Category Archives: To Be Filed

Mostly quiet on the Trump Front this morning…which is good. I'm thrilled at his slow, steady descent and at the increasing number of his supporters who have to be thinking, "Well, I love what he says he wants to do for this country but I'm increasingly uncomfy with the lawlessness and/or craziness." Still, I don't like how often I have to discuss this guy, even with myself. "Trump Fatigue" is a term we're hearing more and more, though so far not as often as any phrase about throwing someone under a bus. A full day off from any of that would be nice. I also think the Sunday News Programs should emulate Chick-Fil-A and close down on Sundays.

On Fridays, I always think Trump will do something especially outrageous if Bill Maher's show is off. I don't mean intentionally; just that Maher's luck runs bad that way. Big things happen when he isn't there to comment on them. Anyway, he's doing a show tonight so maybe not much will happen today except a lot of people on his team denying they said what they said yesterday and, of course, Rudy Giuliani saying something any competent lawyer would tell his client not to say.

Halloween — a holiday I will abolish just as soon as I'm powerful enough to do that, which I soon will be — is looming ahead. My new problem with Halloween is that as I get older, it seems to be followed by about three days of Thanksgiving prep and then everything's All-Christmas, All-the-Time until about January 15.

I used to have a friend who was born on December 25 — no, it was not Jesus Christ — and I felt sorry for him because his birthday kinda got lost under the Big Name Holiday. Also, of course, he had half as many opportunities for presents as someone like me who was smart enough to be born in March. Now, I feel sorry for anyone born in November or December.

And speaking of birthdays: Had he lived, tomorrow would have been my father's 109th…sort of. Like many Jewish kids of his era, my father had no birth certificate. Way back when, it was not uncommon for Jewish families to bribe someone to destroy those certificates, the better to keep the kid from getting drafted when he'd later be needed to help support the family. My father was reasonably sure he was born in October and only a tad less sure it was in 1910.

Because we needed a date on which to give him a tie and a cake with candles on it, he arbitrarily picked October 19 as his birthday. And I don't know how this worked but he got it onto his Drivers License, passport, government I.D. (for his job) and everywhere else even though it was a made-up, educated guess of a birth date.

When he died in 1991, I got access to many documents he had and had never studied all that closely. A few of them gave me enough info to do some research and I tracked down a government record that said he'd been born on October 25, 1910 — not that far off. I assume that's right but it doesn't really matter now, does it? The only reason it might is if I was the kind of person who only thought about his father on Dad's birthday and I think of him every day — with nothing but fond, positive memories…

Today's Bad News for Donald Trump
White House Chief O' Staff Mick Mulvaney admitted there was a quid pro quo involved in the release of military aid allocated for Ukraine. A few hours later, he was out insisting he hadn't said what he said…but he said it. Wouldn't you have liked to have heard the phone call or meeting where he was told to do that?

Today's Outrage by Donald Trump
In his never-ending quest to project his own misdeeds and failings on everyone else, Trump began slamming Nancy Pelosi. As Anna North observed…

The president's attempt to shame Pelosi likely worked among his base. But for most other Americans, it backfired. That should come as no surprise, given Trump's track record with powerful women.

As I've written before, Trump's strategy in confrontations with men is often to question their masculinity — he called Marco Rubio "Little Marco" and made fun of Jeb Bush's supposedly "low energy." It's a style he's likely developed in a long career in male-dominated spaces, from the military academy where he went to school to the heavily male real estate development business to the Hollywood sets where he bragged about being able to grab women "by the pussy."

But that strategy doesn't work on women, so Trump usually tries to invade their personal space, insult their appearance, or, as in the case of "Nervous Nancy," insinuate that they are mentally ill or unstable. Any woman who's gotten to where Pelosi is now, though, has had to put up with being called "crazy" a time or two. Except with people already primed to applaud Trump's misogyny, the strategy is doomed to fail.

I think when some non-partisan, observant author writes the history of American politics in this century, it's going to amaze many how much of it has to do with men who can't rationally deal with women in positions of power. And usually they don't call them "crazy" so much as they impugn their appearances and femininity.

It's Randy Rainbow Time! It's Randy Rainbow Time! Oh, yes! It's Randy Rainbow Time!

Jeffrey Toobin says "William P. Barr just gave the worst speech by an Attorney General of the United States in modern history. Speaking at the University of Notre Dame last Friday, Barr took 'religious liberty' as his subject, and he portrayed his fellow-believers as a beleaguered and oppressed minority." The inherent flaw in this, of course, is that Barr is lecturing us about morality while simultaneously defending every single thing Donald Trump has ever done.

Almost every time I come across anyone complaining about attacks on their religious liberty, what I hear is "It's unfair to me that someone isn't recognizing that my interpretation of my religion is the only truth in the world."

