The Burrow

I'm really proud of America today.  The center held.  My faith in our institutions has been vindicated. Not because the verdict went against the Lying Felon, but because there was a unanimous verdict of any kind.   It makes me feel that our country is less divided than it felt yesterday.  Twelve people listened to facts, listened to explanations, talked about it, and then decided to tell a former President of the United States that the rules apply to him, too.  I can let my breath out now.  Tomorrow there will be time to think about the election,  about what it means to be a Republican voter right now, about the media,  about the future.  Right now I'm going to revel in the wonderfulness of our democracy. 

I've been anxious for several days.  Driving home on Friday, I catalogued all the pieces of my life.  There is nothing to stress over, beyond the fact that age is taking its toll on our bodies.  Everything is fine and yet I'm still antsy. The cd I was playing ended.  As I hesitated to turn on NPR, I realized the source of my angst.  It's the Lying Liar and all the tentacles he's using to poison my America.   I once wanted to be a Supreme Court justice.  Now, the thought of sharing a room with Clarence Thomas makes me quiver and quake.  There was a bipartisan border solution, which was just what he asked for, yet he stomped on it for political gain, putting the legislative process up for sale.  And don't get me started on the ChristoFascistFool's minions have in store for reproductive rights.   Naming the source helped..... a little.  But today, Sunday, my brain nearly exploded.  The news was filled with a NYTimes poll...

It is true that there are those who've drunk the MAGA kool aid and are just waiting for the poison to seep into the rest of us.  There are those who will not listen, and that is sad.  But for those who might have a small chink in their armor, maybe because they love you, and who might be willing to listen and think about what you're saying,  you might try this: The State of New York found that your guy is unqualified to do conduct business unless two, separate monitors sign off on the deal.  He cannot write a check unless it is cleared by different entities, each of whom is endowed with total oversight of the man's affairs. If the State of New York thinks he's not to be trusted with his own business affairs,  why would you trust him with the country's spending, budgeting, forecasting?  These are your tax dollars he's spending.... or grifting. That's the kind and loving way of saying what I heard in a cascading series of talking heads following the lead....

James Patterson books are easy ways to pass a lazy day.  I found myself re-reading  Cross Down  today, realizing a few short chapters in that I remembered the basic outline of the plot but that I didn't mind spending time with those characters again. It's a plot revolving around a coup.  Hate groups on all sides are encouraged and supported.  Martial law and loss of basic freedoms are the plan.  It felt remarkably real. Television seems to be revolving around a coup, too.  With the majority of prospective Republican voters telling pollsters they are committed to returning him to jail, the Lying Liar turned his minions onto Fani Willis.  Not satisfied with attempting to steal the choice made by Georgia voters, not satisfied with defaming election workers and sticking his friends with the bill (cf Rudy Guiliani owing $148 million to satisfy the judgment), he decided to take a big bite out of the whole enchilada - he went after Fani Willis. I was nev...

91 criminal and civil indictments have been handed down against the man.   Jurors have watched him up close and personal and have spanked him to the tune of $83.7 million dollars.   The Senate took up the MAGA fold's challenge and came together on a bipartisan bill funding our various proxy wars and addressing the border issue in a way sure to anger the left.  Progress on immigration under the current administration is anathema to the presumptive Republican nominee so the Speaker of the House declared that the legislation is DOA in the House. The fact that our economy is doing quite well thank you very much is, apparently, due to the fact that he's predicted to win in 2024.   There's so much to unpack there.  Steve Bannon had a plan to break the government and he found a willing stooge to front for him.  A man with no moral center, with a toddler's sense of entitlement, someone who does not understand the concept of respect, a fountain of wor...

It has a nicer ring to it than The Lying Liar.   Do you remember him from West Side Story?  I'm stuck for anything more relevant to say about a man who thinks that a president is not an officer of the organization which he serves. Did he not hold The Office of the President of the United States? Dr. Google defines officer this way:  a person holding a position of command or authority in the armed services. As terrifying as it is true, the man was the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces.  By definition, he's an officer. That he and his apologists are ignoring and misinterpreting history shouldn't surprise me at this point. Yet I am struck, over and over again, by how obvious the lies are and how blatantly they are disseminated..... and believed. A young friend said he was probably for Trump because Biden is old.  He has paid no attention to the indictments, equating their significance with something about the Bidens and his son or something .   ...

Fulton County DA Fani Willis has indicted 19 people for the same crime.   Several of those charged want to sever their cases from the others. I don't know these other people  seems to be at the basis of their request.  I was only doing my job  is also underpinning the court filings.   It seems pretty obvious to me that the Chief of Staff to the President of the United States of America is not placing his own phone calls.  Shouting  Get me the guy in Georgia who's in charge of all of this  to Cassidy Hutchinson seems to me a more likely scenario than Mark Meadows doing his own Google search for the phone number to the Secretary of State's office, and then dialing direct.   Aside from the fact (it's in the Constitution) that the Office of the President has no job duties relating to the administration of elections happening in the various states,  I don't think that participating in an illegal activity (creating votes where t...

