Dear Diary - Today was another Crappy Day

I was just outside and Nancy had a modern version of “Can’t Hurry Love” playing on the radio.  Norman Goldman’s motto is “You Can’t Hurry Progress” it seems.  You know there is this tribe on a southeastern Asian island where they can sense tsunamis coming from way off.  And this tribe is very proficient at things like throwing spears to catch food.  And they are missing certain words from their vocabulary such as waiting and hoping and anticipation.  They live completely in the present tense.  The element of waiting or momentum “stalling out” just doesn’t exist here like it does with United States politicians.  I heard that little meeting today with Trump and the students and parents of that Parkland high school.  There was a lot of “thank you for listening to us” and everybody was trying to be very polite and deferential toward Trump.  But at times all of that politeness and patience can be like a nuce around your neck cutting off the flow of events as surely as a tourniquet.    There is something constricting and strangulating about knowing you don’t have any real power except for your words.  Words can go in one ear and out the other.  At least Sol Allinsky in his book “Rules for Radicals” believed in the leverage of force to back up their words.  There had to be the threat of something bad happening to you if you didn’t follow through.  There are times I think about the novel “The Strange Case of Benjamin Button” and how too much of life seems to be suffering the blows of one event only to have another event buffet you a few days or weeks later.  Wouldn’t it be nice if you could somehow make events un-happen.  (Selah)  This may sound like the ultimate reactionary position.  But I look over the past twenty years and I see the tide of events, which used to be in our favor in the sixties and seventies – now being continually against us.  And I’d like to know how to change that.  I don’t think “Possibility Thinking” will do the trick.   It has to be something beyond belief to have real teeth.  There has to somehow be “knowing” involved along with that warm, fuzzy belief.  People with the power can afford to live in the present.  The rest of us have to be content to live either in the “by and by” future, or else take refuge in the past, when things made a lot more sense.   Yes I know the line (from Harrison) of “with every mistake we must surely be learning”.  The trouble is the guy who’s supplying the “mistakes” and “mishaps” of the future has an endless supply and can throw them at us seemingly whenever he wishes.   It seems that the best we can do is make our schools and armed fortress the same way we’ve armed airports and government offices to the teeth.   It seems as if living with fear and even dread seems to be “the new normal”. 

Two busloads of those Florida High School students went to Tallahassee, Florida.  The legislature was pretty intransigent.  One of their favorite chants is “Drain the NRA”, but they have other chants.  Now we hear that President Trump is meeting with some students about gun control.  There is talk about raising the age to 21 when you are able to buy assault weapons.   Now there is a rumor from the conservative “trolls” that some of these students are paid actors.   If President Trump has finally decided to go against the NRA, I wish he’d let us know. 

This is Wednesday February 21, 2018 and like yesterday morning the picture jammed on “Days of our Lives” but what I saw was strange.  Marlena is now in on this plot to kill Steve and they are talking openly about Billy as an ISA member.  Kayla gave Steve the antidote.   Suddenly he’s better.  Paul and Will are now free.  In yesterday’s episode they were tied up.  But now there is a new wrinkle in the thing.  Because this ISA lady pulls a gun on Trip calling on him in his apartment to “explain the situation” to him.  She lied to him saying Steve had been moved from the hospital and wouldn’t let him confirm that with Kayla.  The reasoning behind Steve’s “betrayal” is that when Joey confessed to the crime of killing Trip’s mother it blew the ISA cover.

Thom Hartman has been talking a lot about gun regulation.  He wants to license guns and also ban the use of assault weapons such as AK 47’s and AR 15’s.   The latter is a good gun for the armature to shoot is because it has almost no recoil.  These assault weapons are about killing as many quickly as possible.  On the Norman Goldman show yesterday there was talking about having your gun card that has to be renewed now and then and you need to bring your weapon with you when you check in annually.  If they slapped a fifty dollar fee once a year for the privilege of owning guns, maybe they would think twice about owning one.  Even a fifteen dollar fee would send a message.   Thom Hartman is bent on saying that gun fanatics have small penises. 

