Stand and Deliver: School's in Session

Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi [Getty Images]

In the past few weeks Washington, D.C. has witnessed something that's been rare on Capitol Hill lately.

Politicians who are ready to work after eight long, unproductive years of the House of Representatives being run by obstructionist Republican lawmakers more interested in legislating on behalf of their wealthy donor base than on behalf of the majority of Americans and the environment in which we live.

It's been refreshing to watch Democrats take back the levers of power on Capitol Hill.

Does everyone feel that way? Obviously not.

Especially given a shifting American political climate still marked by division, partisan rancor and an unpopular president with a sinking approval rating now hovering in the 38% range according to the latest Gallup poll data for January.

The results of the mid-term elections in November made it clear that independents and suburban swing voters have drifted away from a president many of them supported back in 2016 when they still bought into the idea that Trump was going to be some kind of crusading reformer of "big government" who would "shake up the system."

Now that his signature tax cut gift to the wealthiest Americans has exploded the federal deficit, his self-proclaimed "trade war" with China has raised costs for some products used by U.S. manufacturers and stifled crop markets and prices for many baffled American farmers, the magic has worn off this scandal-plagued administration - for those who believed in it anyway.

As conservative stalwart William Kristol reported for The Bulwark last Sunday morning, veteran New York political operator Bruce Gyory notes that recent Marist poll data conducted for PBS now shows Trump loosing support among his core base of white evangelicals (down 11%) and blue collar white men (down 17%).

And yet Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell allow the shutdown to linger on.

Tuesday January 22nd: federal workers line up for
charitable food assistance in Washington, D.C. [AP] 

What the White House doesn't seem to grasp is that most of the people who still support Trump - aside from his right-wingy billionaire mega-donors - actually understand what it means to live paycheck to paycheck in this country.

They may be angry about immigration, guns or women making their own reproductive healthcare decisions - but they're not completely heartless.

And they're beginning to understand that the TSA, IRS and National Park Service are parts of the government they need - and want.

The political views of Trump's base may be out of synch with the vast majority of American people, but you can't tell me that Trump supporters aren't affected by the images of federal workers who haven't seen a paycheck since December lining up in the freezing cold on a Saturday to get free produce and canned goods donated from a food bank.

Like the almost 200 furloughed federal employees did in Rockville, Maryland last weekend.

So this protracted government shutdown resulting from Trump's childlike refusal to sign any legislation that would reopen the closed portions of the federal government that does not contain $5.7 billion for his wall, is not sitting well with many of those who own MAGA hats.

Arguably even some registered Republicans would privately admit to feeling a sense of relief over the legislative branch of government now being in the hands of party that's going to use the powers delegated to them under the Constitution to begin exercising some restraint and control to reign in a chaotic president.

The new Democratic House leadership, Jim Clyburn,
Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer  

The new Democratic House majority under the leadership of Speaker Nancy Pelosi, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and Majority Whip Jim Clyburn have only been in power less than a month.

But they've proved quite adept at schooling Trump on the realties of the powers granted to the House of Representatives.

And how power in Washington, D.C. really works.

Just today Trump received a letter from Pelosi saying that she would not allow him to use the House Chamber to give his State of the Union address next week while major portions of the government are still shut down.

Unaccustomed to being told "no", Trump predictably had a hissy fit, calling Pelosi's decision "a great, great horrible mark." - apparently he's just learning that a president must be invited to deliver a State of the Union address in front of a joint session of Congress, and the Speaker of the House controls whether that happens or not.

Sorry Mr. President, Nancy Pelosi is no spineless do-nothing like Paul Ryan, and she has teeth too; as her decision to have the House Oversight Committee investigate how Trump's self-enriching son-in-law Jared Kushner managed to get access to classified material despite not having proper security clearance demonstrates.

Trump is also facing increased opposition from Democrats on the Senate side too.

If you're not familiar with Democratic Montana Senator John Tester, he's a no-nonsense, down to earth politician who rocks a crew cut and still works as an actual farmer.

Seriously, this guy is a political bad-ass, a Democrat who held off a strong challenge by Trump and the Republican Party to take his Senate seat in conservative-leaning Montana in the recent 2018 mid-terms - dude is tough.

My order of Cakepops from Baked By Yael

Two weeks ago Tester took to the Senate floor to tear into Trump for refusing to sign legislation to reopen the government and using innocent tax-paying Americans as pawns.

