Green Eagle

Donald Trump tweeted Friday night that the deal “was in no way a concession.” In the same way that this was not a concession: In case you are not sure, Nancy is the one who is standing up.

I do not want to take a thing away from Nancy Pelosi, whose actions have been virtually picture perfect since reassuming the role of Speaker of the House.  I do want, however, to point out one thing about her relationship with Donald Trump. Throughout his life, Trump's success (such as it is) at being a dealmaker was largely based on the fact that throughout his business career, he always owned the business and had control of all of the money.  He could bully people into doing what he wanted, because they really had no choice.  It took no more skill for him to win an argument than it did for Hitler to beat down his generals.  Well, with Nancy Pelosi, that came to an end.  He had no threats to hold over her, so that, as long as she kept her temper and acted appropriately, she was bound to win. I hope the Democrats realize this.  I hope that, at long last, after forty years cowering in the shade, they understand what kind of power they do have.  If s...

He caved.  End of story.

“This is your fault,” Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) told Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. “Are you suggesting I’m enjoying this?” McConnell snapped back." No answer from Ron.  He should have said this:  "Of course, you are enjoying it, you malignant son of a bitch.  There's nothing in your whole misbegotten life that you have ever enjoyed more than your chance to show your naked power and run roughshod over the interests of the American people.  You are now going down as the worst majority leader in the history of this country, in order to satisfy your lust to hurt people." Yeah, Ron stuck his neck out to tell half the truth, but right now, half the truth is not enough.

A prediction that absolutely nobody will remember several years from now, when it is proven to be true: First of all, let me remind you that Venezuela has the largest proven reserves of oil in the world. Over the course of my lifetime, and certainly under the Chavez government, we have seen periodic spasms of anti-government violence in Venezuela.  As the years pass by, the tiny minority of Americans who even remember problems in other countries discover that the United States precipitated economic collapse in Venezuela, through means such as its currently unjustifiable sanctions against the country, massively financed opposition to the government from rich businessmen and their paid henchmen, and often open support for rebel (i.e. terrorist, in U.S. government terms) armies. Why? Because the Venezuelan people repeatedly elect governments that are determined to see that a fair share of the revenue of its oil goes to the Venezuelan people, instead of having all of it taken by ...

Not that she needs my help. So Trump is threatening that, if she holds firm on no State of the Union address until after the shutdown, he will deliver a "State of the Union" address to one of his rallies, which will be almost verbatim the same belligerent, racist blast of hatred as always. Go ahead, Nancy, and then accept that demagogic piece of garbage as his official State of the Union address, to be forever enshrined with every other State of the Union address ever given.  That will serve as a perfect reminder to those who come after us, what kind of President he really is.

I've been thinking of this biblical story of the wisdom of Solomon lately. The Wisdom of Solomon, by Rafaello I'm sure you are all familiar with the tale:  Two women appeared before Solomon, each claiming to be the mother of a baby.  To decide,Solomon said, "Well, let's be fair here; we'll cut the baby in half and give each mother one of the halves."  One of the women said, "Fine."  One begged Solomon to give the baby to the other woman, as long as it could live.  Thus, Solomon discovered which woman actually cared about the baby. Well, of course I am talking about the government shutdown.  We have one party that is willing to kill the country to prevent the other side from winning a battle with him, while the other side is trying a succession of agreements to save the country. I'm not a religious person, yet I thought of this story.  Funny that the bible obsessed Christians who run the Republican party apparently never heard it. ...

Well, if nothing else, hopefully the reign of Donald Trump will finally disabuse the nation of the idea that being a CEO is great training for being President. Being a CEO is great preparation to head a country, but only a certain kind of country.  A CEO does whatever he wants.  He is perfectly justified in running his company for the sole benefit of himself and his close associates.  He has no legal obligation to spend one minute concerning himself with  the welfare of the people that are under him, except to keep their condition a hair's breadth above what would induce them into open rebellion, or as we call it in the private sector, going on strike.  He can punish them or ban them at will. As I said, these are indeed the characteristics of a certain type of national leader: a dictator.  A corporation is essentially a dictatorship, and running one is the perfect training to run a country the same way.  Funny, the people who tout the CEO President...

In all the coverage of the Buzzfeed report about Trump's subornation of perjury, and the Mueller non-denial denial of it, I have yet to see a single mention of what, to me, seems to be a highly likely explanation of what happened: that this information was planted with Buzzfeed by Republicans to give themselves an opportunity to go on one more screaming tirade about the phony press, and in the process make this impeachable revelation radioactive, so it is just dropped. The Republican party has, after all, a history of this sort of thing.  The Most notorious, and most successful of such schemes was the deliberate releasing, a couple of months before the 2004 election, of false evidence of George W. Bush's desertion from the Texas Air National Guard during the Vietnam war.  And let me be clear that the evidence that Bush did desert is and was at the time absolutely incontrovertible; but this fake scandal made the entire issue, which could well have derailed Bush's reelectio...

From today's Washington Post (although the story can be found all over at this point,) the following: "We have, on Thursday, a story that perhaps serves as the best encapsulation to date of how the early days of Donald Trump’s campaign for the presidency worked, a summary that, itself, seems to explain much of what happened afterward. It’s the details that are particularly compelling. It was, according to the Wall Street Journal, a Walmart bag, blue, containing somewhere over $12,000 in cash..." So now we are down to passing out bags of cash, the ultimate caricature of the corrupt politician.  What next?

