SHINING, GLEAMING, STREAMING, FLAXEN, WAXEN

Could our long national nightmare be traced back to Donald Trump’s hair?  Men react differently to hair loss.  Personally, I’ve chosen to ignore mine.  I wash whatever’s left up there and get on with my day.  Other men shave their heads when the start going bald, or wear toupees.  Some try medical interventions like transplants, lotions, or pills.  Donald Trump is a pill guy.

Which brings us to the weirdest story of the month, even though it’s only May 3, and even though the story concerns events that happened fifteen months ago.  I’m referring to the raid Donald Trump launched on the office of his doctor, Harold Bornstein.  Trump sent his private bodyguard Keith Schiller, plus one of his lawyers and a third unidentified goon, to Bornstein’s office to take Trump’s medical records away from his doctor. 

Bornstein says that Trump had accounts under several fake names as well as his real name.  Why would a patient use multiple identities with the same doctor?  And why would the doctor go along with it?  Makes me wonder if Bornstein was Trump’s candyman, over-prescribing some drugs to meet Trump’s demand and using fake names to avoid arousing suspicion.  At any rate, Trump’s henchmen took the pseudonymous records too.

As I understand it, Trump was entitled to COPIES of his medical records if he requested them, but the originals belonged to Dr. Bornstein.  But Donald Trump didn’t bother to submit a request.  His hired muscle showed up at Bornstein’s office and simply took what they wanted.  

It’s hard to feel sympathy for Bornstein, who cuts a faintly ridiculous figure and didn’t help his reputation when, in December, 2015, he released a letter attesting that candidate Trump’s "physical strength and stamina are extraordinary.  If elected, Mr. Trump, I can state unequivocally, will be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency."

Now Bornstein claims that Trump dictated that letter himself.  Since the language is very Trump-like, the allegation is believable.  But what kind of doctor just signs off on whatever nonsense his patient writes?  Makes me wonder if Bornstein is a doctor in the same way that Michael Cohen is a lawyer.  They both seem like guys who had one main client (who often used aliases).

The Bornstein raid took place on February 3, 2017, two days after Bornstein revealed that Trump was taking Propecia (aka Finasteride) to prevent hair loss.  Why might that be a big deal?  The drug has side effects, and the symptoms can persist indefinitely even after discontinuing the drug.  Those symptoms include erectile dysfunction, chronic depression, insomnia, weight gain, and confusion. 

Makes me wonder if Trump’s mental decline might be at least partially attributable to his long-term use of Propecia.  Meanwhile, Trump’s hair marches on.

And that concludes the story of Harold Bornstein, the latest chapter in the ongoing melodrama called “Everything Trump Touches Dies.”

WHEN YOU GET TO MY DOOR, TELL THEM BORIS SENT YOU

Jonathan Chait, in New York Magazine (link below) speculates that Michael Cohen has already flipped – or at least that the Trump Crime Family believes that he’s already flipped.  That’s why Trump’s pals at the National Enquirer are trying to sabotage Cohen’s reputation.  As Chait puts it, “Discrediting Cohen is a break-glass-in-case-of-emergency move that makes no sense unless Cohen has already flipped.”

Revelatory highlight:  Cohen was involved in an insurance scam in New York that investigators named Operation BORIS.  “BORIS” stood for Big Organized Russian Insurance Scam, in which Russian emigres staged auto accidents and tried to sue for medical expenses. 

Revelatory quote: “Cohen is not, as I assumed before reading the story, an unethical lawyer who enjoys acting like a goon. He is (almost certainly) a crook who happens to have a law degree.”

Yep, Donald Trump hires only the best people.

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/04/has-michael-cohen-already-flipped-on-donald-trump.html

HEAVENLY SHADES OF NIGHT ARE FALLING, IT'S TWILIGHT TIME

A few minutes before sunset last night, I leashed up our newly adopted dog, Marigold, and headed out to meet our friends Cindy and Rudi for a walk.  As we reached the street, we saw three kids running south, with an adult in hot pursuit. 

It was a pleasant evening, so there were a lot of other dogs and dog walkers out and about, and my initial focus was to keep Marigold out of the way to avoid a barking frenzy. 

Then a neighbor drove by and yelled “call the police.”  By then a crowd of neighbors began to gather on the corner, and since I was the only one who had a cell phone with me, I placed the 911 call.  They put me on hold for four minutes, and then someone picked up.  I handed the phone off to Bill, the guy who was chasing the kids.  911 took his information and said the police were on their way.

The story we pieced together was that the kids had shoplifted stuff from a Ross store a nearby shopping plaza.  Bill caught the slowest kid, who said he was friends with the other two but claimed not to have been involved in the theft.  Marigold and I, plus several other neighbors, stood around on the corner for 30 minutes, waiting for the police to arrive.  Finally, Cindy and I decided to proceed with our scheduled dog walk.  Twenty minutes later, when we’d circled back to our starting point, the crowd was beginning to disperse.

Long story short, the cops never showed up.  Two hours later, I got a call from a police officer and told her what I knew, which wasn’t much.  She thanked me and we said goodbye.

I guess the moral of the story is that if you're a petty criminal in Tucson, your odds of getting away with your crime are pretty good.  Even if you can't outrun your neighbor, you can probably outrun the law.

SMOKE GETS IN YOUR EYES

I’d never heard of Michelle Wolf until this weekend.  She made news at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner by making the following joke about Sarah Huckabee Sanders: “She burns facts and then she uses that ash to create a perfect smoky eye.” 

The right-wing outrage machine seized on the comment and claimed that Wolf was mocking Sanders’ physical appearance.  I have several thoughts, the first of which is:  bullshit.

The joke (whether you think it was funny or not) is obviously about the undeniable truth that Sanders lies a lot in her job as White House Press Secretary.  In the Trump Administration, lying is part of the job description.  Just ask her predecessor, Sean Spicer. 

It’s possible that for insiders – and the White House correspondents are by definition insiders – some small subset of the joke was about Sanders’ makeup choices.  But her makeup choices are entirely voluntary.  And as far as I’m concerned, that means they’re fair game for humor.  Sanders’ eye makeup is no different than Trump’s penchant for weird hair and long red ties. 

The Republican reaction is understandable.  Reprehensible, but understandable.  This is a proxy war, and Republicans are jumping on this because they haven’t had a chance to go on the attack in ages.  They’ll milk it as long as they can.