Want an idea of how our government is supposed to operate, in particular how the Legislative Branch of the federal government is supposed to keep the Executive Branch in check?

Take a few minutes to watch Senator Tester's floor speech from last Wednesday; this isn't some kind of anti-Trump rant, it's about the responsibility of government. It's old school.

Anyway that's it for this edition.

As I mentioned in my blog post on Sunday, I ordered some Cakepops from Baked By Yael, the bakery in Washington, D.C. owned by small business entrepreneur Yael Krigman after seeing a segment on the PBS Newshour about how her business was being affected due to the government shutdown because none of the foot traffic she gets from the National Zoo across the street have been coming in lately.

I'm happy to say that my order of Cakepops was waiting on my doorstep when I got home from the gym earlier this evenin - so I'm about to go eat do my part for small businesses in America.

The Senate is set to vote tomorrow on two different measures to reopen the federal government, the chance of passage is reportedly slim but at least the Senate is trying to take action - and the two measures may be a starting point to move towards a solution.

My sense is that any solution to this issue is going to have to come from the House and Senate - and that may mean Trump faces the humiliation of a vote to override his veto of any measure that doesn't include money for his wall.

We'll see, things are getting grim out there for hundreds of thousands of federal workers and government contractors; Trump is going to have to understand that his new reality is that he now shares power with Democrats on Capitol Hill.

And like Los Angeles, school is now in session.

The Shutdown's Heavy Toll & The Old Kentucky Home

Washington, D.C. bakery owner Yael Krigman (left)
with WABC-7 meteorologist Eileen Whelan

On the Friday, January 18th edition of the PBS Newshour, I watched national correspondent Lisa Desjardins' segment examining the human toll of the Trump - McConnell government showdown; which is now the longest in American history.

The segment focused on the Washington, D.C. area which is home to thousands of federal workers and federal contractors; including a security guard named De'von Russell and a small business owner named Yael Krigman (pictured left).

They're both staring down the barrel of financial uncertainty thanks to Trump.

At first glance, Krigman and Russell are the kinds of Americans that Republican politicians like to claim they represent - hard-working folks looking to make a better life for themselves and carve out their own little slice of the American dream.

But since Trump has been in office, Republicans have done nothing but screw small businesses, farmers, the middle and working class and the poor, between the trade war with China impacting U.S. farmers, the government shutdown and the massive Republican tax cut - which has caused the federal deficit Republicans whined about incessantly when President Obama was in office to skyrocket*.

*[I tried looking up the Monthly Treasury Report on the Bureau of Fiscal Service website which lists updated deficit numbers - but there's no updated data because the people who get paid to do that aren't doing their jobs because of the Trump - McConnell shutdown.]

As Lisa Desjardins reported, Yael Krigman quit her well-paying job as an attorney to pursue her passion for baking and opened a small Kosher bakery called Baked By Yael across the street from the National Zoo - which normally supplies her and he 17 employees with a steady stream of hungry customers during the day.

Custom "Cake-pops" from Baked By Yael

Thanks to Trump's stubborn refusal to sign legislation intended to reopen the closed portions of the federal government, bills which passed both the House and Senate with bipartisan support weeks ago, the National Zoo remains closed to visitors and foot traffic into Krigman's bakery has dried up.       

By the way her custom "Cake-pops" - balls of baked cake batter attached to a stick and dipped in candy coating - looked so good, I went to her website and ordered some of them to be shipped to me.

Hey I figure it's only right to try and support fellow Americans affected by the shutdown right? And, well, I really love cake.

Check out the Baked By Yael website for yourself.

Lisa Desjardins also visited De'Von Russell as he played with his adorable three-year-old daughter Dejah; if you want to see the PBS segment click this link and scroll to 25 minutes 14 seconds.

Russell works as a security guard for the Smithsonian's Museum of Natural History, he loves his job, but he's one of thousands of federal contractors across the country who probably won't be getting back pay for the two weeks he's been furloughed from work.

As Russell said in the interview, he's managed to pay all his bills for the time being, but like many Americans including myself, he lives paycheck to paycheck.

And if the shutdown continues, he and thousands of other Americans are looking at a bleak month ahead with no end in sight simply because of Trump's refusal to act, and Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's refusal to allow legislation that would reopen the government to even come to the floor for a vote.

Just think about that for a moment; is he serving the American people, or a constituency of one?

