It's raining shoes

I've probably used the title of this post before, but the centipede which is the investigation of the tRump *presidency keeps dropping shoes at an increasingly frenetic rate.   The latest Gucci loafer to fall was one of Michael Cohen's.  The erstwhile consigliere of The Donald now admits he lied to Congress when he told the House and Senate Intelligence committees that the Trump Organization's pursuit of a Trump Tower Moscow ended in January 2016.  He now maintains he lied about the date in support of Cheeto Jesus' public comments regarding the project.  In reality, Cohen says now, he continued negotiating with Russian officials until June 2016 at about the time of the Republican Convention which nominated his boss.   The fact Putin knew the details and could leak them at any time would have compromised tRump as a candidate and thrown the GOP and the entire country into turmoil.  If Putin's goal was to sow chaos in America, an October surprise revealing the details of the lies told by the candidate would have done the trick.  An even better strategy is seemingly the one the Russians followed, namely helping elect a candidate who was severely compromised by the information they possessed about the Tower negotiations.  As Lawrence O'Donnell pointed out last night, tRump has spent his entire life chasing three things; Money, Fame and sex.  It seems the Russians were helping provide all three, with the chief among them the money which will eventually result in the American chaos Putin has schemed all along to achieve.  There are still a lot of shoes left to drop.

Who is playing who

This smacks of an "inside baseball" type post for political junkies like myself.  Of course the Paul Manafort case is getting big play by the MSM.  I don't know about Faux News and talk radio.  The gist of the stories is Manafort took a plea deal with the special counsel's office, but then lied to the investigators and in addition relayed what questions he was being asked to Cheeto Jesus' defense team.  In what now looks increasingly suspicious, The Donald completed and submitted the answers to the questions Mueller's team had for him.  Many pundits, attributing superhuman powers of deduction to Mueller's people have speculated they not only knew of Manfort's perfidy ahead of time, but allowed for it in their interactions with the *president's men.  In this iteration of events, Paulie M not only screwed himself, but allowed tRump to incriminate himself.   I'm not so sure the special counsel wasn't played a little bit in this case.  I think Mueller and most of his people are not prepared to deal with a totally amoral person in the president's office who is willing to lie and lie about anything and everything.

All the *president's men

The weather here remains awful.  We have a traveler's advisory with more snow on the way.  Ugh!  With that out of the way, let's get back to the story of the degradation of our democracy by the Liar-in-Chief.   In an interview with the Washington Post, Cheeto Jesus dismissed his government's report on climate change.  "I don't believe it", he said.  I suppose if Vladimir Putin told him the climate is going to hell, he would be a believer.

The Good, the Bad, and the Worst

The release of a government report on climate change and the harrowing effects we can expect in the future is part of the process of winnowing society into deniers and those of us who believe that we must do something or risk the very existence of modern civilization.  As Paul Krugman points out in the NYT today, denialism can no longer be the province of honest skeptics.  To argue against anthropomorphic climate change is a bad faith enterprise and Krugman rightly proclaims these bad faith individuals and organizations are operating from an immoral perspective.  Michele Goldberg goes further in her column.  Besides the immoral members of Cheeto Jesus' entourage, she calls out the amoral types who are drawn to this administration because of a lust for power.  Aside from a few national security types she believes are trying to prevent tRump from blowing the world up, the administration is made up of people who are either true believers (in what, I'm not sure) or sycophants like Lindsay Graham who want to be "relevant".  In either case, these people are greasing the skids leading to a poorer and more violent world for our descendants.  Shame on them!

Generation Now

Having read Bill Mckibbens latest doomsday warning in the New Yorker magazine, I am reluctantly hopeful that millenials and their children will pull us back from the apocalypse with scant help from the boomer generation and the vestiges of the "greatest" still alive at this point.   As the present administration (if you can dignify it with that appellation), continues to dismantle the EPA and any other department capable of making a difference in the fight against climate change, the consequences of inaction become more manifest each week.  The wildfires in California are just the latest in a long chain of events which would have sparked outrage 50 years ago along with demands for action.  In the age of tRump, mega storms, droughts and super fires arouse yawns among the somnolent media, which for the most part has come to be Cheeto Jesus' foil on a daily basis.  Mckibben says we can expect more of the same climate changes in the short term and on a longer time horizon we can anticipate the drowning of many coastal areas before the turn of the century.  Heat waves will make large portions of the tropics uninhabitable as the combination of rising temperature and humidity will not allow unprotected humans to survive outside for more than a few hours during the day.  Heat related deaths will soar in the southern and southwestern US.  At some point, our children's generation will come to into power and will have to deal with this dystopian future.  How they react will show whether humanity has a future on this planet or if we should shut off the lights and let the cockroaches take over.

Post Thanksgiving notes

As usual, our family thanksgiving consisted of 7 hours of heavy duty cooking, 30 minutes of frenzied eating, 2 hours of cleanup followed by 10 desserts and the requisite cleanup from that.  Finally, a few beautifully played Thanksgiving themed hymns featuring the talents of the Divine Mrs. M and an exhausted and thoroughly stuffed exit for most of the family.  I'm sure this scenario was played out in countless American homes yesterday.  For most of us, the cooking, cleanup, etc. take up most of the day with scant time to reflect on the "meaning" of the day.  In the era of tRUmp, what are we being thankful for?  We have a buffoon for a president, a sprawling military establishment keeping watch on an American Empire, a planet careening toward climate disaster and very little oversight on any of these issues.  Instead, we are thankful for family and all the ties that bind us together.  For the time being, that will have to do.

Misgivings instead of Thanksgivings

The Centers for Disease Control just issued a death sentence for the romaine lettuce industry in Canada, Mexico and the US.   By advising consumers to not eat romaine, processed, whole head, hearts or baby, virtually every farmer and processor of romaine in the three countries has just had their business model upended with financially disastrous consequences.  Yuma, Az. is the most likely suspect in this latest outbreak which has sickened consumers in the US, Ontario and Quebec.  Mexico has not reported any cases so far.  Romaine suffered a severe blow early this year when consumer sickness was traced back to lettuce grown in Yuma.  The source of contamination was an irrigation canal.  It's likely the same problem has occurred in the same area, but government investigators will probably take months to confirm that conclusion.  In the meantime, suspicious consumers will avoid all kinds of leafy greens, despite the fact more testing and vetting of said greens is going on in any farm involved in interstate trade than at any time in history.  I was going to write a post about my own interaction with a local restaurant I supply with kale and other greens on a sporadic basis.  I shared my concerns with some greens which looked less than perfect and my customer didn't hesitate;"Don't worry, we cook everything" he replied.  Anyone for a boiled romaine salad?