safe.

The crowd for that championship game he attended was a little different than this game's. The big games tend to be stuffed with boosters and alums who are older and richer: This is a regular college game albeit - one with national viewership - but the crowds will have more college-age attendees. And trump is not polling well with college-level voters and especially that age bracket.

And times have changed. In 2017 trump was barely into his office, reactions to his actions still underway. It's been two-three years now and people know what trump represents. There's also the impeachment factor, where the public exposure of trump's scandals are hurting his approval numbers (which have NEVER gotten above 50 percent). Even a "safe" state like Alabama outside of his fanbase rallies may not approve of the man.

Throw in the mood most game attendees will be in. This WAS going to be a major college game to determine who owns the SEC West (and top dibs on the championship game in January). But now it's a political event, where everybody knows that trump attending ONLY so trump can get his damn cheers in front of national television. trump is hijacking a Big Game for his own damn self. And some fans may not take kindly to that and boo him out of spite.

My two cents on the matter is: To the Bama fans and to the LSU fans planning to attend, just don't go in. Keep tailgating in the parking lots. Listen to the game on your radios and watch on portable TVs. Don't let trump hijack YOUR game for HIS ego. Give him an empty stadium and root for your teams in other ways.

You don't have to boo him and you don't have to cheer him. Just let him sit in silence. Right now, that's the punishment trump deserves.

I Already Hate My New Neighbor

This is the last person we need to turn himself into a Florida Man. NOOOOOoooooooooooo.

Via Elliott Hannon at Slate:

Donald Trump has always been a Florida Man at heart, but the president has now put his allegiance in writing , officially submitting a “declaration of domicile” to move his primary residence from New York to the absurd state of Florida. Donald and Melania Trump both filed documents at the Palm Beach County Circuit Court in late September to relocate their primary residence from Trump Tower in Manhattan, where the president has been a resident since 1983, to Mar-a-Lago. Please welcome: Donald Trump, Florida Man.

NO. NEVAH! A TRUE Florida Man has genuine style and elan when it comes to pulling off batshit crazy stunts. With trump, there's no grace, no truth, no wit to his actions, just pure malice and denigration.

Can you picture that Shitgibbon riding a 15-foot alligator to the nearest Wendy's to try and order twelve Baconators and throwing a live possum through the Drive Thru window as payment? No.

Can you picture that Shitgibbon raiding Disney World at night while dressed as a Power Ranger wielding a Nerf gun? No.

Can you picture that Shitgibbon getting caught in a sex scandal involving an ex-Sheriff, an entire strip club of dancers all named Bambi, two former U of Miami players as henchmen, 5 million dollars of drug money, and an abandoned Deerfield Beach condo tower? Well, yeah he could, but trump could do that in ANY state with beach property!

trump can NEVER be a True Florida Man.

So why the fck he gotta move down here to make things worse?

If we go with what Ed McCaffrey is saying at CNN's website:

Trump's legal move to Florida may indeed be about taxes, as Trump himself suggests, but just not about paying taxes, which Trump doesn't do. Instead, the move seems inspired by attempts to disclose Trump's taxes, which the President also very much does not like to do.

New York has been aggressive on the front of trying to shed light on Trump's taxes: The state legislature passed a law facilitating Congress's access to Trump's state-level returns, and the Manhattan district attorney, Cy Vance, has been pressing the case for access to Trump's returns in court.

New York State Attorney General Letitia James has also proven to be a talented and persistent thorn in Trump's side, specifically on the tax disclosure issue...

Thing is, I doubt this move can stop an ongoing investigation into trump's prior returns. There remain serious questions about property valuation, violations of non-profit filings for his now-defunct Foundation that need answering, and other acts that point to state-level charges of fraud. This move won't stop New York from disclosing his state income taxes, it might even hasten it.

I'm personally convinced trump is doing this NOW - rather than having done this in 2016 when it became clear his tax returns would be a serious topic of legal investigations - because of how it will relate to 2020 and his re-election campaign.

The conspiracy nut in me - the X-Files fan who played the Who Shot JFK parlor game - is afraid trump is doing this to plan ahead for a Presidential ticket move of - yeah, this sounds crazy but hear me out - dumping Mike Pence at Veep and replacing him with Ivanka (and not donnie junior).

Hold on, seriously. The rules of running for President are limited by the Constitution by these rules: 1) Must be over 35 years of age, 2) Must be a natural-born citizen, and 3) Must have lived in the states for 14-plus years. The only other restriction is from the 12th Amendment: that the President and Vice-President cannot reside in the same state (this hails back to when the Founders wanted to keep one state from dominating all the others).

