Bret: Maybe now that the administration isn’t going forward with its $1.8 billion slush fund for Jan. 6 rioters and other allies, we can restore that N.S.F. funding?
Mindless optimism is the only antidote I know to rational despair.
Frank: In your despair you have indeed identified the big problem — Trump’s repudiation of expertise — and the administration’s inarticulate defense of abandoning ocean research is a tell.
That’s why I shared it. It’s the semantic sewage you pump out when you have no legitimate argument for your actions and nothing real to say.
The Trump administration destroys for the sake of destroying, to erase what its predecessors have done.
Nihilism is too grand a term for its approach, which is more like that of a schoolyard bully who steps on your Fluffernutter sandwich because he can and because he likes the sound of the smooshing and the gloss of your tears.
I really should have worked on this to get Fluffernutter sandwich into the haiku …
Maybe tomorrow.
Aside from that, I am not sure there has been a better summing up of current presidential situation.
The Trump administration destroys for the sake of destroying, to erase what its predecessors have done.
Nihilism is too grand a term for its approach, which is more like that of a schoolyard bully who steps on your Fluffernutter sandwich because he can and because he likes the sound of the smooshing and the gloss of your tears.
It is for that reason that I have to feel that this is all a hybrid hot house environment that cannot either sustain itself or recreate itself once that current man in office no longer is in office.
I have to think this.
Mindless optimism is the only antidote I know to rational despair.
duty-bound fulfill roles with due care, modicum of independence
The Kennedy Center’s organic statute makes crystal clear that the Center is to be named for President Kennedy, and it cannot bear any other formal name or public memorial based on the Board’s unilateral say-so.
Congress gave the Kennedy Center its name, and only Congress can change it.
But, while public board service may be an honor, board members are not mere figureheads.
They are still duty-bound to fulfill their roles with due care and some modicum of independence.
That tenet holds especially true for board members tasked by Congress with managing property held in trust for the enjoyment of the American people.
From the ruling of United States District Judge Christopher R. Cooper in the case Beatty vs. Trump, et al.
Congress it seems, gets a muligan.
According to Wikipedia, A mulligan is a second chance to perform an action, usually after the first chance went wrong through bad luck or a blunder. Its best-known use is in golf, whereby it refers to a player being allowed, only informally, to replay a stroke, although that is against the formal rules of golf. The term has also been applied to other sports, games, and fields generally. The origin of the term is unclear.
As a point of trivia, Wikipedia also says, The earliest known use of the term is in a 1931 issue of the Detroit Free Press, somewhat predating the earliest citation in the Oxford English Dictionary from 1936. The most common explanation of the term’s origin is that it was named after a golfer with the surname Mulligan, the main candidates being either David Mulligan or John A. “Buddy” Mulligan; however, no connection with these figures is recorded until several decades after the term entered common use.
Which I include as a shout out to the Detroit Free Press, but I digress.
As I was saying, Congress has been given a muligan, a second chance to perform an action, usually after the first chance went wrong through bad luck or a blunder over adding a name to the name of the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center of the Performing Arts.
It is a mistake to think that that current man in office would ever wait for permission to do something.
Anyone who has managed to read all of Robert Caro’s bio of Robert Moses, The Power Broker, will recognize the game plan.
Mr. Caro writes about the efforts of people in New York to preserve the revolutionary era Fort Clinton at the tip of Manhatten Island.
Robert Moses wanted the old Fort demolished and the land redeveloped and he wasn’t waiting for persmission.
Caro writes, “In 1946, Congress was ready to pass the bill designating Fort Clinton a national monument. But, recalls Binger, “this would take six or eight months.” Moses moved faster. At four o’clock one Friday afternoon, he got a new demolition authorization from the Board of Estimate. (O’Dwyer betrayed the reformers; McAneny confided, “He’s not a very solid sort of person.”) Leaving City Hall, the reformers huddled desperately. Binger had been toying with the idea of bringing a new suit—on the grounds that the fort was a monument and hence permission was required from the Municipal Art Commission for its destruction.
Binger hired Frederick Van Pelt Bryan, who “called Windels and said, ‘I’m going to court Monday on this.’ And that’s when Paul Windels saved the fort. He said, ‘Are you crazy? There won’t be anything left of this fort Monday morning. He’ll demolish it over the weekend.’ This was all on a Friday, remember. ‘You bring this to court in half an hour.’ ” Bryan did, and persuaded a Supreme Court Justice to sign an injunction, which was handed to Moses that evening.
How right Windels had been was proven when the reformers rushed to Battery Park the next morning to see if any damage had been done. In the brief hours before the injunction had been served on Moses, Binger recalls, he “had already burned those great doors.”
But again, I digress (though I have to add there is a lot to learn about the ways and means of that man currently in office from this book).
I feel on this one small thing Congress has got a second chance to perform an action, after the first chance went wrong through bad luck or a blunder.
As the Judge said, they are still duty-bound to fulfill their roles with due care and some modicum of independence.