The Constitution- remember that? "He shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union" A hostile partisan harangue is not "Information of the State of the Union,"  and we know that is all that Donald Trump is capable of doing with the cameras pointed at him.  It has been reported that his most extreme aides have spent weeks drafting a speech which is nothing but an attack on Democrats.  That sort of thing does not fall within the scope of what the Constitution requires. For the greater part of our country's existence, the fulfillment of this requirement was done in writing.  That is a massive precedent for doing so in this case.  The country has no legal or sensible reason to give this man one more platform to repeat his lies . If he wants to have one more pathetic address from the Oval Office, let him.  If he wants to substitute his typical audience of screaming racists for the Congress, let him.  That is per...

Just how damning is the case against Trump at this point?  I am going to take the very great liberty of repeating an astounding series of tweets by someone I knew nothing about, named Clint Watts.  Here is who he is, from Wikipedia: "Clinton Watts (known as Clint Watts) is a senior fellow at the Center for Cyber and Homeland Security at George Washington University and a Foreign Policy Research Institute fellow. He previously was an infantry officer in the United States Army, and was the executive officer of the Combating Terrorism Center at United States Military Academy at West Point (CTC). He became a special agent for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, where he served on the Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF). He has consulted for the FBI Counterterrorism Division (CTD) and FBI National Security Branch (NSB)." The content below takes the point of view of the people who decided to investigate Donald Trump for being an agent of the Russians.  I find it distractin...

I think it is time to review the state to which those pathetic people who are still pro-Trump have had to descend in order to maintain their psychotic world view.  This is particularly relevant today because of yesterday's revelation by the New York Times  that the Mueller probe was actually an outgrowth of an FBI investigation: "F.B.I. Opened Inquiry Into Whether Trump Was Secretly Working on Behalf of Russia" I have linked to this colossal story, in case you have not yet heard the details.  May I also mention a story today at Daily Kos, entitled  "Team Trump had over 100 contacts with Russian-linked officials and covered up every last one" The tale of Trump's treason has been clear to those willing to see the truth since the day he took office.  The response of Republican voting "patriots?"  To invent a looking glass world in which it is the Democrats that are behind the most malignant conspiracy in all of history, and that it is Trump ...

Oops, that should have read "Ocasio-Cortez Shuts Down Joe Lieberman With Four Words" Funny, you have a guy that dumped the Democratic party to run against them and win his last Senate seat with Republican votes, and he's telling Dems to turn their backs on their most popular new figure since Barack Obama.  You might almost suspect that he doesn't have the party's best interest at heart. "New party, who dis?" Guess that was all it took to put this has-been jerk in his place.

Here's Green Eagle's guess about the dreadful waste of broadcast time by Donald Trump tonight; and perhaps more importantly, it's the guess of Green Eagle's wife, who probably has far more sense about things than Green Eagle himself: Trump really did intend to pull the trigger today and declare a state of emergency.  He would use it to build his lunatic wall, and if he got away with it, I am positive that he would have just gone on escalating what he would do with his new-found power, like our Corgi dog, who is never happy with any new toy until he's found a way to tear it to shreds.  But somehow, some way, some one talked him out of it, at least for today.  Who knows what he will do in a few days, if the Coulters and Limbaughs of this world ridicule him for being weak?  But at least we can get one more night's sleep without having to think about our country having literally descended into dictatorship.

But why? Well, we know that his new line, that the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan was to prevent terrorists from swarming across the Soviet Union's southern border with that country.  We also know that Vladimir Putin has recently been making the same claim.  And we all know that the claim is completely false. So, what's going on here  Is this just one more effort by Trump to promote Putin's interests at the expense of the rest of the world?  If so, it's a mighty tiny gift.  I am afraid that there may be a much more malign reason that Trump is suddenly pushing this ridiculous claim. So, it's okay, according to Trump, to invade another country based on specious claims that terrorists are filing across their Southern border.  Well, I know one other country in the world where, according to Trump, the government is allowing terrorists to use their land as a base to launch attacks across their border, against another country. We often hear that only Rob...

I read today that Vladimir Putin announced that Russia will produce all the soybeans that China needs to make up for the ones no longer available from the American soybean farmers that Trump destroyed.  No problem with that- they have a right to sell food to whomever they choose, but I have just one question:  Did Trump know that Putin was ready to do that before he wrecked the U.S. trade with China in that product?

As most of you probably know, there is one Congressional race in the country which is still not decided; that being in a North Carolina House district where the Republican, currently "leading" by a few hundred votes clearly hired a corrupt operative to rig the casting of absentee ballots.  With the North Carolina elections commission temporarily nonexistent, the struggle goes on, with Republicans, of course insisting that their candidate be seated despite his criminality, and the only other remedy proposed being a whole new election, which would allow the Republicans a redo with a different candidate, and massive outside spending to buy the seat. Here's something that I have heard nobody suggest:  The fraud perpetrated by this Republican candidate was apparently limited to a scheme involving absentee ballots.  Since people must apply for these ballots, there must be a record of everyone in this district who applied for one.  Why not just contact all of this limited...