Bomb Iran! Oops, my bad, never mind

Posted on June 22, 2019 by oddmanout215

Swamp Rabbit fed the last of his sardines to the swamp cats as I ended my rant about the state of the nation with a quotation that’s been in the news:

As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day, the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.

“H.L. Mencken wrote that in 1920,” I said. “Only a total cynic like him could have predicted the Trump presidency all those years ago.”

Swamp Rabbit tossed the sardine can into my recycling bin. “Maybe he was predicting the George W. Bush presidency,” he said. “Trump ain’t the first moron in the White House and he won’t be the last.”

The rabbit’s comment set me off again. Of course Mencken was predicting Trump. Who could be more moronic than the grabber-in-chief? What better proof that democracy, so-called, is a risky business, subject to the whims of voters who might get into a huff and, just for spite, install a president who would wreck the system of checks and balances that prevents presidents from becoming dictators?

“Don’t flip out,” the rabbit said. “Mencken was a crabby old dude who didn’t like no one or nothing except Beethoven, beer and cigars. I bet he wanted democracy to fail just to prove he was right about the plain folks.”

I told him Mencken was a complicated guy, and his personal deficiencies are beside the point. He was right to mock the sort of people who believe two plus two equals five if Big Brother says so.

“He liked oysters, I think,” Swamp Rabbit said. “Baltimore was his hometown.”

“Enough,” I replied. “Worry about Trump, not Mencken.”

But the rabbit, without knowing it, had raised a good point: The worst thing about Trump is that his success makes thoughtful people today feel as cynical as Mencken was. His presidency is a reminder that it really can happen here — dictatorship, that is — as it did in Weimar Germany and other countries that functioned as democracies until fear took hold and ruthless con men took over.

“Blah blah,” the rabbit said. “I don’t need no history lessons.”

I reminded him that Trump had reneged on Barack Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran then tried to provoke the Iranians into some action that would be his excuse for bombing them. He apparently allowed John Bolton and Mike Pompeo to plan a military strike on Iran then apparently called it off — for now.

Swamp Rabbit shrugged. “He gives his peeps what they want. They don’t want plans, they want fear and hate. They want a leader who’s as dumb and nasty as they are.”

“I should buy you a cigar,” I said. “You sound just like Mencken.”

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Plastic bags in the Mariana Trench

Posted on June 14, 2019 by oddmanout215

Swamp Rabbit and I were working a “food truck festival,” an event where humans gather in a big outdoor space for the sole purpose of pigging out. A news story from a few weeks back came to mind as I watched them:

An American man completed the deepest-ever solo underwater dive May 1. But when he reached the bottom of the Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench, he found that another representative of the human world had gotten there first: plastic.

Victor Vescovo said he found a plastic bag and candy wrappers on the sea floor, some 35,853 feet below the surface…

Vescovo isn’t the first to find plastic at the bottom of the ocean’s deepest trench. A 2018 paper documented at least 3,000 pieces of litter in the trench, including a plastic bag at 36,000 feet below sea level. At least eight million tons of plastic enter the world’s oceans every year, and, if this continues, there will be more plastic than fish in the ocean by 2050.

Food festival attendees eventually become satiated and waddle away, but not before leaving in their wake a ton of plastic containers and other garbage, most of which ends up in landfills or in the oceans.

“Why are we here?” I asked the rabbit as we watched a human hippo gobble greasy fries topped with radioactive-looking cheese melt.

The question probably didn’t sound as philosophical as I’d intended. “We’re here to tell the peeps to use clean energy and save the planet,” Swamp Rabbit said. “It’s a mission, remember?”

But the hippo had freaked me out. I remembered an obscure Ed Sanders record from the 1970s with a title for the ages : Beer Cans On the Moon.

“It’s too late, rabbit. Everywhere we go, our trash is already there. The next frontier is outer space.”

I told him humans are hopeless, they don’t change. They fret about climate change but denude the forests. They clog the highways with cars and foul the water with plastic. They leave plastic everywhere, even on the North Pole.

“You got no room to talk,” Swamp Rabbit said. “You don’t drink nothing but that water from the Alps in them big plastic bottles.”

I told him I drink bottled water to protect myself, tap water is full of toxins. When they come up with a biodegradable substitute for plastic, I’ll switch to it right away.

