honesty

Walking the dog this morning, I got ruminating on the four tenants of stoicism; Wisdom, Temperance, Justice and Courage, and I got thinking about honestly. It seems to be some bit of justice and courage.

Without honesty, we are nothing. Honesty with ourselves, honestly with others and honesty through our deeds and actions.

An element of honesty is acknowledging when you've make a mistake and working to resolve what's happened.

Honesty also takes so little mental load. It appears to me that habitual liars have a carry a pretty substantial mental load keeping all their stories straight. If you just keep to the facts, the story is just the story.

I feel personally with everything going on in your life, having to add the load of making sure when your talking to a particular person you make sure you give them one version of a story and when talking to another person you give them yet a different version of events.. I'm getting tired just writing this run on sentence!

I can see the allure in some sense. You're running late leaving work and when your wife calls you blame it on traffic. It takes the fault off you and displaces it onto something that's out of your control. But you just lied to your wife. So when you do get home, she asks, "where was the traffic jam?" now you're in it for another lie.. Now you need to remember all the details of that set of lies and whatever ripples out from there. vs.. "I'm sorry, I got caught up at work chatting with a co-worker. I'm late and it's my fault."

Sure, your wife might be disappointed, but the story ends there. Moreover, if she starts asking questions, you're merely recounting actual events.

I have to also imagine that habitual liars live with a sense of dread. Keep telling enough lies and stacking those lies high enough and eventually the jenga tower of bullshit comes crashing down. While that tower is teetering.. egads.

Being honest, everybody here has lied, myself included. Thankfully many years ago I got to stand on the sidelines and watch someone lie themselves into a corner and then it all went to shit. It was an instructive moment for me. Like a snowball rolling down a hill, they'd started with a small lie, but then had to buttress it with more and more lies until the bill came due.

Watching that debacle was enough for me to resolve I'd never put myself in such a wildly stupid spot.

Of course, simply googling for "Stoicism and Honesty" brought up some great articles including this quote from Marcus Aurelius.

“How rotten and fraudulent when people say they intend to ‘give it to you straight.’ What are you up to, dear friend? It shouldn’t need your announcement, but be readily seen, as if written on your forehead, heard in the ring of your voice, a flash in your eyes — just as the beloved sees it all in the lover’s glance. In short, the straightforward and good person should be like a smelly goat — you know when they are in the room with you.”

— MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS, 11.15

Be the smelly goat!

It's been a while. Looks like Trump might actually be in trouble.

 Wow.. Sept of 2022.

I'm slightly maybe optiomistic that Trump maybe just might face some consequences. I have this weird feeling he might weasel out in the end, but who knows.

Honestly, he did so much damage to the justice system by his cramming through of crazy federalist judges.

But here's the long and short of it.

The now former president had a whole trove of top secret documents in Mar-a-lago.. essentially unguarded. Documents that should be housed in a vault, three stories underground in vault.

He's tried to claim they're now not secret because he waved his arms and yelled "declassified." but that's so vacuously bullshit as to be silly.

He's tried to claim executive privilege, but that's also bullshit.

Honestly, I think he's proper fucked.

What needs to happen now is for a foreign operative to come forward with copies of these secret documents to make the circle complete.

The Muller Report

I've managed to sit down and try to read the Muller report. Mind you, I'm a guy who builds datacenters and will gleefully digest multiple 100 page PDF's on the inner workings of the latest mainframe...

It's not that I find it that actually hard to read, it's that I find it that actually hard to read.

NONE OF THIS IS NORMAL. I had to get that off my chest.

What we learned was that Russia did in fact meddle in our elections... That unto itself should be enough for me to just stop typing... But it gets oh, so worse.

Apparently through shear incompetence Trump and his associates were unable to work directly with Russia despite trying. Go watch the John Oliver special about it... holy fuck.

As for the obstruction question, well let's say, if any of us acted the way he acted... we'd have been charged with obstruction.

Apparently if you're the president, you can't commit crimes.

Excuse me if that sounds like a fucking emperor.

But now what?

I'm of two minds when it comes to impeachment.

On principle, we impeached a president for lying about a blowjob.

You'd think this would rise to that level... However, I'm fearful if we try to impeach him and it fails it'll be used as ammunition.

What I really want to see is his taxes. I think that might be the one thing that'll likely cause some of his diehard supports to go "the fuck?"

Imagine if it comes out that he's straight up cheated on his taxes?

Why Trumps National Emergency Is A Mistake

Now that Trump has issued a "NED" (National Emergency Directive) for a thing that's clearly not an emergency, we're officially in completely uncharted terrirtory.

Go check out here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_national_emergencies_in_the_United_States

As you can see an overwhelming number of these are sanctions.

What Trump is doing is engineering an attempted end run around the legislative branch and I believe it will fail.

Why?

1. If he manages to scrape up the 5.X billion dollars, congress still has to sign off on it. It's not like he can simply demand 5.XB dollars and just get it.

2. This is a stunning and unheard of case of executive overreach. Moreover, it sets a very dangerous president. Why wouldn't a Democratic president just use the same tactics?

3. This money will need to come from somewhere. I'm sure the list of things to defund is already drawn up, and quite likely it falls squarely on party lines. In a nutshell you can expect states with Democrats senators are likely to get fucked extra hard as programs / institutions in their states get suddenly defunded. So as much as the idiots will be gleeful about the defunding of climate science, etc. They also know this cannon can just as easily be turned on them. Revenge is a dish served very cold.

4. This is going to trigger an unyielding and massive number of lawsuits. Trump will paint this as a stalling tactic from the Democrats, but I can imagine there's quite a few ranchers on the southern border who voted for Trump now going "Wait... you're going to take my land by emanate domain? Let me call my lawyers" and Indian Reservations and conservation land.

