Geezus this pisses me off.  Our lying POTUS (Particularly Offensive Turd Under Suspicion) is out there unabashedly protecting the interests of shifty corporate profiteers at the expense of the working class.  Last week there was this- Invasion of the Swamp People  Treasury Secretary Mnuchin is covered in bog slime.  He personally destroyed the lives of thousands with his ruthless and often illegal foreclosure practices when he was CEO of One West Bank.  Old news I know.  As is the conduct of EPA director Scott Pruitt. It would be comforting to know the administration is looking out for our general health and safety, but what takes priority time after time is corporate profits. Goodby clean air and water. With his intent to replace the advice of scientists in his department with that of his oil and gas cronies, kiss the EPA goodby as well.

Trump wasn’t kidding when he said he would surround himself with the very best advisors, if your idea of best is being the best at promoting self interest.   It’s true he has not been able to get a single piece of major legislation through congress, but while the president  distracts with sophomoric tweets and petty, purposeless diatribes, those very best advisors are sure getting shit done- during the darkness of the night.  It isn’t until we see a media report later that a clear understand of the devious nature of this administration once again hits us right in the face.  The burning question that looms larger every day is how long will his political base put up with gleefully taking it straight up the ass?

TRUMP CASBINET MEETING OVER COCKTAILS

TYPICAL AMERICAN HANG-OUT

BREAKING NEWS!  And speaking of hiring the best, how about that Manafort guy?  When POTUS tax returns are unveiled there’s a good chance we’ll see just how good the indicted fella was at advising Trump how to launder his own money.

Bouyed by President Trump’s recent assertion that he is solely responsible for the bullish stock market  and that somehow Wall Street gains are reducing the national debt, local unemployed resident Mike Blade says he feels confident the president knows what he is doing.  “That’s why I voted for him,” Mike stated. “He knows business and now that all that debt is under control you’ll be seeing me and lots of other folks around here getting a leg up on things,  you can bet on that.”

Mike Blade

Asked if he owned any stocks that have helped him get his leg up personally, Mike indignantly replied “Stocks are how those rich c**k s*****s on Wall Street get even richer. Those dirty b******s do nothin’ but f**k the rest of us over.”  Since the president’s remark about the stock market was an obvious  boast that his economic policies have benefited the  privileged rather than the poor and disadvantaged, Mr. Blade was asked if he was struck by the irony of his comment.   He responded by prattling on about the safety regulations of iron ore mining.  In his defense, he seemed confused by the word “irony.”

This reporter did attempt to inform Mr. Blade that the national debt has not changed much and the stock market has nothing to do with reducing it, but he became a little incensed and said “That’s b**l s**t.  You don’t know business like President Trump, and besides that Fox news fella Sean Hannity even backed him up.  So go f**k yourself.”

You guys know something about Watergate, right?  At the very least the word conjures up an association of President Nixon with unlawful activity.  As every day of the tumultuous Trump presidency passes the word seems to be mentioned more and more frequently, with attached comparisons between the Nixon and Trump administrations.  And in most of the cases you can argue that such a comparison requires a leap of faith to some degree.  But the firing of James Comey is hard to disassociate from that logic.  When President Nixon fired Archibald Cox, the prosecutor investigating the 1972 presidential election, it was viewed by almost everyone as an unethical act performed by a desperate man. The whole Comey affair brings to mind the old adage “Those who don’t know history are destined to repeat it.”

In the summer of 1973 the Senate Watergate Hearings were in full swing.  I have a vivid recollection of many of the prominent figures that were involved in testifying, like White House counsel John Dean, and Alexander Butterfield. The judicial committee was composed of men we so long for today, a bipartisan group of principled, ethical people- Chairman Sam Ervin, Senators Lowell Weicker, Daniel Inouye and Howard Baker.  My question does not evolve around a similarity between these two administrations, but a difference.  What the fuck is with all the classified material going on now?

During that summer of 1973 my wife and I took a very long road trip.  It is difficult for most to comprehend when I tell the story, but seven of us packed ourselves into my father-in-law’s station wagon, an Oldsmobile Vista Cruiser, and drove from Wesley Iowa,  my wife’s home town in the northern part of the state, to Arizona, and back.  Besides my wife and I, members of that brave group were my wife’s family- her mother and father and three siblings.  It was a fantastic trip, remarkable for many reasons, of course one of which would be how we made it back to Wesley without purposely leaving someone behind.  We saw some of our country’s most beautiful scenery- the Grand Canyon, the Arizona desert, Teton and Yellowstone National Parks, the Black Hills and Mt. Rushmore, and the Bighorn mountains, where I spent many weekends of my youth.

