ANXIETY REDUX

 My latest anxiety crash happened about a month ago, and I’m still a bit shaky from it. My handwriting looks like a penmanship earthquake. I’m in a bad mood all of the time. Fatigued. A bit wobbly on my feet. I try to remember the proverb from the Bible: “Weeping endureth for a night, but joy comes in the morning”. But the proverb doesn’t say how long the night lasts. Days? Weeks? Months? Years?

How about forever, which is what it feels like now. Except for a precious little calico cat name Luna, the night might feel permanent. I took Luna to babysit for a few days and ended up becoming her new mommy. She’s chubby, which is great for her greatest joy—rolling. She must hold a world record for rolling back and forth, stopping from time to time to lick her tummy. She pauses from time to time to see if I’m watching. I always am.

Fatigue goes with anxiety, which causes more anxiety. 

Looks like I’m locked in to a squirrel cage existence.

Poor me.

ANXIETY

 I have been binge watching an old television show called Monk, about a retired homicide detective who was asked to resign because of hiss obsessive-compulsive, germaphobic behavior, and his assistant Natalie. They are often asked to assist in homicide cases by Police Chief Detective Leland Stottlemeyer whenever a case gets too strange for normal police work. A witty and clever dramady. I’m not a good puzzle solver so I never see the denouement coming. I just enjoy the story. 

                                                             * * * * *

It woke up this morning from a stress nightmare and have been fighting off stress all day. At 1545 hours I have taken several doses of anxiety pills. Now I’m drinking bourbon. I don’t understand why I have been suffering so much from anxiety for the past few months; it just kicks in. I hate it. I can smell it. It stinks. The smell only lasts for a few seconds, but it is always the same. 

I blame the poltergeist. Yes, I have a poltergeist. It knocks on doors and under the bed. The knock makes a sucking sound. It even knocked once when my husband was asleep next to me. Once it pushed up on the mattress so hard that I launched up several inches. This pissed me off so I kicked the mattress really hard with my heel. The poltergeist made a couple more knocks and left. Weeks or months later it tripped me on the deck while I was carrying my favorite flower pot and knocked the pot from my hand. Of course it broke. Now the poltergeist plagues my mind. I have been practicing mindfulness to gain peace of mind, and I think this angers the poltergeist. I’m locked in to a losing battle.

                                                              * * * * *

I feed this birds. I have bluebirds, chickadees, house finches, sparrows, doves, cardinals, titmice, woodpeckers, robins, and grackles. I’m not happy about the grackles, but they never go away. Now the starlings are back. Speckled pests.The woodpecker is so damn cute. I call it Happy Bird because it makes me so happy to see it. It doesn’t stand; it crouches. It is so versatile it can eat from almost any position. 

Rachel the raccoon has been here for about as longs as I have lived here. Ruth has also joined us.  I feed them every night. Dog food. It’s spring and the girls are obviously feeding babies. They have baby boobies, and they are especially hungry. 

Sometimes I have gone for weeks so anxious or otherwise distracted that I forgot I had a car. (I have almost everything delivered.) Then the battery dies and I have to call USAA to come and start the car. Then I wonder how I could have made such a mistake. I’m old and forgetful, but forgetting that I should run my car engine from time to time seems unreal. 

It’s a bitch to be old and forgetful. It’s a bitch to have so little interest in food. Most food doesn’t even taste very good anymore. I’ve never craved sugary things, but now I’m attracted to sugar. Maybe that’s because I’m diabetic. I hate being diabetic.

Life is too hard, and it hurts too much.

Election Anxiety 2020

Tomorrow is the most anticipated and dreaded of election days in my memory. My stomach has not stopped clutching and heaving since Trump was elected four years ago. I knew he would be a bad president, but I could not imagine the horrors that he would commit in four short years. Historians for decades to come will struggle to explain how one stupid and evil man could destroy what intelligent, patriotic men worked so hard to establish more than two hundred years ago.

I am only one person, but I read about and hear about how others have reacted to the Trump presidency. They sound like me. Every day is a struggle to cope and endure.