Congress gave the Kennedy Center its name, and only Congress can change it.
state is stronger with vibrant parties, stronger when have clash of ideas
“I believe that our state is stronger with vibrant parties. I think we, as a whole, are stronger when we have a clash of ideas. I think that’s true at the national level. I think it’s true at the state level. We are stronger when we have a clash of ideas and we can discuss those policy goals,” Massey said at the time.
“Republicans are stronger when the Democrat Party is vibrant and viable.”
That’s $1.8 billion of your tax dollars potentially going into a slush fund to reward President Trump’s loyalists.
“Designed to provide payments to Americans who claim to be victims of what he describes as government weaponization.”
In one-dollar bills, that would stack more than 100 miles.
And if it were split evenly among the Jan. 6 rioters, each one would receive more than $1 million.
The administration says it’s just —— “Reimbursing people that were horribly treated ——” “Compensating Americans for the lawfare that we saw under the last administration.”
That is false.
The American people should be furious that Trump’s allies could get paid a pile of tax money that’s around the amount that the president cut from health research last year.
This is the opinion of the New York Times editorial board.
Lets be clear about one thing I have only lately come to understand.
Holding the office of President of the United States is just the means to which the goal can be achieved.
The Presidency is incidental to the plan of the people who maintain that man currently in office … in office.
I have LONG said, however, that I can only explain that the hangers-on of the man currently in office, hang on, hang on to the bitter end, only in hopes that by staying near to his universe, there may, someday, be a paycheck or a tip.
It is the equivalent of buying a lottery ticket WHEN BUYING A LOTTERY TICKET is possibly the best use of your retirement plans.
In that respect, I can understand the motivation.
I can understand the motivation, but I have to question the cost.
The sell out.
It is bad and its getting worse but DING DING DING, the long hoped for payoff is on the horizon.
As the Editorial Board closes their opinion piece, “Trump is showing that he will use his power to protect people who break the law on his behalf, and even reward them for it.”
AND BELIEVE ME, this is just the start.
I cannot imagine the extent to which further payoffs will be coming as that current man in office tries to buy his way out of the mid terms (if he becomes so inclined to save the republican party) or further problems for himself and his money.
He has already achieved immunity from the Supreme Court for anything he does while currently holding office.
He had now achieved immunity from the IRS.
You remember the IRS?
That was who finally got Al Capone for failure to pay taxes.
Well, that man currently in office has eliminated that worry for himself.
I am convinced that despite his name being plastered on everything, really cares nothing for his place in history.
Its his money money money.
If anything bothers him, its the headlines that that Musk feller may soon become the world’s first Trillionaire.
Besides that though, he loves money and he will use money to get more money.
The American people should be furious.
Yet for so many, betting on that current man in office is the best hope they have.
Despite the sell out.
Despite knowing better.
As Tom Sawyer said to Huckleberry Finn (and yes I have used this quote before and I will use it again):
“Right is right, and wrong is wrong, and a body ain’t got no business doing wrong when he ain’t ignorant and knows better.”
weren’t satisfied with having money unless there were many who didn’t
Oddly, it wasn’t the poverty that ground against the sensibilities so hard that depressed me the most but the attitude of many of the more fortunate who weren’t satisfied with having money unless there were many who didn’t have it.
Even quasi-religious people liked to quote Jesus as saying, “The poor you have with you always,” neglecting to add that he didn’t say to sit on your ass and don’t do anything about it.
The thought that my country accepts the idea that a quarter of its citizens are destined to be social mutants peels my nerves.
Our compassion quotient has seemed to lower a bit more every year of my adult life.
I never much minded when my colleagues would tease me for being a “bleeding heart” because if your heart doesn’t bleed you’re dead, and you’ve become just another greedy little shit factory on life’s way.
From The Road Home by Jim Harrison (New York, Grove Press, 2004).
Yes of late I have been drawing a lot of inspiration from Mr. Harrison and The Road Home of late.
You can guess that I am re-reading it again and wonder if the power of some of Mr. Harrison’s writing would have been lessened had he left some of the rawness out of it.
But this is like trying to draw life lessons from watching the Soprano’s and wishing they could have dropping the violence.
The life frustrations of Tony in his sessions with the psychiatrist (“If my calling is so important, PICK UP THE PHONE”) I guess need the contrast with the miserable life of a mobster.
But I digress.
Our compassion quotient has seemed to lower a bit more every year of my adult life.
I could start with the compassion quotient but you could add almost any other aspect of life and it has seemed to lower a bit more every year.
It seems that I have read stories that for the first time, the next generation of Americans are looking at a worse world then the previous generation had.
We could start with that current man in the oval office and go down hill from there.
I read books and poems about a filled with bird song and all I have around my house is the caw caw of crows.
I read books filled with exclamations of wonder and beauty over the salt sea breeze and where I live on the Atlantic Coast of South Carolina, what you get is the pluff mud of the salt march which smells of dirty diapers.
Sports are money pits with nothing to do about sports.
I am tired of raging against the machine.
There is just too much money, dead money, money that isn’t doing anything but sitting in banks in account and doing nothing.
I don’t like to go to Woody Allen but in Annie Hall, the artist (Max von Sydow) says:
Money, money, money! If Jesus came back, and saw what’s going on in his name, he’d never stop throwing up.