This is why Dick Cheney in 2000 switched his residency from Texas (where he was working as a CEO) to Wyoming: Dubya was from Texas and Cheney's self-appointment to the VP slot conflicted with that Residency rule.

That's it. There's no other restrictions. Nepotism laws at the federal level doesn't cover sharing of election tickets. trump can't nominate his kids for the Cabinet posts but he could run one of them on the Presidential ticket...

There's been rumors for a long time that trump - fearing Pence can betray him at any moment - wants to get one of his kids to serve as Vice President. trump's also considering the possibility of winning cheating at getting a second term, and wants to get one of the younguns' set up to inherit the throne he's desperate to make.

Of course, I can be wrong. I'm not a legal scholar, and my understanding of the Constitution is college-level at best. But it might happen. There's no law about it because in theory this sort of thing was unthinkable: an open act of monarchism defying the very republican democratic institutions the Founding Fathers wanted for this nation.

But trump doesn't play by the rules, does he. The norms of politics don't apply to him.

Gods help us if this is his endgame.

Keep Writing That NaNoWriMo Project: The 2019 Affair

I'm digging in my heels and getting sh-t done.

I promise.

Like the last 12 times.

It's gonna be a book about aliens! And trump making it worse.

What If You Held a World Series and trump Got Booed At It? (w/ Update)

It'd probably sound and look a lot like this:

And it didn't end there, as reported via NBC News (by Richie Duchon):

Some fans broke out into chants of "Lock him up!" after Trump was shown on the stadium's big screen during a moment to honor a group of Marines...

The chants against the president harked back to campaign rallies in 2016 during which fans of Trump would often break into chants of "Lock her up!" in reference to Hillary Clinton.

So here's trump and his White House handlers, probably thinking that in the wake of this weekend's raid against the ISIL leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi that he'd be received in public as a hero, cheered on by fans or at least respectfully applauded while the stadium cameras flanked his appearance with views of military servicemen/servicewomen.

You'll notice from Jesse Yomtov's Twitter video that the crowds cheered the Marines, booed trump, and went back to cheering more Marines. trump and his people didn't fool a damn soul.

Whereas Obama's reception following the death of Bin Laden was positive, it's pretty clear that outside of trump's comfort zone - his MAGA rallies - trump is not going to be received well at all.

This is where Machiavelli's warnings ring true: In the matter of being Loved or Feared as a leader, always avoid the worst possible outcome of being Hated, which trump is to more than 60 percent of the population (and to 90 percent of a solidly Democratic place like the entire Northern Virginia-Boston corridor).

For all the talk about sports being a pure American pastime and how rabidly conservative those fans could get, that's more myth than fact. Liberals and Moderates (Go Rays) are just as obsessed with sports as Conservatives. I've been racking my brain for the past hour trying to think of a "safe place" trump could appear in public where the sports crowd would openly cheer him. For all the Red state places - maybe Texas, maybe Arizona, most likely Tennessee and/or Alabama - you have to remember the cities are heavily liberal enclaves (or at least with enough moderates to make you wonder).

For all the hype about NFL fans getting enraged about athletes kneeling for Black Lives Matter, that is just a vocal faction: There's an equally large anti-trump faction who'd boo trump (especially anybody who rooted for a USFL team back in the 80s).

This has to be a shock obviously for trump. he has lived with the fantasy that wherever he goes people will cheer him (and maybe even be grateful to him). To have an entire stadium boo him and even chant "Lock Him Up" - a clear and direct insult aimed at trump - is not going to improve his constantly dour mood. I'm willing to bet as soon as he can, his next set of tweets will insult every Nats fan from here to back again.

And the next week is going to be him forcing himself onto crowds to make them cheer for him, by hook or by crook. trump won't be happy until he forces reality to fit his bubble.

Gods help us.

Added: People are reminding each other on Twitter how the Nationals had the ceremonial First Pitch thrown by Chef Jose Andres, a vocal critic of trump's and essentially the best guy to symbolically punch trump in the face every chance that arises. There's no link to video yet but I've heard - I'm not watching, I swore if trump showed up I wouldn't - that Andres got a standing ovation. That is sweet stuff.

Update 11/3/19: And then trump tried attending a fight night in New York City, for an Ultimate Fighting Championship (he and the UFC league owner are good buddies, because trump hosted the UFCs back when no one else would). THAT did not go so well either (via Balloon-Juice).

The polling may say one thing - that trump has 40 percent approval - but the real world is clearly showing something else. We have to remember most Republicans getting polled are vocally giving him support simply because of their partisan affiliation: Because they HAVE to approve their own guy even when he's screwing up. But when given an opportunity, in a public place that's NOT a rally, surrounded by communities that aren't all MAGA hat wearing a-sholes, there are a lot of Americans who will express this level of vitriol when they can.

