The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

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We’re about a year and a half away from an election that will, no doubt about it, define where this country is headed for a very long time. Trump. Or not Trump. That is the question. For the GOP it’s an existential question. If Trump is soundly beaten, they can start writing the memoirs of the Republican Party, maybe try to salvage some small shred of lost pride when in truth they sold their collective souls to the man who would be king, kowtowed to a bully and a know-nothing, paid umbrage to a demagogue who promoted conspiracy theories and made a mockery of truth and facts. If Trump wins, they can continue to play the sycophants, lapdogs to a man who owes allegiance only to himself. Well played, gentlemen, well played.

If the term ‘constitutional crisis’ has been over-stated this past year, let me state it once more. We’re in a constitutional crisis. No need to recap the myriad ways this President has flouted the balance of power between the 3 branches of government. This week he sicced the Attorney General on the FBI and the CIA, while accusing their previous heads of treason without evidence. This from the guy who refuses to accept any evidence the Russians tampered with the last election. Putin told him they didn’t, that was plenty for Trump, better to go after the investigators. Better to stonewall the investigative committees. Better to accuse the accusers.

Not saying this isn’t an expedient tactic. A trapped animal will chew its leg off to escape the clamped jaws. Ugly stuff, politics. Uglier yet with a man who usually hires out his dirty work but only has the courage of name calling from a distance. But now we’re treated to accusing the intelligence community of this country of ‘spying’. Spying on Trump’s campaign committee. Sure they were offering deals to Russia to help Donald get his hotel in Moscow, sure they were playing fast and loose with the Ukrainians, of course they were in contact with WikiLeaks. Nothing to worry about there…

We’ve investigated this before. We’ve investigated Benghazi how many times? We spent years on Whitewater. Now we have the Attorney General, the man in charge of the FBI, investigating ‘spying’. Kind of a charged word, spying, to refer to an FISA authorized investigation. If you hang a cloud of suspicion over our federal law enforcement, if you call the news media the enemy of the people, if you think you won the last election’s popular votes because illegals voted, if you claim that there was no obstruction and no collusion and complete exoneration by Mueller’s spying, tell me why I should think if Donald Trump loses the 2020 election, he’ll concede and go peacefully into his Tower.

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Jeff Bezos is like a lot of the whiz kid, bang up tech boyz, plenty of smarts, too much money and a penchant for imagining a sci-fi world in their own lifetime. There are plenty of folks who applaud the new Rockefellers, but I’m not one of them. I want them to go away. The moon is a good start, but Mars is even better. Hopefully they’re dreaming even bigger. Leave the solar system, guyz, and be quick about it.

Bezos answered a few questions in Amazon’s stockholder meeting last week, some folks particularly disturbed by the colossal carbon footprint envisioned by same day deliveries, drone technology, and packages containing a toothbrush cushioned by plastic airbags in cardboard boxes that are 100 times larger than the brush delivered by fleets of self-driving trucks and drones. Bezos really didn’t address those concerns, just sees a future so bright we’ll all wear radiation shield sunglasses in our cyclindrical cities orbiting throughout the galaxy, little self-contained communities drifting along in their bubble like boats on a river beneath tangerine skies. You bet.

The trouble is, these self-made bazillionaires have the wherewithal to manifest their vision. And the capability of making this particular planet which I’m kind of fond of, a living hell. If you’re rich enough, you too might board the next city leaving earth’s gravity. Not sure what jobs you’ll have, but hopefully money is as unnecessary as the filthy air and polluted water you’re leaving behind. Utopian dreams by the tech wizards! Oh boy!

Not to sound too Earth chauvinistic, but I like the place. I’d like to take care of it for awhile longer, not just assume folks who feel the need to monetize every profit-making aspect of it have the right to muck it up to the point they’ll want to move on to some new colony to exploit when the resources are sucked dry and the the sky rains poison. I’d prefer to get my Amazon delivery a little later if that would would help. But if Bezos isn’t willing to listen, even to his shareholders, I might have to vote for folks who would make Amazon pay taxes, who would think twice about their packaging, who would hold Bezos’ feet to the fire of global warming. Short of that, hurry up, Jeff and build those rockets. Hopefully you’ll be a passenger on the first plane to leave.

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After the boy king’s meltdown yesterday prior to a meeting with Pelosi and Schumer to discuss the way forward on infrastructure, what the Prez had promised a couple trillion for but probably figured out he had no way to fund without raising taxes, Pelosi suggested we give Trump an Intervention. That’s apparently D.C. speak for a Time-Out. Go to your room if you’re going to act like a spoiled brat!! I guess an intervention is half way to an impeachment. Or no supper.

