Author Archives: oinsketta

Manoir de mes reves

I don’t recall the first time I heard Django Reinhardt, the visionary Gypsy guitarist and composer.   It may have been in the sitting room of my friends’ home, I remember hearing that virtuosic guitar crackling out of their phonograph one night.   Although, it sounded quite familiar that night.  Over the years since learning his name I’ve listened to hours of Django, always inventive, ingenious, always pulling new surprises, always swinging and soulful, often devilishly mischievous.   I didn’t have the reaction that Django had when he first heard Louis Armstrong (he happily sobbed “mon frere!”)  but I always loved his playing, and later his songwriting and arranging.  I am not alone in this love, there are many great players out there now playing in Django’s style, inspired by his musical example.

At some point, after his dreams of international stardom were dashed when he started talking sports and drinking with a French cabbie, lost track of time and missed the Carnegie Hall concert where he was Duke Ellington’s featured soloist, he hung up his guitar and painted.   He lived in a small town outside Paris and spent his time fishing in the river and painting.   

After a couple of years he began composing again and assembled a group to record several of his new tunes.  These were astounding and beautiful compositions, including the ethereal Anouman  [1].   His playing on the tracks is superb, as always, but he functions in the group as a kind of guitar-playing conductor for the most part, driving the rhythm, laying down colors and emotions, giving the melodies to other players.  His brief solo on Anouman strikes like a chilling premonition of his own sudden death, not long off.  It is well worth hearing.

He keeled over while drinking coffee in a cafe not long after recording those tracks.  They sent for the doctor but he did not arrive until many hours later.   Django’s last words were “so you’ve finally come, have you?”  He died at 43.

And yet…

                                                                       ii

I’ve been banging my head against the wall lately.  It is hot, and airless, which certainly doesn’t help matters.  I should buy an air-conditioner and get a good night’s sleep, but I don’t have a car and haven’t gotten it together to secure one.   I’ve been listless during this heat wave, as the planet itself melts down.   

The reasons for despair are many — the arctic ice is melting at a faster rate than predicted, we have psychopaths and shills making policy, vengeful incompetents doubling down on the destruction of the biosphere for the continued profits of their fellow earth-raping plunderers.  We have a government that serves only a tiny percentage of our citizens; we’re essentially one re-election away from actual fascism and the spineless opposition party, also corporately financed, is too fearful of political backlash to take a principled stand to hold anyone accountable, as the law requires.   

Reading history is little comfort.   We had a civil war in this country that was basically over the same issue in play now — the right of a tiny group of super-wealthy autocratic landed aristocrats to rule over blacks (and the masses of disenfranchised inferior illiterate whites) as they saw fit.  In the process of creating this genteel southern plantation society they destroyed the soil (among other things).  Millions of acres of soil were exhausted and rendered useless by the constant planting of lucrative monocultures cotton and tobacco.    America’s bloodiest war ended, the history of it was rewritten by the children of those same landed autocrats, and those same forces today are insisting, loudly and effectively, on their right to ride the rest of us, since they were born booted and spurred to do so.     

You can read about how things escalated in Germany leading up to World War II.  It’s famous: first they came for these guys, but I said nothing, because it wasn’t me — then they came for these guys, but I said nothing– when they eventually came for me, there was nobody left to speak up for me.  It’s horrible that desperate asylum seekers are treated as dangerous and despicable criminals, but right out of the fascist dictator’s playbook. 

They flee from one horrible, violent place and wind up crushed into cages, left to stink, unwashed, they are vilified, scapegoated and, it must be said, persecuted in the fabled land they hoped would provide a refuge from the horrors they fled.   We see the brutal hand of the militarized Immigration and Custom Enforcement agents grabbing these vicious aliens, ripping their children away from them, wearing masks and holding their noses at the stink in the overcrowded cages.   It gets everyone ready to consider this sort of thing normal, moves the Overton Window inexorably towards cruelty as simply the way things are, have always been.

The unhinged narcissist president and his unprincipled Attorney General, taking a short break from their full-time obstruction of justice (NO DO-OVERS!  I KNOW YOU ARE, BUT WHAT AM I?   MAKE ME!), revive the federal death penalty, opening the door to executing enemies of the state under cover of law.   If you violate the 1917 Espionage Act, for example, you can be made a bloody example of.  Nothing shuts up critics like a couple of public executions.   Public cruelty changes behavior.

On a personal level, I find myself wondering about the long pattern of estrangement from people I once considered my closest friends, my family.  In each case the person, after years, sometimes decades, of friendship, became a lifelong enemy and I can give you a full and reasonable-sounding account of exactly how this state of final war came to be.    You can read several accounts here, as I’ve written out a few over the years, but the long and short of it is, people decide, based on my reaction to their totally innocent behavior, that I must be fought to the death, that they cannot yield an inch, that I must be given no quarter.   

In my view, this is a choice they made, based on their insecurities and anger, they are, one and all, people who have forfeited my good will by not returning it, earned my eventual disdain by their hard and determined work.  They no doubt feel the same way about me.    In their view, of course, it was me, being my intolerable self, a self-righteous if talented prig with a vicious turn to my humility, I suppose, who gave them no alternative but to fight me to the death, whoever may have started the fight.   The larger, more perplexing question, is why.  Am I actually exactly as insane as my poor persecuted father?

