HALLOWEEN 2017

HALLOWEEN 2017: Scary. Corker, Flake, Charlie Dent, and other right of center or even hard right legislators are desperately distancing themselves - not just from Trump, but from what the incumbent Republican party is about to become. They see what is about to happen, they can't prevent it, and they don't want to be sucked into the constitutional black hole that the Republican party is about to champion.
"...Trump is likely to adopt a self-defense based on huge assertions of arbitrary power. “A president cannot obstruct justice through the exercise of his constitutional and discretionary authority over executive-branch officials like Mr. Comey.” Those words appeared in a Wall Street Journal op-ed posted Sunday afternoon by two well-known Republican lawyers. They are about to become the official White House position—and when they do, you’ll find yourself with little maneuvering room to prevent them from becoming your position as well. "
Staying Silent May Backfire Spectacularly on Republican Lawmakers (The Atlantic)

Paul Manafort's Masseuse Indicted!

Kidding.

Yeah, I know. I'm a butthole. :-)

What's Trump's next move. Eat the turkey he's pardoned?

Nine or ten months ago I began visiting Congressman Dent's office in an attempt to prevent the loss of my (and a lot of other folks') health care. As the year progressed (if that's the right word) I became increasingly concerned about the broader consequences of a Trump presidency and the implications of Russian action against the democratic West.

Now that Trump has gone and - rather than letting Obamacare die on it's own (which it wasn't :-) ) - he decided to destroy the individual market.

Talked it over with my internist yesterday and she said that in the worse case (which may not happen, at least, not immediately) I'd have to forgo routine check-ups (from three times a year due to my various conditions to just one annual visit) and that she'd continue writing my prescriptions - which she believed I'd still be able to afford with the exception of my medication for Generalized Anxiety Disorder.

She said I'd have to re-adjust to living with the physical symptoms of anxiety WITHOUT resorting to self-medicating with alcohol again.

I've come to the conclusion that if effing Trump and my fellow Republicans in congress manage to bring about my death from lack of access to medical care THE YEAR BEFORE I'm eligible for Medicare, I can live with that. (So to speak. :-) )

And I'll consider it a moral victory over the madness of King Trump, if not a more substantive one, if I die sober.

But, at least while I'm on meds, I'm no longer worried about dying (from irony, among other things, the year before I'm eligible for Medicare) as a victim of Trump's and the Republicans' determined efforts to "reform" my healthcare. :-) 

But the meds aren't doing a DAMN thing regarding my anxiety about Trump and his enablers provoking, initiating, or blundering into a nuclear extinction event because Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell are willing to live with a nuclear-armed nutcase in the White House so long as that nutcase will sign their massive redistribution of wealth to the rich (which they ALSO, ironically, call tax "reform." :-) ).

Why should I worry about that if I'm not around?

Because I have family and friends and children and grandchildren of friends who will have to live in Trump's dystopian world until regime change occurs. And it will.

America's Most Dangerous Polarization

America's most dangerous polarization is not between left and right but between those who assert that facts are public and real and those who believe that facts are transient decorations for private mental events and emotion.

"“Journalistic integrity is dead,” he [Breitbart News Washington editor Matt Boyle] declared. “There is no such thing anymore. So everything is about weaponization of information.”"

What if the right-wing media wins? (Columbia Journalism Review)