Several weeks ago we said that something would “happen” in nineteen days, but we didn’t know what.  One thing that happened today is that the Rev Billy Graham died at age 99 in his native state of North Carolina.  He was the last of the evangelists that wasn’t associated with the far right.  You could add Schuller to this declining list also.  These two were main stream evangelists accepted by the American people.  The Rev Billy Graham did a lot of good and his crusades were responsible to saving a lot of souls and turning people’s lives around.  Unfortunately his son Franklin became more political.  I would hope that no Christian would endorse the sexual escapades of our President.   Pat Robertson is really sounding old, almost like he’s on medication now.    Joel Olsteen is very encouraging to watch but I really don’t know what his politics are. 

 I got in the line behind Mario to see Dr Messina.  There wasn’t much else I could do but to tell the good doctor exactly what is going on in my life.  I mentioned the dental diagnosis and how I don’t want to have the work done.  I mentioned Mom’s fall, and her alzheimers, and the fact she may have had a stroke.  Then I mentioned Judy’s Parkinson’s disease.  Dr Messina then asked me if I was getting depressed over these things and I said yes.  He boosted my Celexa from 20 to 30 miligrams and said “Try not to think about that stuff”.   I then said “I guess I’ll try and not think my lack of money either”, and Dr Messina said “If you had money it would solve a lot of problems” and on this I have to agree.

At times Trump seems flexible but always in the wrong way.  In 2000 Trump wanted to run as an Independent and have Oprah Winfrey as his running mate.  Trump was centerist in his past and was more open to gun regulations way back when before the Koch Brothers got to him.   Even Mitt Romney hated Trump two years ago calling him the worst kind of phoney and a fraud.  Even Judy suggested I watch that speech, which I did.  Now Judy is all for Trump and Trump and Romney have kissed and made up.  I guess the saying is true, "Money doesn't [just] talk; it swears".  [Monday]  I got two Oreos and juice from Rico in the courtyard after ten.  I continued to have Thom Hartman on but don’t remember it.  The temperature never got out of the fifties and it has continued windy at least through mid afternoon.  We had some kind of a breaded chicken chunks dish and boiled potatoes and carrots.  They announced there would be no seconds.  We had pineapple for dessert and I got Jerry’s pineapple.  I had the Gary and Shannon show on till ten to two.  I slept through “Draining the Swamp”.  I think they were going to say something about Joe Biden running for President again.  Biden they tell us would be 78 on the day he was inaugurated.   It's too bad the milenials can't run for President now.  They extend to age 36 now in this year of 2018.   The earliest I myself could have run for President was 1988.  That's how long my generation had to wait.  Only the Generation X'ers seems to have come into their political own right away.  Some lady sang the Star Spangled Banner too sexy and Gary mocked her.  Sometimes I think people major on the minors and minor on the majors.  This is inverted thinking.  They had the house whisperer on from 11:30 to noon. 

Will Trump Ever Be Removed from Office?

Clearly 2017 was a year of worsening circumstances as far as the Trump Presidency is concerned.  Added to the revelations about Trump in 2016 we continued to get other bad revelations as to his basic character.  Now we hear that congress wants to pass a background check for purchasing a gun.  President Trump is said to favor such a bill now.  I don’t know what to believe.  Hopefully Muller will come out with other indictments, this time of the Trump administration officials such as Jered Kushner.  The indictments of last Friday were a start but I think we need to connect more dots up.  By no means were last Friday’s indictments intended to be an exhaustion of all of the criminal possibilities.  Hopefully in six months, by late August, we will get a clearer picture of just how good the democratic chances are this year of taking over not just the House but the Senate, too.  I think all of us on the left dream of a new age dawning where we look over the past eighteen years or so as some kind of a bad dream.   I think we have real potential as a nation and we as a nation have grown even through our recent adversity both on the violence front and in the climate front.  It’s hard to tell just how sane the President really is.  Maybe he’s “faking it” like R P Mac Murphy was accused of doing in “Coo Coo’s Nest”.   But I think it’s more likely that Trump has a case of bad “arrested development” both on an emotional and ethical front.   Impeachment is not out of the realm of possibility for 2019 but that’s such a long way off, or at least it seems like it.  All of us are sitting here “Doing nothing but aging” as George Harrison says.   Even if all of the national problems get solved, I have a whole list of personal problems to worry about.   And anybody my age is likely to encounter various health problems.  Twenty years ago there was a lot more reason to be optimistic about the future of America than there is now. The following paragraph was from early this morning.  