So coming to the point where virtually all action seems futile, or at the very least overwhelming, I hear this  solo rendition of Django’s beautiful Manor of My Dreams  (the tune is often called “Django’s Castle”)   This short solo take of this dreamy tune reminded me at once of many miracles I’ve forgotten about.

When Django puts that Bb in the bass of an A13 chord, and follows it with that D-6-9 chord … words are of no use.   The way one gorgeously harmonized chord plays off against the other, makes you want to hear the other one, leaves open a lilting universe of soulful possibilities for improvisation …  there is no explaining the miraculous, really.   And playing these chords to that slow, relaxed dreamlike pulse, as I try to learn the architecture of the rest of the tune by heart and by ear, the way Django and the Gypsies have always done it, another kind of miracle. 

God bless you, mon frere.

 

[1]  Here is a gorgeous guitar version of Anouman by Stochelo Rosenberg and his great trio.   Stochelo’s playing is, as always, sublime.   Somewhere Django smiles.

No obituary for the man who read them every day

My father, a perplexing man,  like so many of us, read the New York Times obituaries every day.   He’d come into the kitchen holding the paper and announce to my mother, “Maurice Tannenbaum, tote” which meant “dead”.    Then he’d read a few bits from the dead man’s obit.

It sometimes seemed to me he was reading the death notices each day to confirm that he wasn’t among the dead himself.  I sometimes think of his obituary reading habit in relation to something I caught myself doing in a library once — searching for my name on the spines of books on the shelves.   It would have been impossible to find a book by me in the library, because none has ever been published, but I absentmindedly scanned the W shelf nonetheless.      

“I’m sure I’m not the first to point out that you seem to be a bit insane,” said the skeleton of my father, lifting his head slightly in his eternal dirt bed.    

Nor will you be the last, pops.  

“I’m wondering about the book of your life, now that mine, gigantically bloated like a dead body kept in warm water for a long time, is largely written and languishing… festering, if you prefer…” the skeleton turned his head, with that maniacal smile they all have.  “You know, it’s a deep question:  how do you summarize somebody, make their emotional life into a coherent story?  We are largely incoherent creatures, Elie, and making sense of a life is essentially a labor of the imagination, painting a convincing picture that people can recognize as uniquely human in a way they care about, in a way that relates to their lived experience.  But truly, what the fuck?”

When you died your brother gave me a 500 word obituary he’d written and printed out and told me to contact the Times and arrange to have it published.    (A year or two ago, after Sekhnet located the print-out, I posted that obituary here.)   At the time the long obit, and the demand that I call the Times and have it printed, both struck me as absurd.  In hindsight I realize it was a pretty good piece of work by my uncle and that there was nothing unreasonable, outside of my uncle’s overbearing and oblivious style, in his asking me to arrange to have the Times print it.  

“Well, my brother could have seen that you were organizing the funeral and writing my eulogy, and basically taking care of everything else, so he could have contacted the Times, but as you say, it wasn’t his style.”    

The question of style might hold the key to the biographer’s art.  

“And the ingestion of gaseous foods might hold the key to the biographer’s fart,” said the skeleton absently.

Sometimes I wonder why I drag you into this.  

“It’s a fair thing to ask yourself, Elie,” the skeleton revolved his head 360 degrees, a new trick he’d discovered, very disquieting.  

I started off thinking how you, a man who read the obituaries religiously, as we say, never had one himself.  There was no obituary of you ever published, that I am aware of.  

“Are you blaming me?   Don’t forget, I was dead already, so, I have to plead, I don’t know– I couldn’t have done it since I was already dead?”

Nah, of course not.   I was just wondering about my inaction in the days after you died, why I didn’t get the obituary printed somewhere.  

“Well, in fairness to you, it was probably related to your general inaction, your decided predilection for inactivity — how long is it since you broke that tooth and made a note to call the dentist?   Two weeks, three weeks?   I mean, don’t be hard on yourself, man, you are inactive about many things,” the skeleton turned to watch the lazy arcs of two turkey vultures.    

“Elie, I realize you’re feeling listless and lifeless today, I get that, I really do– you could hardly feel more listless and lifeless than I do, after all, but could you leave the fucking turkey vultures out of it today?”

One turkey vulture seemed to turn to the other in mid-air as if to say “watch this” and then deposited a long stream of vulture shit on to my father’s side of the headstone my mother had picked out for them.  

“Nice,” said the skeleton, doing his best to smirk, as he turned on to his side and seemed to sink back into his grave.  

 

Come on now

20190726_210933.jpg

Is this really where we’re at as a culture?   We can all applaud Fidelis Care for its worthy aspiration — that no child in our wealthy nation die a preventable death for lack of health insurance coverage [1] — but, seriously, is this something we as a people really need to have a nuanced discussion about? [2]

We are living in a culture where extreme cruelty to children who look like the kid pictured in this poster is a mere instrument of policy, yawned at, because, you know… what the fuck.  Poor kids die by the millions every day, everywhere, what’s a few more?   Seriously– who among us has not inadvertently murdered some little kid somewhere?   Let he who is without sin cast the first stone at our well-born masters who decide who shall live well and who shall die miserably and unnecessarily, as it is said in the private clubs where these fabulous luxury-loving job creating philanthropists congregate when the unfortunate subject of the stinking poor comes up: why don’t they just go fuck themselves? 

