The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Maybe I’ve mentioned this before, maybe even a hundred times, but I have a 96 year old father who forwards me the emails he gets from his buddies, most of them probably nearly as old as he is, what we’ll generalize and call ‘angry white males’. Yesterday I got one that headlined Who the Hell is This? which was mostly a recounting of every misinformation ever written about Obama, his wife, his daughters and whether or not they were really Americans, really lawyers, ever went to the colleges they claimed to have attended, even if they had proof of their birth certificates. Including the kids.

I used to send him fact checks on the stuff he forwards, but my suspicion is he never really reads the replies. Nevertheless, I figured he sends me these screeds to see what my response will be, which in the past was sometimes fairly wild. But the old man is going on 97 and the last thing he needs is vitriol coming back at him from his oldest son. My brother gets the same emails and just hits Delete. Probably the smart response.

Today he asked me if I’d read that email he sent regarding the Obamas and what did I think. I said I think it’s old news, Dad, the guy is long gone. ‘Yeah, but pretty interesting, wasn’t it?’ he commented and I realized he believes these crazy conspiracy theories. ‘No,’ I said, ‘they’re not interesting, they’re bullshit, Dad. I don’t have time to go through 20 goofy accusations but half of them, when Obama was President, I sent you fact checks that showed these were phony baloney.’

‘Okay,’ he said, ‘but the other half sounds kind of right.’

My old man has very short term memory, the emphasis on very. Even if I spent hours fact checking and sending him the results, what would be the point? Next email he gets, we can start all over again. What I think is that most people have short term memory, mostly self-induced. They believe, like Dad does, why would anyone send this stuff out if it wasn’t true. And anyway, it sounds true so isn’t that close enough?

Donald Trump questioned Obama’s birth certificate and now he’s been elected, at least once, maybe eventually twice, by folks who believe what he tells them when obviously he isn’t telling the truth, isn’t factual, isn’t honest about much of anything. I wish it was as easy as fact checking, just send them a memo with a Snopes attachment saying FALSE. Between you and me, I can hardly wait to hit 96.

The mizzus just bought herself one of those gizmos that keep track of how many steps she takes. Our friends kept shining around with theirs, forever mumbling about 6500 already or need to make 2000 more, about as interesting to a guy like me as it was when she got interested in computers back in the Dark Ages and the first ones got semi-affordable. Not enough beer in the entire world to make those conversations interesting to the guy who swore he wouldn’t own one until it could talk to him, steer him through its intricacies and pat him on the back when it had taught him some new program. Course, instead of getting simpler, they got way more complex and I realized if I waited much longer I might as well reconcile myself to the life of a caveman living in the Bronze Age. Ugga bugga meets the Flintstones. Yabba dabba do!

This fitbit contraption straps on her wrist and needs to be worn all day if you want an accurate count. Don’t ask me who came up with 10,000 steps, no doubt the result of extensive studies and only coincidental it happens to be a nice round number. The average joe has a stride between two, two and a half feet, so 10,000 steps comes to, oh, 5 miles, give or take. Doesn’t matter to the fitbit if you walk all of it at once, maybe get some aerobic benefit, or just waddle out to the kitchen for another snack. You just need to hit 10,000 of em.

Now, I don’t want to be too dismissive of this technological wonder. If it gets folks off their tush and makes them feel guilty when they only get to 8000 steps that day, I guess that’s progress. Gotta be better than looking at a computer screen or a TV all the livelong day. And it’s not like the thing starts to administer shocks in increasingly painful feedback when you fall short of the 10K goal. Although I suspect the next generation Apple version will have that app built in. For your own good, you understand. Impose a little discipline to the lax.

And I expect my health insurer will want those records before another year goes by. Average 8500, premiums go sky high. And you thought smoking was problematic for those folks. Why not? The lazy bastards who refuse to keep themselves in tip top shape ought to pay more than us fitbitters, don’t you agree? Stick a GPS on that device with a built in transponder, the data goes to the HMO in real time, 24/7, save you the trouble of emailing. After all, could add a few steps to your day with those kind of savings….

Lindsey Graham, the senator who argued during Clinton’s trial “impeachment is not about punishment. Impeachment is about cleansing the office. Impeachment is about restoring honor and integrity to the office.” Right, Lindsey. But of course that was long long ago far far away, in a land grown totally unrecognizable. Now he has the Trump’s ear, imagines himself the emperor’s tailor, and refuses to read the transcripts of the impeachment hearings. See no evil, hear no evil, but speak a lot. The man is the donkey to Don J. Quixote.