I know that the most unfit person in America is president and is doing everything he can to destroy the good things that Barack Obama put in place. And that he installs incompetent, ignorant people to run important offices. They reduce their offices to pitiful shadows of what they should be. It’s like watching lines of dominoes fall into each other until they all lie flat on the floor.

Depression has taken over my survival instincts. I forget to eat. I forget to brush my teeth. Some days I take a shower; some days I don’t. This doesn’t bother me. I sleep for 10 to 12 hours a night. I have nightmares. Once recently I slept for 15 hours. I wake up in the mornings too depressed to move. I think I can’t get out of bed. But my cat Sally isn’t worried about Trump’s vile activities and she insists that I get up and feed her. I’m grateful for that. I do get up, for her, but then I slop around in my jammies for hours because I don’t have the energy to get dressed. Trump has sucked up all of my energy. Sally doesn’t care whether I get dressed or not. She just wants food and company. Eventually, shame forces me to get dressed. 

 I do my chores. I clean the litter boxes. I feed the birds that I so enjoy watching at my bird feeder. I feed the foxes that come out of the woods behind my house for a snack. I feed the raccoons that climb up on my second story deck to eat. They are so cute and such fun. The squirrels help themselves to everything they can find.

I agonize over the possibility that Trump could win a second term. I know I’m not alone. I watch Rachel Maddow reporting the latest shameful Republican activities and wonder how forty percent of Americans can support Donald Trump. My best guess is that they are willfully ignorant. It’s easier to be ignorant than honorable.

In the end, what will America’s epitaph read: Stupidity Won?

Or: Greed Won? 

Or: Putin Won?

I have already voted for Biden and Harris. I am 83 years old and worn out from four years of inexplicable evil. Voting is all I  can do to stop it.

 

TRUMP FAMILY BRAIN CELL

We are now in the fourth month of Donald Trump's lightning campaign to eradicate COVID-19 from  all America. Trump proudly points to the facts that there are only 2,032,633 cases now and only 136,000 deaths--the highest numbers of any country in the world. He lifts his Bible (upside down) and smirks into the camera to celebrate the results of his tireless efforts to Make America Great Again--while ducking all responsibility for thousands of deaths. 🙈🙉

Meanwhile, people insist on dying at an alarming rate and marching against an injustice that he barely notices. He retires to his bunker (only to inspect it) in case things might get tough for him some day and he might have to occupy it. What did he expect to find down there, Adolf Hitler? Saddam Hussein? Those two fellows didn't find much comfort in their hidey-holes. But of course they didn't have cell phones. Can a person Tweet from a concrete bunker, many feet below ground? Trumps shaky grip on sanity depends on it. 

In fairness, Trump has been functioning at a disadvantage. His daughter Ivanka has taken possession of the family brain cell to conduct complex negotiations  with the Chinese who are so vital to her fashion enterprises. She is a selfish young squirt, even with President Daddy, and refuses to hand it back to the Bumbler in Chief. But she promises to return it before the Republican Convention.

Those from the White House expected to attend the convention are:

     Donald J. Trump, who now claims that he is making a “transition to greatness.” 2016 redux
     Donald—I wanna be just like Daddy—Trump Jr.
     Eric Trump He’s not official; he just likes to play with the big kids.
     Ivanka, the Insipid, Kushner
     Jared—my blood is all white cells—Kushner
     William, the Balloon, Barr
     Mitch, Old Gravity Face, McConnell
     Steve. the Bottom Feeder, Miller
     Kellyanne Conner, whose mouth is the nemesis of truth

And Trump will hug the flag smirkily as he has done before. Some clever lady wrote on a social network that, “You’re supposed to salute the flag, not hump it.” Damn, I wish I’d said that. 👿



     

🙏

Vile is too Gentle a Term

Rachel Maddow has reported recently that the government’s Federal Emergency Management Association (FEMA), which is supposed to represent the good guys, regularly steals N95 masks that states have ordered for themselves. Then last night she reported that FEMA has stolen a million masks from the Veterans Association. FEMA disputes these claims, which is to be expected. But I believe Rachel. She always does her homework.

