These Are the Times That Try Men's Souls . . .

the summer soldier and sunshine patriot will, in
this crisis, shrink from the service of his country;
but he that stands up now, deserves the love and
thanks of man and woman.   Thomas Paine, 1776

Nancy Pelosi has directed the House Judiciary
Committee to open an impeachment inquiry against
President Trump.  This is not how things are usually
done.  In other - and there have been many - impeach-
ment inquiries the whole House votes to open the
inquiry.  The House of Representatives may
open an inquiry at any time, it may also file
Articles of Impeachment at any time.  It is
usual, however, to defer to the Speaker of the
House.  It may surprise you to know that certain
Representatives attempted to bring impeachment
proceedings against; John Tyler, Grover Cleveland,
Herbert Hoover, Harry Truman Ronald Reagan, and
G. H. W. Bush.  All of these attempts failed to get out of
Committee and on to the whole House.  Only three succeeded;
Andrew Johnson, Bill Clinton and, had he not resigned,
Richard Nixon.  So, we should not get that excited about
yesterday's events we still have a long way to go.

Perhaps it would behoove us to get some background
on just what impeachment is.  Impeachment was first
established in Britain in the thirteen-hundreds.  Britain
has no formal constitution, so impeachment, as such,
was an unwritten law.  When the framers were writing
our Constitution, there was considerable discussion
about including impeachment at all.  The biggest
roadblock was the wording of just what constituted
an impeachable offense.  In the end they settled on
'treason, bribery, and other high crimes and misde-
meanors'.  It is the second half of that statement which
legal scholars still argue over today.

Let us define impeachment; impeachment is a process
by which a legislative body levels charges against a
government official.  Impeachment is written into the
the constitution of twenty-five nations, among then
are Russia, South Korea and of course the United States.
Impeachment is delineated in Article 2, Section 4, it
simply says:  The President, Vice President, and all
Civil Officers of the United States shall be removed
from Office on impeachment for, and conviction of
Treason, Bribery, or other high crimes and
misdemeanors.  Thirty-one words, that's all, nothing
more.

The House of Representatives and the Senate each set
their own rules regarding impeachment procedures,
as none were set down by the framers.  The procedure
begins with the Judiciary Committee of the House of
Representatives, they hold hearings, take evidence, and
hear testimony.  After which time the Committee may
formulate Articles of Impeachment - which may contain
one or more counts - then the Committee takes a vote.
If the Articles pass the Committee, they are referred to the
full House, which will then debate the matter and take a vote.
If the House votes to impeach, the Articles go onto the
Senate.  The Articles of Impeachment may die at any
point from the Judiciary Committee to the full House,
as six of the Articles we noted did.

The Senate is judge and jury in the case of prosecution
of impeachment, but if the officeholder charged is the
President, then the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court
sits as judge, as William Rehnquist did during the
Clinton trial.  There are attorneys for each side as in a
regular court proceeding. After both side present their
case, the Senate debates the issues and votes.  It requires
a 'super majority', or two-thirds of the Senators present
to convict the President.  The word present is stressed here
as any Senator voting abstain, would be counted as a vote
against impeachment.  It is thought, a vote to impeach
would trigger a Constitutional crisis, in that; would the
convicted president have the right to appeal - and if so -
to whom would they appeal.

The question has been, for years, what is an impeachable
offense?  Some jurist say; any bad act, though not necessarly
a crime, however they also say, not all crimes are impeachable.
In 1970, then Representative Gerald Ford said this, in part,
"what ever the majority of the House of Representatives
considers it to be at any given moment".  This would mean that
impeachment is not a legal proceeding, but a political one.
This is what the framers feared, that the president would then
be serving at the pleasure of the Congress.  James Wilson, one
of the delegates to the Constitutional Congress and later one of
the first Supreme Court Justices, argued that impeachment
procedures are "of a political nature. . . confined to political
characters, to political crimes and misdemeanors, and to
political punishment".