President Trump is getting really tacky.  Of course as you know people like Trump keep talking about the need to address mental illness.  And yet one of the first acts as president that Donald Trump did was to overturn the executrive order by Obama saying that mentally ill patients couldn’t buy guns.  The Republicans in congress favored this one.  But even tackier was Trump’s conflating the FBI carelessness in nor doing something about Nicholas Cruise when they had the chance and Trump launches into a rant about the Russian probe as if the FBI couldn’t do more than one task at once.  The FBI is a huge organization perfectly able to walk and chew gum at the same time.  Trump also had the gall to say that “The democrats had a chance at gun control when they controlled congress ten years ago and they didn’t do it because they didn’t want to”.  The next question I’d ask would be, “Well are YOU saying now that you wish the democrats had instituted tougher gun control and will you recommend a gun control bill to congress at this time?”   The answer is no because Trump’s just blowing smoke out his ass.   In fact the Republicans haven’t even done anything about bump stocks they promised to do.  After the Las Vegas shootings the Republicans in congress said they’d do something about the ability to convert a semi-automatic weapon into an automatic weapons.  One notes that it’s primarily the girls at Parkland who are the most vocal.   Some have said that they are the voice of the Sandy Hook students, some of which would be teenagers by now and more able to vocalize their feelings on what happened to them.   I hope they are registering a lot of voters democratic this year.   They can have all the marches they want to on March 24^th but if they don’t vote in November it’s all in vain.  But let’s talk about the FBI and the Russians.  Another thing I would say is that a normal president upon hearing the Muller indictment report would say something like “I’m glad you brought the seriousness of this problem to my attention.   We certainly need to crack down on the Russians”.  But Trump still won’t execute the sanctions against Russia from a year ago that the Republican congress passed.  And of course when Trump gets to criticizing anybody and everybody in his tweets, one nation Trump still refuses to be critical of is Russia.  This is a prima facia case right here that Trump rather than be repulsed by the knowledge of Russian sabotage of the recent campaigns, actually welcomes it.   There is a fine line between “inadvertent” and actually welcoming the Russian interference.  Muller isn’t done with his indictments yet.  We can’t infer that people not indicted in THIS ruling are therefore innocent of guilt.  In fact maybe Muller was afraid of being fired and that’s why he didn’t issue inductments of Trump officials.  

Muller Hands Down Thirteen Indictments against Russians

Muller has finally come down with thirteen indictments today.  The defendants are accused of running the Russia-based Internet Research Agency, a propaganda operation based in St. Petersburg that leveraged social media platforms as part of an alleged attempt to spread divisive content to American audiences leading up to the election.  The material here is only a bare bones outline of the totality of their activities. 

Executives at Facebook have already revealed that the company unwittingly sold $100,000 in political advertisements to the Internet Research Agency before the election, many of the ads designed to exploit political and social divides in the United States. Twitter has also identified over 3,800 accounts and 50,000 bots linked to the Russian troll farm.  The indictment contains new details that show the sophistication of the alleged operation, which is said to have employed hundreds of people and was supported by an annual budget of millions of dollars.  According to the indictment, the influence operation against the presidential election dates back to 2014. The defendants allegedly created false U.S. personas to reach Americans online through social media pages and groups, and also in some cases used stolen U.S. identities to post content.  There efforts went beyond posting divisive content online from a remote location in Russia.  Some of the Russians are also accused of fraudulently obtaining visas in an effort to travel to the United States to gain intelligence for their operations.

Two of the defendants are said to have successfully obtained visas and traveled to a number of states, including Nevada, Illinois, Michigan, and New York, in summer 2014. The travel was used to produce an “intelligence report,” the indictment states.  Beginning in 2016, they also allegedly staged rallies from their location in Russia by masquerading as U.S. grassroots activists who could not attend the events in person. This included two rallies in New York, one dubbed “March for Trump” and another “Down With Hillary,” that were held in June and July.  The indictment contains the bombshell allegation that some of the defendants through false American identities communicated with “unwitting individuals associated with the Trump campaign” and other political activists in order to coordinate their political efforts.   But to sum it up it’s clear that Trump’s statement of “maybe the Russians were not involved” is false. 