Stealing medical equipment from states is vile; stealing from the VA is so egregious that vile is too gentle a term to describe it. Trump made certain, during the Vietnam War, that he would never become one of those veterans from whom he is stealing medical supplies. (Painful bone spurs that didn’t stop him from playing tennis, I’ve heard.) Now he has put states on notice that they are responsible for obtaining their own medical supplies during this pandemic, yet when they try to, as the VA did, the feds swoop in and take the supplies. Leadership by subterfuge.

An old song called “Hard Hearted Hannah” tells of a woman so mean that once she was seen pouring water on a drowning man. Same thing Trump is doing to the states.

I have faith that Trump and men like him will some day end up in hell. I have a fantasy that Trump will go to a worse place called Double Hell. In Double Hell Trump will always be in solitary confinement so that he will have no one to bitch at or make speeches to. He will occupy a small cell, about six feet by six feet, with no windows and no ventilation. It will be all steel with no chair and no bed. One twenty watt bulb will light his cell for six hours a day. He will be naked so that he can’t hide his eyes from his blubbery body. He will be fed the same food that the immigrants confined at our southern border are fed. His toilet will be a bucket in a corner and he will wipe his bum with sand paper.

And that is just Introductory Hell. In the next phase the floor will be mud and there will be fewer amenities. He will have to wear a dress and high heels. His head will be shaved.

It is said that everyone has a dark side. The train wreck Trump administration has brought mine to the surface. Not pretty, is it?

Cat With Attitude

My cat Sally stomped me awake at 5:30 this morning. Usually she waits until 6:00, but today she was especially anxious to get me to the bathroom where my duty lies in turning on the water in the shower stall for a few seconds so she can lick up the water on the floor. My son Doug finds this profoundly disgusting. Sally learned this behavior years ago from waiting for my husband to finish his morning shower then going in to lap up the leftovers. Sally has clean water in three different places in the house, so she is not desperate for a drink at any time.

After the morning drink she expects her breakfast to be served. Never mind that my aging body and mind are not half as quick to wake up and function as hers are. 

When I say that she stomped me awake, I mean exactly that. She is a little tuxedo cat weighing about seven pounds, so stomping doesn't seem like something she could do. But she has the big round paws of a highly successful hunter and has learned to pound me with them. She stomps across my body to let me know when I should get up. If I don't get up right away, she stomps me a second time. Then if I'm still too stupid to crawl out of bed, things get ugly. Blood might be spilled. My blood.

Other than that, she is a sweet, precious little cat who keeps me company and has been my saving companion since my husband died two years ago. She didn't understand my long absences when I visited him in hospitals and rehab facilities during his long and painful illness, but she didn't punish me for them. She was just happy to see me when I came home.
And I was just as happy to see her.

We have worked out a daily routine which revolves around her eating, playing, and sleeping schedule.

Did I say WE have worked out a schedule? Foolish me. Scheduling is her job. Mine is to read the signs and behave accordingly. 

NonTrumpeous

The coronavirus turns out to be the one thing in America that Donald Trump can't get away with calling a hoax, lying his way out of, or making go away just by calling it bad names and then ignoring it. It is here; it is in his face. No matter how much he squirms or tries to find someone else to take the blame, he has to  deal with it. He's doing a totally inadequate job of dealing with it.

His first idea was to appoint Mike Pence to be the head honcho in charge of taking care of the problem--most likely because he didn't want to take the blame himself when his administration inevitably failed to stop the coming pandemic.

Then he tried daily to blow smoke up everyone's skirt by telling us he has everything under control and things are looking good. He has to do this; he loves himself too much to admit defeat. 
Scientists, doctors, and gym teachers all agree that there is one thing the human body is absolutely unable to do: kiss one's own ass. And yet, Trump has proved them wrong time after time. Every time he has a tiny success or even a crashing failure, he takes to the airwaves and turns them into ass kissing triumphs. Kiss, kiss, kiss; smooch, smooch, smooch. All over his lardy ass.