And so here we are today, there are those who rejoice that their
wish has come true, those who wanted from day one to impeach
Donald Trump.  Christopher Lewis Peterson, Professor, College
of Law, whose main  body of work is banking and lending, wrote
extensively on the subject. He feels strongly that Trump should
have been impeached on the day he was sworn in, based on his
prior bad acts, i.e. bank and insurance fraud.  I, myself, am torn.
There have been presidents whose politics I disagreed with, and
some that I didn't feel were up to the job, even some I disliked
personally, but never have I ever felt this strong a dislike about
a president.  It is visceral, I cannot watch him on television. and
the sound of his voice is like fingers on a blackboard.  Everyday
when I wake up, I think it can't get any worse, but it does.

It will be a long road going forward, and I fear for the country.
I fear even if, and that is a big if, Trump is convicted, he will
not go quietly.  He has intimated as much on more than one
occasion.  When the House of Representatives voted for the
Article of Impeachment for Richard Nixon, he did the right
thing for the country, he resigned.  Nixon knew a trial in the
Senate would be very harmful for the country, especially in
light of the outcome of the Viet Nam war.  His first thoughts
were for America.  Donald Trump has ho such compunction,
he only sees things in relation to himself.  He does not believe
he could be convicted.  When things begin to go bad for him,
he instructs his lawyers to 'buy them out'.  Well, Donald, buy
yourself out of this!

I'm just sayin'

Have You Stopped Beating Your Wife?

There have been allegations by a whistle blower that President
Trump made improper suggestions during a phone call to the
president-elect of the Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenski.  Trump
supposedly asked Zelenski to 'look into', then Vice-president
Joe Biden's son, Hunter Biden, and his connections with a
natural gas firm where Hunter sat on the board. The
accusations had been examined and were found to be
baseless.  How thorough and unbiased the inquiry was
is not the question at this time.

Over the weekend, during an impromptu news conference
- aren't they all - Trump stated to the twenty-five or so
reporters in attendance that during that phone call he
congratulated the Ukrainian President, Zeleinski, and that
he might have mentioned Joe Biden and Hunter.  He told
reporters,  "It was largely the fact that we don't want our
people, like Vice President Biden and his son, creating
to (sic) the corruption already in the Ukraine".  WOW!
Trump is the master of the complex fallacy, he managed
to make not one, but two, false accusations in one
sentence.  He threw suspicion on Joe Biden and his son
Hunter, while also painting the Ukrainian government as
corrupt.

There is a saying, 'when you point a finger at me, you have
three fingers pointing at yourself'. Trump has elevated that
to an art, and he does it with aplomb.  He uses cognitive
biases with the skill of a surgical laser, he has created his
own subjective social reality.  He is a product of, so called,
reality television where Trump envisioned himself the mammoth
business tycoon who could berate job applicants and belittle
prospective employees, and still have them fawn over him,
groveling sycophants inflating his ego, until he turned on them
and said, "You're fired!'". There remains the question whether
Trump suffers from narcissism or solipsism.

Trump has elevated evasionary tactics to new heights, he uses
half-truths, out-right lies, red herrings, and straw men to
obfuscate and complicate any question of impropriety on his
part. His repeated declaration of 'no collusion, no obstruction'
was his answer to the Mueller Report.  He said it so often,
even the House of Representatives apparently believed it.  he
is capable of turning any question around, and diverting it back
onto the questioner.  The deflection of his statement that he
'could grab any woman by the p***y' and get away with it,
was pure terpsichory, oooooh, dance a little sidestep.  He
simply turned it into a discussion on ISIS.  He uses nick-
names like; little Marco, lyin' Ted, low energy Jeb, crooked
Hillary, sleepy Joe and Pocahontas, instead of dialogue in
the debates, and when the unwitting press picks up the
ad homs, they become self-fulfilling prophecies.

Claims of corruption and out-right illegality have had no effect
on his candidacy or his presidency.  It helps that he is shielded
by a willing Senate that is compliant in his wrong-doings,
a Senate that fears his ability to marshal his followers and to
'primary' anyone who dares to challenge him, though there are
House members who are feeling the pressure and some are
folding their tents and calling it quits, or maybe, just maybe
they have developed a conscience.

