Posts

Posted on

“These Are Not Very Bright Guys And Things Got Out Of Hand”

From Palmer Report:

One of the great ironies of the Watergate scandal is that the most famous quote to come from it – “These are not very bright guys and things got out of hand” – was never actually said by anyone involved. That line only existed in the stylized movie version of events. It doesn’t matter. By all accounts the quote accurately sums up what the real Deep Throat was trying to convey to the real Bob Woodward about the real Nixon and his henchmen. But it’s somehow fitting that, like everything else about the scandal, even the pull quote is fake.

What does this have to do with Donald Trump? In a way, everything. His entire life has been one long series of overlapping scandals. Nothing about the man is what he purports it to be. Trump the savvy businessman was a fictional creation. Trump the billionaire was a fictional creation. Trump on the Apprentice was a spliced together fictional portrayal. Trump the politician has been such a work of fiction that… well, you know.

But do we really know? For a decade, one seedy, corrupt, evil, criminal, unhinged, and often outright filthy aspect after another of the real Donald Trump has been exposed. A disturbing number of people didn’t care. Some still don’t. Some didn’t start caring until it was too late. At this point it feels like any additional scandal that comes out about Trump is only going to move the needle incrementally. After all, literally every inch of this piece of crap’s life has been a hideous scandal.

But then there’s Jeffrey Epstein. In his own way, an even more psychotically evil villain than Donald Trump. Epstein committed the one kind of crime that just about everyone on earth agrees is pure evil. It’s the one crime that other criminals all think is evil. It’s the kind of evil that can instantly end any public figure’s public life if it’s exposed that they even so much as knew what Epstein was doing to those girls.

Which of course is why Trump is willing to burn it all down – even his own failing presidency – in a desperate attempt at keeping his connections to Jeffrey Epstein under wraps. And it’s why Trump’s henchmen have been trying to help Trump keep it all a secret. Even as psychotically evil as they are, they understand just how evil Epstein’s crimes were, and how thoroughly Trump will be finished in public life if the public finds out that Trump even knew what Epstein was doing. And frankly, Trump’s own mouth has gotten the public halfway there.

Yet the effort to cover it all up continues. The federal court systen ordered the Trump regime to turn over all relevant information about the Jeffrey Epstein files. But yesterday the Trump regime basically said “nah.” Instead it’s asking for a sixty day delay for no coherent reason. The court won’t grant any such delay. The Trump regime is buying itself a few days at most, waiting until Friday on a holiday weekend to file something that will surely be rejected once the courts reopen. That’s just how desperate Trump’s Department of Justice is to stall this for even so much as a long weekend.

Of course this is the same Trump Department of Justice – the dumbest four words ever strung together – just yesterday admitted to the court that it accidentally sent a copy of Jack Smith’s report to the defense attorney for someone the DOJ has criminally charged with having improperly obtaining a copy of said report. If that sounds insanely confusing, that’s because it is. It’s incompetence on a level that’s so thoroughly on the nose, you have trouble believing it even as you’re reading the news report about it. Except you do believe it, because these people really are that stupid in how they go about trying to be evil.

These are not very bright guys and things got out of hand. These words may have never been spoken during the Watergate scandal, but they perfectly conveyed the entirety of the scandal. And now, just as accurately, just as stunningly, just as absurdly, just as perfectly these same words apply to an attempted coverup that’s so evil and so stupid that it makes Watergate look like a day at the park. These are not very bright guys and things got out of hand.

0 comments

Posted on
Lucius Pham/iowa Public Radio

Life is exhausting these days for lots of us, and I think I’ve figured out why. I think it’s having to sit through the pretending.

You see, it’s bad enough watching over a third of our nation becoming fully indoctrinated into a sycophantic cult of personality of the very worst kind of person, to see once reasonable people abandon any semblance of benevolence toward diverse humanity.

It’s rightly heartbreaking to see those we love so seduced by power, addled by racism, and deluded by tribalism that they’ve declared war on immigrants and, vaccines and gay kids and the electoral process.

And yes, it’s infuriating witnessing tens of millions of Americans having their minds slowly poisoned by Fox News and Franklin Graham to the point they defend a domestic act of terror on our Capitol or take the side of a murderous regime’s genocide or celebrate their neighbors being thrown into concentration camps.

As wearying as all that is, it’s so much worse having them invoke love of God and country in the process.

That’s what makes these days so difficult for so many of us: not merely coming to terms with the beliefs and prejudices and phobias of those we are daily surrounded by here, but having to contend with their constant projection about us and their refusal to simply own who they are. It’s the nonstop, hypocritical, farcical performance art.

Good people are so tired of traitors masquerading as patriots, of the treasonous continually waving the flag, of hateful people peddling a God of love.