We were so overwhelmed with excitement to start out we gave up on sleeping overnight in Wesley and took off at 10pm in the evening,  took turns driving, and drove 22 straight hours to Albuquerque NM.  The next day we arrived in Flagstaff AZ, the primary destination point of our trip, to visit my wife’s older brother.  After two days there, we were off again, and the length of each day of travel became shorter and shorter.  That was because there were those Watergate hearings, and all of us, especially my father-in-law, became mesmerized by the proceedings.  It was late July, and we just happened to be traveling during the sweet spot of the televised coverage- six days of continuous, riveting witness to history. We had to stop early enough and fire up a television set so we could catch up on the day’s events.

In 1973  the Democrats controlled the Senate, but they needed Republican support to move forward with the investigation of a Republican president. By that point in time there were several Republican senators who realized the right thing to do was put country before party and get to the bottom of Nixon’s malfeasance.  Republican and Democrat senators on that judiciary committee pounded away, and never once do I remember the term “classified material” ever coming up.

That I know of, the official investigation of Nixon was conducted by the Watergate Senate Judicial Committee, and that was it.  There were not multiple investigations, like there are now with Trump.  I don’t recall the word “classified” coming up at all during the  Watergate hearings.  We had a responsible senate that decided enough was enough and bore down on the problem, citing evidence and hearing testimony that was evidently not considered classified, or it was declassified at the time of the proceedings.  All ducks were apparently in an orderly row.

Representative Government at Work During Watergate Hearings

I can’t say that I understand all the legal and technical details of what it takes to initiate a judicial investigation like Watergate.  Maybe changes in procedure have occurred since then.  Maybe involved investigative parties do not want to move forward until everything pertinent  is researched and documented.  I know that during the televised hearings that I have seen this month every time it appears there might be some significant revelation, the word “classified” comes up and then again I wonder where and when will the information be handed off to someone who can unveil its mysteries.  Another thing  I know is there is definitely something wrong that needs a full investigation. President Trump is hiding something, and his entire posture smacks of obstruction.  It’s time to get all this classified material corralled and investigated by one dedicated body, and since the Republicans seem to be intensely afraid of President Trump’s unhinged, retaliatory nature it is apparent we need independent inquiry.

President Trump at Work with Governmental Machinery

My personal feeling is there will be little in the way of anything subversive at the end of a competent investigation.  I think what it will show is something President Trump is afraid of more than anything- fear of looking like an incompetent loser.  His tax returns simply have to become publicly available.  There lies the answers to most of the questions.  I think what will be revealed is documented proof that Trump is a shifty, but very poor businessman who might possibly have been bailed out by a shady Russian loan.

The Republicans must quit acting like ass-kissing sycophants and do what is right.  They are supposed to be working for us and the majority of us want to know if the Trump campaign was involved in illegal activity, and to what degree Russia was involved.  Regardless of the outcome we deserve to to know one way or the other if what transpired during the 2016 election is the kind of thing our founding fathers feared most- foreign interference in our democracy.

Once again I find myself in Bill O’Reilly land.  My mother had a heart attack and I am in St. George Utah helping her out while she is in rehab.  She will be 98 next month and is remarkably adaptable.  The woman barely weighs 100 pounds, but a total hip replacement two years ago was merely a small setback.  As I am observing the progress of her cardiac rehab I suspect she doesn’t know what all the fuss is about, and considers the whole thing to be a mild inconvenience at the very worst, only because she now has to wait a week to get her hair shampooed and styled.

But what the heck is going on with Bill O”Reilly?  I know he is involved in that sexual misconduct scandal, but geezuz I though the president pardoned him.   After all, President Trump believes Bill to be a genuinely good person and did nothing wrong and publicly asserted the point.  The president has to now feel he is really getting somewhere with his pussygrabbing agenda.  Couple that with his “I’m going to bomb the shit out of em” policy he has to be giddy with a sense of accomplishment. Never mind he seemed to have misplaced an entire carrier strike group that’s roaming around somewhere in the Pacific Ocean.

If you visited St. George previous to this week, what you saw in the early evening on every television set in the city was this:

Typically Bill follows you around wherever you are in St. George.  In order of above TV screen shots left to right, here is Bill two months ago on my hotel lobby TV, on my mother’s TV, on my mother’s living center TV, on the TV of the bar I went to to get away from Bill, and son of a bitch there he was on my fucking cell phone!