He can wear his skinny lips raw doing this and lie until his tongue blisters, but he is never going to wipe his disastrous coronavirus response from his record. Nancy Pelosi said it best: "As Trump fiddles, people are dying." 

Is this what America looks like when it is Great Again?

Our Founding Fathers brilliantly provided for many government problems when they wrote the Constitution. And yet, they failed to foresee a time when a president was so incompetent and ignorant that even impeachment could not get him out of office. They failed to see a Senate and Senate majority leader whose soulless self interests would lead them to the purblind conclusion that what the president did was bad, but not bad enough. They failed to provide a solution to that problem.

I suggest an amendment to the Constitution that would correct that  omission and get America back to intelligent governance.

Amendment No. 28; Emergency Measures: The Federal Government shall provide, in the case of a president who has proved himself/herself to be dangerously incompetent, ignorant, and clueless, a closet assassin who shall, in the interest of protecting America and its Constitution, provide the services necessary to eliminate that person from the office of president.
This assassin shall operate free an clear of any punishment in the performance of his/her duties.

Run it up the flagpole.

WATER SLIDE WITH MUD

I have four grandchildren now, and all of them love to go to the water parks where there are endless watery attractions. Waves, fountains, deep end, water falls, shallow ends, tunnels, slides. It's the slides that take me back to my own childhood in the 1940s on a wheat farm in the Dust Bowl. 

Of course we didn't have water slides; we had a big cow tank that we cleaned once a year so the cows could have cleaner water and so the kids, including neighborhood kids, could teach themselves to swim. But that was later, before my sister and I discovered, after a particularly heavy rain storm, a racing stream of water that ran from one pasture to another. We created what was possibly the first water slide in the Oklahoma panhandle.

Out wandering around in the fresh mud, because we had carte blanche from our parents to go wading any time we wanted, we found the water gushing like nothing we had ever seen. We called it the washout. Nothing could stop us. We waded right in to the top of the washout and let it carry us under the barbed wire fence into the next pasture, about fifteen feet. Then we climbed back to the top and did it again. And again. And again. 

Submerged, letting our long hair flow out behind in the muddy water, giggling, making the most of our good fortune before the water ran out. 

Did I mention muddy water? Did I mention that cows and horses grazed in those pastures? Did I mention that cows and horses poop in pastures? And that the water must have been filled with liquefied animal poop? We never thought of poop. Germs never entered our minds. We were ecstatic.

I sometimes wonder if we didn't have more fun than my grandkids.

ROBOTS IN YOUR FACE

Why is it that ninety percent of the time when the phone rings it is a call from someone you want to die? 

Those endless phone pests who want to tell you that if you don't call them back immediately, Medicare will cancel your service and you will die broke and alone in a frozen ditch in Siberia. Robots whose messages on voicemail record only half of their messages. 
You would think that a damn robot would be smarter.

You often hear the phrase, "We can send a man to the moon, but we can't . . ." Fill in the blank. Here, the ending is, we can't stop junk phone calls. Is anyone really trying?

My phone rings at regular intervals with the caller ID saying anonymous, or private, or even my own phone number. I have not yet been curious enough to answer the phone when my own phone number appears. It might be spooky. A voice from beyond.

We live in an age of frustration. Technology is so smart, yet it can't make the telephones we pay for free from the garbage we don't pay for.😫

REDACT, REDACT, REDACT

The Mueller Report is out, except for the parts that Attorney General William Barr felt free to redact, which appear to be many. Congress would like to see the entire report, and so would I. Barr apparently assumed that hundreds of collective congressional minds were incapable of reading and understanding the report, so he set his superior brain to interpreting it for them. This is the act of one egotistical suck-up handing another egotist exactly what he wanted instead of exactly what was true.  We are in for a long, nasty fight over this. An extended national migraine headache.

Here's what I think should be redacted: William Barr. Wouldn't it be funny if Barr were barred from the bar? 

A redacted Stephen Miller is way overdue. He should be forced to wear a black, redacted costume for the rest of his days.

A redacted Eric Trump might not even be noticed at the White House. Eric is one of those shadowy creatures who surfaces from time to time to praise his father. But no one outside the White House pays attention to him.

