The real culprit

      Forget Cheetolini and his gang that can't shoot straight.   He and his henchmen are a laughable blemish on our democracy and in a normal universe would have been booted out of office by now.   This would have gone a long way toward correcting the travesty of the 2016 elections, although Hillary Clinton might not feel that way.
      The point I am trying to make is tRump is being enabled by the GOP majority in the Senate and specifically by the majority leader, Mitch McConnel.   When his televised answer to the question of whether he would confirm a Supreme Court nominee for tRump during his final year was a smirking affirmative, both the Divine Mrs. M and I both uttered an expletive regarding McConnel's illegitimate parentage.  
       Not content with bottling up legislation passed by the house and confirming numerous unqualified but ideologically right wing judges, Mitch seems hell bent on enabling The Donald's worst impulses with a fiendish glee.   As the House comes closer and closer to an impeachment inquiry, McConnel and Lindsay Graham have said they will make a mockery of their duty to try the president*.  Although tRump will have the scarlet letter of impeachment attached to his name for the rest of time, he need not fear removal from office before 2020 at least.  May the Flying Spaghetti Monster help us all if by another fluke this menace to democracy gets another 4 years.  It will be forever on McConnel's legacy that he dug the grave for the American experiment.

On impeachment and "molecules of freedom"

    Yes democrats, there is life after impeachment.   Robert Mueller practically begged Congress, or at least congressional democrats to as one pundit put it "do your damn job" and impeach the emperor cheetolini.   We all know this is a fool's errand as long as Mitch McConnel and Lindsay Graham are in the majority in the Senate, but justice must be served if the rule of law means anything in the 21st century.
     Meanwhile, in energy news, the undersecretary of the DOE announce we will step up the export of "freedom gas", aka liquefied natural gas from a new facility being built on the gulf coast near Houston.   These "molecules of freedom" will supposedly supply our allies with clean energy.  Forget the fact that the fracking which produces the clean burning gas releases enough methane to more than cancel the beneficial aspects of the primary product.   Ah, I can smell freedom fries as I write this...

Saving ourselves

The commentary on the political left post Memorial Day is unremittingly bleak.  According to some we are "careening toward totalitarianism".  Others speculate on the imminent demise of Roe vs. Wade and possibly Griswold vs. Connecticut which allows for contraception.  Of course tRump and his enablers in congress, the media and the religious right are blamed for these outrages.
   What many of the despairing commenters seem to agree on is the impotence of the citizenry and our representatives to do anything about the situation.  The quixotic turn by Justin Amash, who defied GOP congressional leadership and called for the opening of an impeachment inquiry is perhaps the opening salvo of the reaction to the president's* perfidy.
    Amash alone can't lead a republican renaissance, but I'll bet there are more than a few terrified members of his caucus who may take heart in his principled stand.   It would only take a handful of republicans in the House and Senate to bring the whole house of cards down.   The leadership knows this and will do everything in its power to halt any sort of dissent to the party line.
    It is up to ordinary Americans to make our voices heard in this time of maximum danger to our democracy.  Let your representatives and senators know you are part of an informed electorate and that you expect justice to be served.

Talkin' bout my generation

     I usually have no patience with those who bash the baby boom generation as the drivers of all that is bad in our culture.  I remember the late 60s and early 70s as a time of optimism.  With the Vietnam war winding down and the new consciousness of the fragility of our Spaceship earth it seemed my generation was poised to make the world a better place.  The inauguration of the first boomer president, Bill Clinton epitomized that attitude.
    Flash forward to the "tea party" revolution of 2010 and the nasty racism that undergirded the movement and the shine of the boomer babies was tarnished.  Climate change denial, the aforementioned racism and misogyny shook  my faith in boomers.  Having grown up in a small town, I knew many of my friends were raised in conservative households.  It should have been a tipoff as to how their political views would harden over the years.  Boomers made up the larges single voting bloc for the abomination now seated in the Oval Office.
     A NYT story about how the administration is systematically undermining the work done by the EPA on climate change has further undermined any defense I might make for the boomer cohort.  For every Bill McKibben who has done groundbreaking work on the menace of carbon emissions there is a James Reilly, a former astronaut and petroleum geologist who has used his perch at the EPA to decree that long term assessments of global warming only extend to 2040.   As he well knows, the pace of warming will pick up drastically at that point.  He wishes to delay the story of climate change until most of his and my generation have passed from the scene.  I will be 89 in 2040 if I am still alive.  The youngest of us will be in our late 70s at that point and will probably not face the reckoning our inaction will doom our children and grandchildren to experience in the latter half of this century.
     If there is any salvation for my generation it will be in working for the defeat of the present administration and in the support of the policies which will keep the world from tipping into drastic climate change.   I hope we are up to the task.

Is this what they died for?

    I have written quite a few blog posts concerning the Memorial Day holiday and its connection to me and the broader American public.   I am deeply conflicted that many patriotic soldiers served their country well and died heroic deaths in the service of what has mostly been an egregious policy of Imperialistic aggrandizement.  Many, myself included, bow to the overarching theme of the national observance and content ourselves with expressions of gratitude to friends, neighbors and relatives who have served in the armed forces.   I hope everyone who takes a moment to commemorate the fallen today also asks why so many have given the last full measure of devotion to causes which served armchair warriors who lead us into quagmires for the benefit of a military-industrial complex which virtually dictates our foreign policy and enriches the few and is enabled by the sacrifice of an increasingly isolated professional fighting force.

The first amendment is for everyone

    Even Julian Assange should expect his first amendment rights to publish freely to be respected.  Now, in a delicious ironical twist, tRump's DOJ is charging Assange with publishing military secrets under the espionage act.
     I'm sure Assange, whose control of Wikileaks and his willing collusion with Russia to reveal damaging e-mails hacked from the DSCC, felt his fellow rat fuckers in the administration would keep him safe.  Unfortunately for him and also for freedom of the press, the authoritarians in the administration are looking to establish a precedent which will chill investigative journalism in this country and around the world.  Reporters will have to think very hard about the possibility of a long jail term before printing information the government would prefer to hide.  Using Assange as the face of this assault on Americans' freedom is meant to blunt criticism a more sympathetic figure would generate.
     In other news, I want to shout out Happy Anniversary to the Divine Mrs. M.  She has been putting up with me for 44 years and I dearly love her for that among a multitude of other qualities.  I consider myself a very lucky guy!

Trumposterous

    Once again, the schoolyard bully got his nose bloodied and in a predictable move took his bat and ball and went home, leaving the rest of the team staring in stupefaction.
     After bragging about his plan for an infrastructure spending deal, tRump left his meeting with Speaker Pelosi and Minority leader Chuck Schumer and spent a few minutes in the Rose Garden dishing on the democrats and saying he wouldn't do anything until all investigations into his finances and administration were ended.   This provoked most liberal commentators to compare our present occupant of the Oval Office with two past presidents who were investigated.  Both Tricky Dick Nixon and Bill Clinton made an ostentatious effort to look presidential in the face of continued investigations by Congress.  Both presidents signed numerous bills during and in Nixon's case just before he resigned in the face of certain impeachment and removal.  Now comes tRump and his cohort of criminals.
    As we get closer and closer to glimpsing his tax and financial records, The Donald is in a flop sweat.   I think the possibility of a "wag the dog" war is a grave possibility.   I also wouldn't put it past the president* to attempt to use the DOJ to dig up dirt on his opponents.  The next few months should be interesting in the Chinese sense of the word.