 

[1] And note that it is lack of access to insurance coverage (which allows a lucrative private intermediary to negotiate health care prices with “providers”), not lack of access to affordable health care service itself, that deprives millions of kids of the same chance for a healthy life that that every brat in the poor child’s well-born cohort enjoys as a matter of course.

[2]  While the “well-born” Donald Trump bellows about stupid black bitches who hate our country and wolf-whistles to his enraged base, his party continues to attack hated Obamacare, the rightwing think tank health insurance plan once known, in Massachusetts where it was first implemented, as Romneycare.   The lying demagogue has no plan whatsoever to replace it because, heh, if you’re dumb enough to believe anything I say you deserve what you get, losers.    Here’s an article about the Republican party’s latest attempt to have the Affordable Care Act declared “unconstitutional” by the Federalist Society’s best minds on the federal bench.

Here’s a terrible section of that piece by Paul Waldman:

Let’s go over the relevant history, just so we’re clear:

  • Prior to the Affordable Care Act, insurers could deny anyone coverage or charge them exorbitant premiums if they had a preexisting condition. The ACA outlaws that practice, creating the protections for the first time. Every Republican in both the Senate and the House votes no.

  • Republicans spend the Obama years filing lawsuits to get the entire law struck down and holding congressional votes to repeal it, which if successful would eliminate protections for pre-existing conditions.

  • Republicans take control of the entire federal government in 2017 and realize they had promised repeal but hadn’t bothered to come up with a replacement. They hastily assemble a bill, including ending protections for pre-existing conditions. The overall effort fails when John McCain opposes it at the last minute.

  • Attorneys general and governors from 20 Republican-led states file a lawsuit to strike down the ACA. One attorney general who spearheaded it, Josh Hawley of Missouri, runs ads in his successful Senate bid touting his commitment to pre-existing conditions protections, the very ones was attempting to destroy.

  • Even conservative legal scholars who opposed the ACA argue that the lawsuit is ridiculous.

  • The lawsuit is filed in Texas so that it will be heard by Judge Reed O’Connor, an unusually partisan Republican. He rules that the whole ACA must be wiped out, thereby eliminating those protections.

  • The Trump administration signs on in support of the lawsuit, asking the appeals court to strike down the ACA and its protections for pre-existing conditions.

    source

Oy, Nancy, Nancy

Defending herself against the charge that she is running out the clock on a House vote on articles of impeachment against a president she claims is currently engaged in criminal activities, as Congress goes on its August break, Speaker Pelosi said:

“We will proceed when we have what we need to proceed, not one day sooner.  And everybody has the liberty and the luxury to espouse their own position and to criticize me for trying to go down the path in the most determined, positive way.

Again, their advocacy for impeachment only gives me leverage, I have no complaint with what they’re doing, but I know ( … Mueller… presi …) what ( …uh, I keep calling him Special Counsel Mueller), Mr. Mueller said the other day CONFIRMED, confirmed in the public mind that the president has obstructed justice.  You know what he said. if he could have exonerated him he would have, but he didn’t. 

But he wasn’t able to investigate the president’s finances, personal business or otherwise,  and that is what we’re doing in the courts.  So I’m willing to take whatever heat there is there to say when we, the decision will be made in a timely fashion, this isn’t endless, and when we have the best, strongest possible case, and that’s not endless either, it may be endless in terms of the violations of the law that the president is engaged in, but that’s what I say to you.”

source

I’ve got only three words for you, Madam Speaker: what the fuck?

A Tricky Story to Tell

“You had only two uncles, me and your father’s brother,” he said.   

“Our father had a brother?” said the niece. 

“Yes, a few years older.   We only met him once, he was kind of estranged from your father and his father.   He was funny, and personable, and seemed like a very nice guy.   He was as big as your father, and had dark hair.   We sat on the back porch playing cards, at your grandparents’ house in Queens.”   

“How come we never heard of him?”   

“You’d have to ask your parents.   I have no idea.   Maybe it was the fact that they were estranged, had virtually no contact once the brothers were adults.   I  don’t know.   Maybe it has to do with his mental illness,” the sole uncle said.   

“Mental illness?” said the nephew.   

“Look, I know virtually nothing about the man, except for a pleasant afternoon we spent with him.   And that he was taking some psycho-pharmaceutical and his psychiatrist apparently had told him to have nothing further to do with the family, that it would only aggravate his condition.   And like I said, we only met him that one time, never heard about him after that.”   

“Whoa, his ‘psychiatrist’?”  said the niece.

“You know, in most families you have your pick of aunts, uncles, cousins.  You will have the ones you feel closest to, a real kinship, and many others will leave you cool, or even cold.  In our family, since the family tree was so ruthlessly pruned back in 1942, you get only one or two uncles — in your case one.   Your other uncle probably died before you were born, another reason you never heard of him, I guess.”   

“How did he die?” said the nephew.   

“That’s just speculation, we really have no idea.  He could still be alive, he’d be in his early seventies now”   

“Jesus,” said the niece, glancing at her phone.

“I can tell you what happened two generations ago, on your mother’s side, when the German army ran across the area we’re from, on their way to invade the heart of the Soviet Union.   Between the winter of 1941 and the winter of 1942 everyone in our family was murdered, except for the handful of people who arrived here between 1904 and 1923.    The areas they came from were, as they say, cleansed of Jews by the SS and willing local anti-Semites.   We know a few of their names, we know what happened to their towns, the muddy little hamlets they came from.   Everyone was executed, end of story.”   