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and colleagues search
the Capitol for Senator Mitch McConnell 

On Wednesday, Democratic freshman Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and a group of her fellow freshman went on a widely-covered search of the Capitol building and Senate offices to try and find and confront Mitch McConnell face-to-face over his refusal to move on reopening the government.

But evidently the elusive senate majority leader was doing his best to hide from AOC and her Democratic posse - if you haven't seen the video of AOC's hunt take a minute to watch the edited highlights.

For those of you who prefer to geek out on the often-arcane workings behind the scene of the House and Senate, Lawrence O'Donnell's 16-minute segment on MSNBC's The Last Word is worth the watch as he offers some deeper historical context on the significance of AOC and her colleagues trying to bring their demands directly to the floor of the male-dominated Senate chamber.

The system is clearly broken when one cowardly senator from Kentucky has the power to keep major portions of the federal government in a protracted shutdown because he's scared of an erratic president having a temper tantrum that could make his angry Kentucky voter base even angrier.

Sadly, that homegrown Kentucky anger was on full display on Friday in Washington, D.C.

As you may have heard by now some students of the all-boys Covington Catholic High School in Park Hills, Kentucky - a suburb of Cincinnati, Ohio located in northern Kentucky - are getting a much-needed lesson in the power of social media.

In a video now seen by millions around the world, a group of mostly white Covington Catholic boys along with what appear to be at least some of their parents in the background, are seen mocking, taunting and blocking a group of Native American activists who were in Washington, D.C. to participate in the Indigenous People's March on Friday.

An unnamed Covington Catholic HS student smugly
stares down Omaha tribal elder Nathan Phillips 

The Covington Catholic boys were in the area to attend the anti-abortion March For Life, apparently the group encountered the Native Americans on their way to, or from the march somewhere near what looks to me like the front of the Lincoln Memorial.

Part of what's troubling is the open hostility many of them display towards a group of Native Americans who were there simply singing and drumming - what is it about the Native Americans that sparked the kind of mob mentality seen in the video?

If you've seen the video, quite a few of the Covington Catholic High School boys are wearing Trump's red or white "Make America Great Again" hats, some have Trump sweatshirts on - as if their parents have indoctrinated them into the kind of openly racist, white supremacist belief system that's become the defining element of the Trump presidency.

The one smirking boy in the gray jacket and red MAGA hat in particular (pictured above) who decided to stand defiantly close to Omaha tribal elder Nathan Phillips, a Vietnam veteran, almost looks like he wants to spark a physical confrontation.

In a short video that I saw posted on actress Alyssa Milano's Twitter page, Phillips reflects on the broader history that the boys who taunted him do not even remotely seem to grasp - even as they can be heard chanting "Build that wall" in the background.

Seriously, these kids live in a cushy suburb and attend a private school with a $10,000 per year tuition, what the Hell do any of them need a wall for?

As USA Today and other media outlets have reported, Covington Catholic HS and the Catholic Diocese issued a joint statement condemning the behavior and apologizing for the student's actions; as well as insisting an investigation of what happened will take place.

#WheresMitch has become a popular hashtag
as politicians wonder why the Senator is AWOL 

As in all things, I think the incident needs to be kept in perspective, this is one group of boys and obviously not all white grade-school boys in this country are ignorant Trump sycophants-in-training openly exploring and expressing their bigotry, and flaunting their ignorance in public.

There are millions of white grade school students who consider the behavior of the Covington Catholic High School boys to be reprehensible, I spent quite a bit of time reading social media reaction to the incident, and people of all ages, ethnicities, nationalities and religions are offended by what takes place in that video.


But given that Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell's chief motivation for blocking spending bills that would reopen the federal government seems to be his fear of alienating the pro-Trump voters in his state whose support he will need in the 2020 election, the video of the Covington Catholic HS boys offers troubling insight into the kind of grassroots conservative anger that McConnell fears.

Anger that's hardly unique to Kentucky.

Whatever happens with the government shutdown, or disciplinary actions against the Kentucky students who mocked, taunted and disrespected a Native American elder who served his country in Vietnam, one thing is clear.

The sun is definitely not shining bright on "My Old Kentucky Home" these days.

In fact there's a cloud hanging over it.

Old Fox Guy, The Singer & Aleister Crowley

Govt. Shutdown Day 13 - Fake President at Thursday's
fake press briefing with his posse of bald xenophobes 

It was my intention to begin 2019 not so much with the daunting pressure and outsized expectations of a bold "New Year's Resolution".

But rather with the simple, honest pursuit of good intent.