This week what you see at the same time slot on Fox News is this:

I can see why Bill likes his job. But speaking as an unwitting observer of the television viewing habits of the residents of St George, it appears Fox New is getting along just fine without Bill.  My mother, who admittedly might not have an exact understanding of all the indelicacies of Bills discretions, put it this way, “I don’t understand the attraction.”  Hopefully 13 million in law suits and losing a very lucrative but overhyped job will help Bill realize he’s not the big attraction he thinks he is.

I can’t remember where I read this- on the internet or a magazine I get- but the chief exec of UBS  recently unabashedly told his bankers it was perfectly fine to make mistakes, as long as they are honest mistakes.  WTF!  I can’t remember the guy’s last name, but his first name is Sergio I am pretty sure.  At first my brain glossed over the comment, but later on I started to process what was said and I did some research and then got really steamed. The reason it took awhile to get ginned up was because I’m not too good with acronyms and capital letters that really don’t spell anything, but I recalled seeing the word “bankers” and that is what finally stoked my anger and I started to snoop around.

Turns out UBS sort of stands for Union Bank of Switzerland.  They dropped the name Union Bank of Switzerland after a long series of mergers with a variety of investment and banking firms, and there were a number of these acquisitions that ended up being big mistakes.  Driving these mistakes was greed, graft, and deception and it all went on for awhile because the dirty bastards involved knew they could get by with all the mischief because they knew no one was was paying attention, that is until it all imploded during the subprime mortgage crisis.  The tally for the mistake was a 50 billion dollar loss and a loss of 12 thousand jobs.  That’s a lot of money and careless attention to detail, a true clusterfuck of a mistake, and of course UBS got in line for TARP money.  There is another one of those acronyms I can’t remember.  It basically means “bailout'” but if you feel it’s important to you to know its exact meaning look it up yourself.

I’m no international traveler, but I believe the Banks of Switzerland are the  preferred travel destination for all the money the drug cartels need laundered, as well as all that dough over- paid CEO’s want to conceal from the IRS.  Are we stupid or what?  That just double pisses me off.

Rescue Vehicle for Swiss Skiers

Rescue vehicle for Swiss Investment Banks

Sure we all make mistakes.  It’s nice when my wife forgives me for not putting my dirty glass in the dishwasher or leaving the toilet seat up.  In my defense, because of  the heavy concentration of scotch my glass contained I felt it was pretty well a self-cleaning situation that a 160 degrees of dishwasher water couldn’t improve upon.  There is no excuse for the toilet seat though, now that we have one that is self-lowereing.  That was a Christmas present from my daughter-in-law, which seems to speak to the fact that this is an important issue for the women in my family.

Yes I suppose some mistakes can, and should be forgiven.  But there are degrees of mistakes and the more blatantly careless and thoughtless are less forgivable.  What makes this Sergio guy’s philosophy so egregious is not only is he saying it’s ok to make a mistake, but to me for someone in his position to say that is like saying “whoops my bad” to a world-wide economic crisis his company contributed to, and also inferring that maybe the rest of us should be prepared for another to come our way.  It’s perfectly normal in his world to slip up and fuck the rest of us over, and he is prepared to promote any employee of his that comes up with the best idea to give us a sore asshole.   And of course we should all be forgiving of any pain so endured.   It’s just galling that this guy not only says such a thing, but he says it publicly for the whole world to hear.   Geezuz that pisses me off.

People are not too forgiving of a surgeon who removes the wrong limb of a patient.  It’s hard to forgive military personnel responsible for bombing a hospital staffed by Doctor’s without Borders.  Usually mistakes like that will get you fired or sued, or both. Maybe even a jail sentence.  But not always.  In fact hardly ever in the financial sector.  What the shifty scum bags in this profession have mysteriously been able to do is to take that one adage “We learn from our mistakes” and flip it on it’s head.   What they learn from their mistakes is what they can’t get by with, and then apply that knowledge to help them decide how to get by with their next mistake.   And the rest of us seem to be helpless to stop it.

I’m not so sure we really get smarter with age.  I think for most of us there’s just less stuff left that we haven’t screwed up yet.  We really should wise up to these pompous dicks running gigantic financial institutions though.  Believe me there are plenty of Sergio’s out there drawing up plans for their next mistake.  Vote for Bernie.  He’ll straighten those greedy bastards out.