It's true of course that the share of adults who self-identify as Christians has declined about twelve percentage points — and that's a lot — over the last decade. That is, if you believe Pew Research and a few other pollsters. Barr thinks that's due to some organized attack on the religion. I think it's because so many people who call themselves Christians say and do things in opposition to the teachings of Christ. You know, like sanctioning torture, not helping the sick or poor, major league hating, caring more about the Money Changers than the Money Needers, etc….

A number of folks — all of them, other freelance writers I'm guessing — sent me this link today about a new California law that seems to affect us. "What does it mean?" they ask…and someone else, perhaps a good lawyer, will have to answer that, perhaps by reading all of the actual law instead of a reporter's summary.

I understood enough of it to feel pretty sure it doesn't affect me in any way and I think I get the premise behind it, which is to encourage little piecework jobs to be transformed into real, steady jobs.  It doesn't seem to me that this change will accomplish much of that but I'd need to know more to say that with any certainty.  I'll link you to anything I see that might help clarify.

My favorite local musical group Big Daddy will be performing Sunday evening, November 3 at McCabe's Guitar Shop in Santa Monica. Tickets are right here and not very expensive when you consider how much entertainment they'll buy you.

These are the guys who take current or recent rock hits and transmogrify them so they sound like they were recorded in the fifties — you know…the last time music was any good. They're quite brilliant, quite funny and damn good musicians, to boot. Search this site for examples (here's one) and, yes, I will be there.

• White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney says the G-7 Meet next June will be at Trump's Doral Miami resort. Asked if it doesn't violate the Emoluments Clause for the president to profit off such a meeting, Mulvaney asked, "What makes you think he'll still be president then?"

Like I said…like we've all said…you wake up in the morning and think, "Well, what's today's Trump outrage?"  This morning, we have the testimony of U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland. Mr. Sondland admits there was a quid pro quo with the Ukraine and he's someone who in no way can be dismissed as a Liberal/Democratic operative…though it wouldn't surprise me if Trump gave that excuse a try. Hell, we may even hear soon that Rudy Giuliani is a Liberal/Democratic operative. And maybe there's something to that since he sure has done everything possible to sabotage his client.

I'm still not officially predicting Trump will not be the Republican nominee next year…but I am tracking how with every week, that seems a wee bit more possible.

Today's Bad News for Donald Trump
Where to start, where to start? The headline "House overwhelmingly votes bipartisan condemnation of Trump withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria" is pretty bad news, as if the news out of Syria and Turkey isn't itself bad enough. "[Trump] was shaken up by it," Nancy Pelosi said on the House's overwhelming vote. "And that's why we couldn't continue in the meeting, because he was just not relating to the reality of it." Meanwhile, Rudy Giuliani is, as he will be for some time, in more legal trouble than he was yesterday and less than he will be tomorrow.

Today's Outrage by Donald Trump
A letter that Trump wrote to Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan was making the rounds and every newsperson who saw it contacted the White House to verify it was legit. That's how daffy it was and you can read it here and about a thousand other places. It wasn't sane, it wasn't presidential and it clearly did more harm than good…but Trump gave himself an A+ for it because, of course, he gives himself an A+ for absolutely everything.

Today's Runner-Up Outrage by Donald Trump
On any other day with any other president, this would be one of the more shameful and wrong-headed moves ever. You all know about Anne Sacoolas, the American spouse of (maybe) a diplomat who killed 19-year-old motorcyclist on an English lane last August. Ms. Sacoolas fled the country, claiming diplomatic immunity and Dunn's grieving parents and many British agencies are trying to get her to return to the scene of the arguable crime. Trump summoned the parents to the White House and then sprang two surprises on them: He had Ms. Sacoolas in the next room and also had members of the press ready to film/photograph the parents meeting the woman who killed their son and he apparently thought some warm, huggable moment would result. The parents, horrified, refused to go along with it and…well, here. Read all about it. It was a crazy move engineered by a man to whom empathy and consideration are alien concepts and who thought a great photo-op with himself as the Great Peacemaker would result. Crazy.

And One Important Article
This could have been in the Bad News category but it was too crowded…

Documents obtained by ProPublica show stark differences in how Donald Trump's businesses reported some expenses, profits and occupancy figures for two Manhattan buildings, giving a lender different figures than they provided to New York City tax authorities. The discrepancies made the buildings appear more profitable to the lender — and less profitable to the officials who set the buildings' property tax.

This is illegal and as Paul Waldman notes, it probably demonstrates why Trump is battling so hard to keep his tax records secret. They've got to be full of this kind of thing.

