Tag Archives: trump

Some thoughts from a “law and order” man…

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The 45th President of the United States has been indicted by a Manhattan grand jury. As I understand the process, that means 16 members of the jury determined that there was sufficient evidence to allow the district attorney to bring formal changes against Donald Trump. With the exception of the single fact that the defendant formerly held the highest elective office in the land, it’s nothing that doesn’t happen a thousand times a week in jurisdictions around the country. 

The MAGA wing of social media has, predictably, erupted with cries of political persecution, false narratives, attempted distractions, and allegations of misconduct from everyone from the prosecutor to the sitting president. Collectively the usual talking heads of that movement have claimed almost everything – except that their guy is actually innocent. It’s a rare tweet indeed that asserts Donald Trump simply didn’t do the things of which the State of New York is accusing him. I’ll leave you to make of that what you will. 

Under the American justice system, all criminal defendants are entitled to the presumption of innocence. It’s the obligation of the prosecutor to prove them guilty beyond all reasonable doubt. You won’t see me making an assertion of guilt here. I wasn’t in the courthouse and wasn’t privy to the evidence presented to member of the grand jury. Nor, outside the crashing gong of social media, have I heard the arguments for the defense. My opinion is, at best, informed by widely available reports and, at worst, colored by the overwhelming contempt in which I hold both Donald Trump and his fellow travelers who have consumed the Republican Party.

The MAGA activists and I agree on one thing, though – this indictment and tomorrow’s arrest and arraignment of the 45th President of the United States is absolutely a low water mark in our politics. How they and I arrived at this assessment, though, are based on wildly differing views of what constitutes embarrassing, egregious, and criminal behavior. History, the kind written a hundred or so years from now, long after tempers have cooled and the actors have all left the stage, won’t be particularly kind to the brand of abject fuckery that Trump and his most devoted followers have wrought. Unfortunately, we’ll be watching this uniquely stupid story play out in real time for the rest of our lives – regardless of whether he’s found guilty by a New York jury or not. 

It’s just not that hard…

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The discovery of classified documents in an office used by the then former Vice President Biden, frankly, is no less troubling than the documents recovered from former President Trump’s home/resort in Florida. Some will point to the difference between the Biden documents being found and immediately turned over to representatives of the National Archives versus Trump’s tantruming fight to keep those he possessed as being a significant difference. I’m not at all sure I agree. 

The fact that the current president and his immediate predecessor are both caught up in a situation where classified documents were mishandled is, in a word, troubling. If a few more words were called for, I might wonder aloud what the actual fuck is wrong with these people we entrust with the highest levels of executive power?

Is it that they’ve been empowered so long that they believe rules simply no longer apply, or is it alternately that they’re too ragingly incompetent to keep up with basic procedures governing the care and use of classified materials? Is it malicious? Intentional? Is anyone working for them at least attempting to keep their shit squared away?

Maybe I only get incensed about this because I know what happens to people a lot further down the food chain than the Executive Office of the President when they misplace or otherwise fail to secure their red-edged paperwork.

I welcome a full and complete investigation into the circumstances surrounding the mishandling of classified information at the highest level and can only hope the guilty party receives the appropriate level of sanction for their abject fuckery. I promise you, it’s not that hard to keep information secured appropriately. Whoever cocked it up, whether president or peon should be roundly pummeled about the head and neck.

Say what you feel you need to about me, but one thing I can promise, is that my position on these issues is never, ever about the utter triviality of political party. I want to see the guilty hang regardless of what color tie they wear.

Don’t simp for sleazy, scumbag politicians… 

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I spent a good amount of time raging about Hillary Clinton’s mishandling of classified email back in 2016. I believed then and I believe now that if I stored classified email on my home computer, I’d be at best fired and at worst prosecuted and imprisoned. She shouldn’t receive special consideration due to her august and lofty position. 

In 2017 I called out Jared Kushner for use of private email to conduct official business on behalf of the U.S. Government. I recommended that his files and records be subpoenaed and if there was evidence of guilt he should be charged and tried.

In 2018 I called out Ivanka Trump for using her personal email address to conduct official business on behalf of the U.S. Government. 

Here, now, in 2022, I’ll state publicly and for the record that if Donald Trump is suspected of having unlawfully retained, stored, folded, spindled, mutilated, sold, or otherwise misused classified materials, his residence and/or place of business absolutely should be subject to a lawful search. If evidence is found based on that search, he should be tried. That would be my position regardless of whether we happened to be discussing a sitting president, a former president, or a private citizen.