If you had illusions that given the evidence to prove extortion of the Ukrainians by withholding military aid to fight the Russians who invaded their country unless they investigated Joe Biden’s boy, you must be 10 years old and still sleep with a teddy bear and the lights on. Politics isn’t for the faint of heart, but you haven’t seen anything like this since Chicago ’68. Even Nixon looks fairly benign these days, but then, he wasn’t mobbed up like Daley and Donald. Crimes are crimes only if you get caught. And if you get caught, so what? Justice is for the weak, the strong don’t care. Don’t underestimate the current mobster in the White House, he plays to win. Cheat, steal, bribe, lie lie and lie some more. Show the slightest weakness and the wolves will eat you from the shoes up. And obviously there are those who think these traits are real strength, a strength that will be used to help the little guy, them.

A week ago Lindsey was open to impeachment if the facts warranted and quid pro quo was proven. I guess if you refuse to look at facts, impeachment becomes a closed door. Today the good Senator remarked that the policy of Trump and his underground State Department was too incoherent to be effective. He admitted he sneaked a peak at some of the transcripts released so far, enough at this point to make the call. You really can’t make this stuff up. But the point is, Lindsey and his fellow apologists would win Olympic gold medals in mental acrobatics trying to defend what is essentially, indefensible. Their mamas should wash their lying mouths with soap.

Richard Nixon was brought down by the evidence anyone could hear on the tapes he made in the Oval Office. Donald Trump would have destroyed those tapes. Or just sequester the Ukraine phone call with Zelensky in top secret vaults and hand out redacted transcripts. He claims to want to weed out corruption in that country, why he needs to have Biden’s boy investigated. Irony, obviously, is not this emperor’s strong suit. If he had one at all.

We just got home from a wee vacation down at the Columbia River Gorge where we met up with old friends to hike and reminisce. We rented an old log cabin built by some biker dude who used to drive his Harley up to the location where Mt. Hood was perfectly framed beyond the orchards that dot the valley. From the antiques to the old photos on the walls, the place was like going back a century to a less complicated era. Mostly it was a respite from newspapers and politics and the impeachment hearings. To say it was a much needed tonic from those would be an understatement and a half.

But we’re back now, catching up on all things Trump and the ongoing impeachment investigation. It feels like my friend who returned from Nepal to find that returning home was more like PTSD, a head-jarring culture shock of consumer overdose and information overload. I mean, how many cereals do we possibly need glutting up an aisle or two in every grocery store from Miami to Seattle? Forget about the fact that most of them are diabetes-inducing processed crap marketed to kids who will be addicted to sugar before preschool. We want more choices, not less. We want more Trump, not less. We want our politics to be entertaining, not informative.

When we left less than a week ago, Trump and his apologists were bitching about ‘the process’, same one they used on Hillary with Benghazi, hypocrisy be damned! When the folks being interrogated testified that a quid pro quo existed between Trump and the Ukrainians, they argued at first that these people weren’t in the room, weren’t on the phone call, weren’t reliable witnesses, weren’t loyal, might even be spies and traitors. They screamed bloody murder that not every Republican Senator and Representative could be at the hearings, totally unfair, totally undemocratic. Everybody and their brother has been ordered by the White House to ignore subpoenas to appear before this witch hunt, but a few have defied that and testified anyway, probably to save their reputations and their hides. Now that transcripts are being released and testimony is under oath, well yeah, there was a quid pro quo to get dirt on Biden’s boy and find a secret server in Ukraine under a bed maybe in a farmhouse possibly outside Kiev in exchange for Congressionally mandated millions for a military fighting the Russians, they argue that if it was true, so what? Get over it, it’s done all the time, it’s how we do business.

Turns out Giuliani and Rick Perry were running an undercover State Department to get this done. You don’t hear from Rudy these days and Rick is stepping down from his cabinet post but not, he assures us, because it has anything to do with this Ukraine mess. The new line from the apologists is that okay, so it was quid and pro and quo too, it’s hardly an impeachable offense. Maybe looks bad, might even be the wrong thing to do, but not criminal, not illegal and certainly not impeachable.

The chickens are home too, to roost. The arguments from the apologists get wilder and wilder, the corner they’ve painted themselves into gets smaller and smaller. Their reasonings make as much sense as a box of Count Chocula, no nutrition, just empty calories. They’ll be adding a prize in every box soon, the way they used to when I was a naïve kid growing up in an America I thought I didn’t recognize any more. But it’s the same old con, the same old snake oil, the same old shell game. We’ve always had Trump, we just never put him in charge before.