This never happened to Obama in public places to the sporting events he attended. Dubya had some boo birds for the baseball games he went to - especially after 2005 - but he never got this level of vocal hatred from the fans.

trump is arguably the most reviled President Loser of the Popular Vote of modern memory.

Taking Note of the Mueller Report, As Things Get Worse

By the by, I finished reading the Mueller Report.

Well, the parts of it that weren't redacted.

There's not much to say about it that hasn't already been said elsewhere by better legal experts. I'll just add my three cents by pointing out the three things the Report proves.

One: The first half of the Report is a meticulous and detailed review of how Russia attacked our 2016 election cycle, with a ton of laundered money to help trump and other Republican candidates and a spicy helping of psych ops via social media to suppress voting and distract voters.

You can argue the merits of the rest of the investigation until you're red in the face, but the evidence on this part is solid: Russia meddled in our elections, and there are things Congress - specifically the Senate, where election security bills are dying in the shadows - should act on to protect our rights as Americans.

Two: The second half of the Report tries to answer the question if trump actively worked with Russians - both to get their aid as well as provide information to them for their operations - but ran into enough Obstruction and lying to prevent a full understanding of what happened. While the investigations didn't get enough evidence of that, the Report did highlight how trump instructed his people to hinder those investigations long enough for trump's replacement Attorney General Barr to shut the investigations down (just as Mueller was getting close to trump's Inner Circle with Stone's indictments).

What Mueller left behind with his Report was a road map to how Congress could file Obstruction charges against trump, just as long as the Democratic-controlled House grew enough of a spine to do so.

Three: The Mueller Report revealed a glaring weakness in our legal and political systems. A lot of accountability and responsible governance relies on everybody acting in Good Faith. That is, a general acceptance by all parties - not just the political parties but the media covering the elections and the state/federal agencies overseeing the process - to adhere (mostly) to the rules.

What happened in the 2016 election cycle was a breakdown of that Good Faith. Our system wasn't ready to handle the likes of donald trump - an over-reaching, unstoppable force of lying and corruption - who abused and ignored the rules so often and so consistently that the agencies tasked to enforce them couldn't keep up. The ones that did uncover some of the rule-breaking - our intelligence agencies like the FBI - didn't see enough of the pieces to solve the puzzle fast enough (the details of the June 2016 trump tower meeting didn't come out until after the election). The pieces they did find got set upward to the Congressional level where the likes of Mitch McConnell refused to accept the evidence provided and denied our agencies a chance to warn voters before the election that trump was compromised.

Even Mueller's investigations was - still is - hampered by guidelines and administrative codes that prevented him and his teams from breaking through the lies and delays by trump's people. For all the arrests and indictments his Special Counsel's office could produce, there were glaring misses among the targets - why donnie junior wasn't indicted with what Mueller found out anyway remains one of the greatest flaws of the investigation - that highlighted what couldn't be done.

Above all, there was only so much Mueller could do. He was hampered by a major guideline - an Office of Legal Counsel memo from 1973 claiming a sitting President can't be indicted - that he felt couldn't be challenged or ignored. The argument for that memo relies on authority outside of the courthouses: the power of Congress to impeach Presidents for abuse of office ("high crimes and misdemeanors").

And this is where the Good Faith breaks down even further. Impeachment isn't a legal tool, it's a political one. It relies a lot on the willingness of both major political parties to see it through. When one party (Democrats) are reluctant to apply it and the other party (Republicans) are eager to quash it to protect their own corrupt boss, relying on Impeachment to resolve the high crimes of trump becomes impossible to comprehend. Even if the House Democrats follow through on their inquiries - currently on trump's Ukraine extortion efforts - and Impeach, there's every sign McConnell will simply toss the proceedings over the Senate railings and let trump crow "vindication!" in triumph.

It's sad to note that ever since the release of Mueller's Report, trump's own behavior has gotten worse: open acts of compelling foreign nations to dig up dirt on political enemies, threatening retaliation against the FBI for even impugning his Russian buddies, and making impulsive foreign policy decisions that clearly benefit Putin to the detriment of our allies.

Everything Mueller documented in his Report is replaying out again in real time. Only now, trump's gone public with it.

Because trump thinks he's untouchable now.

Which makes trump more dangerous than ever.

Gods help us.

Rise of Skywalker Official Final Trailer AND I AM NOT READY FOR STAR WARS TO END

Okay, I know there's a ton of spinoffs out there and there's no way the story will end here...

But this is the official Canon series, the one Lucas envisioned when he first drew up his outlines for a possible Flash Gordon reboot he wanted to film.

I started this when I was seven years old. I'm 49 now, but I don't want this part of my childhood to go away...

Who will be there with me when this happens, at long last...?