Incompetents, Zealots and Criminals (Lawyers, Guns and Money)

Before I begin my rant I want to put forth two things:

1.    President Trump was legitimately elected by our electoral process.

2.    President Trump in no way has been shown to have colluded with the Russians.
      (To influence the 2016 Presidential Election)

That being said, were you to send a gunman with an AR-15 through an unguarded White House you would have difficult time doing more damage than has already been done to the President's, staff, Cabinet, trusted advisors and campaign staff.  25 bodies that have been fired, resigned or indicted.  Think of what FOX News and Breitbart and MSNBC and CNN would have done to the Obama administration with similar carnage.  Evidence that an inexperienced “Community Organizer” could not possibly manage a White House much less a country.  So many average appointees and yet however bad, I thought they were, they have been worse and a lot of them have been fired or resigned under Twitter fire from the man who empowered them.

But with the Big Orange Man… we are numb.

So my question, for all of you, is…

WHEN DO YOU BEGIN TO HOLD A MAN RESPONSIBLE FOR THE KIND AND CHARACTER OF THE PEOPLE HE HAS SURROUNDED HIMSELF WITH AND RELIES ON AND TRUSTS?

WHEN?

WHEN DOES THE BUCK STOP THERE?

As a boss I have always been responsible for the people I hired.  My clients held me responsible. My partners held me responsible.  My bank account held me responsible.  For years I have lectured High School kids that if you show me your friends I can tell what kind of person they are.  That gets truer as you get older, or it should.

But as long as our president is angry.  As long as he “says what is on his mind”, he is bullet proof to criticism of the literal madness that has affected his White House.  This same ⅓ of the country that will not leave his side would have impeached our immediate Ex President as a matter of national security if he had hired and fired such an array of incompetents, zealots and criminals.  HW would not have faired a great deal better… and Bill Clinton (or God forbid HILLARY!...) forget about it.

For your consideration:

April 10, 2018 Tom Bossert, President's Chief Adviser on Homeland Security:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/white-house-homeland-security-adviser-resigns-amid-continued-turnover-in-trump-administration/2018/04/10/15db518a-3ccb-11e8-a7d1-e4efec6389f0_story.html?utm_term=.1efc408f546e
March 27, 2018:  David Shulkin.  VA Director he inherited from Obama. Replaced with Trumps personal Doctor.  What could go wrong? See below from when I originally wrote this.  Took a month and a half.

March 22, 2018:  HR Mc Master National Security Officer.  Replaced by the rabid John Bolton.

March 16, 2018:  Andrew Mc Cabe.  Set to retire in 48 hours.  Hardly counts.

March 13 2018: President Donald Trump's longtime personal aide John McEntee was fired because he is currently under investigation by the Department of Homeland Security for serious financial crimes, a source familiar with his firing told CNN.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/13/politics/john-mcentee-white-house-security-clearance/index.html?utm_source=nextdraft&utm_medium=email

March 13 2018: Rex Tillerson.... I have no words.  The last grown up officially left the building.  I believe he was Secretary of State.  No big deal.I am sure the President would tell he was "not very involved".

March 7 2018:  Gary Cohn.  Cohn, a classic Democrat gone bad was a former Goldman Sachs banker who was all on board for the making the rich, richer tax cut which proved to be the only legislative success of the Trump first term.  Still, he was a free trade guy and he lost the battle when the President announced tariffs and then refused to back down.  Another one bites the dust as he announced his resignation yesterday and markets opened today down 150 points.  Not earth shaking.  It will be interesting to see if the Republican old school, free tradists will do anything to stop the Tariffs and also interesting to see if they are right about their disastrous effects.

NPR Weighed in with this summary of Trumps departure schedule:  https://www.npr.org/2018/03/07/591372397/white-house-staff-turnover-was-already-record-setting-then-more-advisers-left


2-28-18  Hope Hicks!?  This one is surprising and has to be difficult for the President who clearly relied on her and trusted her.  She appears to be a very talented person but has all the problems that any 28 year old person sitting in the most powerful circles in the world might get.  It is my hope that when her parents found out she was dating alleged wife abuser Rob Porter that they said, "YOU COME HOME RIGHT NOW YOUNG LADY!"  Good for her to get out but she was almost the enabler in chief.

2-28-18  Josh Raffel.  https://www.axios.com/scoop-josh-raffel-leaving-white-house-1519758344-420c51f4-093a-4457-afce-595c50236061.html
He was Communications director for The Office of American Innovation in the White House and ended up being a Jared and Ivanka confidant and champion.  Interestingly he was formerly a Democrat but everyone seemed to like him.  This does not seem to have to do with anything related to our President although EVERYTHING relates to our President.  Jared just lost his security clearance today and now he has lost an ally in the Royal Court.