“That would make you a little paranoid, I guess,” said the nephew. 

“Claro que si, sobrino,” said the uncle.

“I can only say a little bit more, because to some people, well, this is ticklish to say… some people believe that anything that causes pain or anguish should be avoided.  The passive voice and all that.   You don’t touch a nerve that’s raw.  If it’s bad, or makes you feel bad, especially if it evokes shame or anger, don’t talk about it.  Talking about it is very dangerous,” he turned to his niece.   

“You know, when you were a baby and first learned to sit on the potty to do your business, your mother asked you once why you have no hesitation to sit there and pee but the other thing, the shitting business, you weren’t ready to do that in the potty.   She asked why.  You said, with great seriousness and conviction, and you couldn’t have been more than two:  it’s very dangerous!“   

“Ha, I forgot about that,” the niece said.   

“What I hear you saying between the lines, Uncle, is that you are very dangerous,” said the nephew.   

“Yes, nephew, if you believe in making sure every source of shame and anger is completely repressed at all times, someone like me is very dangerous.   I’m as dangerous as pooping in a potty, more dangerous, actually,” said the uncle. 

 “Some people believe it’s better to lie than to expose and talk about regrettable, shameful or terrible things.   We have a president like that.  Never made a mistake, never been wrong, never had any reason to reflect or do anything differently, nothing to apologize about, anything bad that ever happened in his life was somebody else’s fault.   You know, a lot of people live that way.   I try not to judge those motherfuckers, but I can’t live like that.  If I know I hurt you, and I care about you, I’m going to try to make it right, starting with an apology.  Unfortunately, not everybody does that.”   

“This is getting a little awkward,” said the niece. 

“I agree,” said the uncle, “where are we going for lunch?”

Iron-willed Ditz and Birther “Judge”

Nancy Pelosi is Neville Chamberlain, as history will soon show, unfortunately.   An iron-willed version of Chamberlain, no doubt, one who knows how to wield power and get her party in line with whatever she decides.   Her party, according to Madam Speaker, is waiting for something more dramatic, more convincing, more of a total popularly approved slam dunk, than this seamless pattern of a mere ten obstructive acts detailed in the report Mueller handed to presidential bodyguard Bagpiper Bill now four months ago.   Each act was part of a long (and ongoing) pattern of obstruction of justice, each was done to impede or end a lawful investigation, with the intent to impede or end that investigation:  

1  President Trump asked the FBI director to shut down the investigation into National Security Advisor Michael Flynn

2  President Trump said he fired FBI director Comey because of the Russia Investigation

3 President Trump ordered White House counsel Don McGahn to fire Robert Mueller   

4  President Trump attempted to curtail the Special Counsel’s investigation 

5  President Trump prevented the public disclosure of evidence 

6  President Trump wanted Attorney General Sessions to “unrecuse” from the Russia investigation   

7  President Trump directed White House counsel Don McGahn to create false documents that covered up the truth from investigators

8  President Trump tried to discourage Campaign chairman Paul Manafort and National Security Advisor Michael Flynn from cooperating with the Special Counsel’s investigation 

9  President Trump encouraged Michael Cohen to lie about Trump Tower Moscow

10  President Trump tried to get his longtime lawyer Michael Cohen not to cooperate with the investigation.   

But according to Speaker Pelosi, this is not a very dramatic and convincing pattern of corrupt and arguably illegal actions by our in-your-face contemptuous president.   

He’s right, by the way, in this case, to feel contempt for the Democratic party.   I feel it too.   I watched Adam Schiff’s body language as he stood next to the confidently dithering leader of his party, his face said it too.  He was having a hard time keeping a neutral expression on his face, a scowl off of it.    “We are using the courts to try to get a ruling,” Nancy Pelosi explained.  Jerald Nadler added that once the court rules, as it should, that this blanket protective executive privilege, this ridiculously over-broad claim of immunity, is groundless that they’ll be able to subpoena everybody and they’ll have to appear, and produce documents.   He did his best, next to the Speaker, but Nadler didn’t seem particularly convinced either.   They looked like the beaming Pelosi’s dazed captives up there.   Elijah Cummings gave Pelosi some fiery support, speaking with some force and gripping the podium with both hands (since he was no longer holding on to his walker).

The most powerful player in that party right now is an iron-willed ditz with an unshakeable theory — that impeachment that doesn’t result in Trump’s removal from office will strengthen the corrupt, lying strongman president in 2020.   The best thing to do, according to the iron-willed ditz, is wait — until he actually shoots somebody in the face on Fifth Avenue and skull fucks their corpse, on live TV.

You can understand her worry when you see the caliber of the president’s defenders.   They were on powerful display yesterday at the Mueller hearings.   I was lucky enough to catch Texas Congressman Louie Gohmert’s riveting performance.     Gohmert [1] went ballistic, after first holding up a pamphlet he introduced into evidence.   The pamphlet was called Robert Mueller Unmasked.  Gohmert was too modest to mention that he was the author of the 48 page illustrated document proudly displayed on-line at hannity.com.   It makes the case that Mueller is the worst, simply the fucking worst.   It ends:

If you want answers, and you CAN handle the truth, join me in demanding those answers from “Special Counsel” Robert Mueller, along with his resignation. If he were to resign, it could well be the only truly moral, ethical and decent action Mueller has undertaken in this entire investigation.