“That’s lame, Odd Man,” he said. “You’re screwing up the planet with your plastic empties.”

He was getting under my skin. “What do you care about the planet?” I said. “You stumble around drinking whiskey most days.”

“At least whiskey don’t come in plastic bottles,” he replied.

He grinned at me, waiting for a comeback, but I didn’t have one.

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What protest? I don’t see any protest

Posted on June 7, 2019 by oddmanout215

Swamp Rabbit was listening to me enumerate the lies Donald Trump told in Britain this week. My favorite was Trump saying, “I didn’t see any protest” when asked about the anti-Trump protest in London. Then he said the protesters were “a very, very small group.” Then he said the people on the streets were pro-Trump demonstrators, not protesters.

“I guess he didn’t notice that giant ‘Baby Trump’ balloon or that Trump-on-the-toilet float,” Swamp Rabbit said.

Note the irony: This week marks the 75th anniversary of D-Day. Who would have thought a few years ago that a would-be dictator like Trump would be feted by British royals then go to Normandy for a ceremony honoring soldiers who fought to overthrow a dictator?

“You can’t call Trump a dictator,” the rabbit said. “America elected him.”

The Nazis were elected, too, I told him. Enough Nazis to get Hitler appointed chancellor. Does he really think Trump won’t seize power the same way Hitler did if Congress and the courts continue ignoring his crimes?

Swamp Rabbit threw up his hands. “There you go with Hitler again.”

Another irony: This week is also the 30th anniversary of the massacre of protesters in Tiananmen Square, a history-changing event that Chinese dictator Xi Jinping and his gang have more-or-less erased from Chinese media outlets and history books.

I said, “When Xi’s gang is asked about the protest at Tiananmen Square, they say ‘I didn’t see any protest.’ Or they say ‘The protest was very, very small.'”

“Trump ain’t on the same page with that China boss,” the rabbit argued. “He started a trade war with China.”

I shook my head. “Trump wants to cut the trade deficit, but he admires Xi. He called him a ‘a terrific guy‘ and ‘a great leader.'”

“That don’t mean nothing,” the rabbit said. “I doubt Trump knows what he’s saying one minute to the next.”

Back to D-Day for one more irony: In a speech at the ceremonies, French President Emmanuel Macron, with Trump nearby, said the Allies who made D-Day a success “are the same ones that were able to build the existing multilateral structures after World War Two.”

This was an implicit jab at Trump, who has worked hard to undermine the European Union and other “multilateral structures” that were established in part to help prevent the sort of bad relations between countries that resulted in two world wars in the 20th century.

“Do you think Trump got it?” Swamp Rabbit asked. “Did he know Macron was criticizing him?”

“Maybe,” I said. “If anyone asks, he’ll say ‘I didn’t hear any criticism.’ Or ‘The criticism was very, very small.'”

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Mueller vows to duck all questions he raised

Posted on May 29, 2019 by oddmanout215

Swamp Rabbit was crawling on his stomach, looking for a bottle of whiskey he might have hidden for emergency situations like this one. Robert Mueller had just appeared on TV and told the world he would say no more about Trump’s possible obstruction of the probe into Russian interference with our elections.

“Settle down, rabbit,” I said. “Just because Mueller is clamming up is no reason for you to start drinking again.”

“It ain’t Mueller that drives me to drink,” he replied. “It’s having to listen to you complain about Mueller letting Trump off the hook.”

I told him Mueller is no hero, he fumbled the ball by not explicitly stating in his report that he found enough evidence to indict Trump. But neither is he one of Trump’s henchmen. His public remarks today made it clear — again — that it’s the job of Congress, not the special council, to make a decision regarding possible indictment of a president.

“Mueller said it would be unconstitutional for the Justice Department to formally accuse Trump,” I said.

Swamp Rabbit’s parole officer, Victor C, arrived at my shack while we were arguing. “Nothing in the Constitution says the president has immunity from prosecution,” Victor noted. “That’s an excuse Mueller is using to duck responsibility for his own conclusions.”

“Maybe,” I conceded, “but his bottom-line point is good. It’s up to Congress to take down Trump.”