2-22-18   UPDATE! I don't know what choice I am going to have other than to
update. Robert Weaver, Mr. Trump’s former nominee to lead the Indian Health Service, alleges that he was forced by an official in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services “to decide to withdraw or to face the public humiliation of having the White House withdraw my nomination.” I would suspect there will be 10 more bodies this year!

2-15-18    George David Banks, “Senior White House Official:  Resigned because marijuana use didn't allow him to get a security clearance.  

2-10-18            David Shulkin, VA Director (Has not yet resigned or been fired)  takes his wife to

England (the VA does a lot of business there) and There are memos which clarify that his staff invented an “honor” so that agency Would pay for his wife.  According to the Wall Street Journal, “Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin improperly accepted a gift of Wimbledon tennis tickets, misspent taxpayer money and misused department resources in an official trip to Europe last year, according to an inspector general’s report released Wednesday.”  

2-10-18    David Sorenson, White House Speech Writer:   Resigns after allegations of
                 spousal abuse allegations.

2-7-18        Rob Porter Resigns. Staff Secretary (or was fired, the story changes every day)
                 over spousal abuse allegations.

1-20-18            Omarosa Manigault Newman,White House Office Of Public Liaison:  Who knows

why she was fired/resigned. Manigault Newman reportedly drew scrutiny from White House chief of staff John Kelly. She also came under fire for bringing her 39-person bridal party to the White House for a photoshoot in 2017. She is now back on reality TV discussing her time in the White House and How she was “ganged up on” and discussing how God talks to the Vice President.

9-29-17    Tom Price, Health and Human Services Secretary: The movie came after Price 
                 received major criticism following reports of his use of private planes.

8-25-17           Sebastian Gorka, Deputy Assistant to Trump.  According to Fox News, “White

House officials told Fox News that Gorka did not resign but confirmed that he “no longer works” with the administration. However, Gorka insisted to the Washington Examiner that he did actually resign.

8-18-17           Steve Bannon, White House “Chief Strategist”:  I am not going to talk about him

but his fall from grace was spectacular.  In every way a classic Trump appointment and departure.

7-31-17           Anthony Scaramucci, White House Communications Director:  Once again, a

Classic Trump appointee on July 21st was murdered by his own troops 10 days later after an inexcusably arrogant interview he gave “off the record he thought”.

7-28-17           Reince Priebus, White House Chief of Staff:  Thought he could ride the whirlwind.

Not a bad guy it seemed and it had to be a relief to leave. He made his own bed

by dealing with the devil.

7-25-17           Michael Short, Assistant Press Secretary:  Quit when the Mooch was hired and

made clear he intended to fire him.  I don't know anything about him.

7-21-17           Sean Spicer, White House Press Secretary.  Has a nice man ever been so

overwhelmed by a job, ever in his life.  I cant even make fun of him.  He assumed that the old rules regarding how a President should act, still met something and he was embarrassed every day.  He had to go.  Now we have Sarah Huckabee Sanders who is awesome at resolutely justifying every contradictory statement of our commander in chief.

7-6-17              Walter Schaub, Director of Ethics:  Surprisingly resigned.  Surprisingly clashed

with the President over...everything?

5-17-17           Michael Dubke, White House Director of Communications:  Personal reasons.

3-30-17           Katie Walsh, Deputy Chief of Staff:  Quit when healthcare repeal failed.

2-13-17            Michael Flynn, National Security Adviser:  He could not tell the truth regarding his

business dealings and his meetings with foreign officials.  He has now pled guilty to a felony.

It might be unfair to put Schaub on this least.  He was really just a holdover from previous administration who he consistently fought with also.  I didn't name the following holdovers who are no longer serving but it is impressive:

James Comey, FBI Director:  Fired

Sally Yates, Assistant Attorney general, Fired

Preet Bharara:  Manhattan Federal Prosecutor, Fired

Richard Cordray: Consumer Finance, Quit to run for Governor

Andrew Mccabe: Number 2 at Justice, TERMINAL LEAVE

The list does not include his campaign team members:

Paul Manafort:       Indicted

Rick Gates:            Indicted and as of 2/19/18 apparently will be copping a plea to
                           Testify against Manafort.

George Papadopoulos:    Indicted

Carter Page:                     Mentally Ill?

We have a lot to answer for with what we are tolerating from this man.  Seriously, please, consider this.  Other than the Obama holdovers he has surrounded himself with 18 people in his campaign, his cabinet 18 people who he has either fired, or resigned or have just abused their office and embarrassed themselves and our country.  This does not take into account Jeff Sessions who he is always about to replace and Rex Tillerson who has been undercut so many times that he is totally ineffective and incredible as a representative of the US, calling the President “a moron”.  All of his cabinet appointees have been specifically appointed to dismantle and decapitate their particular branches.  I will not rail against this, he ran on being a disruptor and these people will certainly make their branches smaller, less effective and generally non existent in our lives and it will take a lot to revive them but that is not the point.