The press, however, have no such excuse.  By and large, they’ve reverted to type, cringing in the face of right-wing criticism and mumbling about a breach of civility. 

Another person I’d never heard of until this weekend, Matt Schlapp, declared that “journalists shouldn’t be the one to say the President or his spokesperson is lying.”  And again, I say, bullshit.  That’s exactly the job of journalists covering the White House.  If they can’t call out obvious lies, they’re not journalists, they’re propagandists – like Matt Schlapp, who’s the chairman of the American Conservative Union.  

The White House Correspondents’ Dinner is an anachronism.  It was meant to demonstrate that the press and the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue are basically on the same side.  In better times than these, that might be true.  But in the Trump era it can’t be true.

In show business terms, the White House Correspondents' Dinner is basically a "roast," like those Dean Martin/Don Rickles TV specials  of yesteryear.  Some of the most powerful people in the world show up and let comedians make fun of them for a couple of hours.  If you can't stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen, for crying out loud.

I CAN'T GET NO SATISFACTION

2018 has been a year of vocabulary building for me.  Last week, I learned a new word – “Incel.”  It means involuntarily celibate, which certainly described my adolescence.  But this being 2018, involuntary celibacy has become a protest movement, the latest fad among men’s rights advocates. 

It’s easy to mock these guys, but some of the more impressionable lads among them have turned violent.  Last week in Toronto, a self-described Incel committed mass murder by driving his van down a busy sidewalk and killing 10 pedestrians.  He wasn’t the first misogynistic mass murderer.  In 1989, a sexually frustrated shooter killed 14 people in Montreal.  In 2014, another sexually frustrated guy went on a shooting spree in Santa Barbara, killing 6 people and wounding 14 others.

Members of the Incel movement aren’t just horny.  What separates them from me in my adolescence is that Incels have a sense of entitlement.  Women owe them, dammit!  They’re mad as hell and they aren’t going to take it anymore.  This being 2018, of course Incels have online forums dedicated to nursing their grievances.  Because spending all your time online with other lonely men complaining about women is a surefire way to attract hot babes.

Radical Incels are at war with the world of Chads (sexually active men) and Stacys (sexually active women).  Incels believe that they’re an oppressed minority, and they demand justice.  And by justice, they apparently mean random acts of violence against women who won’t have sex with them. 

Donald Trump isn’t an Incel, but he shares the Incel’s sense of entitlement.  Trump’s money and fame give him access to women.  He can marry the ones he temporarily likes, cheat on them with impunity, and dump them when he’s ready to move on.  “When you’re famous, they let you do it.”  That’s the ultimate Incel fantasy. 

C'EST SI BON, LOVERS SAY THAT IN FRANCE

A tale of two marriages, proving that one picture is indeed worth a thousand words.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump decided to call Fox & Friends on Thursday morning.  He ranted.  He raved.  He said that Michael Cohen’s work on his behalf represented only “a tiny, tiny fraction” of Cohen’s legal business.  He also admitted that Michael Cohen represented him in the Stormy Daniels case.  Both Stormy’s lawyer, as well as federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York, were delighted.  Trump’s own attorneys?  Presumably less so.  It’ll be a lot harder for them to argue that any Trump-Cohen communication apart from those relating to Stormy are subject to attorney-client privilege.

But the really weird part of the conversation was the ending, which was like something out of Luis Bunuel’s The Exterminating Angel, or maybe the Eagles’ “Hotel California.”  The Fox hosts were desperately trying to get him to hang up.  Thanks for calling in, we know you’re busy, call again soon, have a great day, etc.  Nothing worked.  Trump was so far into his litany of grievances that he couldn’t recognize the common social cues that he was hearing.  

The signs of mental instability that Trump occasionally displays had been dormant for a while, at least in public.  On Thursday, they resurfaced bright and early.  Pressure from his legal troubles?  Or maybe just a continued deterioration of his mental faculties?  Will we ever know the truth about Trump’s mental health?

I'M JUST LOOKING FOR CLUES AT THE SCENE OF THE CRIME

I’m not going to take the 5th.  I’ve been to Prague.  My wife and I were there for a few days in 2015 and we had a great time.  We’d like to go back someday.  There were pubs named after John Lennon and James Dean.  Medieval Prague, including the 14th century Charles Bridge connecting it to the modern city, is better than Disneyland. 

I took the photo of the brass plaque from the Charles Bridge on that trip.  It’s an image of St. John the Confessor, who was wrapped in chains and tossed off the bridge in 1393 at the behest of King Wenceslaus IV.  That Wenceslaus was not the Good King in the Christmas carol, who lived 400 years earlier.  Bad King Wenceslaus had a suspicious mind, and he was pissed at John because John refused to snitch on Queen Sofia’s confessional secrets.  The plaque is shiny because rubbing it is said to bring good luck. 

I do solemnly swear that, while I was in Prague, I did not meet with any Russian spies.  Not even one.  And I’d be happy to tell to Robert Mueller, under oath. 

You know who really doesn’t want to testify to Robert Mueller under oath that he’s never met with Russian spies in Prague?  Donald Trump’s fixer, Michael Cohen, that’s who. 

Former British spy Christopher Steele asserted that Cohen visited Prague in August, 2016, to work with Russian agents to help keep the Trump-Russia connections on the downlow.  Cohen denied it, and whipped out his passport to demonstrate the absence of a Czech Republic entry stamp.  That made   Cohen’s assertion that he’s never been to Prague is central Donald Trump’s much larger claim that the whole Steele Dossier, pee tape and all, is fake. 

But now Cohen’s claim is being challenged.  The absence of a Czech passport stamp doesn’t prove anything, one way or the other.  There’s this thing called the Schengen Agreement, in which 26 European countries have eliminated passport checks at their mutual borders.  My wife and I crossed borders between the Czech Republic, Germany, Austria, and Hungary without showing a passport. 

Now the McClatchy news organization has cited two sources (anonymous, of course; link below) that say Robert Mueller has evidence that Cohen did, in fact, visit Prague.

But there’s a caveat.  Usually when this sort of news breaks, other press outlets like the New York Times and the Washington Post quickly find sources of their own to confirm the story.  This time?  Crickets.

So who knows?  Maybe McClatchy is wrong.  Or maybe – I’m kind of leaning this way – the city of Prague is a red herring, and Cohen met with Russian spies somewhere else.  The truth is out there, and I’ll bet Robert Mueller finds it. 