Trump uses false dichotomy to strike fear in the hearts of his
dedicated band of MAGAs; build a wall or have open boarders,
Chinese tariffs or no more jobs, vote for him or face a recession,
restrict Muslims or sharia law, the list is endless.  There is no grey,
only black or white.  When Trump says Mexicans are murderers
and rapists, and Muslims are terrorists, and Chinese are thieves
he is building a masked man fallacy.  He offers a false dilemma,
it is one way - his way - or disaster of immense proportion.  You
have only two options, which one do you like?

When faced with exposure, he cries 'fake news', when confronted
with logic, he argues from incredulity.  And when all else fails, his
fall back is; argumentum ad lapidem, appeal to the stone, or as your
mama used to say 'because I said so'.    

And, I'm just sayin'.

A Time for All Things Under Heaven...

Fall has always been my favorite time of the year, I have
never thought of it as an ending but rather as a beginning.
When I was a young girl, it was the start of the new school
year; new school uniform, new shoes, new books, new
pencils, and a new 'school bag' to put them in (those of you
under fifty Google the term). I remember the smells, nothing
smells like new leather shoes, new books which have never
been opened by anyone but me, and newly sharpened pencils,
that still smell of the forest from whence they came.  And is
there anything more reminiscent of school than the smell of
library paste.

Fall is the beginning of the holiday season for me, the last
holiday, the Fourth of July, is long past.  Now corn stalks
and pumpkins foretell of Halloween and Thanksgiving.
The earthy smell of mums, mingles with the smell of wet
leaves and wood smoke.  The trees, which were dressed in
a thousand shades of green, now don robes of rust and red
and gold and garnet, muted or magnificent, they put on their
brief show and then fade away.

It is half past the middle of September, and warm still, the
usual chill that portends the first frost, has yet to arrive.
I have chosen today to put my garden patch to bed, the
weatherman says there is rain coming for the next three or
four days and I have only a small window of time available,
as I am going to the Middle-East in two weeks. I had pulled
out the summer squash last week and heaped them in a plie
to be dried and reduced to a more manageable size.

Setting about to pick my meager harvest, I collect the last
of the green peppers and the lonely eggplant clinging to the
bush.  My green beans have suffered the past weeks with bean
mosaic, and there isn't enough to bother with.  There are a
few ripe tomatoes that I place in my basket.  I'll leave two plants
to see if the remaining green tomatoes will ripen before I leave.
The swiss chard has done well away from the heat of summer,
I select only the larger leaves and leave the smaller ones for
the deer and rabbits, as they will be able to reach them when
I remove the fencing that kept them at bay since early spring.

Time to pull up the plants; pepper, eggplant, tomato, and beans
and put them on the pile of squash leaves that have shrunk
to less than half their size.  The pole bean fencing, that made
picking beans so easy all summer, now has become a chore
to clean, as the beans have wound the their way round and round
the 2x4 inch weld-wire openings in the fence.  If I don't remove
them now, while they are still green and pliable, I will have to
do in the spring when they have dried and have a stranglehold
on the wire.  Though not a strenuous job, it is boring and will
consume most of the time I will spend in the garden.  My mind
wanders to a dear friend who used to share this chore with me.
We gardened on this little plot, though it was bigger when we
worked it together, for several years.  She passed away; it will be
three years this November.  I have lost four other friends this
year, it doesn't seem possible.

The fencing, now clean, gets rolled up for storage, along with
the poultry fencing that covered the chard.  The fence posts are
pulled and stacked alongside.  Time to hoe and pull the weeds
that had sprung up amongst the veggies, and all goes on the heap
for composting, there are four wheel barrowsful.  Lastly, I cut
an armful of zinnias, I always plant flowers in my patch, they
are food for the soul, and their beauty sustains my spirit as well
as the vegetables sustain my body.  They are especially radiant
today, it is as if they know their time is short.  I leave the plants
for my fellow gardeners, they will produce blooms until frost,
and who knows, they may still be here when I come home.  I have
cut enough flowers to deck out every room in my house.