The point is this.  We have elected a President (legitimately and without collusion) who does not hold himself accountable for anything.  Everything is someone else's fault.  He cannot help “the mess” of a country he was left with (or the 8 year economic recovery he inherited). But we are all accountable or the people we hire, for the people we surround ourselves with.  We have never had a President who exhibited such dramatically poor judgment in who he relied on, ever.  Look at this list.  Internalize it.  There will be more.  Think about it.  Pray about it.  We are in trouble with this lack of leadership and we are careening dramatically off course.  I don't have an answer, I am NOT calling for his impeachment but I am calling for all of us, to hold this man accountable for his actions.

Post Fact

Soooo… I have been laying low since the election.  

What I discovered in the election is that...

MY SILO WALLS ARE VERY THICK AND HIGH AND I THINK MY SILO SITS OUT BY ITSELF IN A FIELD SOMEWHERE.  

To say I was confused by the result is a dramatic understatement.  I pride myself on being well read, well informed and kind of an information junky.  I proudly discussed the fact that I sought out all of the input I could on a day to day basis from what I thought was the “spectrum” of opinion.  This generally included:

1. The Wall Street Journal (Subscribe)

2. The Post Dispatch (Subscribe)

3. NPR (Send them money and listen as default in car)

4. Patriot Radio (Because my brother is Tea Party Conservative and listens to them

I mean that is pretty diverse.  And I listen and read a lot.  I read things on line.  I know the difference between Fake News and a journalistic piece.  I assumed any 6th grader knows that but once again I discovered that I was wrong.

The Drive By Truckers, a southern rock band (being totally unfair to them) came out with a song this year called “What It Means” regarding the current status of the “Black Lives Matter”, “Blue Lives Matter” racial divide that we are all living in post Ferguson.  It is a great song and here is the link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mY0qOCUy27Q

But one of the many great lines summarizing our morass is this:

"And we're standing on the precipice
Of prejudice and fear
We trust science just as long
As it tells us what we want to hear
We want our truths all fair and balanced
As long as our notions lie within it
There's no sunlight in our ass'
And our heads are stuck up in it”-DBT

So we are are all just hearing things that confirm our own innate world view and we don't hear anything that disagrees with that. And we all come to the table loaded with opinion. The Internet that was supposed to bring us all together and level the playing field instead is dividing us more than ever in ways we never imagined.

There was nothing in any of my information sources (and I don't want to label them “media” because that has become a prejudicial term) but there was nothing in any of these sources, liberal or conservative that prepared me for the fact that we could elect a man like Donald Trump to be President of the greatest country on earth and perhaps the greatest power in history on that earth. It felt like and it still feels like we gave the car keys to a drunken kid.

I get that the country rejected Hilary (although she won the popular vote she lost the election under the same rules that she thought had gamed the system for her. She was and is, difficult to like, a career politician, weighing every word and evaluating every opportunity to see how it “played”. Nothing got said that was not field tested to make sure it fit one of the demographics needed to cobble together the votes she needed...and she blew it. And she deserved to lose. Don't ever let me be mistaken for a Hilary lover but she was the kind of politician I knew and frankly the kind of politician that our country has historically rewarded. She played the game. I was happy she lost. Just not to this man. What the election said is that there are 48% of voting Americans who reject that and demanded change and it was change at any cost.

I am amazed at how wrong the polls were. Even Five Thirty Eight, my favorite and the other numbers stats guys had it wrong and evidently they had it wrong because no one would admit to a pollster that they were voting for The Donald. How does it feel that we elected a guy that people were embarrassed to acknowledge that they would consider voting for? Not too good.

But ultimately we get the leadership that we deserve. My hope and prayer is that I am wrong and this man who I loathe everything about (and when people ask me what I am basing that on I am basing it on everything he has ever said or done and his entire predatory, self aggrandizing, proud bullying career). I do believe he will bring change. So we pray that God blesses our country and blesses or leaders and for me, I have to expose myself to more and different people. Outside my silo, outside of my work, outside of my church. The fact is that I know more urban African Americans that I do white, rural working poor. Shame on me.

So I am looking for a source for news and for facts. Facts are something we should all be able to agree upon. If you are aware of a source where I might glean these common accepted facts, please advise. If not then I think we all have right to be scared because if there is not place to get facts that we can all agree on then I believe we are all well and truly #$%&*%$$!
Help me out.
Please.

Soooo… the election.  8 years ago this space was rife with politics.  The ascent of Barack Hussein Obama was stunning.  We were tired of Bush.  It was clear our country had made a mistake by going into Iraq and had indeed made the world less safe.  People like me pinned their hopes and dreams on this man.  This broken man.  Different than the rest of us but really no different and idiots like me thought he could transcend the system.  Pull our country together...Hopey Changey type stuff.  Oh well.