In the meantime, if you have a chance to visit Prague, go for it.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/white-house/article208870264.html

STILL CRAZY AFTER ALL THESE YEARS

Terry Rex Duling, in a comment on my “Dufo, What a Crazy Guy” post, points out the biggest downside of a Trump impeachment – President Mike Pence.  Frying pan, meet fire.  The mind reels. 

My Indiana friends know more about Pious Pence than I do.  Wikipedia says that he was a right wing talk show host, a Tea Party congressman, and governor of Indiana.  I first heard of him in 2015, when he signed Indiana’s so-called “Religious Freedom Restoration Act,” a transparent attempt to legalize discrimination against LGBT people. 

Arizona’s Republican governor Jan Brewer vetoed a similar bill in 2014, so it’s fair to conclude that Mike Pence is both more conservative than Brewer (whose claim to fame was that she wagged her finger in President Obama’s face), and also dumber.  Brewer knew what happened when Arizona Governor Ev Mecham repealed the Martin Luther King holiday in 1987.  There was a huge national backlash, and bye-bye Super Bowl.

Sure enough, Pence was faced with the threat of boycotts from the NBA, the NCAA, as well as Subaru USA and Angie’s List.  Pence signed legislation that appears to have defanged the law for all practical purposes.  I’ve read that Pence was pretty unpopular by the end of his first term as governor. 

Then fate, in the form of Paul Manafort, stepped in.  Yes, the very same Paul Manafort who is under indictment from Robert Mueller made Mike Pence Vice President.  Donald Trump reportedly wanted Chris Christie as his running mate, but Manafort pushed hard for Pence.  He even lied to Trump about a non-existent mechanical problem with Trump’s plane to keep him in Indianapolis.  Trump spent the evening with Pence, and the rest is history.  It would be interesting to know how and why Manafort became such a fan of Mike Pence. 

But wait – there’s more!  Pence’s potential Russian connections don’t stop with Manafort.  Remember that Donald Trump claimed that he fired Mike Flynn not for unauthorized contacts with Russians, but for lying to Mike Pence about those Russian contacts.  That always seemed fishy to me. 

Yesterday, Flynn’s son tweeted that his father “did not lie to Pence (or anyone else in the admin) about his perfectly legal and appropriate conversations w Russian AMB Kislyak in Dec 2016.  Why would a highly decorated military intel officer lie about something legal?” 

That’s a great question, Mike Flynn Jr.  Especially since your highly decorated dad later lied to the FBI about exactly that. 

Why would Flynn Sr. tell Pence the truth and lie to the FBI?  Lying to the VP might not be a good idea, but lying to the FBI is a crime by definition.  Curioser and curioser. 

Of course, it’s always possible that Flynn Jr. is simply lying.  Maybe lying just runs in the family.  Pence has been as vague as possible on the matter while providing cover for Trump’s story.  But there are some important unanswered questions about connections between Pence and Russia.  I hope Robert Mueller clears that up someday.

Be that as it may, let us gird our loins and consider the hypothetical presidency of Michael Richard Pence, 46th president of the USA.  We’ll set aside the question of what happened to Donald Trump in this scenario.  Maybe he decided he’d rather play golf seven days a week instead of just two or three.  Maybe a health problem surfaced.  Or maybe a Democratic wave in 2018 made the surviving congressional Republicans mad enough to put impeachment in play in 2019.  For the sake of the argument, we’ll just stipulate that, however it happened, 45 is gone sometime in 2019 or early 2020.

Terry notes that 46 would be a good deal more dignified than 45, which would win him friends in the press.  My guess is that the dominant media narrative would be something like, “Let us be grateful that our long national nightmare is over.  Let us put aside partisan differences and unite behind President Pence.”

Mike Pence is religious in a way that no president has been since maybe ever.  But I can’t see a path to implementing a religious agenda in 21st century America.  Republican control of Congress is likely to be broken, at least in the House.  And however popular Pence may be inside his own party, he doesn’t have Trump’s sleazy charisma.  He won’t be able to rouse the rabble the way Trump did.  He’d enjoy a short-lived burst of good will, and then reality would set in.  If Governor Mike Pence couldn’t turn Indiana into the Republic of Gilead, he won’t make much headway in a largely secular nation of 325 million people.

I say “largely secular” not because I think that most Americans aren’t religious or spiritual in some way, but because I believe that most religious/spiritual Americans understand instinctively that they can’t forcibly convert millions of their fellow citizens to the One True Path, whatever they imagine it to be.  The only way for 325 million people to get along is to live and let live.  Disagree without being disagreeable, and all those civics class clichés.  That’s how we keep the United States united.

What we’re left with, though, is the uncomfortable fact that a substantial cohort of American voters, perhaps as many as 30%, responded to Donald Trump’s siren song.  If we’re lucky, the 2018 and 2020 elections may put them in their place temporarily, but they are a large enough cohort to represent a real impediment to small-d democratic government.  The passage of time will probably reduce their numbers, since older white folks make up a disproportionate percentage of these dead-enders. 

But there are entire regions in America where a right-wing white Christian monoculture has deep roots.  They have become a minority group, and they hate it.  They don’t want to live and let live.  If conversion by the sword was good enough for medieval Christians (and Muslims too, it must be said), then by golly it’s good enough for them.  Only with assault rifles this time around. 

Dealing with this cohort compassionately but firmly will be the greatest challenge Democrats face in future presidential elections. 

The image that accompanies this post is a map of the results of the 2016 presidential election by county.  There are a helluva lot of red counties.  The good news is that most of them are sparsely populated.  The bad news is that the Electoral College was constructed to reward rural regions at the expense of more populous urban areas.  The inherent small state bias of the Electoral College (where a vote in Wyoming counts 3.6 times as much as a vote in California) handed the 2016 election to Trump. 

It’s important to remember that Hillary Clinton got 3 million more popular votes than Trump.  A shift of only 100,000 votes in three states would have changed the outcome in the Electoral College.  In the short term, what Democrats need to do is find a way to shift those 100,000 votes.  I think that’s eminently doable.  I expect it to happen, regardless of whether Donald Trump or Mike Pence is the Republican standard bearer in 2020.

In the long term, if I were a Democratic Party strategist, I’d make the abolition of the Electoral College and the direct popular election of the president one of my top priorities. 

DUFO, WHAT A CRAZY GUY

Donald Trump likes to insult people.  This is known.  This weekend, in one of his rage-tweets, he called his Attorney General “Mr. Magoo,” and his Deputy Attorney General “Mr. Peepers.” 