I take one last look at the garden, the tomato plants at the far end
and the zinnias at my end, stand like lone sentries guarding an empty
plot.  It was a good garden, they always are, and it will be here again
come spring, whether I am or not.  I always say I don't think
 I can do it for another year, my back is sore, I worked up two
blisters on hands that grew soft over the summer, my nail are ragged
and dirty.  But I know come February, when the seed companies
inundate my mailbox with their colorful catalogues, I will once again
long for the smell and feel of the earth.  Like childbirth, I will forget
the pain and only remember the joy of watching what I sowed grow
to fruition.  I will do it until I can no longer turn a spade or rake a
clod of soil.

As I stow my harvest in the trunk of the car, along with my garden gloves
and shoes, the wind begins to pick up, there are ominous clouds on the
western horizon, and the first drops of rain splatter on my windshield.
I will have the chard and tomatoes for dinner, they will taste especially
good, as good as the first ones of summer.  Next week I will have to
vacuum summer's soil out of the car.

I'm just sayin'.

You Can Call Me Stupid...

Well, everyone is entitle to their mid-life crisis, if
this is mine, I will have to live to one-hundred and
fifty.  I had to put my beloved dog, Sweetie down
three years ago, her heart just couldn't go on, and I
knew it was time to let her go.  I cried for two weeks;
she was the last thing I had left of my husband.  She
was really his dog, and she mourned his passing as
much as I did.  Sweetie merely tolerated me, but she
would give up her life to protect me.

When my husband died, I took a month-long trip to
Poland to connect with relatives, and when I came
home, I put the house up for sale, piled as much as I
could carry in the car, and with Sweetie as my co-pilot,
we headed to Wisconsin.  I didn't know a soul here
but, as fate would have it , I now have a wonderful
group of friends, and a network of activities that
keep me busy six-days a week.

When Sweetie died, I bought a new car, I didn't need
a new car but I bought one anyway.  And not just any
car, I bought a sporty SUV, with a variable-speed tranny,
turbocharged engine, speed shifter, and all-wheel drive-
for the snow don't you know- his name is Spike.  I
always name my cars, and this one is definitely, Spike.
There isn't much room in the backseat for passengers,
but then I didn't buy it for a taxi.  My friends groaned,
and rolled their eyes.

This year for whatever reason, I have decided to take
my life in a new direction.  I have been involved in a
class in reminiscence writing for the past seven years. I
have seven years of memories set down on paper, I have
listened to other people's lives unfold in snippets, weekly
installments of their childhood through adulthood, and I
quit.  I refuse to look back anymore, there is nothing left
there that I wish to recall.

I have taken the same four classes in my Senior Learning
Group for the past seven years.  This year I am taking four
different classes.  I am giving up the comfortable for the
challenge of something new and different.  No more physics
and philosophy, I can't do Kant for another year and no one
can explain quantum mechanics, and they don't care, so why
should I.  I am going back to my first love, poetry, and I am
going to finish that collection of short stories that I started
writing a lifetime ago.  I am going to improve my skill with
a writers workshop.  And I am blogging, but I guess you know
that as you are reading this.  They say you are not a writer unless
someone reads your work, and I am happy to say I received my
first comment on one of my blogs.  Someone out there is reading
them.

But the biggest change I am making in my life is really scary.
I have put an offer on a house, not just any house, but a four-
bedroom three-bath house.  Right now, I live in a two-bedroom
two-bath condo.  It's big enough for me, I don't need anything
bigger, certainly not twice the size.  But if you gotta go, go big!

I spent the morning with the realtor going over page after page
of the contracts, the addendums, and the condition report, until
we finally came to the bottom line, the line that says 'signature of
the buyer'.  I guess that was me, my palms were sweaty, and my hand
shook a little but I signed the paper.  The agent gave me my copy,
shook my hand and said he would let me know as soon as he got
an answer from the sellers.