 I had the Gary and Shannon show on and there was a second more major FBI tip on this Nicholas fellow that they ignored saying that he was going to shoot up a school.   They learned of his arsenal of guns and that police had been to his house over thirty times for violent behavior.   Under Florida law you can’t take his guns away from him.  “Lex Luther” the Florida governor wants the FBI director fired.  I don’t agree.  This would only give President Trump an even clearer opportunity to pick a hand-picked stooge to replace him.  Now they plan to tear down the whole “Freshman building” which is massive and is three floors.  I disagree.  I think the easiest way to forget something is to forget it.  Just patch the bullet holes or re-plaster whole walls or paint the rooms a different color or rearrange the desks or something.  You don’t have to tear down the whole building because this will only reinforce people’s memories beyond what it would ever be before.   At the same time they won’t replaces roads, bridges and water-works of our crumbling infrastructure.  They don’t have the funding to do that but they will come up with funding for this, which is money which could be much better spent paying teachers a decent salary or updating text books or what have you.  Shannon said that students should not even come back to collect their back packs filled with books and notebooks.  It was a shooting not an outbreak of leporacy or something.   They aren’t going to change the gun laws.  That’s the country’s way of saying “Well, too bad but these things happen”.  And if they don’t change the gun laws they can and will happen again and again.   Of course the one act of President Trump was to sign a bill making it easier for mental patients to get guns.

This morning I had Thom Hartman on.  Around nine thirty I checked the lunch and dinner menus and did not change either of them.  I don’t particularly remember what topics Thom covered.  I went out for snacks after ten and got juice and a graham cracker.   I had “Days of our Lives” on the NBC site.  But they aren’t covering what we want to know and that’s John Black’s murderous activities.   From what I have seen I still have no idea why the ISA wants Steve Johnson dead or the necessity of killing two other people to try and cover up the crime.  But around twenty to eleven I switched back to Thom Hartman till ten to eleven (and maybe it was longer than that).   I went to lunch then on impulse came back here to make sure I had two and not just one VHS box in the drawer.  We had beef and cheese sandwiches.  I had Jerry’s slice of roast beef but it still wasn’t enough meat.   We had a green salad with that and orange sherbet for dessert.  I had thought of doing a retrospective of the year 1998 (twenty years ago) but people don’t care what thoughts I have because they’re already bored with the stuff I’ve written already.  There are four “Mom” updates and I seriously doubt anybody cares. 

A Bunch of Different Stuff

Now it’s three thirty and ABC network news is doing a live feed to the west coast just like they did yesterday.  They are talking about the Park City shooting.  Seventeen are dead and Nicholas Cruise was charged with seventeen felony first degree murders.  He is of age and so is ellegible for the death penalty in Florida.  It’s said to be a very large campus.  They say you should shade the windows and turn out the lights to keep quiet.  The question is why a person so obviously mentally ill was able to buy an AR 15 a year ago.  They have a lot of live video, that’s for sure.  Cruise has lost both of his parents.  The FBI flagged a remark of Cruz last September made in twitter or something about wanting to go down in history as a mass school shooter.  But the FBI couldn’t pin it down.  The FBI was suspicious but couldn’t do anything about it.  Cruise had a real arsenal of guns in his room.  He lived in a “nice neighborhood”. 

[Yesterday] There has been another major school shooting.  This time it is at a Ft Lauderdale high school by a nineteen year old ex student with many psychological problems.  He was banned from showing up at the school with a back pack.  The shooting began about twenty to three and the students were about to be dismissed for the day.  Many terrified students actually ran into buildings and hid in closets.  The shooter’s name is Nicholas Cruise and his mother died last year.  It’s speculated he might have a beef with the teachers.  At first they said that fourteen were wounded and just one or two were dead.  Later they said that seventeen students were killed in today’s shooting.  I had on Eye Witness news after I hung up with Paul.  They also had a special airing of ABC World News Tonight at three thirty.  I imagine they’ll have a west coast update when the time rolls around.  Of course it raises the age old question about the access to guns by just about anybody no matter how mentally unstable.  Unlike other shooters he didn’t commit suicide but allowed himself to be captured an hour later.  We’ll be hearing more.  It’s been kind of overcast today and they say there’s been rain today but I haven’t seen it. 