Swamp Rabbit groaned. “So now you’re saying it’s the Dems in the House, not Mueller, who are letting Trump off the hook, even though the Senate probably wouldn’t convict him if he was impeached.”

“I’m saying most Democrats won’t do the right thing if they think it will cost them votes,” I replied. “They’re afraid voters will get tired of impeachment talk and turn on them.”

Swamp Rabbit kept nagging. “So you think the Dems should impeach even though impeachment might help Trump win in 2020?”

He thought he had me on the ropes. “I think they might help Trump win if they don’t impeach,” I replied. “People will conclude that the Democrats are too timid to deserve election, and they will be right. Dems have a history of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, usually because they don’t have the guts to fight until the end, even when the stakes are enormous.”

“There you go,” the rabbit said, turning to Victor. “I knew Odd Man would find someone to complain about.”

Footnote: We jawed for another hour and Victor C noted that Mueller is a Republican lawyer who was appointed special council by a Republican deputy attorney general (Rod Rosenstein) to investigate possible ties between a Republican president and the Russians. Anybody who says political partisanship didn’t play a part in this sordid story is naive or lying.

Another: In his announcement today, Mueller failed to mention that Republican William Barr, the current AG, had misrepresented Mueller’s findings in statements he issued prior to the report’s release. This is a serious omission given the fact that Barr’s blatant lies had an important impact on public reception of the report.

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GoT’s political science lesson

Posted on May 22, 2019 by oddmanout215

The finale of Game of Thrones moved at a snail’s pace and was mostly anticlimactic, but it featured an amusing scene in which VIPs from the Seven Kingdoms gathered to choose a new ruler. The bookish Samwell Tarly argued that the people should decide — the common people, that is — but the others merely chuckled at his suggestion.

“I don’t blame ’em for laughing,” Swamp Rabbit said as we watched the show. “You never know who might come to power if you leave it up to the peeps.”

I told the rabbit to hush, the show was supposed to be an escape from real-world politics and other depressing subjects.

But he was right, I added. We live in a country where the people decide who rules, and this time the people — with the help of the antiquated electoral college system — chose an orange hog monster who’s working hard to become our first dictator.

The rabbit clucked at me. “Sounds like you ain’t got no faith in them institutional norms I keep hearing about.”

I asked him what the norms were, just to see if he knew. In so many words, he told me that norms in politics were rules and conventions that ensure a basic level of civility and functionality in government. Norms are essential to the checks-and-balances system. Norms help keep the three branches of government co-equal.

I scowled at him. “Norms do nothing but hide the flaws in the Constitution. It took a lowlife like Trump to prove once and for all that norms are no substitute for laws, not when it comes to the presidency.”

He clucked again. “You’re agreeing with me, Odd Man. Who woulda thunk it.”

I told him I was just stating the obvious. Norms can’t compel a president to disclose his tax returns, or divest himself of businesses that he owned prior to being elected, or refrain from firing important federal officials who might reveal something damning about his conduct in office.

And so on. Trump wants to establish his own norms. He wants to make it normal for a president to appoint a crooked attorney general and to prevent staffers from obeying congressional subpoenas and to threaten nuclear war.

The rabbit said, “The scary thing is that the peeps who elected Trump, and half of them peeps in Congress, are cool with him becoming a dictator, or a tyrant. Whatever you want to call it.”

“The people make big mistakes sometimes,” I countered. “But can you think of a better way to choose a leader?”

We watched the part of the TV show where the VIPs decided their next ruler should be a paraplegic who hardly ever speaks and spends much of his time in a dreamworld.

“There you go,” the rabbit said. “Them VIPs figure Bran Stark is the safe bet.”

I scowled again. “A small group of royals settle on a lame, kooky teenager to be their chief. This is your idea of a good system for choosing a leader?”

The rabbit shrugged. “He’s a kook, but at least he ain’t likely to turn into a tyrant.”

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Books? There is no time!

Posted on May 15, 2019 by oddmanout215

Swamp Rabbit told me he was going home, he was tired of my grumbling about Donald Trump, I should finish writing my new “fiction book” instead of following politics.

“Or read books by other peeps,” he said.