So here I sit and wait for something that I don't know whether I will
be sad if I lose or sadder if I win.   When I bought my condo, I said
that I would never move again, I said they would carry me out of here
feet first.  It has been a very nice home, but I have never felt 'at home'
for years, so many years.  When I married, I moved into my husband's
home, it was a nice house and soon I made it mine.  We were happy there,
it was a family home and we had lovely family, two boys and a little
girl.

Then fate stepped in and our son, Michael, was killed in an accident.  By
then the other two children, David and Ann, were on their own, David to
his own apartment and Ann to college.  Suddenly the family home wasn't
anymore.  We didn't know if it was harder to stay with the memories, or
leave and take them with us.  We chose to leave.

But you can't move away from the pain, you take it with you wherever you
go.  That first move led to a series of eight more moves.  The houses all
seemed perfect when we bought them, but after two or three years they
became just empty shells, that, no matter how hard we tried we couldn't
fill them.  And our lives became a quest to find a 'home'.  The kids had
scattered to the wind, across the county.  Then one day, Ann called, she
had discovered a lump, it was cancer, stage four.  We spent Christmas
with her in Oregon and then, reluctantly we drove back home to Arkansas.
All the way home we couldn't speak of what we knew was coming.

By New Years Eve my husband had worked himself into such a state, and
by his birthday, January 28th, he was gone.  I knew he could not face
burying his baby girl.

And by that August, Ann was gone too.  Suddenly I had to leave, I had
to go back to my roots again, but there were no roots left, they had been
ripped out years before.  So the dog and I settled in our little condo
in Madison Wisconsin, a new start in a new place.  I buried her ashes
in the little piece of ground next to the condo.  I'm happy here, I am, it's
still not home but it's comfortable.  So why am I still looking for a place
to call 'home'?  I don't know, but there is still an emptiness that I have to
fill, right now I fill it with work.  Maybe someday...
we'll see what tomorrow brings.

I'm just sayin'.

If You Remember the Sixties...

The completion of that statement goes something like;
If you remember the sixties, you weren't there.  Well I
remember the sixties; I was there and I was cold-stone
sober and drug free though them all.  And the way I
remember them, they make today look like a church.
picnic.

For all the hand-wringing and hair pulling of today,
the world, and especially the United States, have survived
much worse.  For one thing there was the Great Civil War,
but if that is too far back for you, lets jump up
100 years to 1968...

The year started badly with the war in Viet Nam, and
the Tet Offensive.  The North Viet Cong army, 85,000
strong, attacked over 100 cities and military bases in
the South, shattering Americas belief that the war was
going well.  And by February, American casualties
totaled 500 or more a week.

March brought us face to face with what the war was
doing to our servicemen.  On March 16th, the extent
of the massacre at the village of My Lai was revealed.
Between 400 and 500 unarmed men, women and
children were gunned down, lined up and photographed.
Exhausted and facing opposition from the Democrats
for his handling of the war, Lyndon Johnson announced,
on March 31st, that he would not run for another term.
Leaving the field open for Humphry, McGovern, and
Robert Kennedy, a fateful group.

Then on April 4th, Martin Luther King Jr. was
assassinated in Memphis TN, sending shock waves
across America and the rest of the world.  The shooter,
James Earl Ray, was apprehended in London's Heath-
row Airport and quickly extradited to the US and just as
quickly tried and sentenced.  Robert Kennedy gave a passionate
speech calling for unity.

And on June 5th, after winning the California presidential
primary, Robert Kennedy was gunned down on live television
in the basement of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles.
All this was leading up to and culminating with the
Democratic National Convention  August 26 thru 29,
in Chicago.

While the Democratic delegates gathered in the Interna-
tional Amphitheater, tens of thousands of protesters gathered
in Grant Park on the city's lakefront.  The peaceful demon-
strations were soon disrupted by police, in riot gear, who
tried to disperse the crowd.  Hundreds of young demonstrators
were beaten and arrested.  And a new lexicon entered our
vocabulary: Hippies, Black Panthers, and Chicago 8, became
household names.  Hubert Humphry was nominated by a widely
divisive Democratic Party.  It was four days that rocked the world,
and it would be years before the wounds would finally heal.