The Wicked Witches of the West Wing girls, Kellyanne and Sarah, need redacting. Starting with their mouths.

I wouldn't waste ink trying to redact the president. It's such fun watching him try to squirm out of his many troubles.

Ivanka and Jared Trump (Bonnie and Clyde) must suffer a different fate. For them I call on the Greek goddess Athena, who once turned a rival, Arachne, into a spider. Mr. and Mrs. Kushner must be turned into spiders. It would be so easy for someone to step on them that way. But in order to keep them from reproducing more of their kind, they must be sterile spiders. Sterile, to match  their hearts.

STEPFORD REDUX

Remember The Stepford Wives? (Of course you don't; you're too young.😅) It was a 1972 novel about husbands in a town called Stepford who, growing impatient with their wives' imperfections, created copies of them in the form of robots. The robots were, of course, perfect in all domestic and social respects. Let's don't get into their bedroom skills--I don't remember if they were discussed.

Don't remember what became of the imperfect, discarded bodies of the wives, either. Not important here.

Some people that I know of went so far as to accuse Nancy Reagan of being a Stepford wife. She had that glassy eyed, thin lipped, robotic stare and stiff way of moving. And the big hair that never moved. When she made the shocking faux pas of wearing a strapless gown to the inaugural ball, though, she might have been mistaken for an upside down floor mop. She had no shoulders. Her 
gown must have been glued on.

But now we have a new twist on Stepford wives: Stepford husbands. Picture Jared Kushner. Have you ever seen his face move? Have you ever seen his lips move? What does Ivanka know that we don't know? Come to think of it, maybe she is a Stepford product, too. Just a bit more animated than Jared.

He hangs around Daddy Trump like a dog on a leash. Was he programmed to do that? If Trump goes to jail, will he have to go?

If Don Jr. visits Stepford, will he insist that his robot must have a stronger chin? How about Eric? Can robots be programmed to be that dippy?

I shall continue to observe Jared for signs of life. And I shall continue to monitor his father-in-law for signs of intelligence.

GUADALUPE FROM GUATEMALA

She was standing in a wire cage at the Tijuana border crossing clutching an old tin wash tub and wash board. The border guard asked her her name. She replied, "I am Guadalupe Gonzales from Guatemala, sir. 

 "And why have your brought such very unusual objects with you to America," he asked pointing at the tub and wash board.

"Ah, sir," she said, "I have come in hopes of getting a job at the White House doing the president's laundry."

The border guard couldn't restrain his laughter. "But I'm sure the president has people who do his laundry for him. He hasn't cut any part of that budget."

"Oh, no, Mr. Border Guard," she insisted. "In Guatemala we hear quite often that Mr. Donald Trump is 'airing his dirty laundry in public.'"

The guard saw how serious she was, and that she was not familiar to that old bromide, "He is airing his dirty laundry in public," meaning that a person made no attempt to hide his or her misdeeds.

And then he thought how good this story would look on the front page of The Washington Post. So he took a picture of her, her wash tub, and her wash board and called a fellow he knew who worked at the Post.

Damn, I wish this were a true story. 👿

TRUMP AND VIETNAM

Donald Trump finally made it to Vietnam last week. He tried so hard to get there fifty years ago, but those darn bone spurs kept him from military service time after time. But he was so determined to get there at last that he became president so he could still go on the government's dime. He and his true love Kim Jong Un (he said in a speech that they fell in love) met in Hanoi for their second mating dance. But the love gods were angry, or maybe listless, and Trump came home unfulfilled. Perhaps Kim fell out of love. Or perhaps he is jealous of Vladimir Putin and is playing hard to get. Trump didn't say. His heart little tin heart must be broken.

How many Trumps does it take to screw in a light bulb? Don't be ridiculous. Trumps don't do manual labor. They leave that to the undocumented aliens that they hire secretly to work at their golf courses and mansions.

Trumps many and varied crimes and corrupt activities are finally crawling out from under their rocks, into the light, to be inspected by House democrats licking their lips, interviewing Michael Cohen, and making up for two years of repression. Did Mitch McConnell think he could run the show forever?