Mon rallied today at my visit, which was encouraging to me.  Tim and Marie were there and they’d been there since just after lunch when Mom missed out on that meal.  Tim himself hadn’t eaten and needed to get lunch after he left.  The drapes were closed but we opened them.  That night stand was turned back the right way facing out into the room.  Mom definitely seemed more alert and made eye contact and smiled.  I talked to her some but it wasn’t much.  There was an aid that came in and took Mom’s oxygen and pulse level, which is in a thing on her wrist now.  I asked Paul why they had to puree her food and Paul said it was because she can hardly swallow.  The only food she ate today was a part of a muffin, a half a banana and a little applesauce with pills ground up in it.  There were no hugs from Marie today but I did kiss Mom good-bye on the lips.  They have these access codes at the gate for going both in and out.  Paul says “sometimes patients wander off”.   

I shaved and brushed my teeth twice.  I went down about twenty minutes to nine to be taken to the dentist by Alvin.  Naturally Alvin relied on the GPS thing.  We got there just before nine and parked.  I was trying to light a cigarette when the door opened.  There were two other men waiting outside and they got into a conversation about their medical problems.  I had to fill out one of these electronic gismos where you had to review your medical status and make sure it was correct.  You were supposed to touch a yellow square with your finger and turn it blue but I had to use the stylus thing and press hard.  You had to press hard for your signature too.  I didn’t get seated in the chair till about twenty after nine.  The cleaning took longer than usual.  First it was the ultra-sound thing and then it was the polishing and then a long session using the pick.  There was waiting and I was watching a thing on TV about the African savanna and the animal interaction.  Then they had a thing on cities in India invaided by some kind of monkey and also white leopards.  They said that twenty (?) men had been killed by leopards.  Dr Bui finally came in and said that I had a cavity in every front tooth and she showed me in the mirror.  She said that a year is too long for me to go without having a dental cleaning.  I also needed six root canals, which flabbergasted me.  She said they could get approval.  They took a whole lot of X rays in two different sessions.  It’s lucky I didn’t OD on X rays.  I got the fluoride treatment and I got the usual new toothbrush and stuff.  Alvin was there waiting for me at twenty to eleven.  He helped me with the electronic thing.  Besides this I was nervous.  Then we stopped off for gas on the way home.  I barely had time to smoke a cigarette before lunch. 

SONG SUBSTITUTION ALERT:  “Johnny Can’t Read” was replaced with “Star-Trekking” on “Spring Training” both on the posting and on this file.   “Rock this Joint” was replaced by “Moonage Daydream” on the album “Passionate Playthings” out in January.   In both cases the new songs had been on my mind but they ended up being dropped.  “Kid Charlemagne” replaced “Star-Trekking” as the lead-off song at the last minute.  In both cases I was just reviewing songs (in "Predators" and "Knocking Over the Bar" from October) and the fact that two duplicates showed up is a little unnerving.  Management just says “It was a translation error”.   

Russians Admit Meddling in US Elections

News we’ve heard vague rumors of recently seem to be turning out to be true.  The FBI and all of the US intelligence agencies say Russia has admitted meddling in the 2016 elections and they have just as cinnister plans to meddle in the 2018 congressional races.  They have plans to influence social media and otherwise campaign interference in 21 states.  A caller on the Norman Goldman show says he saw a map of affected states in last September’s Washington Post and that one of the states was California, though they wouldn’t have a chance here.  I am assuming the Russians want to help the Republicans because they have such a high regard for President Trump.  Trump never says anything against Putin.  They changed the Republican Convention platform two years ago on the matter of aggression in Ukraine so as to not offend the Soviets.  I can call them Soviets if I want to.  Trump of course no matter the overwhelming evidence keeps talking about “fake news”.   I would assume the CIA and our other intelligence agencies have a plan to thwart these sympathizers of Putin.  We can’t allow another election to be sabotaged.  We just need to watch the social media very closely for signs of involvement.