Mama said there’d be days like this. Course, Trump’s mama didn’t. He’s the bully who hits back harder than he got, a big guy in a board room of yes-men and sons-in-laws and kids dumber than a box of one color crayons. Sure, they were afraid of him. One minute raging, the next minute lost in a TV program. But are you gonna criticize Daddy when you know he’ll make you rich?

Pelosi maybe has a point. Actually her point is the end of a sharp stick. She’s figured out how to rile the little fella, make fun of the pathetic boy without seeming mean spirited, just concerned he might be, oh, a little overworked, a little out of his league. It must be tough, running a country with so little talent and unwilling to hire decent help. Wouldn’t hurt to take a break, play some extra days of golf down at Mar a Lago, have some laughs with Rudy Giuliani, forget about the subpoenas and lawsuits and investigations for awhile. Watch a little more Fox and Friends, maybe redecorate Trump Tower. Unwind a bit. He seems ragged as a muskrat with a leg in a trap, all teeth and spit, fang and blood, but not going anywhere any time soon. Take a break, Don, do all of us a world of good.

Pelosi says she’s praying for him. Praying for the country. Nice touch, ma’am, let the evangelicals feel your pain for him. For the Yew Ess of Aye. For all of us. Obviously they’re not praying too hard except for the lives of the unborn. Nancy can pray for them too. Me, I’m praying for that Time-Out. A real long one….

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I got most of my education from the School of Hard Knocks. To be fair and completely honest (ho ho), I also graduated from a college with a double major, neither of which I used to find a career or even a viable means of livelihood. What finally served me best was wanting to keep learning, try out new avenues, read books and teach myself, see where the highway led, mostly detours and dead ends. I won’t say everyone should try this at home, but hey, the learning part for sure. Nothing wrong with continuing education even though most folks seem to think graduation is pretty much when it should stop.

Lately, though, we’ve all been getting an education whether we want one or not from the Trump University. Mitt Romney recently said “Here’s what I know: Donald Trump is a phony, a fraud. His promises are as worthless as a degree from Trump University. He’s playing the members of the American public for suckers. He gets a free ride to the White House, and all we get is a lousy hat.” Mitt is basically right, but he’s forgetting that we’re also getting quite a tutorial in New American Politics, 101. I doubt in our lifetime so many of us have focused so laser-like on the minutiae of Supreme Court nominations, impeachment proceedings, sausage making, foreign policy decisions, nepotism, cabinet appointments or various Constitutional deliberations. We even know what the term ‘emoluments’ means now. Put that on a red baseball hat and call it a mortar board cap. You’ve graduated with honors!

But … like my first run at the sheepskin fit for hanging on the office wall, it may not mean all that much if you can’t or won’t apply it to life skills. What we’ve mostly learned is that so-called Christian values are more malleable than we previously thought. The end certainly justifies the means. You want an end to Roe v Wade, pretty much everything is okay to get it. Honesty? It’s definitely a 20th Century relic. Patriotism? Ask Putin for help on that one. Compassion? Don’t make me laugh. We’re nasty sumbitches now, Homey. The weak need to get out of our way.

Maybe we do get the leaders we deserve, sad to say, and maybe we can still teach old dogs new tricks. It may take the pups to do it, kids fed up with this pathetic do-nothing-sensible government we have now, but if any of them want to tackle the existential problems of our time, they need to get rid of the Trump U. graduates. They know anyone running for President whose sole modus operandi is to beat Trump, well, they’re not the ones who will solve global warming, student debt, nuclear proliferation or income inequity. Trump isn’t the problem, he’s just the con-artist CEO of Trump U. It may just be time to try that School of Hard Knocks and forget about bogus degrees. Time’s running out.

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It’s not every day … or even every year you get to look down into an eagle’s nest. They are, after all, perched high in the firs where they won’t be bothered much. They like a good view of their hunting grounds and probably a better view of raiding crows who seem to be fond of attacking their huge adversaries. Today I watched one of the adults sitting on the two newly hatched chicks (one is one day old, the other two) and the only thing that seemed to ruffle his or her feathers was a passing crow. She watched it like a hawk.

Me, I am too. Here’s a couple shots from my aerie above theirs. Next times, I’m bringing a tripod. National Geographic, eat yer heart out…

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