Scientists down here in the super secret ultra-secure bio-labs of the South End have discovered a fungus that lives in the gut of a select few that self-ferments carbohydrates into alcohol. This break through, described by Dr. Lacti of the Elger Bay Institoot, opens the portal to untold riches for the savvy entrepreneur who can isolate that particular strain of fungus. Budweiser, he told a reporter from the Crab Cracker, has already shown considerable interest.

“Imagine watching the Super Bowl with all your pals,” the biologist told the Cracker, “and you take a pill then eat potato chips, say, or heavily processed crackers and voila, the carbos ferment immediately. No beer required. None of that gassy, heavy bloated feeling. By half time you’ve probably saved ten dollars. Who wouldn’t choose that?”

Dr. Lacti declined to estimate the cost of the fungi pill, but he said it probably would be a nominal cost. “Unless, of course, Budweiser buys the patent.” When asked to interview one of the subjects of the study, the doctor cited confidentiality concerns, but the Cracker, through intensive investigation, learned that the original source of the breakthrough was Fairlane Freddie who had been pulled over for DUI after a morning breakfast of pancakes with biscuits and gravy at the Diner with the Flatheads, the island vintage car club, when his 1965 Ford Fairlane was seen weaving repeatedly across lanes.

Freddie, a six year member of Alcoholics Anonymous, fought the charge and in the months before his trial, discovered that he had the rare disorder Dr. Lacti was now trying to market. “I gotta tell ya,” Freddie told the Cracker, “I thought they were crazy. Hell, I thought I was crazy. But it turns out I got Auto-Brewery Syndrome. Tell that to the Flatheads. They think I’m distilling in my car. But actually, I’m distilling in my stomach. Weird, huh? I eat a piece of toast, I’m high as a Katmandu Kite. The judge let me off thanks to Doc Lacti, but I’m not supposed to drive on pancakes anymore. Strictly eggs and bacon here on out.”

Down here on the bibulous South End, plenty of my cronies who brew nettle ales are more than a little concerned by this discovery. As Two Toke Tom confessed to me, the thought of ingesting raw nettles, fungus or no fungus, was enough to set him off on a panic attack. “It may be the end of the moonshine era, Skeeter. This damn science, what are they gonna dream up next?” I didn’t have the heart to mention Dr. Lacti was working on a self-vaping cannabis fungus. No point ruining another hobby of his. Life is plenty hard enough on us entrepreneurs.

I know a lot of you snowflakes out there on the hinterlands of the South End would like to give reparations for slavery. I get it. Of course we don’t have any descendants of slaves living on the South End, but your bleeding heart is in the right place. You, like me, probably feel guilty we don’t have people of color living down here, this being practically the white bread bastion of the island. Sure, we let Hispanics drive in for the day. Somebody’s got to mow our lawns and trim our hedges. Geez, you think our own kids are going to do that? Or us???

But while you’re emoting like crazy for the sins of our great great great great grandfathers, those genetic creeps who bought and sold human beings for fun and profit, how about a remorse or two for a real victim, the President. The guy has been under siege for three long years, subjected to the water torture of the Mueller investigation in which he declared himself totally exonerated. But what about the mental price the poor man paid? The sleepless nights, the friends who were unjustly indicted and convicted, the embarrassment of those porn star pay-offs, the judgement of Melania, the constant harassment to see his tax records, the scrutiny of his real estate empire, the whining about emoluments … and now an impeachment hearing in the House. Hasn’t the guy suffered enough?

Maybe, just maybe, a little compassion is in order here. Obviously he doesn’t need fiscal reparations. I mean, the man is a billionaire. Money means nothing to him. He tells us that every time he gets dinged for diplomats and our own government folks staying at his swank hotels. In fact, he will tell you himself that being president has cost him hundreds of millions of dollars. And he’s fine with that. Doesn’t bother him one bit. It isn’t about the money, he says again and again, it’s about service to the country. Maybe, just maybe, it’s time to pay him back.

So if money won’t make amends, what can a grateful nation offer to a man who has everything? And the answer, good citizens, is another few years in office for the years he lost to those witch hunts. In his own modest way he himself has broached the idea. When his term comes up, just tag on a few extra years as make-up. This would give him the time needed to finish all those programs and projects that were held up by investigations and inquiries and, let’s be honest, just mean-spirited probes by his envious enemies. Time to build the wall, time to get those trade agreements done, time to secure that Syrian oil, time to bring coal back to the heartland, time to get rid of unneeded regulations, time to cut more taxes on the already over-taxed rich. So much work to be done and so little time left. How about it? How about four or five extra years? You know he deserves it. The slaves, c’mon, that was way back when….