Granted at this point the SCOTUS is 5/9's filled with judges who have demonstrated they're Republican shills and when the facts don't work, simply throw out the facts and craft legal opinions that'll go down in history as galling hackery, but I'm not so sure about this. I'm suspecting they're going to be looking at #2 and #3 and asking the question "Do we want to open this pandora's box?"

At this point I've lost all hope they'll do the right thing, but who knows...

In any rate, I don't see the president getting his wall built. I see his lawyers frantically trying to defend a position that'll go something like this.

TL (Trump Lawyer): "This is clearly a national emergency"
OP (Opposing Lawyer): "So the last two years this wasn't? When you controlled both houses it wasn't?"
TL: "Umm... It's an EMERGENCY!!!"
OP: "By your own accounting the number of illegal immigrants is dropping"
TL: "THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!!"

You get the drift...

Kavanaugh, or as I will be calling him, Dick face.

Let's be frank. Right now in basements all over Maryland people are tossing shoe boxes full of polaroids looking for that one of Kavanaugh when he was passed out drunk and they drew a dick on his face.

Henceforth, I'll be referring to him as dick face.

This to me seems like yet another chess move in the long con that is the Republican party. Realize that while we've been thinking about fighting the battles, they've been fighting the war.

With putting Kavanaugh on the supreme court they ensure their power is locked in.

How? The supreme court doesn't have to take a case. They take simple polls to decide which cases are point on the docket and which ones they decide to not rule on.

Now with a conservative majority on the court do you think a case regarding Gerrymandering is going to be taken up? Especially one that might cause a Republican held state to redistrict in a way that might allow an independent/Democrat any wiggle room? We both know this answer.

Let's be clear, this new court is has a clear mandate, given to it by it's republican masters.

1. Row v. Wade.

2. Obergefell v. Hodges (Same Sex Marraige)

3. Chevron deference.

I know that last one is a bit obscure, but trust me you care about it.

In a nutshell, the EPA is allowed to write it's own rules. Imagine a situation where whenever the EPA wanted to ban a particular class of chemicals it first needed to go in front of a court. That's what elimnating chevron deference would do. Just imagine how that would gum up the works for the EPA / BLM / etc.

As to the first one on that list we all know how that would go. Needless to say, a number of women greater than zero is going to die from lack of access to cancer screenings and back alley abortions.

I've written this before but I believe that my child and grand children will have less access to reproductive healthcare than their mother and grandmother.

I can only gawk at this horrifying situation and ask a simple question.

There's clearly a demographic of people who are rabidly anti-abortion. How willing will they be to sacrifice their daughters, sisters and mothers? I have this weird sense that when it gets down to the brass tacks they'll talk the talk but quietly go to Canada to get their fifteen year old daughter and abortion.

I threw in that last sentence because the other leg their standing on is a rather unworkable and known to be patently unworkable sex ed. curriculum of abstinence only.

Let's be clear, as long as their has been teenagers, their have been teenagers having sex. Only now they'll be doing it completely uneducated to the risks and have no options.

I'm sure the next thing on the chopping block will be all the services these young mothers will need to take care of their unintended children...

We are living in the worst possible timeline.

 

What crosses the line into treason?

Let's be frank. All 17 of our intelligence agencies have concluded without a doubt that Russia meddled in the 2016 elections to help get Trump elected.

This is a fact that is NOT in dispute.  As much as the Foxtards would like argue that it is.

What's also not in dispute is our relationship with Russia. It's a hostile one. We're not military allies. With the exception of a few distinct things (such as the space station) we're on the opposite sides of the table.

Knowing our decades long history with Russia and knowing that they've been actively working to undermine our democracy, you have to ask the question.

"What is Trump going at here?"

He had an opportunity to stand up to a bully and say, "Cut your shit. We're hip to your games, we don't appreciate them and if you keep them up, they'll be consequences."

He had an opportunity to show Russia that our bonds with NATO were as strong as ever.

Instead he attacked our allies.

Who has this trip helped? Certainly not us. Certainly not our allies.

If Trumps allegiances were unclear, they're clear now. He's a Russian Shill. No other president in history has acted more disgracefully towards our allies or kowtowed to our enemies.

At what point do you have to ask where the line for Treason is drawn?

 

When will Republicans cut bait?

As much as it's a sketchy shitshow, Trump plowing Stormy Daniels and then having his fixer Cohen cover the whole mess up in the most incompitant way possible has just been a distraction.

But with that said, it's still been a bit of a shrug fest because Trump hasn't really fucked with our economy until now.

Look,Republicans have been happy to yield the stage to this buffoon if it meant they could cram through partisan Judges and enact shitty pieces of legislation without much scrutiny.

However, Trump's lining up to seriously fuck up our economy just in time for the 2018 midterms.

If you're a republican in Congress or the House, behind closed doors they have to be having a fit.

Blowing up our trade relationships with Canada is just plain stupid. This will have instant ramifications. Canada is a HUGE trading partner with us, one that we have very equitable trading relationships with. This fully demonstrates how stupid Trump is.

Farmers in the midwest (many of whom voted for Trump) are likely (albeit quietly) going on into the barn and cussing up a storm as they realize the guy they helped put in the White House apparently has little understanding of how markets work.  They're going to find themselves shut out of all the international markets, with a glut of product driving the price per unit towards zero... combined with rising fuel and labor costs. Compounded shitshow seems like a good term.

This all culminates with the final question: "When will Republicans cut bait on Trump?"

It's clear they don't give a flying fuck about his impropriety, immorality or dishonesty.

They do however seriously give a fuck about the economy.  How many town hall meetings will they need to flee from before they sit down and say "We need an exit plan."

I just hope that time comes before our economy is in a tailspin.