E. Jean Carroll's second suit against the lying liar was to start in January.  Instead, that trial will be about the money. The judge said that since the lying liar had already been found to have assaulted her, there was no reason to relitigate the issue.  Facts are facts.  All that's left is to decide how much he owes her.   He's already been assessed $5 million.  She's asking for $10 million this time. Just keep talking, Don.  That's what you're good at.

The flora is in desperate need of a sustained rainfall, a monsoon storm raging all night long, with actual liquid water accompanying the light show and the noise.  The branches are drooping to the ground.  The leaves are as tight as they can be, offering the smallest surface to the elements.   There's a lizard watching from the path in the courtyard.  He's trying to blend in so that the birds flitting from tree to tree don't notice him.  He took a dash to the stony ground cover during an intermission in their air show, hung out for a minute or two, then dashed back across the path and under the rosemary hedge.   The ground squirrels are scurrying and here come the birds again.  .......  And there I fell down a rabbit hole trying to figure out what kind of birds they might be. The Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Birds Western Addition was there on the shelf behind me, and now, several delightful minutes later I still don't k...

I felt no urge to watch helicopter footage of  OJ's Bronco and I have no great urge to watch the drone version of it playing on MSNBC right now.  Nicolle Wallace scolded her producer when the split screen showed Trump's motorcade on the way from Bedminster to the airport.... another reason I like her.   A couple of hours later, rather than gawking, watching the lying liar emerge from his eponymous airplane feels like witnessing history.  I muted the talking heads, watching his motorcade take the exit to the Fulton County Jail.   It's a short trip, and I'm hooked on the visuals.   The route takes him through a residential neighborhood.  The cross streets are blocked by official vehicles. There's not an American flag nor a MAGA sign on any of the front lawns to cheer him up.    What there is, at the very end, is pretty grim.  The low buildings on the left are for processing.  The tall towers, whose windows look out only...

There were 10 of them.  The prosecutors asked for 10 and not one of those asks was rejected.  Of course, none of the commentators can agree on what an indictment might be.  When the first indictment out of the Grand Jury was made available to the talking heads, no one was sure that the other 9 indictments were at all related to the attempts to steal the election: They might be just regular cases the Grand Jury normally sees. ***** Because Georgia law requires an extraordinary amount of transparency, the world could watch the County Clerk, in all her orange splendor and surrounded by guards, walk a stack of papers down the hall and through the door into the courtroom where she presented them to Judge McBurney.  We saw him look them over.  We saw the Clerk assure him that they had been and would still remain in her custody, and then the camera followed her back down the hall, through a closed door, and that was that. It took less than tem minutes. ***** The only p...

How is it possible for someone to believe that a person who is under indictment up and down the East coast should be the President of these United States? I get the cognitive dissonance argument.  But 7 indictments?  I just don't get it.

When they started using the sketch from the courtroom artist to analyze Jack Smith's intent,  I had to flee the scene.  I'm losing my mind over the free air time the Republican frontrunner is getting.... once again.... while I rail against the moon.... because they obviously have not learned a thing since the last time. (Look at me using they ... and assuming you knew who I meant.... quite Trumpian, no?) Anyway. I get that it's important.  But hours of his motorcade(s) and his fancy plane sitting on the tarmac; then turning.... slowly; then flying off into the clouds, left me both nauseated and impressed.  I was sharing space with my sweetie, who readily admits his obsession with the whole thing.  I did crossword puzzles, worked on getting from Amazing to Genius status in Spelling Bee , as he followed, watched, and cogitated. I don't need to make a tv star (once again) of a person who has been indicted for trying to steal my vote.  Rusty Bowers stood betwee...

You don't get indicted for lying. You get indicted for conspiring to deny Americans their right to vote, to have those votes count, and for those votes to be counted.   Just like the Mar-a-Lago document, the indictment reads like a legal thriller.  MSNBC suggested assigning it to your book club.  TBG and I are reading the pdf I printed out together.  There is a lot of headshaking on our couch as we turn the pages.   It's damning.  It's terrifying.  It's absolutely inconceivable to me how anyone could think this man is qualified, capable, or deserving of serving as President of the United States, yet the news this morning was how close the 2024 race will be. We shall see.   It is not an "UnAmerican attack" as the lying liar claims.  It's democracy.  It's the justice system at work. And try as he might, the lying liar does not seem capable of destroying it.

The political scene is lunacy right now.  Most of the population disagrees with most of what the Supreme Court and the Republican Party is trying to do, yet they keep doing it.  There have been so many censures and impeachments and obscenities that I've given up trying to keep track.   The Democrats have watched and waited and counted on me to be outraged, without making a big push to urge me on.  They haven't learned any lessons from MAGAworld - emotional appeals work.  The reproductive rights fight tapped into that in a big way without any prompting.   But polls don't show much distance between the lying liar and President Biden, and Joe's not getting any younger (his biggest flaw in the polls).  I'm counting on the Active Shooter Drill generation's votes to push gun safety legislation and legislators all on their own, perhaps pulling their families along with them.   But moving indolent voters toward the decisions I want them to ...