John Cleese wins an award. Stick with this until the end of the clip and as they say on the Food Network, your patience will be rewarded…

• Mitch McConnell is claiming "Democrats are throwing fairness and precedent to the wind." And Supreme Court Justice Merrick Garland agrees.

Didn't watch the Democratic debates. I've kinda decided there's no point in me deciding which candidate I want to see become the Democratic nominee. By the time I vote in the California primary — March 3rd, 139 days from now — the field will be different, the issues will be different, what we know about the candidates will be different…

I've received a whole batch of messages wanting to discuss the merits of privately-owned fire departments and/or the success rates of the times that's been tried. This isn't a debate that interests me a whole lot. I think capitalism is great when we have a Free Market at work — and I mean a real Free Market, not the faux kind that's called that but isn't. That includes the buyer being able to make a reasoned, researched selection with real options, which is not the case when your home's ablaze or you're on a gurney and the paramedics are taking your broken body to the closest emergency room.

And yes, I had lunch yesterday with the inestimable Frank Ferrante. Friends in Southern California keep asking me when, oh when can they see him do his oft-plugged-here An Evening With Groucho without driving to Iowa. An earlier date may appear but right now, his next appearance in the lower half of my state is April 13 and 14 at the North Coast Repertory Theatre in Solana Beach. I would point out that April 10-12 is when the next WonderCon Anaheim takes place and that the two events are but 72.8 miles apart. That will be of interest to a few friends of mine.

Today's Bad News for Donald Trump
Ronan Farrow's new book revives the issue of Trump and/or his handlers paying off women to keep hush about affairs with The Donald.  If the National Enquirer really was shredding papers about those alleged affairs, that's something.  I mean, it's not like the Enquirer ever dumps a story because it's false…

Today's Outrage by Donald Trump
Trump announces that he will soon be "issuing an Executive Order authorizing the imposition of sanctions against current and former officials of the Government of Turkey and any persons contributing to Turkey's destabilizing actions in northeast Syria."  Oh, great.  Now Trump has to impose sanctions on himself.

Here's a terrific article from 2016 on Betty Lynn, who played Thelma Lou on The Andy Griffith Show. I would have linked to it then but I just saw it today for the first time.

For those of you new to this blog, there's a reason I have a special interest in Ms. Lynn. In the article, it says — and I quote: "In 1950, she bought a house in west Los Angeles. Built in 1928, it became the home for Lynn, her mother and her grandparents." Three years later, my parents bought the home next door and they moved in, bringing their one-year-old son. That son was me. Betty was more than a great neighbor. She was like my unrelated aunt and I couldn't care more about her if she was family.

With but two and a half months left in 2019, the leading contender for the title of "Favorite Thing I Did This Year" is that last June, I went to visit Betty in Mt. Airy, North Carolina where she now lives. I wrote about it here and in that piece, you'll see me saying a lot of the same things about her that are in the linked article. They include how wonderful she is and how people make pilgrimages to that town and to The Andy Griffith Museum to meet her. Three years later, she's still going there to give them that thrill. I need to make more pilgrimages myself to see her.

During Watergate, the comedian Jackie Mason had a great joke. He said, referring to Richard Nixon, "Because of him, I get up every morning and run out to see if my furniture is still there." Nixon created that kind of mindset in this country…that constant sense of "We don't know what he's going to do but it won't be good." But it's worse with Trump.

Each morning when I awake, I fumble for my cell phone by the bed, open my app for news headlines and wonder, "Well, let's see how things got worse today." There's always something. This morning, it seems to be how bad things are getting to be in Syria and how little thought and consultation Trump seems to have had in making that decision. Hell, even Lindsey Graham couldn't get behind it. The bonus "how bad things are" is how bad they are for Rudy Giuliani.

Remember how for weeks here, I've been saying that it wouldn't surprise me if Trump wasn't on the 2020 final ballot? I'm still not predicting that'll be the case but doesn't it look a tiny bit more possible than it did two weeks ago?

Yes, yes…I know some of you — including some who like Trump even less than I do — wish I'd stop writing about this stuff and would instead talk about comic books or old comedians or cole slaw or where Frank Ferrante's appearing. (I can help you with that last one: In less than an hour, he's appearing across a table from me for lunch.) But the premise of this blog is that I write what's on my mind and it's tough to get Trump off it for very long. You're annoyed that I'm not providing your desired means of escape for a few moments because you find it tough to stop thinking about him, too.

This will pass. It may not pass as quickly as we wanted but I'll tell you this: I didn't expect him to be in this much trouble this far before Election Day. I really didn't. Until the ballots are counted and we feel confident they've been counted honestly — if indeed that happens — I will never say Trump can't win a second term. But it feels good that the trajectory of his popularity is only going in one direction and it ain't up.