In November, during the Mexico City Olympics, the tumult of
the preceding year came to a head when two black athletes, who
won a gold and a bronze medal, raised their fists in a Black
Power salute during the playing of the Star Spangled Banner.
The outrage just further widened the gap that was forming
between the black and white population, despite the work done
by LBJ with the Civil Right Act of 1964.

November of that year had Richard Nixon wining the presidency,
and George Wallace, the third-party candidate and avowed
segregationist, garnering over 13% of the vote.  The year ended
with 16,592 Americans dead in the Viet Nam War!

If you are exhausted just reading this, you should have tried living
thru it.  Those years changed America, and not for the better.  But,
we survived, we adapted, and we came out of those difficult times
with a new resolve to work harder to close the gap between black
and white Americans.  Funny thing about gaps though, they never
really stay closed for long.

Today it is the man in the White House that, instead of calling
for calm, unity and reassurance, is once again stoking the fires
 of segregation.  Turning white people against those people
of color, and Christians against Muslims, he has emboldened
 the far-right white supremacists, encouraging them to violence.
Instead of seeking unity across the globe, he has disparaged our
allies and encouraged our avowed enemies.  His coarse and crude
ad hominem attacks of persons he perceives as being against him,
are broadcast everyday via Twitter to his tens of thousands of
followers.

He has single-handily changed American discourse, and debased
the office of the presidency.  He seeks no council, relying on gut
emotion to guide him, most times erroneously.  His wild swings
of contradictory decrees confuse and frighten our allies.  For all
appearances, he makes 'shooting from the hip' look like a marks-
manship contest.  The question is, will we come out of this better
than we were, or will we be forever cursed with a country and a
presidency that no longer commands the respect of the world?

I'm just askin'.      

 


 

Don't You Wish You Lived in Canada?

Here we are in the full throes of an election that is
scheduled to take place on Tuesday November 3, 2020.
Yes that is 418 days hence. 418 more days of 24/7 assault
by television, radio, e-mail, and text of what your
favorite - or not so favorite - candidate has done,
is doing, and will do.  418 more days of being hit up
for money, "Puleeze, all we are asking for is five more
dollars".  418 more days of worrying about answering
your phone or your doorbell for fear of getting bombarded
by a sales pitch for the presidential flavor of the day.  418
more days of your mailbox being stuffed to the gills with
campaign literature.

Right now, for the Democrats, it is a game of  'ten little
candidates', down by more than half from the initial
group.  It is a painful process, especially if the guy you
were backing is no longer in the running, pardon my pun.
The top three candidates; Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, and
Elizabeth Warren have been at it for quite a while. Warren
declared her candidacy on February 9, 2019, right behind
her was Sanders who declared on February 19, 2019, and
taking up the rear, but finishing first, is Biden who tossed
his hat into the ring on April 25, 2019.  And somewhere in
the mix are Cory Booker, Pete Buttigieg, Julian Castro,
Kamala Harris, Amy Klobucher, Beto O'Rourke, and
Andrew Yang, phew!  There are enough there for them
to have their own parade, but then again none of them
could decide who would lead it off.

But as far as being in the running for first place, they are
all pikers when it comes to the Republicans. The bible that
Trump was sworn in on, was still warm from his touch,
when he officially filed his campaign papers with the
Federal Election Commission.  Yup, he filed for reelection
on his Inauguration Day!  And hang on to your hat folks,
he is now talking about his 2024 election.  Hasn't anyone
told him about the Twenty-second Amendment?  Though
I doubt Trump would let a little thing like that stand in
his way, it hasn't before.

There are some brave souls who have declared their
candidacy for president on the Republican ticket to
run against Trump in 2020; Joe Walsh, the 'potty
mouth' former talk show host/ U.S. Representative
from Illinois, and Mark Sandford, yes that Mark
Sandford, the one, who in 2009, was 'walking the
Appalachian Trail in Argentina' while governor of
 South Carolina.  And that folks are the ones in the
clown car.  