Maybe it’s easier for me to say because I’m beholden to neither of our major political parties, though I like to think it’s simply because I have the intellectual integrity not to have different rules of behavior depending on what party I happen to support. I have many bad qualities, but being a hypocritical asshat isn’t one of them.

I know it’s far too much to expect people to dispense with their partisan blinders at this point. They’re too entrenched – too invested in the position that they’ve staked out. No one wants to admit they bought a pig in a poke. There’s too much face to lose. Nothing I say is going to change minds, so I’ll just be over here eternally grateful that I never wrapped so much of my own identity up in a sleazy, scumbag politician to have hurt feelings when they go out and do sleazy, scumbag politician stuff.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. The joy of home ownership. I thought we had a pretty solid handle on the homestead’s water supply after last year’s well and filtration work. The fact that it literally fell apart at the seams yesterday tells me it wasn’t quite satisfactory as I expected. So, in addition to the never-ending bathroom remodel, I’ve hired another plumbing company to design and build a much less fragile way to get water from the well and through some filters before delivering it up to the rest of the house. I only laid two requirements on them for this project: It must be dead simple easy to operate and perform regular maintenance on and all components must be affixed to or supported by structure versus hanging free from the pipes. I suppose it’s just the kind of thing I’m willing to spend on if that’s what it takes to avoid future blowouts when someone has the audacity to try closing a ball valve.

2. The MAGA campaign to discredit Cassidy Hutchinson. There are lots of Donald’s supporters ranting, raving, and questioning Ms. Hutchinson’s intelligence, truthfulness, and anything else they can dream up to discredit her testimony before the January 6th Select Committee. None of them, thus far, have submitted evidence or requested that they be allowed to offer conflicting testimony under oath. If they’re withholding key evidence or information about the events of January 6th, they’re negligent in their duty. If they’re big mad because this brave 20-something former White House staffer has the personal integrity to sit down, swear in, and say true things about Donald that make him look like an out of control, petulant child, well, it’s just the expected kind of sound and fury that doesn’t signify.

3. Salad. Look, I like salad well enough. I mean top anything with enough dressing, cheese, and bacon bits and it’ll be edible at some point. In all seriousness, though, I’ve been making a concerted effort for the last few months to replace one meal a day – usually lunch – with a truly enormous salad. Even with the toppings a massive bowl full of various greens should be nominally more responsible than whatever combination of Hot Pockets or PB&J’s I’d be having otherwise. The trouble comes down to the greens themselves. Despite the salad spinning and paper towel drying and specialized containers, I just can’t seem to get a full week of freshness out of the stuff. Towards the end of every week, there’s a good wilt setting in at best. If the produce wasn’t fresh off the truck when I grabbed it, sometimes by Thursday it’s gone off completely. Hot Pockets definitely don’t have that problem. Sure, I could solve this particular issue by buying less produce on Saturday and adding a mid-week supply run, but that violates my cardinal rule of minimizing the number of times every week I need to leave the house. If this turns into a competition between wanting a salad and not wanting to leave the house, salad loses every single time no matter how many bacon bits are on it.

Detached from reality…

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Donald Trump lost the 2020 election. It wasn’t a fact blatantly obvious at the close of election day, but one that became rapidly inescapable as absentee or mail in ballot totals were added to in person vote totals over the next few days. Certainly, by Friday of that week, the trend – and outcome was clear. I knew it. You knew it. The media knew it. The political class knew it. The overwhelming majority of American people knew it. 

Hard as Trump and his people might spin tales of election fraud, the claims were not reflected by the evidence – a fact that court after court found as one ruling was handed down after another, while other, wilder claims were thrown out as having no merit on their face. It seems that everyone except Donald Trump and perhaps his inner core of true believers was well aware of the state of play.

Bill Barr, in his testimony before the select committee appointed to investigate the January 6th insurrection, asserted that when then President Trump went before the cameras claiming theft and fraud, “he was detached from reality.” Let that phrase sink in. That’s a man who has twice served as Attorney General of the United States observing that the guy we’ve entrusted with the nuclear launch codes was having a hard time telling reality from make believe. 

I’m increasingly convinced that on January 6th we stood a hairs breadth from an American chief executive, gotten high on his own supply, refusing to leave office. How close we came to overwhelming the creaking, 200+ year old Constitutional safeguards that have always been more than enough to guide better men who held the office, is absolutely horrifying to behold. 

 If seeing these facts and patterns of behavior laid out now, when not caught up in the heat of the moment, doesn’t give you even a moment’s pause, I don’t have any idea what would. We got incredibly lucky that the American system, under incredible and unprecedent pressure, worked. We’d be well served to never run it that close to the red line ever again, because I fear being delivered safely out the other side had a lot more to do with luck than skill. 