I told him there’s no avoiding Trump, he’s even crept into contemporary fiction. I’d read Gary Shteyngart’s Lake Success a few months ago and encountered about a dozen mentions of the grabber-in-chief. Trump is like an expanding cloud of smog, polluting the whole culture.

The rabbit asked, so I explained that Shteyngart is an A-list novelist and that Lake Success is about a guy named Barry whose life is falling apart even though he’s an enormously wealthy hedge fund manager with a beautiful wife named Seema and a zillion-dollar condo in Manhattan.

Self-absorbed Barry feels unloved by Seema and their autistic son, and is in trouble for insider trading. He leaves town to search for an old girlfriend, and he ends up searching for the real America or the meaning of life or something. He’s like Sal Paradise in Jack Kerouac’s On the Road crossed with Sherman McCoy in Tom Wolfe’s The Bonfire of the Vanities, except that Barry is a bit older than Sal and a thousand times more prosperous and jaded.

“Wait a minute, who’s this Sal guy?” Swamp Rabbit said. “And where’s this bonfire you’re talking about?”

I told him never mind, I should know better than to make literary allusions to someone who gets his information from talking heads on TV and gossipy Internet news sites.

“That ain’t fair,” Swamp Rabbit said. “You get your news from the same crappy sources as me.”

He was right. I spend more spare time scrolling Internet news sites than reading books, fiction or nonfiction. I realize that news venues impart only superficial knowledge of what’s happening in the world, but I excuse myself by saying “Who has time to read books these days?”

“And who has the energy?” I added, challenging the rabbit. “I’m worn out from working my traveling salesman job. It’s easier to watch cable news or Game of Thrones.”

“Quit whining,” he said. “Tell me about Lake Success.”

So I told him Barry’s reunion with the girlfriend doesn’t work out (of course not) as he travels west by bus and meets minorities and suffers through a bunch of indignities and wises up to the obvious fact that daily life in America is much worse for the poor than it is for the rich.

And there’s a counter-narrative from the POV of Seema who, after their first meeting, had

…Googled Barry’s net worth and found it comforting. A man that rich couldn’t be stupid. Or, Seema thought now, was that the grand fallacy of twenty-first-century America?

Trump is in the story even when he isn’t directly mentioned. He’s the grotesque symbol of the emptiness at the heart of the American Dream — the emptiness that helps explain Barry and Seema’s inability to feel any contentment despite their opulent lifestyles. But Shteyngart is a naturally funny writer, so you don’t get hit over the head with that message.

“Blah blah, ” Swamp Rabbit said. “Cut to the chase, what happens in the end?”

I told him to read the book if he wants to know. He looked at me like I was loony and said, “Who has time to read books these days?”

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Biggest loser’s fan base remains rock-solid

Posted on May 10, 2019 by oddmanout215

Swamp Rabbit and his parole office, Victor C, were digesting the news that businessman Donald Trump, in what most people assumed were his most successful years, had actually lost more money than almost any other American taxpayer:

The numbers show that in 1985, Mr. Trump reported losses of $46.1 million from his core businesses — largely casinos, hotels and retail space in apartment buildings. They continued to lose money every year, totaling $1.17 billion in losses for the decade.

“I can’t imagine having that much dough, let alone losing it,” the rabbit said.

Victor C, quoting David Cay Johnston, put it this way: “Every time Donald Trump took a breath for 11 years, he lost more than $3.”

I chipped in with a newspaper factoid that put Trump’s 1985-1995 losses in perspective:

If you got the entire amount in $100 bills and lined them up end to end starting at the entrance of Trump Tower, the chain would stretch to New Orleans, assuming a flat surface the entire way.

And so on. The point is that Trump, even at the time The Art of the Deal was published (1987), was an artless fraud whose boat was kept afloat by his rich daddy and by bankers who loaned him huge sums he had no intention of repaying.

I reminded Swamp Rabbit that Trump’s worldview, such as it is, was forged during the era in which Tom Wolfe coined the term “masters of the universe” to describe those grandiose Wall Street denizens who used financial wizardry to compile great fortunes.

“But Trump ain’t no wizard,” the rabbit said. “He couldn’t even make a profit on them casinos in Atlantic City.”

“It doesn’t matter,” I replied. “He knew the bankers were in too deep to stop lending him money. He knew he could tie them up in court forever if they tried to force him to pay his existing debts. The more he lost, the more they forked over to him.”