J. Quincy Magoo’s career lasted long enough that people of a certain age probably get the reference, although J. Beauregard Sessions looks more like the Keebler Elf than the near-sighted Mr. Magoo.

On the other hand, Rod Rosenstein does indeed bear a passing resemblance to Mr. Peepers.  But how many people recognized the reference?  Mr. Peepers was a sitcom from the primitive days of early 50s television.  It starred Wally Cox as a mild mannered junior high science teacher.  Mr. Peepers was probably a little too mild-mannered, even for the Eisenhower era.  It was kind of an anemic version of the 70s hit Welcome Back Kotter, minus John Travolta and the Sweathogs.  The show only lasted three seasons.

Wally Cox, on the other hand, led a more interesting life.  Cox and Marlon Brando were best friends, and even roommates for a while early in their careers.  This story sounds an urban legend, but Wikipedia says that when Cox died in 1973, Brando claimed his ashes and kept them in his bedroom, where he “conversed with them nightly.”

That’s enough nostalgia for the moment. 

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again.  Neither Sessions nor Rosenstein are Deep State moles.  Donald Trump appointed both of them just last year.  Because Trump’s intention is to only hires toadies, he was dumbfounded when Sessions recused himself from the Trump-Russia investigation (which may be the only principled thing Sessions has done in his entire political career), and when Rosenstein decided to take his oath of office seriously.

Trump was confused because he had no previous experience in dealing with honorable men.  He obviously loathes both Sessions and Rosenstein, but although he could theoretically fire them, doing so at this point would simply feed into the obstruction of justice narrative that Robert Mueller is building.  Instead, he tries to humiliate them, hoping that they’ll resign in shame, which is how he deal with his toadies.  But his Trump Inc. toadies didn’t take an oath to uphold the Constitution.

What Trump doesn’t understand – and is probably incapable of understanding – is that tweeting insults at his employees makes him, not them, look petty and foolish. 

In theory, Trump is the most powerful man in the world.  In practice, he can't wield that power effectively because he and his legion of grifters don't understand the rules they're trying to break.

THE ELEPHANT SNEEZED AND FELL ON HIS KNEES

A tip of the hat to Vox Media’s Matt Yglesias, from whom I learned the term “collapse without replacement.”  It’s what happens when a movement is in denial about the fact that it has abandoned its core principles.  When that happens, it can’t grow or adapt.  All it's left with, Yglesias says, is that “a degenerate version of the old agenda.” 

Yglesias used the term to describe the decadence of the Republican Party.  Not that this was breaking news, but I found the descriptor useful. 

Collapse without replacement perfectly describes the hollow shell of a political party that Donald Trump encountered in 2016.  Trump huffed and puffed, and the GOP’s much touted “deep bench” – more than a dozen governors, congressmen, plus assorted randos – collapsed like a house made of straw.  

But the important point is that Trump didn’t corrupt the Republican Party.  He simply exposed the corruption that was already there, just waiting for someone like him to give them permission to embrace their dark side.

What was once the “Party of Lincoln” is now the party of neo-Confederates and neo-Nazis.  The former party of fiscal responsibility now happily creates trillion-dollar budget deficits to help the rich can get richer.  People who once boasted of being “family values” voters have cast their lot with a compulsive adulterer, liar, and thief. 

And speaking of family values, collapse without replacement is a pretty apt description of what has happened to the white Evangelical movement.  If white Evangelicals ever believed what Jesus taught in the Gospels, those days are long gone. 

They ignore Jesus’ teaching that it would be easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.  Bummer, dude.  What Republican voter wants to hear that?  How much more pleasant it is to listen to prosperity gospel hucksters in megachurches who tell them Jesus wants them to be rich.

Evangelicals claim to be “pro-life,” but they’re really only pro-fetus.  After all, when fetuses become babies, they develop bad habits, like needing food, shelter, and education.  Some of them turn into anchor babies and welfare queens.  Best to ignore them once they leave the womb.

Blessed are the merciful?  Turn the other cheek?  Love thy neighbor as thyself?  Do unto others as you would have them do unto you?  Nowadays, those sentiments would get you branded as a social justice warrior.

Evangelicals would be scared shitless if they really believed what Jesus said in Matthew 25:40-41: “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me….  Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels.”

RUDY, A MESSAGE TO YOU

Rudy Giuliani (the blonde on the left in the photo that accompanies this post) simply isn’t Donald Trump’s type.  Try as he might, he doesn’t look much like Ivanka.  But 18 years after the photo was taken, Giuliani and Trump are hooking up for one last fling.   

Back in the 80s, Giuliani was the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York – the same SDNY that is currently putting the squeeze on Trump’s personal fixer, Michael Cohen.  Now comes news that Trump has added Giuliani to his legal team. 

It’s an interesting move for both men.  Giuliani is an attorney, but he currently works for a high-powered firm that “advises” large energy corporations on government relations.  Thirty years ago, back in SDNY, he was a prosecutor.  Trump needs a defense lawyer.  Since he has tried and failed to hire one of those, he’s settled for Rudy, a long-time friend.

Not coincidentally, the White House leaked a story that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein has assured Trump that he’s not a target of Mueller’s investigation.  Trump is said to have found this comforting, but it doesn’t mean that Mueller intends to exonerate Trump. 

Whether Trump knows it or not, “target” is a very specific legal term.  A target of an investigation is someone who has been, or will soon be, indicted.  Since Mueller works for the Department of Justice, and since the DoJ is on record as believing that a sitting president can’t be indicted, Rosenstein’s alleged assurance doesn’t mean much.  Trump may not be one of Mueller’s targets, but I’ll bet he’s one of Mueller’s subjects. 

At the moment, Rudy Giuliani is portraying himself as a peacemaker.  You can be sure that Giuliani knows the difference between a target and a subject, but he may have concluded that things will be more peaceful if he doesn’t burden his new client with too much information.  For public consumption, at least, Giuliani says he respects Robert Mueller and wants him to finish his work.  I’m no Giuliani fan, but I regard that as a hopeful sign.

Speaking of targets and subjects, the White House seems to be pretty nervous about Michael Cohen, who is definitely a target in SDNY.  Trump’s cronies are engaging in remarkably public speculation about whether or not Cohen is a stand-up guy.  The consensus seems to be that Cohen will fold under pressure.  He’ll give up Donald Trump if that’s what it takes to get a lighter sentence.