The limit of endorsements…

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Although my days of voting in Republican primary elections are over, I don’t suppose I’ll ever stop keeping an eye on them. It was gratifying to read reports last night coming out of Georgia that both the governor and the secretary of state, officials who stood as a bulwark against Donald Trump’s attempt to illegally overturn election results, both won their primary fights against Trump endorsed opponents. It gives me at least a bit of home that even though Donald’s voice remains loud within the party, it may not command the unquestioning obedience that it once did. 

On the other side of the coin, we have utter wackjobs like Marg Green winning her primary in the Georgia 14th. That’s a clear indication that we remain miles and miles away from what anyone could reasonably call “normal,” but it’s a just barely a shuffle in the right direction… even if It’s probably still worrisome that the measure of a candidate is “well, at least this one isn’t crazier than a bed bug.”

Now, having said all that, I don’t mean to imply that any politician anywhere that won their primary yesterday is actually any good. The older I get, the more I hold the opinion that they’re all either useless, self-serving, creeps, crooks, or weirdos. Many of them seem to be all those things simultaneously. It’s a matter of picking through the trash heap in hopes that some of them are very slightly less awful than the others.

What a wreck we’ve made of a perfectly nice republic.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Virtually in person. Monday was one of those days where I was in the office fulfilling the (in my opinion) questionable requirement that our little team must always have a warm body in the building. Like the ravens at the Tower of London, the whole enterprise would collapse should we all simultaneously be doing the work from anywhere other than our assigned badly lit, gray-toned workstations. The only meeting I had that day involved seven or eight people… half of whom were also physically in the office. It’s awfully telling that despite so many people being on site, the whole meeting was held over Teams with everyone participating from their desk. If we’re all going to be meeting virtually from our own section of cubicle hell, I’d really love a non-corporate speak explanation of why there’s even a push to have more and more people in the office? You’ll never convince me it doesn’t defy logic and plain common sense.

2. Pulling rank. This week, as I may have mentioned, was the yearly spectacle where I attempt to stage manage / executive produce a three-day series of presentations. This year there were 9 organizations and 21 separate presentations across three days. This event rated permanent support from me, three guys who managed the IT infrastructure from soup to nuts, and a handful of rotating support personnel from each of the participating organizations that fell in for their portion of the event and then buggered off. By way of contrast, there was another event on Tuesday morning. This one lasted 90 minutes. It rated support from a staff director, six subject matter experts, three guys to manage IT, and another half dozen aides, support staff, and various strap hangers. If it sounds like I’m in any way angry and a little bitter, I like to think it’s justified hostility and just one of the many reasons why I hate the last week of April.

3. Choices. At the princely cost of $4.25 per gallon, I filled up the truck this morning from about a quarter tank and spent $77.60. I didn’t jump online to “Thank Brandon” or scream “Orange Man Bad” because I know the American president has next to no direct control over setting global commodity prices. I paid my bill without much comment, because paying his way in this endlessly beshitted world is a man’s job. Well, that and because no one twisted my arm 12 years ago in west Tennessee when I bought a big V8 powered pickup truck knowing full well that on its best day, I might get a little more than 16 miles per gallon. Brandon didn’t do that. I did… and so did everyone else who opted for size and power over efficiency. Want to find someone to blame? Take a hard look in the mirror.

Three word mantras…

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If I’m honest, finding something relevant to drop here every day is getting to feel a bit like swimming against the tide. Sure, I’ve got opinions about damned near everything, but I’m not a foreign policy expert. I’m not an Eastern Europe expert. I’m not an economist. Even though I studied political science, most days I even struggle to get my arms around what American domestic politics has turned into in this stupid century of ours. The way I learned to understand the world is often enough no longer the case or impolite to say out loud.

The best I can manage is trying to take in information from people who are experts in a wide array of fields and try to filter those through my own philosophical and, yes, ethical, lens. I like to think I hit more right notes than not, but the only real way of telling will be looking back here in 20 or 30 years and seeing how it all turned out.

All I feel particularly competent to guarantee at this point is that I intend to keep grappling with events in a legitimate effort to understand the world around me. Here, if nowhere else, it will never devolve into grand over-simplifications like “Orange man bad,” or “Let’s go Brandon.” The world is entirely too complex to be distilled down into three word mantras. I’ll call the balls and strikes as I see them based on as much intelligent commentary and information as I can get my hands on at the time.