Today is Valentine’s Day and it’s also the first day of Lent.  This is the first time this has occurred they tell us since 1945.  However Easter fell on April Fool’s Day in 1956.  I remember because when I was a little kid at the Westchester house me and Nana were looking out the back window watching it just pouring down rain all day and Nana sings “It Ain’t Gona Rain No More, No More”.   We should pray for some of that rain this year.  Some would say the rock compilation issued today is kind of sleazy for Valentine’s Day and definitely too sleazy for Lent.  It is hoped that “giving up something for Lent” doesn’t interfere with Valentine’s Day festivities.  Some give up alcohol, others give up meat.  Just as long as you don’t give up sex.  It struck me that the economic cycle of 2007 and 2008 is starting to repeat itself.  We are falling into the mental trap of people telling us we can pull cash equity out of our houses.  We are also being told that interest rates are on their way up and if you’re going to buy a house you better buy one now before the rates get any higher.  This is the exact same thing that happened ten years ago.  Now we are told prices are so high that more people are just renting.  As to the matter of Joel Olsteen’s statement the other day about “If you don’t look for opportunities, opportunity will come looking for you” we have tomorrow’s appointment for a dental cleaning, which appeared out of the blue.  Most normal people have to wait two weeks for a dental appointment.  Not me.  The thing cleared with Federico and whoever else is driving me to the appointment.

SPRING TRAINING

Kid Charlemeign  (Steely Dan)

The Hunter Gets Captured by the Prey (Blondie)

Everybody Wants Some (Van Halen)

Dun Ringal (Live Jethro Tull)

Heroes (David Bowie)

Witchhunt (Rush)

Les Boys (Dire Straits)

Hey Bulldog (Beatles)

Freeform Guitar (Chicago Transit Authority)

Cagey Cretins (Blue Oyster Cult)

Living After Midnight (Judas Priest)

Police Truck (Dead Kennedy’s)

Ride the Lightning (Metallica)

The Severed Garden (Jim Morrison)

The front title photo is the start of a drag race at twilight.  There are six cars in a row with their headlights on.  The one closest to the camera is a Ford Galaxy.  These are cars from the late fifties and early sixties, many with fins.  There’s a guy on a platform who is lit up waving a green flag.   On the back are title listings and commentary about Russian hacking of US elections, which seems more widespread than any of us imagined.  The open out photo is of Rob Porter dragging his second wife dripping wet out of the shower grabbing her by the neck.  For you directional people she is being dragged from right to left.  Brian Jones is said to have substantially contributed input to this compilation.  It’s definitely a longer album than our last one.  Of course this represents soul-growth over the last 45 years of her life when she was a “walk-in” at age thirteen.  We end on kind of a downer-death note.  But isn’t that what ash Wednesday is all about.  According to Catholic tradition Jesus spent forty days in the desert in preparation for his death in Jerusalem.  Jim Morrison did not contribute to this album.

I prepared the room for Nora’s arrival around nine and I did have another cup of instant coffee then put the jar in the drawer.  Briefly I had Bill Handel on till Nora’s arrival.  I smoked a few cigarettes and then walked on down to the front to look at the lunch and dinner menus.  I didn’t change either of them.  They were just starting up the Catholic service around nine thirty.  There were people asking whether people wanted to get ashes for Ash Wednesday.  I didn’t feel holy enough to do that.  I went to the back again and then returned here.  Nora kept the thick red bedspread on, which I’m glad about.  Melody came in and of course Bill’s bed hasn’t been slept in in a week.  If you ask me why his bed is different, I really have no idea at this point.  It used to have something to do with scabies.  Melody asked how long I expect Bill to be gone and I said “It could be weeks at Harbor Villa”.   Bill needs a lot of medical tests in preparation for three different operations, the most important of which is his cateract surgery, which has been post-poned for months.  Of course Mom is faring even worse.  I didn’t mention the stage four metastatic breast cancer she has, which is responsible for a lot of her symptons.  

On the ABC and other news recently we’ve heard that the FBI has contradicted President Trump’s chronology of events leading to Rob Porter’s firing.  You suspect that Shawn Hannity likes to reverse the order of a lot of events when he’s not making up lies entirely.  Some chronologies are a little hard to swallow like stories about how people got rich starting an instant success business.  “Did it really happen that way?” you wonder.  On Days of our Lives you now can call it murder incorporated.  There’s an unsolved murder from a few months ago.  They are investigating a murder from a couple of weeks ago and still have half a dozen suspects in that one.  And you have John Black on a triple murder spree the past few days.  I guess if that’s the way they want to tell it, that’s the way it is.  Nobody but me seriously questions the chronology of the start-up of the Christian Church.  I guess I’m outvoted.  But I would remind you that even if every word in the New Testament is true, that doesn’t in any way affect left wing Churches who support democrats verses right wing Trumpsters who are willing to sacrifice morality in the interest of political expediency.  I don’t know for sure just how the Koch Brothers or whoever were able to convince the Republican Party to except Trump whole, flaws and all without contesting any of it.  I just hope that Special Prosecutor Muller hands down indictments soon.  