He was also stiffing the small businesses that serviced his casinos, hotels and other failing enterprises. Not so long ago he bragged, ““I’ve borrowed knowing you can pay back with discounts. I’ve done well with debt.”

I told Swamp Rabbit that Trump will do the same thing with Congress that he did with his creditors — tie them up in court to delay and maybe avoid being held accountable for possible crimes. That he’s asserting “executive privilege” to block congressional access to documents and witnesses that might derail his efforts to destroy the system of checks and balances essential to the American notion of democracy.

“Enough with the speech-making,” the rabbit said. “Ain’t nobody gonna prop up that moron now that they know he lost a billion-and-some dollars doing business.”

I thought of all the Republicans in Congress who remain more than willing to let Trump shred the Constitution, and of the many millions of Americans who seem to admire the biggest loser because he rose to the top despite (because of?) his hatefulness, dishonesty and incompetence.

“That’s what you think,” I said.

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Apocalypse 2020!

Posted on May 3, 2019 by oddmanout215

The cable news header for the next presidential election should be “Apocalypse 2020.” So says Swamp Rabbit’s parole officer Victor C, who dropped by my shack today to make sure the rabbit was abstaining from the hard stuff.

“The army of the dead is coming,” said Victor, a Game of Thrones fan. “You can’t beat death.”

I told him to stop being such a pessimist, the Democrats sound like they’re ready to fight. Yesterday morning, word leaked that Nancy Pelosi had told colleagues that Attorney General William Barr committed a crime when he lied to the Senate Judiciary Committee. Elizabeth Warren and others have called for Donald Trump’s impeachment. Jerry Nadler threatened to hold Barr in contempt for punking out on his House Judiciary Committee appearance.

“The dead are only 30 percent of the electorate, 35 at the most, and they don’t have a Night King to lead them,” I said. “All they have is an orange warthog.”

“Yes, but the living aren’t very lively,” Victor countered. “Democrats always talk a good game, but they get wimpy when push comes to shove.”

Swamp Rat weighed in on Victor’s side. “Every time the Democrats draw a line in the sand, the Republicans step over it. Them Dems are up against the scum of the earth, but they still don’t get it.”

They get it, I told him. Trump, in order to downplay evidence that he obstructed justice during the Mueller investigation, is trying to undermine congressional oversight of the executive to the point where Congress is no longer a co-equal branch of government. He and Barr, his mouthpiece, have the support of almost all congressional Republicans, who would rather see Trump become a de facto dictator than risk the possible election of a Democratic president.

I referred the rabbit to an op-ed by former FBI director James Comey, whose theory is that Trump’s lackeys start out as good people who gradually learn he is a fraud and much worse but stay with him because they think they can serve their country despite him. Comey wrote:

Of course, to stay, you must be seen as on [Trump’s] team, so you make further compromises. You use his language, praise his leadership, tout his commitment to values. And then you are lost. He has eaten your soul.

“That’s real poetic,” Swamp Rabbit said, “but most of them peeps ain’t got no soul to begin with. They’d rather join the army of the dead than miss out on a chance for a little money and power.”

“You’ve got no room to talk,” I said. “You’d sell your soul for a shot of Jack Daniels.”

We argued for another hour. The only thing we could agree on was that Victor is right, Apocalypse 2020 is coming to a voting booth near you.

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WAY worse than Watergate

Posted on April 29, 2019 by oddmanout215

Swamp Rabbit was trying to read the news to me but I was on the porch feeding the swamp cats and blasting Eric Dolphy’s Out To Lunch through my JBL speaker.

“I can’t hear you,” I shouted through the window. “Who is it that won’t testify?”

“That guy who looks like Fred Flintstone at Wilma’s funeral,” Swamp Rabbit said. “The attorney general.”

I went inside and read the story on my laptop screen:

[Attorney General William] Barr is expected to appear before the Senate and House Judiciary committees Wednesday and Thursday, respectively, to address questions about special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s report on Russian interference in the 2016 election. But according to senior aides for the panel’s chairman, Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), Justice Department officials have objected to Democrats’ plans to permit extended questioning, including by the committee’s lawyers, and threatened that Barr may withdraw.