On the matter of collusion with Russia, Trump continues to have defenders, both in Congress and in the media, despite the fact that the more we learn about the Mueller investigation, the more foolish those defenders look.   No smoking gun, they say.  Move along, nothing to see here.  Meanwhile, the noose tightens.

But it's instructive that none of Trump's usual defenders are being Cheerful Charlies about the Cohen investigation.  Even people close to Trump believe that whatever the FBI seized in the Cohen raid spells trouble for El Presidente.

DE MORTUIS NIL NISI BONUM

I took four years of Latin in high school.  Along the way, I memorized quite a few Latin aphorisms, a few of which have stuck with me all these decades later.  “De mortuis nil nisi bonum” is the Latin translation of a statement attributed to Chilon of Sparta, one of the seven sages of ancient Greece.  It means “do not speak ill of the dead.” 

When Barbara Bush died, two people – one obscure professor on the Left, and one notorious friend of Donald Trump on the Right – chose to ignore that advice.  The obscure professor’s name is Randa Jarrar, who called Mrs. Bush “an amazing racist,” and added “I’m glad the witch is dead.”  Donald Trump’s pal is Roger Stone, who called Mrs. Bush “a nasty drunk.” 

I have no idea whether Barbara Bush was a racist or a drunk.  I voted against her husband twice, and her son twice.  But how clueless do you have to be to launch such crude posthumous attacks on a 92 year old whose main sins were that she was the wife and/or mother of politicians you disliked? 

Jarrar has tenure at Fresno State University.  Stone is old and rich.  A plague on both their houses, I say.

DEVIL OR ANGEL? I CAN'T MAKE UP MY MIND

There’s an ancient Greek legend dating back to the second millennium BCE, known as the Gordian Knot.  In the Kingdom of Phrygia, there was a complicated knot that no one could untangle.  Even though an oracle prophesied that whoever untangled the knot would rule all Asia, the puzzle confounded all comers for centuries. 

In 333 BCE, Alexander the Great rode into town, pulled out his sword, and sliced the knot down the middle.  He was an outside the box thinker.  Alexander’s empire didn’t include all of what we think of Asia today, but he got as far as the Indus River, which was the end of the world as far as the Greeks were concerned.

James Comey’s reputation is a modern-day Gordian Knot.  Not that it will take centuries to solve.  Not that whoever solves it will rule all Asia.  And not that I’m suggesting that anyone cleave Comey in two with a sword.  But the publication of his book has resurrected the argument about whether he’ll go down in history as a good guy or bad guy.  They say that history is written by the winners, and we don’t know for sure who’s going to win the War for American Democracy (2016-?). 

In my view, Comey will go down in history as the person who tipped the balance in the 2016 election and made Donald Trump president.  Boo, Comey! 

But with any luck, Comey will also go down in history as one of the people who did the most to ensure that Donald Trump’s presidency ended early, and in disgrace.  Yay, Comey! 

That’s a complicated legacy.  It has a lot of people flummoxed.  But the question doesn’t have to be either/or.  I think it’s both/and.

In the days before the election everybody – Comey, me, and even Donald Trump – thought that Hillary Clinton would win the election with room to spare.  Comey knew there was no legal case against Hillary, but he was also dealing with a rogue group of Giuliani disciples in the FBI’s New York field office, who were determined to indict her.  He tried to split the difference by exonerating Clinton and criticizing her at the same time. 

He blew it.  I was pissed off. 

In late October, I argued that President Obama, or President Hillary Clinton after she was inaugurated, should fire his sorry ass.  And then came election day, and that changed the narrative forever.

As best I can tell, once Comey met the new president, he was stunned by Trump’s blatant disregard for the Constitution.  Comey has been criticized for not calling Trump out immediately, but maybe it was for the best.  Comey doesn’t strike me as a devious man, so I assume that he didn’t deliberately maneuver Donald Trump into firing him.  But the effect was the same.  James Comey, simply by choosing to honor his oath of office rather than Trump’s demands for personal loyalty, gave Trump enough rope to hang himself. 

When Trump fired Comey, he set in motion a chain of events that included the appointment of Special Counsel Robert Mueller, all the indictments we’ve seen so far, and all the indictments that will surely come in the future.  Comey’s firing gave rise to the possibility that the Trump crime family will be brought to justice.  Only time will tell how future historians will judge Comey’s legacy.

As far as I’m concerned, the Comey story isn’t about whether he’s a bad guy or a good guy.  He’s been both in the past couple of years.  His story is about a flawed man seeking redemption.  I don’t know how that story will turn out, but it’s a story I can identify with. 

HOW MUCH IS THAT DOGGIE IN THE WINDOW?

My Facebook friends who actually know me are probably aware that our dog Hobbes died, basically of old age, in mid-January. 

On April 6, we adopted a new dog. Her name is Marigold, which is not a name we’d have chosen, but she responds to it, so we’ll get used to it.  She’s a four-year-old hound mix, maybe a Redtick Coonhound.  A friend who’s a volunteer dog walker for the Humane Society spotted her and gave us a heads up. 

For those of you who’ve known me for a really long time, I’ll add that Marigold’s coloration is quite similar to that of our dog Ruby, back in the 80s.  But Ruby was a beagle mix.  Marigold is taller and heavier.  In fact, our vet says she could stand to lose five or six pounds.  My doctor says the same thing about me, so we have a lot in common.

Marigold was turned in by her previous owners because she barked and annoyed their neighbors.  They said she also chewed stuff in their house, and occasionally peed inside.  The Humane Society says her previous owners were “elderly,” which is probably how they’d describe me.  But after spending ten days with Marigold, my guess is that her previous owners didn’t provide her with enough stimulus or exercise.  Apart from one peeing incident within the first 15 minutes of bringing her home, she hasn’t displayed any of those bad habits with us.

She's really sweet - affectionate without being clinging, and good with both people and other dogs.  The Humane Society recommended that we crate her, so we bought a large crate.  The first day, she wouldn't go near it, but a couple of mornings later, I got up and found her sleeping in it.  We haven't left her home alone for more than two or three hours, but so far, so good. 

YOU'LL FIND HIM ON THE SIDE OF LAW AND ORDER

Yesterday (Saturday, April 14) was my birthday. I’m now 71. As a good friend of mine says every year on his birthday, so far it feels a lot like 70.

Unlike most Zero year birthdays, turning 70 last year felt like a big deal for some reason, so I decided to look up my life expectancy at birth. It turns out that males born in 1947 had a life expectancy of 64.4 years. I felt strangely proud of beating the Grim Reaper. It was like getting an “exceeds expectations” on a personnel evaluation.