They’re tired of human beings with no empathy pretending they care about the sanctity of life, of the loudest prophets of America First having the least regard for so many Americans, of the self-righteous sermonizers defending a predator.

Where are the selflessness, generosity, and hospitality that were supposed to mark the lovers of God and country?

Where are the lives that replicate the embrace of the poor, huddled masses affixed to the foundation of Liberty?

Where are those who emulate the love of disparate neighbors at the heart of the Gospels?

Patriot. Christian. American.

These words have all lost their meaning: words that used to cost something to claim, labels that once came with even a modicum of transformation, and self-identifiers that had previously required a measure of evidence displayed in one’s life.

The flag and the cross that used to hold such meaning to so many of us are now just stolen iconography wielded by the immigrant-hating wall-builders and the violent anti-abortion zealots.

Using these words and wearing these symbols has become more and more difficult for us, as they now align us with the very antithesis of our moral convictions and guiding principles.

People who truly love this country, those who earnestly seek a faith expressed in love, human beings who are burdened to make America worthy of the speeches and anthems—we find ourselves branded heretics and traitors and apostates, forcefully displaced from religion and country by these angry squatters who have taken up residence in them.

True patriots should want all Americans to vote, they should oppose would-be dictators, they should yield to the Constitution, and they should demand a nation that is offered to everyone equally.

Actual followers of Jesus should defend the vulnerable, they should give comfort to the sick, food to the hungry, welcome to the immigrant, and love to the least among us.

And while the masqueraders and pretenders parade around in grand performative acts of love of God and country while willfully betraying both—the rest of us are going to have to fight to hold on to our nation and our religion, and to care for a world that needs desperately authentic people of faith, morality, and conscience who simply live a love that doesn’t need to declare itself loving.

As far as patriotism and faith go, this nation needs the real thing again.

1 comments

Posted on

Forcing Myself

Since WordPress first introduced the Block Editor in 2018, I have avoided using it like the plague, going to far as loading a plug-in that activates (or at least recreates) the Classic Editor.

After 8 years, however, I’ve decided it’s time to embrace change and give the Block Editor a serious try. It’s still confusing as hell to someone like me who has been using WordPress for the last twenty-some years and didn’t immediately adopt the new paradigm.

Maybe you can teach old dogs new tricks. Let’s see how it goes.

0 comments

Posted on

The Beginning Of A Mellow Afternoon

Joey Alexander – Warna  (2019)

And believe me, it’s needed.

I took Sophie in for her annual shots this morning.

“Dad! I do NOT like this! Can we please go home?”

She was such a good girl however, that we stopped for a pup cup on the way home.

Prior to leaving this morning, I was about to do my usual breakfast routine, but discovered I was out of the Kate Farms solution (haven’t received my monthly supply from the healthcare distributor and my most recent order from Amazon hadn’t arrived yet), so I combined my iced coffee with two cartons of isosource. All was well and good until right before I left for the vet and the most horrific reflux hit. Apparently I overdid it on the volume and my stomach didn’t like it one bit.

The worst part of not being able to swallow is when you get reflux. If everything were functioning properly, I’d whip up a glass of baking soda solution, swallow it, and  everything would be right as rain. Unfortunately, that’s no longer an option. Yeah, I can still do the baking soda solution via the g-tube (after using the tube to drain the excess stomach contents) to quiet my stomach, but there’s no way of immediately relieving the burn left in my throat from the reflux. And of course there was a certain amount of aspiration, so my O2 (after being 98-100% for weeks now) took a—thankfully brief—nosedive to under 90%. It’s since recovered  to the mid 90s, but damn…it wiped me out and I wanted nothing more upon returning home than to take a nap.

That’s passed now, but it’s still going to be a very low-key, quiet afternoon and Joey Alexander is a perfect accompaniment for that.

0 comments

Posted on

Evening Tunes

Peter Erskine – Transition (1987)

I originally bought this disc in 1987—for obvious reasons—long before I had gotten into jazz. Despite the bear on the cover, after a few listenings, I just couldn’t get into it and ended it selling/trading it at Streetlight Records on Market Street. Nearly 40 years years later I ran across it again and wondered if my musical taste in general or appreciation for more freeform jazz had changed any.

It had. It’s that one disc I always pull out when I can’t decide what to listen to. But to be honest there is still one track on the album that I consistently skip over if the remote is handy.

0 comments

Posted on

I Could Live There

I would definitely rip out that entire kitchen/maid’s room area and convert it into one large kitchen with adjacent 1/2 bath and laundry room. Might even open it up to the Dining Room. The Sleeping Porch would make a nice home office.

1 comments

Posted on

Will It Blend?

Of course it will. A mere shadow of its former self at only 280 calories. I used to love the full-sized ones.

Yeah, it’s Taco Bell again. If I was going to go to the trouble of getting there, I was going to get a couple day’s lunches out of it.