There are rumors that former Ohio governor, John
Kasich, former Arizona Senator, Jeff Flake, and former
Tennessee Senator, Bob Corker - anyone of whom
would make a fine president - are thinking about
running against Trump.  Also the former governor of
Massachusetts, Bill Weld, has declared his candidacy
already.  

However, the Republican Party, the one in the choke-
hold of the current president, is allowing several states
to forego their primary contests for 2020.  It would be
a tad embarrassing to have some states pledge their
delegates for anyone other than the benevolent leader
and potentate himself, Donald J. Trump.  Imagine the
blow to his ego, why it would be enough to make his
yellow hair turn white.  Not gonna happen.

Now let us take a look at our neighbors to the North,
you know, the nice people.  They are having an election
for Prime Minister, a substantial figure in Canadian
government, not quite president but still important.
The current PM a member of the Liberal Party, Justin
Trudeau - whose father was PM for over fifteen years -
is running against Jagmeet Singh and a formidable
opponent, the Conservative Party's candidate, Andrew
Scheer.

By law there must be an election every four years for
Prime Minister, usually on the third Monday of October,
but the PM can call for an election at any time.  The
current Prime Minister goes before the Governor General,
the Queen's representative in Canada, and announces the
date of the election.  In this case, the election is to be on
October 21...wait for it...2019.  Yup folks, 40 days from
today.  That is also a law in Canada, no electioneering
prior to FORTY days before the election,  That's the
time between Ash Wednesday and Easter, you know
when you give up beer and potato chips for three days.

Now there are those who say that America is a vast
country and it takes months to cover all the cities and
towns to get one's message across.  I have news for
them, Canada is even bigger, and its cities and towns
are smaller and more far-flung.  And most of them do
not have 5G internet or anything close to it.  So how
can Canada hold a very important election, their most
important election, in forty days and American politicians
are running for reelection as soon as they are sworn in?
The answer is: MONEY!  During the 2016 election,
the political parties spent $2.4 billion.  Imagine, if you
will, what that amount of money could be used for instead
of being spent on tat; junk buttons to clutter the landfills, audio
and visual junk to assault your ears and eyes, paper junk
milled from a thousand trees.  If the press is right, and
no one pays any attention before Labor Day of the election
year, what the heck are we doing?  What if legislators could
spend their time working for their constituents, instead of
spending 60% of their time raising money for their reelection?
Think about it, we could be like Canada, only warmer...

I'm just sayin'.

How Do You Like Your Strawberries?

For those of you who remember the movie
The Caine Mutiny, there is a parallel to what is
happening with Alabama and hurricane  Dorian.
For those of you who are too young to remember,
let me explain.  My humble attempts would be
foreshadowed if you would do an internet search
for 'Caine mutiny strawberries', there you can play
back the portion of the film detailing the
strawberry incident.

The film, which came out in 1954, was adapted
from the book of the same name by Herman Wouk.
It is a fictitious account of a paranoid ship's
captain, and the resulting mutiny.  The movie
was nominated for seven Academy Awards,
including Best Picture.  It had an all-star cast
including Humphrey Bogart, Van Johnson, Fred
MacMurray, and Lee Marvin to name just a
few.  The film has since become a classic.

The incident concerning the strawberries
is as follows:   The ship's captain - played
impeccably by Bogart - calls the ship's officers
down to the wardroom because he feels that
someone from the kitchen staff has stolen
the remaining frozen strawberries leftover
from that night's dinner.  To prove his point,
he has a sailor from mess ladle out the amount
of strawberries - using a one-gallon can and
sand as a substitute for the berries - that would
have been consumed for dessert.  There was almost
a quart of sand left in the can at the end of the
experiment.  Thus proving to his mind, that some-
one had stolen the leftover berries.

The Captain then orders the officers to conduct
an investigation of the missing berries, immediately,
even though it is 0130 hours, and to report back to
him at 0800.  The written report, submitted by his
lieutenant, says the finding were inconclusive.
Convinced that there is a thief on board, the Captain
concocts an elaborative scheme to find the guilty
person.  The Captain refuses to let the incident
die even though the thief is never found.