Watching these impeachment hearings, we can start revising the law books any time now. If you are accused of a crime, the proper defense is to accuse the prosecuting team of a similar crime. All evidence is to be considered hearsay, third party rumor because you haven’t heard it yourself, even if you have to cover your ears. The trial itself is a sham, a witch hunt, illegal, all about trying to ruin your reputation. Your family should storm the courtroom and cry kangaroo court, kangaroo court, until the judge calls for a delay or even better, a mistrial. And if you happen to be President of these United States, you can simply claim total immunity.

The evidence for soliciting favors from foreign powers in exchange for military assistance is mounting daily. Let’s be fair and balanced here, the evidence is convincing and incontrovertible. It looks like a duck, it quacks like a duck, it craps like a duck. The Trump defenders want to ignore the evidence and instead claim the investigation is bogus, the Bidens are the really guilty ones, the Democrats never liked their guy, the hearings are being held out of public view even if their own members are privy to the testimonies, the Justice Department should never have investigated Trump in the first place, on and on with any and everything unrelated to the facts. Because the facts are damning. A President solicited foreign help in his election and threatened to withhold military aid if he didn’t get it. Period.

How do you defend that? And of course, they can’t. The process is screwed up. The press is fake. The Bidens were worse. Benghazi, what about Benghazi? Where is Hillary’s server? Up is down. Today the Barr team opened up another investigation into whether its own department was biased in investigating Trump and calling for the Mueller Report which raises some troubling questions as to the independence of the Justice Department run by the guy who said there was nothing to see in the Mueller Report. If you’re one of the very few who actually read the thing, you know that’s more than bogus. No doubt, though, they’ll hold these hearings in public, right?

Apparently the strategy of the Republicans is to toss out a smokescreen and hope we’re all so attention deficit we’ll forget what the issue was in the first place and just return to our Netflix binge-watching. They broke into the secure chambers where Schiff’s hearings were taking place, crying cover-up, when actually this is what they did with the Benghazi hearings and Clinton. No problem with closed doors back then.

Pretty soon the doors will be open and testimony will be public once these investigative hearings are over. The ducks will be quacking then too, just some other excuse that the process is corrupt, but nothing to refute the facts. In the end they may not convict Trump. Out of loyalty, out of fear. We should all be afraid.

So okay, we all know the impeachment trial is going to be coming soon to a theater near you. With clowns like Rudy and Mick, personal advisors to the stars, denying any wrongdoing while admitting the same, it’s only a matter of time before we quit horsing around and just get on with it. Of course, Trump isn’t going to allow anyone to testify, pleading everything from executive privilege to witch hunt the sequel. What to do other than wait for the Supreme Court to make a ruling and that could take two days this side of forever.

I want to make a suggestion in the spirit of bipartisanship, one that should make everyone happy, Dems and GOP alike: offer to hold the impeachment trial at Mar-a-Lago. Donald will make a fortune, not that he needs it, but obviously he wants a pay for play in just about every endeavor this White House undertakes. And televise it. Give every TV outlet a chance to bid, then take the highest offer and give it to Donald. Tremendous ratings, high visibility for weeks, PLUS a ton of loot. The Trump Brand will never be more monetized. And after all, isn’t that why he ran in the first place? Make America Great Again? C’mon, we’re not in kindergarten here. Make Donald Rich Again is the real slogan.

And what a cast of characters! Netflix could do a binge to addiction 60 episode series with this. Dallas meets West Wing. Golf courses of the rich and famous meets Hell’s Kitchen. Billionaires on the witness stand. Generals testifying against their old boss, now who’s fired! Bring in the kids, haul up Melania. It’s a fashion show, it’s a kangaroo court, it’s Saturday Night Live Live! Every laptop, TV, pay for view theater in America will be riveted for weeks, hopefully months. The 2020 elections will look like the cartoon before the movie. The residuals and spin-offs should be astronomical. Interviews with Mike Pence, questions about pardons, angry Senators, Benghazi Benghazi what about Benghazi, all the old but never dead accusations, Ukrainegate, Rudy and more Rudy, who can possibly get enough? If we’re lucky, we get a hurricane too. Give the man his Mar-a-Lago moment and let’s get this show on the road!