Another interpretation of the same information is that I’m living on borrowed time.

I’ve got some aches and pains associated with old age, and I could stand to lose a few pounds, but otherwise I’m in good health, and I have every hope of living long enough to see constitutional government restored to the United States of America.

I thank everyone who offered birthday wishes on Facebook, as well as those who have said nice things about the things I post. I appreciate it.

The photo accompanying this post is me in 1951, a few weeks after my th birthday.  That kid had no idea what was in store for him in the next 67 years!

FATHER LEFT, HE NEVER EVEN MARRIED MOM

In a week of surprises, the most surprising news might be that there is at least a semi-credible possibility that Donald Trump fathered a child “out of wedlock” with his housekeeper back in the 1980s.  That would have been when he was married to his first wife, Ivana.  I’m not surprised that Trump committed adultery.  He seems to have done that regularly, whichever wife he happened to be married to at the time.  I’m not surprised that some of his liaisons resulted in pregnancies.  That’s what happens when you refuse to use condoms.  No, the only surprise is that the mother resisted the pressure from Trump’s fixers to abort the child. 

(I put the phrase “out of wedlock” in quotes because it strikes me as incredibly quaint.  But it’s better than “love child” because I seriously doubt that any love was involved.  And it’s better than “illegitimate child” or “bastard,” because those terms are pejorative, and imply that the kid was to blame somehow.  Donald Trump is the only bastard in this scenario.)

I’m not surprised that Donald Trump was willing to listen to Steve Bannon’s harebrained scheme to declare Trump’s only real lawyer, Ty Cobb, to be incompetent.  After that, Bannon said, Trump should claim that because he got bad legal advice, Mueller shouldn’t be able to use the emails and other documentation the White House turned over to the Special Counsel.  Instead, Trump should assert a retroactive claim of executive privilege over everything.  And then basically burn the Department of Justice down to the ground.  Fire Sessions, Rosenstein, Mueller, and even Trump’s handpicked FBI Director Christopher Wray. 

Cooler heads seem to have prevailed, at least for the moment.  But Trump issued an expression of confidence in Ty Cobb, which is often the kiss of death.  If Cobb is kicked to the curb, Trump’s entire legal team will consist of his New York fixers and Fox News commentators.

I think what Trump would really like is to fire James Comey again.  I’m a little surprised that after hearing about the possibility of issuing retroactive orders, it hasn’t occurred to Trump that he should fire Comey retroactively as of January 20, 2017, and then declare that the whole obstruction of justice narrative has just been invalidated.  So far, though, Trump has settled for calling Comey an “untruthful slimeball.”    

Takes one to know one, as kids used to say. 

And while we’re on the subject of Trump’s tendency to project, I’m also not surprised to learn that Michael Cohen is threatening to plead the Fifth Amendment in future legal proceedings against him.  Ah, the good old Fifth Amendment.  Perhaps you remember that Donald Trump said at two separate campaign rallies in September, 2016, “If you are not guilty of a crime, what do you need immunity for?  The mob takes the Fifth Amendment.  If you’re innocent, why are you taking the Fifth Amendment?”

It probably won’t make much difference if Cohen takes the Fifth.  What the hell, big fella, take all the amendments you want.  Take the entire Constitution.  You were dumb enough to tape your conversations, and now the FBI has those tapes.  You’re screwed.

(And oh, by the way, it’s a matter of public record that Donald Trump pleaded the Fifth Amendment 97 times in 1990, in legal depositions related to his divorce from Ivana. I have a feeling that won’t be the last time Trump pleads the Fifth.)

The truth is, Trump and his legal advisors are grasping at straws.  They’re reduced to floating every crackpot idea they can think of.  They know that Fox will parrot the party line, and that national news outlets will at least repeat their talking points, even if they balance their reporting with skepticism from legitimate legal scholars.  They’re down to one strategy – obfuscation.  Cry fake news at every opportunity to keep the Base on your side, and count on the Base to keep congressional Republicans cowering in their offices. 

It’s a strategy that has served them well so far.  The depressing thing is that a third of the electorate believes whatever Trump says.  On the other hand, that means that two thirds of the country knows bullshit when they hear it.

Speaking of which, here’s the latest from our very stable genius of a president:  “DOJ just issued the McCabe report - which is a total disaster. He LIED! LIED! LIED! McCabe was totally controlled by Comey - McCabe is Comey!! No collusion, all made up by this den of thieves and lowlifes!”

Takes one to know one, as the kids used to say.

YOU GOT TO KNOW WHEN TO HOLD 'EM, WHEN TO FOLD 'EM

Appearances can be deceiving, but it appears to me that Michael Cohen is leaning towards folding ‘em.  Reports from inside the Fuhrerbunker say that Trump now believes that Cohen – who once said he’d take a bullet for Trump – is going to flip. 

Cohen was a tough guy when it came to threatening women on Trump’s behalf, but when the FBI came knocking, he meekly thanked them for their professionalism.  Then he said, “Do I need this in my life?  No.  Do I want to be involved in this?  No.”  Perhaps even more significantly, he said those things on CNN, not Fox or Breitbart.  He sounds like a man who knows the jig is up.

There is more informed speculation (i.e., based on leaks from Cohen’s legal team) about what the FBI was after.  According to the New York Times, the warrant was executed by the public corruption unit of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan.  That sounds ominous all by itself.  They were looking for information on payoffs to women during the presidential campaign, both from The National Enquirer and from Cohen himself, as potentially illegal campaign contributions.  What did Cohen know – and do -about the infamous Access Hollywood tape?

And then there were the famous taxi medallions.  The Times says Cohen once operated a fleet of 200 cabs in New York City.  Did that involve tax fraud and/or money laundering?  If Cohen bought high, at c. $200,000 per medallion, that would be $40 million worth of taxis.  One theory is that Cohen borrowed money using the medallions as collateral.  This theory suggests that when the value of the medallions dropped significantly with the advent of Uber and Lyft, Cohen couldn’t pay his debts.  Time will tell. 

Oh, and the Cohen investigation is being run by Robert Khuzami, a Deep State Muslim sleeper agent activated by President Obama during his last days in office.  No, wait.  I got that wrong. 

Khuzami is a Republican.  He spoke at the 2004 Republican National Convention and donated to John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign.  He was born in Brooklyn, to Lebanese Christian parents.  He helped prosecute “blind sheik” Omar Abdel-Rahman for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.  Now he’s after Michael Cohen.