Trump Sticks It to the Poor Again

Over the past two days information about Trump’s new federal budget have been trickling out.  What we know is that he is boosting the military but cutting budgets for the State Department and foreign aid.  On the domestic front, now you have to wait 600 days to get approved if you are an applicant for Social Security disability.  Medicare and Medic-aid have been slashed.  This whole infrastructure talk is bogus.  Trump has talked about a 1.7 trillion allocation for infrastructure over the next several years but that means only 300 Billion are out of federal money and the other four fifths or more of the money has to be provided by the states, most of which appear to be broke despite a roaring economy.  I don’t know how that happens.  And also other services are being slashed such as energy assistance for heating and such in the cold weather back east, and also public housing and also food stamps.  Apparently they want to choke food stamps to death with countless new restrictions.  Norman Goldman and Bill Press were both talking about this on their programs.  Some say that when the general population is aware of these vast cuts in domestic spending they’ll vote democratic in the fall.  We can only hope but it hasn’t worked so far.  Basically all of these sacrifices of the poor go to the tax cuts we got in December for the millionaires and billionaires.  It doesn’t matter what promises Trump made to the voters in 2016, we all know the truth.  As I have said before, the only promises President Trump has actually kept are the ones he made personally to Shawn Hannity. 

Yesterday it dawned on me that we don't have "Johnny Can't Read" by Don Hendley on any of our rock compilations.  This situation may change soon.  It all depends on Management.  

My mom is fading fast as the following paragraph illustrates. 

Paul called at five to twelve saying he’d be over in ten minutes.  He arrived at twenty after.  The place is off Brookhurst just past the railroad track.  Once again Mom was sleeping and it took time to wake her.  But she seemed unable to say very much and it was disconcerting.  We learn that she has general weakness on her left side perhaps due to a stroke.  Perhaps this is why she fell in the first place.  Her left eye was droopy and a care giver remarked that the whole side of her face was droopy and she had little use in her left arm and hand.  The place was in the eighties when we arrived and the TV was on.  Paul opened the patio door.  We turned the TV off.  I asked Mom whether she watched much TV and she shook her head no.  She complained of pain in her stomach.  Paul did her nails remarking on how dirty they were.  There were two aids in the room and one of them had really big eyes.  Both were fairly young.  UTI stands for urinary tract infection, which they feared Mom might develop.  One of them explained that sometimes it makes more sense to put patients in diapers rather than risk their falling being taken to the bathroom.  The two aids stressed that they are the caring type and will not leave a dying patient to vegetate in isolation.  I hope it hasn’t come to that yet.  The first thing I noticed when I entered the room was that there was an oxygen tank in the room and it was on and making a noise.  The aids believed Mom should be on oxygen all the time and not just when her number dipped really low.  But prior to this day Mom never needed oxygen at all.  Her blood pressure was high at 148 over 110, which is definitely high. The bathroom had a shower but no step so it seems the water would just run all over the floor.  I sometimes sensed I wasn’t phrasing things quite tactfully enough.  We were there a little less than two hours and left at twenty after two.  They took Mom to breakfast but she wasn’t eating but only slumped over her chair.  Paul worries that there is a risk of giving her too much pain medication.  Tim and Wendy had lunch with Mom yesterday and she was doing a lot better then.  The only thing is that Tim said she wasn’t talking much.  Paul called Judy twice while we were there.  The second time was out on the patio just before we left.  Paul asked me about the Time magazines but I didn’t want them because they were a month old and I have my own magazines.  There was an empty bed in the room.  Sometimes you’d hear cries of “Help!” down the hall.  We arrived back here just before two thirty.  (The place isn’t far)  I borrowed a cigarette from Larry and five minutes later I borrowed another cigarette from Ron.  I guess I was having a nicotine shortage.  