Prior to the strawberry incident, there were other
incidents of errors in judgement that the Captain
tries to cover up and he demands that the officers
back him.  The officers are conflicted, knowing
how serious a charge of incompetence against a
ship's Captain is, and they are reluctant to use
Article 184 of the Navy Regs to relieve the Captain
of his duties.  The final straw comes when a storm
puts the ship and crew in peril and the lieutenant
takes over to save all.  He is rewarded with a Court
Marshal.

If any of this sounds familiar, it is because we are
living the plot in real time, only today's 'Captain' is
the President of the United States and not just a
lowly Captain of a fictitious minesweeper in the Pacific.
But the parallels are too similar to ignore.  In the latest
saga of 'who stole the strawberries' the President took
to Twitter to announce, erroneously, that Alabama was
in the path of hurricane Dorian.  To back up his mis-
statement he showed a weather map that was crudely
altered with a black magic marker.  Alabama's weather
service immediately corrected the President's
communique.

What would have been just another 'confeve' moment to
be forgotten by the next morning, was to grow into an
incident of massive proportion.  It appears that the
President did not take lightly being corrected by a lowly
local weatherman.  Our 'Captain', directed NOAA - the
National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration - and the
US Weather Service, a branch of NOAA, to order the
regional weather services to back the President in his
erroneous statement.  A US Coast Guard rear-admiral
was also enlisted to corroborate the story (anyone here
looking for a star or two to pin on his epaulets).  And so,
what should have been a non-story, or just another
Trump laugh line, went on for six painful days of who
was right and who was wrong.

The crux of this hullabaloo, is that lives depend on the
warnings issued by the National Weather Service, be they
hurricane, flood, or tornado.  To cast aspersions on their
credibility is to put millions of Americans in imminent
danger at a time when time is of the essence. The men and
women who work at NOAA are science professionals, they
deserve our respect, and thanks, for working tirelessly to
interpret the signs of impending storms.  What Trump did
was a slap in their collective faces.

But this latest incident, as inflammatory as it was, is not
the first, but merely one of a long line of suspect behavior.
How much longer does the country have to endure the
erratic behavior of this president?  The powerful inner
circle that at one time deflected the president's actions,
has grown smaller with defections.  His entourage now
consists, mainly, of sycophants who encourage such
errant behavior as an end to their own agenda.  We see
how easily the president's attention span can be diverted
by those who curry his favor.  It is so apparent, that fawning
and flattery was used to control him at the G7 meetings,
by members of the EU.

Is this what it has come to, a buffoon, a figurehead, influenced
by the latest proclamations from FOX News, and the war hawks
who have his ear?  Where is the outcry, have we become so
desensitized by Trump's out bursts that we simply tune them
out, or laugh at them over morning coffee?  This man has the
nuclear button, for God's sake!!  If that doesn't scare you,
read the commentaries in the newspapers from other countries.
They are very worried.

When will the members of the Republican party stop apologizing
away the craziness from this administration?  When will the
Democratic party stand up and say enough?  Are you all so afraid
of losing positions that you refuse to call out this madman?  Do
you really believe that you will be able to control him and his
sociopathic advisors when they take us to war?  Donald Trump
is unfit to govern as president; it will only get worse as the
pressures of the reelection begin to mount.  He has not fulfilled
his campaign promises yet, and he will have to do something
spectacular to draw the attention away from the hue and cry
coming from the other side.  People are beginning to pay
attention to the candidates running for the Democratic
nomination.  They are drawing huge crowds, that used to be
the purview of the Trump rallies.

It is time, it is past time, while the damage done to our country's
reputation is still repairable.  At one time I thought, like you, that
we can defeat him in the next election, so why bother to take him
on now?  Because he is becoming more erratic with each passing
day.  Call it mutiny, call it whatever you wish, it is time for all
patriots to come to the defense of their country, to put America
first, if you won't or don't you are cowards!

I'm just sayin'.