I listen to Rachael Maddow's podcast every weekday to learn the things that don't always make it to the TV evening news. She is a gold mine of information. Trump must hate that.

FOURTH AND FIFTY

Football's answer to Vaudeville is finally over. Super Bowl One Zillion. I didn't watch; I have an aversion. I'm one of those odd ducks who doesn't like football. It's violent and brutal and slow. Four hours of watching huge men smash into each other. A half-time show that I'm told can involve naughty incidents of wardrobe malfunction.

If you are a fan, just think what watching a game involves. You get to the stadium all hyped up, your blood pressure maxed out from wanting to see your team win. Then the players run onto the field and get introduced. Your BP is somewhere in the stratosphere. Then everything gets quiet for the kick off.
Your BP sinks to near normal. Then the kick off and the players start running and smashing for a few seconds and your BP spikes again. This goes on for the next four hours. You are having a great time, but your blood vessels are screaming STOP!

You probably have had a few beers and need to go to the bathroom. If you are a woman you stand in line for twenty minutes waiting for a stall. Then you stand in line again to wash your hands. If you are a man, I've heard, you walk right into the bathroom, hop over a few suspicious looking yellow puddles, use the urinal, and walk out, not bothering to wash your hands.

Then you stop at a food stand and buy a hot dog and nachos, which you eat gleefully with hands that have not been washed.

Before half time your team were playing like a bunch of blindfolded gorillas. Wile E. Coyote, sitting behind you, spills his beer down your neck. You are too hyped to even turn and give him a dirty look.

Hours pass. Your gorillas finally stop sleep walking and get into the game. Yea, team!

Final score: Bad Guys 14; Gorillas 15

You cry from joy.

I don't get it.

National Emergency Golf Game

Trump threatened to do it for months before he finally got to do it--declare a national emergency so he could close America's southern border. All those brown people piling up there trying to get into America to escape the horrors of their native countries really bugged him. Maybe even some black or red people. Black and brown and red are colors that Trump does not and cannot trust. And he tries to scare the rest of us into thinking like he does. Personally, I find that orange people are way scarier than black or brown or red people. Especially when they try to grab unlimited power.

So what should a president do after he declares a national emergency? Shouldn't he go to the place where the emergency is and lend support to the people responsible for enforcing it, show a bit of leadership? Naw. Surely that would be overkill, a waste of presidential time.
Immediately get on to the next emergency: a golf game in Florida that simply cannot begin until he arrives. America is now safe until the wall makes us safer.

Not much is ever reported about Trump's golf game. I'm sure that is by design. If he were any good he would undoubtedly have his scores announced on Fox and Friends and by Sean Hannity, America's shadow president. I have a sneaking hunch that he fills out his score card before he takes his first swing, just in case someone leaks it. And I'd bet that his idea of a good tip for his caddy is, "Be careful not to get a social disease."

Vladimir Trump

It's not much fun anymore, picking on Donald Trump. Back when I thought he was just a clueless clown, playing president because he thought it would look good on his resume, I had a good time jerking him around. But now . . . but now he has shown America that he means business when he savages so much of what decent Americans want from their government and holds secret meetings with Vladimir Putin, then takes away the interpreter's notes so that no American, except him, will ever know what was said in those meetings.

I am sickened by the thought of what all those thousands of children and parents ripped from each other at our southern border are going through. Even worse, what psychological damage is being done to them every day that they are separated from each other? What nightmares and fears fill the heads of children who don't know why they have been separated or if they will ever see their parents again? These fears will never go away. They will haunt their victims for the rest of their lives. And Donald Trump and Jeff Sessions will never give it a second thought.

That stupid wall. Most Americans don't want it. The land owners whose property will taken from them for the wall to be built almost certainly don't want it. Yet Trump has invented a mountain of lies to justify building it. The Berlin Wall finally fell. And surely some Hispanic with a blow torch or something similar could blast through his beautiful steel wall.