So after work on Wednesday I closed my office door, changed into my workout clothes and drove over to the Retrofitness gym just around the corner from my apartment.

I needed to escape the incessant media coverage of Trump's delusional whining about building a pointless wall.

After spending much of my New Year's Day nursing a hangover, eating and watching Penn State come up short against a resurgent University of Kentucky football team in the Citrus Bowl on Tuesday, it felt good to work up a good sweat and burn some calories.

Now for some folks, the gym is a social experience, some people spend as much time talking and shooting the breeze with others as they do working out - which is cool.

But I'm more the cerebral type, and after a day of ringing phones, nonstop emails and constant interruptions at work, just meditating and thinking quietly while working out is much more relaxing and rejuvenating to me than talking.

Excessively chatty people at the gym, especially the types who thrive on a captive audience in a confined space where others are forced to hear them talk, can really annoy me by intruding on the peaceful, quiet place I try to create inside my head when I'm working out.

An asylum seeker pulls her children away from tear
gas fired by U.S. Border Patrol agents

My first workout of 2019 went pretty well, I did 30 minutes of lifting and ab work, then 30 minutes of cardio.

While on the treadmill I flipped back and forth between local weather and a CNN panel discussion of Trump's delusional demands for Congress to authorize $5 billion in taxpayer funds to begin construction on a useless monument to his xenophobia, bigotry and infantile ego along the southern border with Mexico.


Afterwards I walked into the locker room to change and grab a hot shower, and these two regulars are in there - one of whom is an older conservative guy I know to be a Fox News watcher.

He's not a bad guy, but he tends to roam the expanse of the gym looking for people willing to listen to him spend 15 to 20 minutes talking in excruciating detail about the woes of the Philadelphia Eagles or his right-wingy political views - which come straight from the aforementioned Fox News.

Allow me to share an example.

Back in the summer of 2017 I heard him angrily denounce Arizona Republican Senator John McCain as a traitor after the feisty, decorated Vietnam vet and former POW famously gave his thumbs-down on a Senate floor vote to pass that sketchy, cobbled-together Republican bill to repeal Obamacare - torpedoing Trump's disturbing obsession with rolling back the Affordable Care Act.

That's just one sample of the kinds of things I've heard him say in the gym at high-volume.

So as I enter the locker room on Wednesday, there's Old Fox Guy talking to this other gym regular who defies the Retrofitness dress code by insisting on working out in jeans, black leather boots, a black t-shirt, and a black baseball hat - he also wears headphones and spends much of his workouts singing loud, off-key snippets of classic rock like Led Zeppelin or Pink Floyd.

(I enjoy classic rock, but if I'm going to listen to 'Breathe' from Dark Side of the Moon I want to hear Roger Waters sing it - not some sweaty dude in a gym with no musical tone staring at himself in a mirror pretending he knows the lyrics.)

Trash normally collected by Park Service employees
piles up across from the White House

Anyway, I see these two characters talking so I scurry over to my locker to change as fast as I can to try and get in the shower as quickly as possible where it was my hope that:

A) neither of them will try to engage me in conversation.

And B) the force of the water will hopefully drown out the sound of whatever conversation I know they're about to have.

I was making good time peeling off my sweaty clothes when The Singer brings up the government shutdown.

Old Fox Guy quickly agrees that something must be done, but before he can launch into some kind of tirade about Nancy Pelosi being responsible for it, The Singer stops in the middle of the locker room and his face gets red.

He raises his voice and announces that he's "sick of the whole thing", and with Ayn Rand-ian flourish says he could care less what happens to the 800,000 federal workers who are still going without a paycheck.

Many of whom have no means to pay their monthly mortgage, car loan or rent for January.

Now even Old Fox Guy was taken aback by such a statement, and despite his decidedly right-leaning political views starts to make a point about federal workers deserving to get paid.

But The Singer cuts him off, and shoots back that federal workers all get better benefits and pensions than he does and that they don't care about him.

Right-wing Net rumor: English occultist Aleister Crowley
was the father of First Lady Barbara Bush

He suggested they're all in cahoots with "the politicians" and out of the blue ( I shit you not) he says:

"Dude, you know Barbra Bush's father was Aleister Crowley, right?" 

Old Fox Guy is suddenly and uncharacteristically silent, as he ponders this question.

There are others besides myself in the locker room, and he has to realize how totally bat-shit crazy that sounds.