 

0 comments

Posted on

Nutrition

This—along with pureed soups or very occasional pureed solid food— is what I’ve been surviving on since last September. After speaking with my nutritionist around the first of the year we realized I wasn’t getting nearly enough of it (hence, why I dropped nearly 60 lbs.) and she upped my intake to 7 cartons a day (twice what I’d been doing). Easier said than done, because it seemed my stomach had shrunk and now barely tolerated two cartons at a time. She suggested I split up my feedings until I can go back to three, 2-carton “meals” a day.

This was unacceptable, so I didn’t. I powered through two cartons three times a day with a “snack” in the afternoon.

The problem was this shit is boring as fuck. It’s unflavored, and as unlikely as it seems, even with tube feeding I still have a (vastly diminished) sense of taste of what goes into my stomach even if it doesn’t take the usual route.

I told the nutritionist that in addition to the isosoure, I was supplementing my diet with Premier Protein drinks. She checked the nutritional values and suggest we up the game. She had a sample case of Kate Farms vanilla and Boost High Calorie chocolate sent to me.

Initially I preferred the Boost. The Kate Farms didn’t sit well and seemed to cause more reflux than I was willing to deal with. But once again, I powered through and came to prefer the Kate Farms over the Boost. When I spoke to her again last month, I asked if we could ditch the isosource completely and do Kate Farms exclusively. The Kate Farms is hella expensive (even discounted on Amazon it’s still $60 for a case of dozen cartons) so it would be great if my insurance would cover it like it did the isosource. She said she’d check with the vendor and my insurance to see if it was covered.

Turns out it was, so the next shipment I receive will be exclusively Kate Farms. I’ve discovered it mixes extremely well with my morning iced vanilla (or lately orange vanilla) latte, boosting my caloric intake even more. Both it and the isosource (I still have about 8 cases of 24 cartons each so I’m going to be using that for quite some time regardless) mix well with the Premier Protein drinks, so yum!

So by mixing all this up and throwing in some pureed real food on occasion…

Yes, it’s another Taco Bell enchirito. This time I had the forethought to pick up sliced olives beforehand for the full retro experience!

…I get enough variety daily and since my stomach has now stretched out to the point where I can handle more than 16 oz of material at a sitting, I’m consistently reaching my nutritionist-set daily caloric intake of 2.7K calories and often reaching above to more then 3K calories a day.

Have I gained back any weight? Not that I can tell, but I haven’t lost any more, so that alone is a good thing. Putting any weight back on is going to be a long, arduous process.

In other health-related news, my endocrinologist has upped the dose of my thyroid medication (my last TSH test was through the roof) and my energy level is back to “normal,” and I’m no longer falling asleep at my desk or while watching television. I’m also sleeping much better.

Insurance approved my dermatologist’s request to put me on Duplixent for the Keytruda rash. The current therapy of prednisone and cortisoid cream has helped greatly and the skin eruptions are healing nicely, but the generally accepted therapy for getting rid of Bullous pemphigoid completely includes Duplixent. The first double dose, as I mentioned a few posts ago was administered at the doctor’s office as a “sample” and the first of many followup doses due next week—through insurance—was $1K and satisfied my remaining yearly out-of-pocket Medicare Part D requirement. The good news is that because of that—and those two week-long stints in the hospital in April—I shouldn’t have to pay for anything health related for the rest of the year.

Yay, ‘murika?

4 comments

Posted on

“Eight Is Enough” Of Anything

Famous last words.

I suppose there are worst things to spend my money on, but collecting shit is a fun hobby no matter what you collect, be it antiques, Hummel figurines, Beanie Babies,  Candlewick glassware (in the case of my sister), or in my case, portable CD/Minidisc players.

Yeah, I know I should be saving, saving, saving with all the uncertainty in the world right now, but let’s face it: with that madman in the White House everything could go up in a mushroom cloud at any moment because someone disrespected his fragile ego one too many times and the only solution in his addled brain was to start WWIII. And even if it doesn’t get that crazy, none of us has any guarantee of tomorrow—especially if you’re dealing with ongoing health issues—so find joy in what and where you can.

And these little nuggets bring the geek in me much joy.

I’ll admit there is a fine line between collecting and hoarding, however. Fortunately I don’t think I’ve crossed that line, nor have any of my living relatives. My late father, however, was not a collector. He was a hoarder, and no matter how many times we tried to help him declutter (or even so much suggesting that he move into a new apartment) we were met with incredible resistance to the point of outright meltdowns. When he went into skilled nursing and we knew he’d never be going home again, I spent a couple days cleaning his place while I was in town and ended up filling an entire residential dumpster. After he passed it was a Herculean task for my sister (I was back in Denver at the time) to clean the rest of his place out and get it ready for sale.

I hope that when my time comes, whoever has to go through all my shit doesn’t feel like I had crossed the line.

0 comments