He was not transcendent.  Even worse he galvanized the people who disagreed with him.  They were dispersed and weak and dispirited from the Bush Presidency.  But when faced with a liberal black man with a super majority they came together… an angry 20% to block vote for change and whipping up enough fear the Republicans swept that democratic majority out in 2010 and more importantly took over ⅔ of the state house just in time for the census and reapportionment cementing the divide through Gerrymandering that would make Elbridge Gerry very, very proud.

The Tea Party Rose.

The Republican Party began to be commandeered by its base.  The leadership of the party went along with the whipped up frenzy assuming they could control it and… it turned on them. Classic Republican leaders dropped like flies because they were not conservative enough.  RINOs.  Republicans in name only.

But Obama got re-elected.  

Half the country was scared by the strident right which had been whipped into a frenzy by their leaders to fear the liberal, progressive, community organizer, Kenyan, Muslim President and his ilk.

Two sides who hate and fear one another and above all despise and distrust our political system.  Blow it up and tear it down!

The Base of the Democrats rallied around Bernie Sanders pulling the Democrats further to the right.  The base of the Republicans never rallied around anyone sporting 15 or 16 candidates and it looked to be a free for all but it was never even close.  The base argued about who was purest and the entertainer, megalomaniac who understood the media hijacked the entire process with a solid base of 30% in each state who were feeling angry, disenfranchised and they wanted the guy who looked like the biggest asshole to be their bully for change.  And they got him.  In Spades.

So now we are left with a bad choice.  Hillary Clinton is an old, self dealing pol.  She and her husband were low level dealers who have maintained a legacy of self enrichment post Presidency which is unparalleled in American History.  She is not likeable but she is smart and motivated and is a product of our system.  She would be the most disliked and mistrusted candidate in history but for her competitor.  Her competitor is a self aggrandizing, narcissistic sociopath who has never done anything for another human being that he did expect to get a personal or business advantage from.  I don't know why he ran but at this point he is behaving like the proverbial dog that caught the car.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/06/the-mind-of-donald-trump/480771/

It is going to be a Hobbesian choice of epic proportions.

We will end up as divided as we started. I wonder how our grandchildren will judge us for the “leadership” we have raised up.  I do believe our country and our constitution will survive as it always has but we all need to think again about when we are going to stop villainizing our leaders, defunding our government and making sure that they cannot do the job we elected them to.  We will need to have courage to find a consensus and a way to move forward as more than a divided nation and find some new leadership that will not manipulate a minority within their own party to disenfranchise the good old american middle.  The disenfranchised middle is the group of people who should be railing about taking our country back.  We will see.

Separation Between Beer and State

Soooooo… I am not on Facebook so you have to endure this.  We have a lot of people in our country who fetishize our constitution and our founding fathers like it was a holy book and like they were holy men.  That is of course a misguided reinvention of the brilliant men who started our country.  They were rebels, they were elite, they were poor, they were rich, they came from all walks of white,  male life but the one thing they were united on was the principal of the separation between beer and state.  But now we have... this.

You know I am not a Bud drinker but it is an iconic brand.  Not just and iconic American Brand but primarily that but… but…

This just makes me so very, very sad.  I know that no publicity is bad publicity but this is just a bastardization of a brand and the fact that it is accomplished by a Brazil/Belgium run operation makes it even cheaper and dumber.  Where does pandering like this stop? I don't see them changing the name of SKOL to BRAZIL!

 

Perhaps they pay 100 Million dollar licensing fee to “The Donald” so they can really grab the media until November with, “TRUMP” and replace “E PLURBUS UNUM” with “MAKE BEER GREAT AGAIN”. 

 

Maybe InBev has plans for Stella Artois to have a black, yellow and red label and rename the beer WALLOON for some period!

 

“E PLUBUS UNUM”?  Out of many, one.  WTF? What does it have to do with Beer?  Is it a comment on the times?

 

Maybe, maybe, this would be cute to release for a week on July 4^th each year. 

 

This label does so many offensive things all at once.

 

“Indivisible since 1776”.  Really.  Tell that to the South which would desperately love to rise again.

 

“From the redwood forest to the gulf stream waters this land was made for you and me”.  Woody Guthrie would have a gun in his mouth if he knew his revolutionary response to “God Bless America” was being bastardized for the sake a “Merica” beer campaign.

 

“Liberty and Justice For All”… I cannot even begin to start my rant against putting this on a beer label.  Never have we been closer to ignoring the “For All” portion and changing it to “For the Few”.

 

It just seems so wrong.  We do have a great country.  Budweiser is an iconic beer but I am only voting for politicians in the future who support the separation between beer and state.  Well, at least they have not tried to wrap their beer in the flag.


Never mind.