Bottom line, the AG did what Trump hired him to do: sugarcoat the Mueller report’s findings to protect Trump. Barr is reluctant to answer questions about this because he, like his boss, believes in an imperial presidency.

“They should quit wasting time and subpoena the guy,” I said. “He’s just another Trump lackey.”

“But he’s the AG,” Swamp Rabbit replied. “This is some serious shit, Odd Man. It could turn into Watergate all over again.”

I said yes, the current crisis is another test of whether a president can get away with ignoring the popular notion that the Constitution calls for three distinct and co-equal branches of government.

“But this is bigger than Watergate,” I added. “Trump is hiding a hundred times as many crimes as Nixon hid. Anybody else would be impeached by now. In jail, maybe.”

Swamp Rabbit, beside himself with angst, wondered aloud if the rule of law can survive a profoundly corrupt and ignorant president who dismisses the concept of congressional oversight. A would-be dictator, in other words.

“Trump says he’s gonna tell all his lackeys to ignore subpoenas,” he said. “What can them Congress critters do if that happens?”

“They can hold the lackeys in contempt and have them locked up,” I replied. “They can start with Flintstone.”

But then there’s the question of what happens if the courts get involved. I’m glad the rabbit didn’t ask me that.

Footnote: Check out this piece, which cites Garry Wills’s A Necessary Evil in arguing that the so-called Founders meant for Congress to have more power than the executive or judicial branches.

Another: David Cay Johnston, who’s been tracking the Trump monster’s ups and downs for decades, is convinced the courts won’t save him.

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‘The fix is in’ — a cliche, but how true

Posted on April 19, 2019 by oddmanout215

No collusion… No collusion… No collusion.

I could hear Donald Trump’s mantra through the window yesterday as I was hanging clothes on the porch at my shack. But it wasn’t Trump speaking; it was William Barr, the attorney general, who was holding a press conference an hour before the release of the redacted Mueller report.

My friend Swamp Rabbit was watching Barr’s speech on the TV. “The fix is in,” he said as I walked in from the porch.

I groaned. “Spare me the cliches, rabbit.”

“I ain’t the one said the fix is in,” Swamp Rabbit said. “It was Jeffrey Toobin.”

He was right. Toobin is an attorney, a writer for the New Yorker, a talking head on CNN, and not exactly a flame-throwing radical. He usually avoids cliches, but what else can you say in light of the way the Mueller report has been handled by Barr who, not long before being chosen for AG by Trump, wrote a memo arguing there was no legal basis for bringing obstruction charges against the president?

Here is Barr at the press conference, kissing up to his boss:

The White House fully cooperated with the Special Counsel’s investigation, providing unfettered access to campaign and White House documents, directing senior aides to testify freely, and asserting no privilege claims… And at the same time, the President took no act that in fact deprived the Special Counsel of the documents and witnesses necessary to complete his investigation.

“Give me a break!” I shouted at the TV. “Trump fought Mueller tooth and nail, every step of the way. He refused to be questioned in person by Mueller. He would have fired Mueller if Don McGahn hadn’t threatened to quit.”

Swamp Rabbit put his feet up on a milk crate. “Calm down, Odd Man, we knew it would go down like this. Ain’t no use crying over spilt whiskey.”

But it was hard to move on. Robert Mueller, everybody’s great hope for justice, seems to have wimped out. He didn’t subpoena Trump, Trump Jr., Eric, Ivanka or Jared Kushner. He identified ten instances of possible criminal obstruction of justice by Trump but wrote no suggestions regarding what should be done with the evidence his team had gathered.

Mueller is no partisan hack like Barr, but one might argue that his apparent decision to protect the institution of the presidency by not charging Trump played directly into the hands of Barr and Trump.

“Then one would be wrong,” Swamp Rabbit said, mocking me. “Mueller was punting the ball to Congress and hoping they’d run with it. And he was counting on average Americans to do the right thing in 2020.”

Later on yesterday, I worked a sales job at the Iron Pigs game in Bethlehem. The ballpark’s loudspeakers cranked out advertisements and bad rock & roll. The noise was deafening but the average Americans in attendance didn’t seem to mind. It might be too late to count on them for anything.

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