I'm a tired blogging fool. I took today off because I was getting a new railing installed on the front steps to my house and some ugly shrubbery taken down in my front yard and it seemed like a nice time to do some outside work myself and get some sun--so in the unseasonable 90+ degree May weather, I got burned to an unpleasant two-toned ouchiness. I lowered my A/C to 75 after dinner, took a cold shower, fixed some Campari and sodas, and spread a nice ($) chamomile face cream all over myself as if it was a (cheap) body lotion, and settled down to catch up on the news.
MMWHHAHAHAHA! Weed-whacking shrubbery to death isn't half the effort keeping up with the news is, these days. Most days, at my job, I sneak in news breaks at intervals, coffee breaks and lunch. Unplugging for hours was like spinning "Feeling Lucky?" on a time machine, and disembarking to about a year and a half's worth of news.
Well, maybe not exactly. But feels like it though!
I guess the biggest thing that happened was that Rod Rosenstein, the Deputy AG that Trump and them tried to stick with being the decider in the FBI Director Comey firing, made the positive decision to appoint a special counsel, and made it former FBI Director Robert Mueller. That was a great, solid choice. Mueller is a serious person with bipartisan respect. He seems like the man to do a great job, and I will say this--appointing Mueller was a better response to how Trump tried to play the DOJ than Rosenstein resigning. This might make Trump think about firing him, too--but that would look weird and vindictive, wouldn't it? He should think a bit longer the next time he sets about firing people.
Another odd damn thing that came out was news that the Trump transition team should have been well aware that General Flynn was under investigation before putting him on as National Security Adviser. This kind of undercuts the rationale that Flynn was fired because of lying to Mike Pence, because Pence was in charge of transition and of all people, how wasn't he in the know, already? And it certainly true that Trump et als took their good time after Acting AG Sally Yates made her concerns known, as well. It's like the nascent Presidential team very nearly saw Flynn's foreign entanglements as not a bug--but a feature.
How did this dynamic work? Appallingly, based on the possibility that Flynn, as a known compromised NSA, stopped a raid on ISIS because Turkey preferred it be stopped. Flynn, a known hardliner about anti-Islamic terrorism, may have put a delay on a military op against ISIS because of what it looked like to the country paying him--that was not the US?
I don't know how Flynn was fixing to serve Turkey, and the US, and maybe Russia, all at once. I especially don't know how the Trump vetting process never picked up on how conflicted this should have left their guy. But you know who I don't think has got enough focus in this--Mike Pence. VP. The guy in charge of the transition, who for whatever reason is setting up a PAC right now like he wants a lifeboat berth if the fine-tuned Titanic he's on is going down. (Would those funds be applicable to defense costs in case of impeachment, one speculates? I can't be arsed to look this up--his problem, obvs.)
In other funny news, the GOP House leadership is a regular Abbot and Costello. Ryan and McCarthy were caught making the funny about whether Trump sort of seems like he might be a paid tool of Russia, which is spending money to try and subvert other governments. I'm trying to stay neutral in my feels about this. Is the funny because they are in on what they know is true? Or is the funny because they are skeptical of what they are seeing in the news? I can't decide. What is funny to Republicans might not really be up my funny bone, you know?
Also guilty of having a funny bone when it comes to Trump? Vladimir Putin, who is also a gifted pianist, which I did not know. He made a great funny about our potential Constitutional crisis, implying that the Trump WH team's eagerness to invite TASS and Lavrov to the Oval Office resulted in "tapes" he had access to. (You know I love you Vladi, but this is too much joking for anxious Americans--we might get skittish like a horse that is impossible to ride. Being thrown off might hurt!)
Feh. I don't believe so much in following the funny, as following the money, anyway. Poor Donald Trump--he already thinks he has been so imposed upon, even though political figures have had so much worse. Imprisonment, torture, assassination. All he's had is people being mean!
It's almost worth his being elected, to see him so whiny and pathetic. But when will his base understand how buggered he truly is? And why they should never have set their Chinese-make red trucker caps for him in the first damn place? He's thinking of putting his old campaign squad together. He's chumming the media sharks with red meat by appointing WI Sherriff Clarke, who is basically the Worst. But is that really going to win anyone to him? He knows how to attract his base, but he's off-putting basically everyone else.
I think he's screwed. I could be wrong. But today's over-excited news cycle is super-negative. And I don't see how it improves.
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