There’s a ton of great shit in there, and it’s impeccably reasoned and beautifully written, of course, and also illustrated.   I’ll give you just a snapshot, just the opening salvo, since it’s worth scrolling quickly through this well-done strong opinion piece in its entirety (if only to see the several illustrations):

ROBERT MUELLER: UNMASKED

by Congressman Louie Gohmert

Robert Mueller has a long and sordid history of illicitly targeting innocent people that is a stain upon the legacy of American jurisprudence. He lacks the judgment and credibility to lead the prosecution of anyone.

I do not make these statements lightly.

Each time I prepared to question Mueller during Congressional hearings, the more concerned I became about his work ethic. Then as I went back to begin compiling all that information in order to recount personal interactions with Mueller, the more clearly the big picture began to come into focus. At one point I had to make the decision to stop adding to this or it would turn into a far too lengthy project.

My goal was to share some first-hand information as other Republican Members of Congress had requested, adding, “You seem to know so much about him.” This article is prepared from my viewpoint to help better inform the reader about the Special Prosecutor leading the effort to railroad President Donald J. Trump through whatever manufactured charge he can allege. Judging by Mueller’s history, it doesn’t matter who he has to threaten, harass, prosecute or bankrupt to get someone to be willing to allege something—anything—about our current President, it certainly appears Mueller will do what it takes to bring down his target, ethically, or unethically, based on my findings.

 Since we now seem to  be living in the sound byte/twitter-ruled land of the freakish and the home of the braying, let me not assume an American attention span sufficient to read all of the material quoted above.   Here’s the takeaway from a former “judge” [2], Texas’s own Louie Gohmert:

This article is prepared from my viewpoint to help better inform the reader about the Special Prosecutor leading the effort to railroad President Donald J. Trump through whatever manufactured charge he can allege.

Spoken like a true Texas judge, circa 1858.   “We’ll give the filthy, thieving varmint a fair trial and hang him, and let’s make it quick, boys, Ah need lunch, Ah’m starvin’.”

Democrats yesterday tried to get Mueller to say that only the OLC memo prevented him from referring Trump’s obstruction case for prosecution.   Mueller would not go quite that far, though he said that the OLC memo prevented him from making a traditional prosecutorial decision about the sitting president’s actions (as his report said, though Barr claimed in his famously misleading summary, and afterwards, that the OLC memo had nothing to do with anything).   

Mueller confirmed for his Democratic questioners that Trump refused to testify, for about a year, and would have tied up a subpoena in court for a long time, preventing the completion of the investigation into coordinated, wide-spread Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.  Mueller’s task was to publish his findings about Russian interference in the presidential contest, which he documented, characterized as “sweeping and systematic”,  and warned of repeatedly (and which Mitch McConnell refuses to allow the Senate to address in any way — the help was good in 2016, it’ll be great in 2020).  Mueller added that Trump’s inadequate written answers were often contradicted by credible evidence.  Mueller-speak for “Trump was not entirely truthful in his inadequate. arguably evasive, answers”.   (Sworn answers to a federal investigator that are not truthful are… p-p-p-perjury…)

Republicans, in contrast, didn’t care about the old news report that Barr had already disposed of.  They focused on indignantly showing what a pathetic, corrupt dupe of Commies and transsexual Mexican zombie abortionists the “Special Prosecutor” (as Gohmert refers to him in his final challenge on the damning hannity.com pamphlet) is, and how viciously and ineptly the vile partisan Mueller went after a completely innocent man, a man who should never have been investigated in the first place (we’re looking into that!) and was revealed, even by these Trump-hating traitors, to be completely and totally exonerated, exculpated, found not guilty of every and all charges.

We get the government we deserve.  We have earned this shit show, we really have.

What happened to the millions who ran into the streets wearing pussy hats, flocked to airports to immediately protest the Muslim ban, who assembled in a huge throng to support climate science?    Got tired out and shouted down by an innocent mad man and his most ardent supporters (including America’s top law enforcement official) who, believe it, would not hesitate to beat you to death if they thought you posed a real threat to the spotless reputation of the greatest leader this country has ever had. 

Speaker Pelosi urges us all to wait and see.  Maybe the paperless 2020 election won’t be hacked by anyone (although an 11 year-old recently demonstrated how small a challenge it currently is to do so), maybe those 78,000 surgically targeted Electoral College votes won’t appear again, as if by magic, in the proper number in every single district needed to win each state’s electors and amass the Electoral College majority to legally elect this innocent and good man to another four years of glory.

Nancy Pelosi, by refusing to allow an impeachment investigation to go forward, is Neville Chamberlain.   The end of democracy is taking place on her fretful, calculating, vote counting, party disciplined watch.   An iron-willed ditz, confidently wringing her hands with that great smile as the clock runs out on protecting our constitutional system.