No doubt a lot of you South Enders are considering dressing the kids up in spooky Halloween gear this festive holiday. William Barr big and tall suits, Lindsay Graham chameleon outfits, Mitch McConnell Moscow Mitch garb complete with sable fur hat, Mike Pence robot costume with the fake smile and dead eyes. Used to be we just went as skeletons and ghosts, but they wouldn’t scare a mom on meth these days. Heroin addict with the phony needle stuck out an arm, nope, too commonplace. Franklin Graham with a scratch n sniff Bible, uh-uh, the evangelists only scare their flock these days. Rudy Giuliani with the Humpback of Notre Dame slouch, that should scare the kiddies. If not, try the Kellyanne Conway mask with the vampire teeth. Looks frighteningly real. For a zombie.

It’s trick or treat every day in Trump’s America. Tricks if you’re worried about the demise of democracy, treats if you think the government needs to be flushed down a toilet. There’s really not much in the middle. Instead of moving the outhouse back a few feet we have new pranks to raise the hair on the unsuspecting. How about pulling troops out of Syria without any preparation whatsoever or consultation with the generals or the State Department? If that didn’t scare you, this might dirty your diapers: try to make a deal with a country under attack from the Russians, hold up their military assistance mandated by Congress, in exchange for help finding something, anything, to smear Biden and his kid.

Quid pro quo — which is scarier, the Latin or the reality? Half the folks you knock on their door with your pillowcase half full of emoluments wouldn’t know a quid from an octopus, no problem with their President looking out for himself against the corruption of Hillary and Uncle Joe. Bad people. Benghazi. Now there’s a spook house, Benghazi. Full of goblins and Moslems and who knows what else in there. Haunted as hell. Just the name, just saying it out loud one million times, scares the bejabbers out of people. So what if they couldn’t tell you where Benghazi was, is, or who. Was Benghazi a terrorist leader? Frankenstein’s brother? A pandemic disease? Yikes! Benghazi is coming, Benghazi is coming!! Lock the doors, pull the shades. Nobody home, go away, please go away….

The night is full of bogey-men, best to stay home, turn off the fake news. If the pranksters light a bag full of dog doo on your porch, let it burn. What have you got to lose, right? Around the South End, back up the hollers where folks have kids and the houses are still affordable, the yards are littered with plastic gravestones and giant spiders, the dead rising from between the abandoned bikes and broken toys, the cobwebbed trees without leaves now looking skeletal and creepy, Halloween is here a month early. Up the road where the gated folks hide behind keycoded gates, the Trump 2020 signs, like autumn mushrooms after a cold rain, push up into view, no candy here, kids, we’re keeping it all for ourselves.

This year I’m thinking of chaining their gates, multiple locks, titanium chain. Lock em in!, Lock em in! They’ll regret not having an outhouse…..But they got one in the White House.

How long, Lord, how long? Not even the most addicted binge-trained Netflix junkie can sustain the marathon attention span required to wade day after day through the Trump travesties. Emoluments, foreign interventions, bungled military maneuvers, allies bashing, cabinet firings, juvenile letters to foreign leaders, professed love of despotic dictators, sure, it’s wild stuff at first, but … c’mon, year after year and nobody seems to break a rash to call for an intervention, much less an impeachment. The man told an adoring crowd in Texas this week that it was easy to be presidential. But it was too boring.

Boring, this yahoo is not. He’s a 1000 clowns crammed into a Vee Dub bug, he’s the guy standing on the Golden Gate Bridge threatening to throw himself off, he’s the maniac holding hostages in the daycare, the sniper in the tower, the guy who calls at 2 in the morning to Art Bell’s Coast to Coast radio show to describe his alien medical exams, the bozo who has a new conspiracy theory every day, the man who calls the gossip columns to brag about his latest conquest, the rich guy who declares bankruptcy with casinos. Boring he’s not. Certifiable, absolutely. A good businessman, not really. A great politician, you tell me, but we know he wins.

He’s abrasive, rude, infantile, narcissitic, mean as a snake, a groper, greedy, a liar, a tax fraud, a thug. He’s the New American. Ugly but proud of it. He’s the spokesperson for white nationalists, the KKK, the closet racists, the bullies, the wife beaters, the Jew haters, the people who want immigrants sent home. He claims to want to make America Great Again but he couldn’t care less. More of the American Pie is what he wants, what he craves, what he feeds on. We know this guy and half of us love him. Half of us would gladly give up our freedoms for a chance to stomp on someone else. Half of us see political correctness as a brake on our natural inclination to be something moral, something decent, something we have no desire to be.

I don’t understand it and I’m sure Trump doesn’t understand it, but by god, he has channeled something dark and sinister that courses through the American bloodstream as surely as genocide and lynchings, spousal abuse and pederasty. He’s the disease that turns septic in the body politic, the grinning ghoul in the mirror of our national history we’ve tried not to look too closely at, but here he is. Heeeere’s Donny!