My understanding is that Donald Trump’s pardon powers cover federal crimes, which probably includes violations of campaign finance laws.  I don’t know what’s up with the taxi medallion thing, so I won’t speculate about a presidential pardon there.  It’s hard to imagine, though, that Cohen didn’t break a few state laws along the way.  

Word on the street is that Trump trusted Cohen more than anyone outside his family, and their relationship goes back to 2006.  He is to the Trump crime family what Tom Hagen was to the Corleones.  If Khuzami makes Cohen an offer he can’t refuse, every tree in the forest will fall.  (Two 70s metaphors for the price of one.)

Michael Cohen isn’t the only one who’s deciding that the jig is up.  Paul Ryan, having achieved his boyhood dream of rewriting the tax code to reward rich people at the expense of poor people, has decided to take the money and run.  Ryan isn’t nearly as smart as he and his fans in the mainstream media think he is, but he can read the writing on the wall.  He’ll get a comfortable sinecure from some right-wing billionaire. 

In some ways, though, the most amusing jig-is-up story so far this week comes from right-winger Erick W. Erickson, who printed a lightly expurgated conversation with a Republican congressman that took place in a D.C.-area Safeway supermarket (link below).  This politician, who appears on Fox to defend Trump in public, told Erickson privately, "It's like Forrest Gump won the presidency, but an evil, really f*cking stupid Forrest Gump. He can't help himself. He's just a f**king idiot who thinks he's winning when people are b*tching about him.”

It gets better.  Take a look.

https://www.themaven.net/theresurgent/erick-erickson/a-congressman-s-profanity-laced-tirade-in-a-safeway-grocery-store-SeHI2l5bIECGQn4gmnzGaw/?full=1

DEATH CAB FOR CUTIE

There have been more developments in the adventures of Michael Cohen since I last posted, so I thought I’d share a correction and an update.

The correction is that, contrary to my speculation this morning, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Geoffrey Berman, did NOT sign off on the Cohen raids.  Rather, he recused himself, which strikes me as a reasonable and ethical thing for a recent Trump appointee to do. 

The update is that multiple sources are now suggesting that one the FBI’s priorities in this series of raids was information about Cohen’s New York City taxi medallions.  As I understand it, a medallion is like a license to operate a cab in NYC, and before the advent of Uber and Lyft, they were pretty valuable.  As in worth upwards of $200,000. 

Sources say that Cohen first made his fortune by buying up taxi medallions.  Reports also say that Cohen owes some $37,000 in back taxes to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, but that would hardly seem worth the FBI’s time.  Word on the street is that Cohen used money from Ukraine to buy those taxi medallions, which also doesn’t seem illegal.  But if he were buying lots of them, at $200,000 a whack, it might suggest that there was money laundering going on. 

Cohen’s ties to Ukraine aren’t exactly secret.  His wife, and his brother’s wife, are both from Ukraine. 

Funny thing, Paul Manafort also did a lot of business in Ukraine.  Not only that, but in 2015, at the start of Trump’s campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, Ukrainian oligarch Victor Pinchuk paid Trump $150,000 to make a 20-minute televised speech to a group in Kiev.  Trump reportedly offended some people by saying “the Ukraine” rather than simply “Ukraine,” but hey, what’s an indefinite article among friends?  It does seem remarkable, though, that Trump and his associates have so many connections to Ukraine, particularly among factions loyal to Vladimir Putin.  Just a coincidence, I’m sure.

Meanwhile, speculation continues on potential non-taxi-related issues that Cohen’s files might contain that would put Donald Trump in jeopardy.

As the guy who cleaned up after Trump’s extra-marital affairs, Cohen undoubtedly has records of all the women Trump has paid off over the years.  Trump’s base, including all those holier-than-thou Evangelicals, have already agreed that the Seventh Commandment, the one against adultery, doesn’t apply to their boy.  But what if Cohen’s records showed that Trump had paid some of them to have abortions?  Would that shake anyone’s faith?  Or would Evangelicals stand by their man?  I’d say that would be a 50-50 proposition.  The real deal breaker for Evangelicals would be proof that Trump paid women to give up their firearms. 

There’s also been speculation that Cohen has copies of Trump’s tax returns.  As with adultery, Trump’s Base has reconciled itself to his larceny.  But what if his financial records showed that he wasn’t nearly as wealthy as he’s claimed?  A lot of Trump’s swagger rests on the claim that he’s a brilliant businessman, worth billions of dollars.  What if he’s just a garden variety millionaire?  Or worse, what if he actually owes more than he’s worth?

What a week!  And it's only Tuesday.

DING DONG THE WITCH IS

I’ve lost track of the number of times Donald Trump has referred to the investigations into his high crimes and misdemeanors a witch hunt. He did it again on Monday, after the FBI raided the home and office of his personal fixer, Michael Cohen, seizing material related to various illegal activities. It was an awfully aggressive move on the part of the G-Men, and I can’t help but wonder what they were looking for.

The early take is that they were after information on the Stormy Daniels payoff, which is possible. The other hypothesis I’ve seen is that Robert Mueller orchestrated the whole thing as a warning shot against the guy who keeps threatening to fire him. I guess that’s possible too.

According to one of Cohen’s lawyers, the raid was conducted under the auspices of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York (SDNY), working from information passed along by Robert Mueller.

As best I understand it, this means that Mueller’s team found evidence of illegal activity involving Cohen, but considered it to be outside the boundaries of his charge. In that situation, the rules require Mueller to consult with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who had the option to expand Mueller’s charge to include the new crimes or to refer the matter to a U.S. Attorney in the appropriate jurisdiction. He obviously chose the second option.

Once the witch hunters (oops, I mean the SDNY) received this new information, they didn’t just load their tommy guns and smash down Cohen’s doors, like the Gang Busters in days of old. No, nowadays there are a lot of namby-pamby procedures that must be followed. Imagine if the old school Puritan witch hunters in Salem back in 1692 had been forced to deal with such bureaucracy. We’d probably all be speaking Wiccan today.

As best I understand it (I’ll say a second time), a request for a warrant authorizing the raids must have been reviewed and approved by the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Geoffrey Berman – a man who (like Deputy AG Rosenstein) was appointed by Donald Trump. Berman was one of Rudy Giuliani’s law partners, and a donor to the Trump campaign. He is not, in other words, some Deep State mole dedicated to undermining Donald Trump.