 

[1]  Early in Obama’s second term, Gohmert (apparently an ardent Birther) sponsored a bill to make sure we never again have a Kenyan secret-Muslim president.    As Wikipedia reports:

On July 29, 2009, Gohmert signed on as a co-sponsor of the defeated H.R. 1503. This bill would have amended “the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 to require the principal campaign committee of a candidate for election to the office of president to include with the committee’s statement of organization a copy of the candidate’s birth certificate, together with such other documentation as may be necessary to establish that the candidate meets the qualifications for eligibility to the office of president under the Constitution”.[13]

Some of his other well-researched positions:

Gohmert does not believe in manmade climate change, and has asserted that data supporting the theory is fraudulent.[30] He opposes cap-and-trade legislation, such as the one that was passed in the U.S. House when it had a Democratic majority, and supports expanding drilling, and exploration and drilling in Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR).[30]

Gohmert is pro-life and opposes abortion. He has stated that he believes that life begins at conception. Gohmert sponsored the Sanctity of Human Life Act. Gohmert voted for the Child Interstate Abortion Notification Act, a bill that prohibits the transportation of a minor across state lines for the purposes of an abortion without the consent of the minor’s parents. He has 100% pro-life voting record rating from the National Right to Life Committee(NRLC).[39][40]

In December, 2018, Gohmert made national news headlines as a guest on Fox News. Gohmert digressed from the topic of Google to assert an unrelated and defamatory allegation about Holocaust survivor and philanthropist George Soros. The allegation, which is popular on right wing propaganda websites but has been thoroughly debunked by credible news sources, denigrates Soro’s childhood experiences during the Holocaust. Later, Stuart Varney of Fox News apologized for Gohmert’s “false allegations” against Soros.[74]

 

[2]   Gohmert actually did serve as a Texas judge.  The quotes around “Judge” refer to this:

join me in demanding those answers from “Special Counsel” Robert Mueller, along with his resignation.

HOAX of the lying, conflicted, Comey-loving witch hunter

The Honorable Robert S. Mueller III testified to two congressional committees today under subpoena.   He agreed to be bound by Bagpiper Bill Barr’s recent letter limiting the scope of his testimony.  Bagpiper had a fairly low level assistant write a snitty little legal letter laying out the limitations, asserted under the expansive new protective presidential privilege not to be subjected to anything that could possibly lead to his impeachment. 

Mueller (a former DOJ employee, we note — currently a private citizen) was informed by the DOJ that he may not impugn the president or speculate as to his intent or motives (both of which Barr has spoken extensively and conclusively about in defending his boss.)  The former Special Counsel was warned against directly contradicting any of the false and misleading things that Bagpiper has publicly said and written.  He was instructed not to comment on any member of Individual One’s family, or go into any detail not explicitly included in the report, or step near any redacted material, etc.  Mueller, good Eagle Scout that he is, stated that he’d abide by these restrictions.

If you watched the hearings wearing a MAGA hat, you had to laugh at this regurgitation of old, harmless news that Trump-haters put so much faith in.  The president, who said he wouldn’t be watching the lying, conflicted, Comey-loving, hoax-mongering witch hunter (whose report nonetheless TOTALLY exonerated him) was tweeting about the HOAX during the testimony he claimed not to be watching.   If you support Trump (or even if you despise him) you understand that all Trump has to do is brazen this one out, and he has decades of experience being as brazen as they come.  He has his all-powerful Roy Cohn, finally, an unprincipled, ideologically pure right-wing zealot who has proved his loyalty and his willingness to go beyond principle to defend his Unitary Executive master.

If you believe, as I do, as anyone who has read any portions of Mueller’s report does, that there’s massive evidence of impeachable conduct laid out in the Mueller report, you saw many answers by Mueller that hammered this home.   The president refused, over the course of many months of negotiation, to appear before Mueller and his “perjury trap”.   Mueller explained why he didn’t subpoena Trump (though, per Barr’s recent letter, he wouldn’t answer questions about why Koosay Jr., or smug, silent Jared, for that matter, wasn’t forced to testify).   Mueller said that a subpoena for the president would have been tied up in litigation (by the Roy Cohn-trained obstructor-in-chief) and unnecessarily hold up the crucial investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election.   

Mueller elaborated about Trump’s written answers, which not only were “inadequate” but often were contradicted by other evidence.  He would not speculate, or give his opinion of Trump’s credibility, though he did note that he wasn’t satisfied with Trump’s answers, formulations that were inadequate and, as he said, often contradicted by other credible evidence.

Mr. Trump is, I’m trying to find the right New York Times tone to use here, a fucking liar.  He’s known as a compulsive liar, meaning, he seemingly cannot help himself.  He simply says whatever he feels he has to say at any given moment, to get maximum leverage in any given transaction.   What is Mueller’s opinion about Trump’s credibility?   Well, he gave inadequate answers that were often contradicted by other credible evidence.   So what are you saying?  That this known liar was lying in his sworn answers?   

That he stayed out the “perjury trap” of testifying falsely under oath on the strength of his long reputation as a lawyered up, action-taking knave.  He had a team of lawyers craft the answers he falsely claimed to have written himself, answers that stated he didn’t recall, had no specific recollection, was too busy winning to notice the detail asked about, didn’t remember, was coming up blank, really didn’t know because it slipped his mind, if he ever knew about it, which, for the life of him, he couldn’t say for sure if he did or not.   Answers that were often contradicted by credible evidence.  Nuff said?

I didn’t see Mueller’s entire testimony, but I was waiting for somebody to direct Mueller’s attention to his final written question to Trump about obstruction.   It was a long, complex question about the nefarious actions of disgraced former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn.  It was Trump’s firing of Comey, because not only did he refuse to declare personal loyalty to Trump but he wouldn’t let the Flynn thing go, that led to the appointment of the Special Counsel.   The multi-part question about Flynn was a particularly important question.   Trump’s answer was, literally, [no answer provided].     