To me, suggesting that the wife of former President George HW Bush is actually the biological daughter of Aleister Crowley, the notorious British occult leader and prolific womanizer, ranks up there with the Pizzagate conspiracy that revolved around allegations that Hillary Clinton was a member of a pedophile ring that was run out of the basement of a Washington, D.C. pizza restaurant - which doesn't actually have a basement.

Curious about where The Singer could have dredged up this Bush-Crowley nonsense, I looked it up online and read an article on Gizmodo.com by Charlie Jane Anders which pointed out that the source of the rumor was an article published on the Cannonfire Website - on April Fools Day 2006.

Anders reported that he contacted author Tobias Churton, who wrote a biography about Crowley, to ask him about the rumor - Churton claims that Crowley, who like many cult leaders incorporated sex into the "rituals" associated with the occult practice he founded, kept meticulous notes of the various women he had sex with in his diary - there's no mention of him ever having had sex with Barbara Bush's mother Pauline Pierce.

So back to the gym, at this point I'm all but running past these two guys to get to the shower.

As I pass him, The Singer is red faced and pacing the small locker room area complaining that the Bush family are part of a cult that worships Satan.

By the time The Singer asks Old Fox Guy, "Do you believe in Lucifer?" I've got the shower going full blast and am rinsing my head to try and drown out the rest of his muttering about Trump foes being Satanists - this kind of irrational vilification of moderate Republicans by MAGA-hat wearing Trump loyalists is truly frightening.

8-YO Guatemalan immigrant Felipe Gomez Alonzo who
died in US Border Patrol custody on Christmas Eve

What's sad about that odd verbal exchange in my gym is how it reflects the kind of de-evolution of intelligent discourse and substantive political debate in this nation.

It's a direct byproduct of our deeply polarized political climate, and Trump's toxic presence in a White House where lies and deceit have become a daily part of the narrative.

His efforts to normalize racism, his paranoid attacks on institutions like the free press, the judiciary and free and fair elections go hand in hand with the denial of facts that Trump peddles like his xenophobia and bigotry.

The remarkable thing is that this Con Man-in-Chief doesn't actually care about any of these reprehensible views any more than he gives a shit about migrant children languishing (or dying) in detention facilities around the U.S. because of a policy he implemented.

Like 8-year-old Guatemalan immigrant Felipe Gomez Alonzo who died while in the custody of the U.S. Border Patrol on Christmas Eve as a direct result of the intentionally inhumane immigration policy that's been the centerpiece of this nightmare presidency.

Trump's absurd policy positions and clownish statements are little more than crude tools used to prod and stoke the anger of the approximately 34% of American people who fawn over him like a cult leader, or quietly tolerate his intolerance.

Simply because it serves as a psychological outlet for the pent up fear and anger over their growing economic marginalization in a nation that's growing more racially and ethnically diverse every day.

A nation where the gap between the rich and everyone else continues to widen thanks in part to the Republican Party's zombie-like devotion to their corporate oligarch donor base.

All The President's Men

The quasi-delusional chaos Trump sews also serves as a way for him to try and deflect attention away from the shocking revelations of the Mueller investigation.

Like the fact that his former fixer-slash-personal lawyer (Michael Cohen), ex-campaign chief (Paul Manafort) and ex-national security adviser (Michael Flynn) have all been found guilty of varying degrees legal and ethical violations that point to a clear and sustained effort by the Trump campaign to actively conspire with Russia to rig the outcome of the 2016 presidential elections.

So it's troubling that I went to my gym to try and escape the ceaseless barrage of media coverage centering on Trump's rampant idiocy, and ended up being forced to listen to a "Freedom Caucus" Trump supporter whose contempt for mainstream Republicans is so extreme, that he's literally standing in a crowded public locker room repeating a baseless internet rumor about former First Lady Barbara Bush being the biological daughter of Aleister Crowley.

But that's okay, I get in, do my workout, shower and get out - calmed and reassured by the knowledge that a solid Democratic majority has just been sworn into the House of Representatives.

Politicians motivated by a desire to legislate on behalf of the majority of the American people, and energized by a sense of responsibility to reign in the chaos of a man who has turned the White House into a cesspool.

Besides, if the quasi-delusional rantings of The Singer are any indication of what's motivating Trump's base and the divisions within a Republican Party that's shown itself unable to govern, then the 2020 elections are shaping up to bode well for Democrats at the local, state and national level.

Happy New Year indeed.