Donald Trump is practically foaming at the mouth with rage. But the thing is, he brought it on himself.

“When you’re famous, they let you do it,” as Trump told Billy Bush on the Access Hollywood tape. He was bragging about getting away with various forms of sexual assault, but he could just as well have been talking about stiffing small businessmen or laundering money for unsavory characters from Eastern Europe. Trump did indeed get away with a lot of sketchy behavior. If he got caught – as he did, frequently – he bought his way out of trouble. He paid fines for his casino’s money laundering convictions and settlements to his ex-wives and paramours.

When you’re livin’ La Vida Trump, a few million dollars in fines and payoffs are just part of the cost of doing business.

Until you get to the White House. When you’re president, people start paying closer attention. That never occurred to Trump, probably because he didn’t expect to win. The irony of the situation is that the editors and publishers of the national press are instinctively deferential to power, and especially to Republicans in power.

A smart president would have found a way to manipulate that tendency. A smart president would have acquired at least a minimal understanding of the functions of federal law enforcement and the intelligence communities, and then done his best to stay out of their way. A smart president wouldn’t rely on Fox & Friends for all his information.

Donald Trump isn’t smart. Instead, he spent the past 18 months tweeting out every conspiracy theory he heard on Fox News. He insulted and threatened both the press and his own Justice Department, and he told obvious, demonstrable lies in the process.

Now he’s shocked and outraged that the press and the Justice Department are doing their jobs instead of just taking his word that he’s innocent.

Michael Cohen is the guy who did Trump’s dirty work for him. The legal and financial records he’s kept for Trump probably don’t have anything to do with the Russia election scandal, which is why Mueller passed them on to Berman.

Berman probably wishes this hadn’t been dumped in his lap, but I have to assume that if he finds evidence of criminality, he’ll prosecute. And what are the odds that Trump’s legal and financial records contain no evidence of illegal activity? Slim and none, I’d say.

BUT THE HANGMAN ISN'T HANGING AND THEY PUT YOU IN THE STREET

BUT THE HANGMAN ISN’T HANGING AND THEY PUT YOU ON THE STREET:  A conservative writer named Kevin Williamson has been in the news lately.  He was a columnist for The National Review, where his opinions were apparently pretty much par for the course.  On March 22, he was hired by The Atlantic, a center-left publication, ostensibly to offer their readership a sane conservative perspective on the events of the day. 

Unfortunately, no one at The Atlantic bothered to confirm that Williamson was sane.  “Sane,” not in the sense of hearing voices no one else hears, or seeing things no one else sees, but “sane” in the sense of being someone whose arguments, while perhaps unorthodox, would interest rather than outrage The Atlantic’s center-left readers.

Alas for the Williamson-Atlantic alliance, it soon developed that Williamson had some intemperate views.  He argued that women who had abortions were murderers. 

Outrage ensued.  Williamson’s position was a wee bit uncomfortable even for most conservatives, who typically reserve the term “murderer” for the doctors who perform abortions.  They’d rather stay silent on the status of the patients who solicit those abortions. 

Still, while Williamson’s position was harsh, in my view it had the virtue of being logically consistent with conventional conservative rhetoric.  Where Williamson crossed the line was that he didn’t stop with the label.  He took his position to its logical conclusion.  “I would totally go with treating it like any other crime, up to and including hanging.”  That’s a position that quite a few conservatives may support, but don’t really want to say out loud. 

Why?  Because according to a 2017 report by the Guttmacher Institute (link below), 23.7% of American women 45 and younger have had abortions.  Whether he was aware of the numbers of not, Williamson was advocating the hanging of over 15 million American women.  And he made that point not just once, in a tweet, but in a podcast interview as well.  It was a position he’d considered and was willing to defend.  That was too much for The Atlantic, who fired him a couple of weeks after hiring him.

Controversy ensued.  People on the Left said it was about time, that Williamson shouldn’t have been hired in the first place.  People on the Right used it as fodder for their unquenchable persecution complex:  People on the Left are snowflakes who can’t stand to have their world view questioned.  White people are the real victims.  White men, especially, who have been so persecuted that they’ve only been elected president 44 out of 45 times in American history. 

I don’t have much more to say about Williamson.  He hates abortion, which among his crowd makes him “pro-life.”  But he wants to hang 15 million people, which would put him in the company of people like Hitler, Stalin, and Pol Pot.  Executing 15 million people doesn’t seem like a “pro-life” position to me.  Williamson also hates contraception, the one proven method of reducing abortions.  Pretty clearly, what he really hates is female sexual autonomy.  Screw him.  Or rather, don’t screw him.

The controversy I want to talk about here is the one about the value of opinionizing.  Press outlets like The National Review and The Atlantic have subscribers, who pay their money for a certain product.  Paying customers have a right to an opinion about the content they spend their money on. 

But what about mere bloviators like yours truly?  I have opinions, and I hope they have some value, over and above blowing off steam.  Even though I don’t charge for them, I wonder why anyone reads what I write.  Which begs the question of why anyone reads a New York Times/Washington Post op-ed.

Do people read the Big Media editorial page (or my minor league Facebook posts) for new information?  Or for help in making sense of the information they’ve already heard about?  Or for an analysis of the new information that reinforces their particular view of the world?  Or maybe just for someone who can talk about this new information in a way that amuses them?

I try to touch all those bases in my posts.  If I got paid for my work, I’d feel an obligation to my corporate overlords to write more often, and to make sure my posts always contained click-worthy hooks.  But since what I write is free (albeit worth every penny), I don’t have to worry about pleasing an editor or a publisher.  But I’m not just writing to please myself.  I want to give my readers value for their time.  I know all of you have other things you could be doing.

I don’t really know how many people read what I write.  My guess is that my readership may reach a couple dozen people, give or take, on a good day.  And I’m fine with that.  I’m not trolling for more Likes or Shares. 

If I have a point, it’s this.  I’ve been writing about politics for two years now.  No one is more surprised about that than I am.  If you read what I write regularly, or even occasionally – thanks.  I appreciate it. 

I’m basically preaching to the choir, but the choir does good work and deserves to be acknowledged.  I hear you, friends, whether or not you hear me.  If I had wings, you’d be the wind beneath them.  Keep up the good work, and thanks to everyone/anyone who’s made it to the end of this post.

https://www.guttmacher.org/news-release/2017/abortion-common-experience-us-women-despite-dramatic-declines-rates