Yo, Democrats, do I have to do all your work for you?   

If the testimony today had been part of an impeachment inquiry it would have meant far more than an exploratory feeler as to the public’s willingness to maybe not hold it against Democrats in 2020 if they upheld their constitutional obligation to investigate the corrupt and illegal acts of a famously corrupt and law-ignoring president, acts set out in great detail in a long, detailed report.   A president who calls false emergencies to thwart the will of Congress, a president who routinely ignores court orders, who calls democratic norms, and credible critiques “bullshit” and who is intent only on “winning”– whether it’s the fight over whether stinking, unsanitary child prisons should be called “concentration camps”, whether calling black athletes “sons of bitches”, black female critics “low IQ”, Mexicans “rapists” makes him divisive, hateful racist, misogynist, xenophobe, whether raking in millions from his various businesses, and giving personal access to preferred paying customers and patron-lobbyists, is a breach of his duty to at least appear non-corrupt.   Not to mention his numerous clock-running court challenges to every legal demand for documents and testimony or the sure to be overturned assertion of a blanket executive privilege against anything that could possibly put this innocent child of God in a less than blessedly Christian light.

If the Democratic House does not start impeachment proceedings, based on political handwringing, Speaker Nancy Pelosi will go down in history as America’s Neville Chamberlain.   I heard a recording of the former British Prime Minister, given after his famous Munich Conference with Herr Hitler.   He stated, in flowing, measured, confident tones, that at the outset he found Hitler to be unreasonable, but as they spoke Herr Hitler had convinced him of the justness of his request, that all he really wanted was for Sudeten Germans to be reunited with their countrymen.    Chamberlain arrived back in London to cheers, he had averted war and preserved “peace in our time” by turning British and French ally Czechoslovakia over to the Nazis.  In hindsight, he came to view it as a political mistake.   He lost his job and is remembered in history as a pathetic “appeaser” of one of history’s greatest tyrants.

Hindsight is 20/20, they say, and giving in to one of the world’s most notorious mass-murdering lying psychopaths looks bad on the old resume.   I’m not comparing Trump to Hitler [1] (all Trump has done, to date, is set up a network of stinking child prisons for little “illegals”, no death camps, NO DEATH CAMPS!) but if everything he’s done in his first two and a half years is left up to an election in 2020 that can be won by another beautifully engineered surgical 78,000 vote electoral college “mandate” (even if he loses the popular vote by 15,000,000 this time, instead of a mere 2,900,000) — we’re done.  America’s long, troubled experiment in democracy is over.   Stick a fork in us.   Get your tattoo and move on to indicated train to the assigned privatized processing center for re-education.

Impeachment is the only constitutional remedy for this kind of openly corrupt public official.    As no less an authority on our democracy than Robert S. Mueller III wrote, in his report:

The conclusion that Congress may apply the obstruction laws to the President’s corrupt exercise of the powers of the office accords with our constitutional system of checks and balances and the principle that no person is above the law.

 

 

[1] outside of his personality, his inability not to lie, his disregard for law, his scorn for custom, his autocratic nature, his limited intelligence (which he boasts about as genius), his open hatred of disloyalty, the vitriol he directs towards enemies, his demands for unconditional personal loyalty, a superhuman faith in his own infallibility, his inexperience and temperamental unsuitability for leadership, his violent and overwrought language, his readily combustible temper, his hatred of any opposition, his appeals to the irrational rage of a desperate base, his tendency to pout and throw tantrums, his sadism, his readiness to employ cruelty, his scorn for “democracy”, his demand to be obeyed, he insistence that his word is law, that his ample ass be constantly smooched and several other minor things like that.

Plus, look, to be fair, nobody ever accused Hitler of being corrupt or a money-hungry lover of incomparable luxury.

Warmest Month in Recorded History — ah, who cares?

It’s actually hard to believe how little most Americans seem to care about the rapidly approaching end of a habitable planet.    The scientists keep publishing ever more dire predictions, irreversibly deadly things are happening more quickly than the most alarming reports concluded even a few years ago, we can feel the results in our own skins week after week, but — eh.

The Democratic party decided a month or two ago that it wasn’t necessary to hold a debate on how we’re going to slow climate catastrophe.    The number one issue is not catastrophic climate change, yes, there was another deadly climate event the other day, sure, and we all know it’s getting hotter and hotter,  but voters, polls show, are more concerned with the racist rhetoric of our unhinged attention-craving president.   The leaders of the Democratic party decided, no doubt based on extensive polling, that talking about steps to avert climate disaster is not a winning strategy for 2020.

The month that just passed, June 2019, was the hottest June on record.  This month is on course to become the hottest month ever recorded.   You know, if you live in an air-conditioned home, have good AC in your car, everywhere you go is cooled to a beautiful temperature, all the humidity removed, the hottest month on record is not as big a problem for you as for many millions of old people, tiny children, people with asthma and worse, living in quarters without even fans, or outside.

Global warming, largely the result of the carbon released from the continual burning of millions of tons of fossil fuel, is a big part of the crisis, the thing that’s driving it.  When the planet gets hotter the polar ice melts, sea levels rise, the warmer ocean means more severe, wetter, slow-moving, storms, more flooding.   The increased heat also means drought, wild fire, water shortages.   Coastal homes will be under water soon.  Several island nations in the south Pacific will soon be under the ocean.   Every day more and more species of animals and plants become extinct.   Mother nature is very, very pissed. 