The Great Wall of China still stands, though, and probably always will, It was started around 221 BC and finished in 1878. Around 400,000 people died during its construction. I don't think that Trump has that much time to build his wall. But if he did,
 he would probably not object to letting 400,000 people die building it.

There is joke going around the internet that explains that the Great Wall was built to keep invaders out of China and that it has worked perfectly: not a single Mexican has invaded China in all those years.

It is reported that Donald Trump watches Fox TV and gets many of his ideas for governing from there, and that he is especially fond of Sean Hannity. I shall now revert to picking on The Donald with a bit of doggerel that I wrote. You can sing it, if you like, to the tune of "I Want to Buy the World a Coke."

     I want to be on Fox TV
     And be a talking head.
     I want to be
     Sean Hannity
     'Cause my brain cells are dead.

     And Donald Trump says
     Sean's his guy
     He loves to be his pet.
     They wag their tongues
     In harmony
     A fair and balanced set.

Are We There Yet?

No, we're not there yet. We still have to hear from the FBI. But don't worry; we won't pay any attention to what they report. That was all just a show we put on to get the Democrats off our backs.

The Kavanaugh Senate hearings, orchestrated by Mitch McConnell, have ended, and Mitch wants a vote yesterday.
Christine Blasey Ford gave her testimony, which the president mocked in one of his juvenile tirades last night in Mississippi. The crowd loved it. (Let's hope, for propriety's sake, that they were all drunk.)

If Trump really wanted to display his acting talents, he should have mocked the cry baby judge who is trying to get on the Supreme Court. That was an act worthy of Trump's worst  temper tantrum.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the Wicked Witch of the West Wing, defended Trump's actions by saying he was just stating the facts. And Kellyanne Conway insists that Ford has been treated like a "Faberge egg." Would these two ladies like to trade places with Ford?

In their views, Trump must sit at the Resolute desk bathed in a shimmering, golden light, eating a Big Mac, emanating Truth from every pore. Conway, on the other hand, emits a laser-like shot (according to my rumor mill) from her prickly inner core to anyone daring to get within two feet of her.  

Now Kavanaugh is making himself scarce, reportedly texting his high school and college friends to encourage them to say only nice, sober things about him in their FBI interviews.

And Mitch McConnell and Chuck Grassley are at the dentist's getting their teeth sharpened for the kill.

There is a rumor going around (which I started) that Trump, McConnell, and Grassley were seen going into a local fortune teller's tent to seek counsel and guidance for the upcoming days. Maybe they will find the wisdom which so far has eluded them.

The "failing" New York Times, as Trump calls it, has reported  that Donald Trump has participated in "dubious tax schemes" that allowed his father to give him more than $413 million with minimum tax payments. Investigative reporters spent years researching this story. Trump denies it. He insists that he is a self made millionaire. And yet, we don't get to see his tax returns.

The year is 2099 and Donald Trump IV is president. The Republicans are still in power and they still blame everything that goes badly for them on Obama and the Clintons. (Hey, it worked before.) And Donald Trump I has still not paid his taxes.

😈

Give me your tired, your poor . . .

A few weeks ago, at the height of the southern border fiasco created by our government, with Latino children being separated from their parents and shipped off to unknown destinations, I published a post on Facebook. It starts with words from the inscription on the Statue of Liberty, but then goes a bit snarky.

                         Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses
                         yearning to breathe free . . .

                         . . . and I will dispose of them for you.

                                                                         DONALD J. TRUMP

Facebook took it down almost immediately.

So I posted it again.

Facebook took it down again.

I must have hit a nerve.

Someone at The Washington Post is keeping track of the number of lies and misleading statements that Trump has uttered (or tweeted, I presume) since he became president. As of August 1, 2018, the number was 4,229. Impressive. You've got to be a dedicated liar to hit that number in so short a time.

The Donald  has a long history of inverting the truth, making the good guys into the bad guys and the bad guys into the good guys. After his meeting with Kim Jong Un, he declared that there was no longer a nuclear threat from North Korea. But North Korea is, in fact, expanding its missile program and has not taken the necessary steps needed to denuclearize. But Un still holds a special place in  Trump's little tin heart.