Trump Wants Nation-wide Conceal Carry Laws

The item number one on Stephanie Miller’s agenda this morning was that on Saturday President Trump refused to allow the democrat memo on the FBI Russian investigation to be released.  This is the ten page memo that clearly refutes the false conclusions and missing facts in the Republican memo that Trump had no problem with releasing last week.  The FBI didn’t WANT the Republican memo released last week.  Trump didn’t care about classified information or national security them.  But Adam Shiff checked with the FBI first before he released the democratic memo, and he wanted to release all ten pages.  Some have said that “Ten pages is far too long for President Trump to even read”.  Some have said that President Trump doesn’t read anything at all because he has dyslexia or something.  I don’t think he could have gotten through college without being able to read.  Nonetheless it is strange behavior that his aids report that the President prefers the spoken word to reading a document.  And the President wants everything simplified to death with easy to read bullet points.  And they say the President will only read things that put him in a good light.  On Saturday the President said that “The democrats WANTED me to reject the memo so they deliberately put classified information in it”.  But I repeat that the FBI has NOT criticized the democratic memo like they did the Republican one released last week.  Trump doesn’t respect the FBI.  Rob Porter never got his permanent security status because the FBI was concerned about these wife beating charges against Porter.   You have the photo of one wife and the other wife complained he grabbed her around the neck and dragged her still wet out of the shower and other stuff like that.  Of course Trump is an autocrat who hates women among other things.  And he basically insists that everyone around him agree with him.  Therefore he isn’t firing Chief of Staff John Kelly because basically they are kindred spirits.  Trump doesn’t want the democrats to get an even shot at getting the Truth before the public on anything.  After all here is a president who accuses people who don’t applaud at his speeches as “guilty of Treason”.   That’s dictatorial reasoning.

Sixty Minutes heralded a story that the media has ignored, but it shouldn’t because it makes a fundamental change in the “rule of law” or in this case- state sovereignty to make their own laws.  They don’t want a national gun registration.  They want national licensing of conceal carry laws for carrying a loaded gun into an urban situation like New York.  They say when they experimented with that in Wisconsin it was a disaster and the crime rate went up.  Of course for years the States have trodden over the rights of localities for things like pollution and gun laws.  This too is a violation of the “federalism” system the Constitution sets up.  This is a fundamental grab for power by Donald Trump who is behind this move of the Republican congress.  The Republican House has already passed this gun bill.  But it seems unlikely they will get the sixty votes needed in the senate to pass the thing.  But it is a threat to public safety.  They covered both sides of the argument on Sixty Minutes.  Law Enforcement officials in big cities are definitely against this bill.   This is an ironic example of an extreme Republican convention promise being kept by giving the second amendment untold fire power. 

There was a thing on Russian doping of Olympic athletes both in the London 2012 Olympics and in the 2014 winter Olympics in Soche, or however you spell that Russian city on the Black Sea where the winter Olympics were held that year.  They took away thirteen medals of athletes that year but then some court gave nine of them back.  This year what few Russian Olympic athletes there are had to compete under a neutral flag.   Of course knowing Putin is involved means this guy named Gregory was a defector from Russia.  He was in charge of the Russian doping.  There was this “secure” and “non secure” zone where in this Russian lab they kept urine samples in locked containers.  But someone put a rat hole in the wall between the secure and insecure zones where the vials of urine could be passed in-between and then dumped and substituted with clean urine examples.  This Gregory guy fears for his life nature because if you dissent against Putin you have a habit of ending up dead.  

I had Bill Press on in the morning just before five thirty.  Bill spent most of the remainder of the time discussing the Olympics.  Everybody agrees that it was just “too cold” with temperatures below zero, which is too cold for even winter Olympians.   They seem to prefer temperatures either in the twenties or perhaps low thirties.  Others have said that South Koreans are more “into” the summer Olympics anyhow.  But I guess they don’t want the crowd to freeze so give them blankets and things to keep warm.  And the wind has been horrific and many women skiers didn’t want to do their event because they were afraid that the wind would interfere with their performance.  (So, are these women just being whooses?)  We also heard from Bill that the snowboarding competition was really messed up.  And Bill says that these Olympics are really just venues to sell more bottles of Pepsi.  And that they are an environmental disaster.  South Korea built a whole stadium to hold the opening ceremonies in, but after the Olympics are over, they are going to just tear down this stadium because they don’t need it.  Also there was something about chopping down their sacred forest or something.