You add up all the reasons to care about the biosphere, there are too many to count. We are part of nature, our hubris aside, we are creatures living in nature.   We are homo sapiens the “wise ape” and some very well-paid geniuses are now figuring out how to “terraform” Mars — you know, some of us will want to survive when this shit-hole earth is completely used  up, everything of value extracted from it, only a toxic hell-hole left.

You tally up the reasons to continue destroying our planet: there’s gold in them thar hills!    

What the fuck?   Is it really as simple as “Manifest Destiny” (we have to kill all the indigenous savages who refuse to get out of the way because God said so)?    Seriously, what the fuck?

As near as I can figure, insanely wealthy old white men (I’m sure there are blacks, Asians and other “others” involved, but not nearly as many as old white psychopath bastards), profiting massively from the destructive fossil fuel industry, have decided that since they’re going to die soon anyway, fuck it, let’s rape the shit out of this place before we go.  Who cares?  We’ll be dead, and all of our efforts will not have been in vain if we can take everybody else with us.  

When these fossilized vampires reckon the price, the deaths of a million, ten million, a billion takers is a small item on the ledger.   Who cares?  What have these parasites ever produced, except for more parasites?   More than this earth can support.   It’s not as though love, care for others, stewardship of our natural world, our grandchildren’s future, is even remotely as compelling as the profit motive.  

It’s profits that make the world go ’round, exploiting the natural world for our advantage is our right as job creators.  How dare the weak, the useless, make any demands on us, try to use “democracy” to coerce us to curtail our liberty for the sake of some imagined future?!    Fuck them and their “future”.   Makers vs. Takers, motherfuckers.   

God bless the child that’s got his own, that’s got his own.

 

 

Tucking Melz in (Two)

An illustration of the inherent feebleness of even a well-reputed memory (such as my own).  

I noticed that yesterday somebody had clicked on an old post called “Tucking Melz In” and I told Sekhnet the story.   Later I read the piece and was amazed to find a significantly different anecdote, bearing little resemblance to what I’d just told Sekhnet, which was, minus the first paragraph (which she already knew) which was:

Five and a half years ago an old friend, Melz, succumbed to a rare and deadly form of soft tissue cancer.   When I say succumbed, I mean he died.   The funeral was conducted by his long-time bosom buddy, trained as a rabbi and with a great talent for humanistic public speaking.   He conducted a beautiful funeral.   It’s hard to say how he held himself together the way he did.

Afterwards, at the golf course-like cemetery (no head stones) as we gave our shovels to others who were taking turns burying Melz, according to our tradition, Alan and his wife Terri came up to me.  Alan said (referring to the wonderful funeral oration we’d just witnessed) “you realize, if we die before Sokoll, we’re fucked.  Who’s going to do our funeral?  Think about it!”

I did.  As I was thinking, Sokoll walked by and we told him our concern.  The good rebbe told us not to worry.  “I’ll bury all of you fuckers,” he said, without breaking stride.   Oddly reassuring words.    

After a moment Terri said “let’s go tuck Melz in,” and we walked over and took over the shoveling for a while.

(compare with the original, written a day or two after the funeral)

 

Other People’s Problems

Truly, and this is a feature of human nature, it seems, if you don’t actually feel the pain or discomfort of somebody else, the best you can do is express abstract, if sincere, sympathy.   If you don’t know what the full extent of the misery really feels like, meaningful empathy is pretty hard to pull off and action to change the painful condition is literally unthinkable.

The real-feel temperature here in New York City at the moment is, let’s see… ah, what am I even whining about?   Only 109.   Actual temperature 97, though it is only 89 in the living room where I was playing the guitar a few minutes ago. 

I whine, but I can easily get relief from this killing heat and humidity.   I can get into a car chilled to 70 degrees, head over to a refrigerated supermarket for some cold drinks (in fact, I think I will, as soon as I’ve finished this little bit here), sit in a frosty cinema being entertained, and cooled, for a few hours.

What if you can’t do any of these things?   Suppose you are too poor to afford a movie or even a cold drink?   If your city or town is merciful they will have cooling centers in public buildings on a day like this.   An air-conditioned room where drenched, stinking poor people can gather to cool off for a while.   It saves a few lives.   In a wealthy country, that’s possible, you can set up cooling centers in public buildings to save a few poor souls from their inescapable anguish.    In poor countries, in towns without mercy, you just have to persevere on a day like this.

Seriously, though, if you have central air-conditioning, or even a room in your home you can cool off, remove the humidity from the air, you can ride out this kind of brutal weather pretty easily.   

On days like this I keep thinking of the billions of poor people all over the globe who have no relief from common torments of this sort, who simply, if the going gets tough enough, die.  I’m thinking of those poor bastards Trump has locked up, the stinking children he doesn’t allow to wash, the ones he has warehoused in cages that he insists are better than the shit-holes they come from.   Other desperate refugees detained on their way, fleeing death in their own countries, looking to America for refuge.   America to the world’s desperate: fuck you, assholes!   Spoken in my voice, through the glorious megaphones of our great, exceptional democracy.

If my brain wasn’t parboiled it would make me want to holler.

I’d better shut down this poor laptop, I could fry an egg on the metal.  Stay cool, everybody.