Recently, Trump declared that his trade tariffs were working big time, though they have caused layoffs and plant closures and forced him to grant $12 billion in aid to farmers. Such a brilliant move. If the farmers had not been hurt by the tariffs they no doubt could have made much more money in sales to foreign nations.

Our president also said in May that drug companies would soon announce voluntary massive drops in prices. Shortly after that, the drug companies announced price increases. And Obamacare is still a bulls eye for destruction in Trump world. Medication in America might just become a luxury item.

So I have written a new tribute to The Donald that I hope captures the spirit of his chaotic presidency.

                           Give me your rich, your famous, your evil, your oligarchs, your liars,           
                           yearning to grab power,
                           and I will lead them down the paths of corruption.

                                                                                 DONALD J. TRUMP                                              


I hope Mark Zuckerberg never reads it.

Trump and Friends

I have taken time away from my Blog to attend to a personal crisis.

I thought that Bill Clinton had set the standard for sleaze in the Oval Office when he fondled Monica Lewinsky, but now we have Donald Trump inviting Kim Kardashian, a woman who became famous for publishing a sex video involving herself, into the Oval to chat and have her picture taken. And then he took her advice on handing a pardon to a woman in prison. I didn't think that The Donald could possibly do anything more offensive than he has already done, Now I know better. Why doesn't  he just go ahead and make her his Chief of Staff? Porn stars and Kim Kardashian. America's leadership in action.

Bob Mueller's investigation rolls on, ignoring all the great legal advice that Trump tweets day by day and his accusations of a witch hunt going on.

Paul Manafort has just about scraped the bottom of his legal resources for staying out of jail. I picture him as a balding old man in an orange jump suit behind bars--in a Russian prison, since he's so fond of things Russian.

Jeff Sesssions has ordered that children must be separated from their parents once they step over the Mexican border into America and detained in separate accommodations. If a person's soul can rot while that person is still alive, then that must certainly have happened to Jeff Sessions. Otherwise, how could he live with this sickening order? Has he never heard of compassion?

Then we have Don Jr., Eric, and Jared. The Three Stooges of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Their contributions to America's government can probably be measured in millimeters. And insipid Ivanka. Daddy's little girl. A wolf in designer sheep's clothing. Who voted for these overprivileged brats?

People are wondering why Malania spends so much time away from Trump. Well, wouldn't you? She has probably finally realized who and what she married--and she's not a masochist. She is also probably trying to protect young Baron from all the news and gossip about his father that she can.
I believe that Malania is a decent woman who made a bad marriage mistake and is trying hard to live with that fact. She undoubtedly had to sign one of Donald's famous contracts to never reveal anything about him.

We don't see Kellyanne Conway around much anymore. My prayers have been answered.

Now we come to Bill and Hillary Clinton. Don't even think that they will ever go away. True, Hillary is still no doubt licking her political wounds in her luxury home, but she is also planning her next move. Count on it. Bill still shows up on talk shows telling his shopworn stories and making speeches for thousands of dollars a shot. You couldn't PAY these two to shut up and go away.

Mike Pence and Speaker Ryan have shown us the rewards of sucking up to an ignorant, maniacal, sociopath.

Is this what America looks like when it is Great Again?

Hail to the Thief

A man who does not pay the people who build his towers is not a savvy businessman; he is a thief.
One such man is also president of the United States. I thought it fitting to write some words to go with the music, "Hail to the Chief," that is played whenever he waddles up to a lectern to give a speech.


Hail to the Thief
Donald Trump, the mighty Twitterer.
He loves Sean Hannity
And Sean Loves him, too,

     So Foxy.

Hannity could be First Lady
If he wanted to.

Ohhhhhh,

Hail to the Thief
And to Russia's shirtless leader.
Trump is a sissy man
Compared to sneaky Vlad,

     The killer.

They never smooch in public;
It might make Sean mad.


Ohhhhhh,

Hail to theThief
And to horny, porny Stormy.
She's a naughty porn star
And he's a porn star, too

     ---in reality.

Is this what America looks like
When it is great?