• 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.

The musical version of Little Shop of Horrors debuted off-off Broadway in 1982 and starred Lee Wilkof as Seymour and Ellen Greene as Audrey. The following year, the two of them and other cast members taped this spot for the annual Jerry Lewis Telethon for MDA. The video is wonderful for many reasons, starting with the fact that it captures part of their great performances. It was also done at the Ed Sullivan Theater, later the home of David Letterman's show and now Stephen Colbert's. And it's also kinda nice to see that a sadistic man-eating plant, determined to devour every man, woman and child on Earth cares enough to raise funds to fight Muscular Dystrophy…

Today's Bad News for Donald Trump
I'm putting the increasing bad news out of Syria in the next category so in this one, I'll just put it sure looks like Rudy Giuliani is in pretty deep legal trouble, which just contributes to the lawless rep of the folks Trump chooses to advise him. I don't think Trump will be able to get away with claiming he doesn't know Rudy but that doesn't mean he won't try.

Today's Outrage by Donald Trump
Things just keep getting worse and worse for the Kurds and for the role of the U.S. in world politics. Fred Kaplan explains.

An important article About Donald Trump
Jonathan Chait lays out the "full" case for the impeachment of Donald Trump. I put "full" in quotes because I'm thinking by the time this thing could get to a trial in the Senate, there'll be a dozen more charges in it.

I just put out a can of Friskies Salmon for her. She ate half of it, then went back into the little house and curled up to sleep. I think she's finally moved in.

As readers of this blog and all the feral cats in my neighborhood are aware, I feed feral cats in my backyard. Leaving food out for them means I also unintentionally feed raccoons, as well as possums who hang around, trying to get in good with the guy who edits the Pogo books.

I've had as many as four feral cats at a time regularly stopping by — or just plain living in my backyard — to partake of the free buffet. At the moment though, I have but one. Lydia resides out there and she has since some time in 2007.

In 2008, as I detailed here, I captured her and took her to a vet who terminated her pregnancy and made sure she couldn't get that way again. If you have a problem with that, don't tell me. Tell the various cat care services and experts who told me that was the humane thing to do. Lydia doesn't seem to have objected. She's still living out there except when the gardeners or pool man come by, whereupon she flees to an adjoining yard until they get the hell out of her home.

A little before she came into my yard and life, I was concerned for the cats who had to weather rainstorms out there so I bought them a home — a little cat house which some of them would go into, though rarely when it was showering. Rain or shine, Lydia though never went into it.

I tried moving it to different places in the yard. She wouldn't go in there. I tried putting her food in the cat house. She'd lean in far enough to eat, then scamper away without ever putting her entire body through the door. I tried picking her up and putting her in there but she wriggled free and fled.

At one point, Carolyn tried some sort of catnip spray that was supposed to make anything you sprayed it on more feline-friendly. All that happened was that I wound up with a yard full of drunken pussycats, none of whom wanted to be in the house for more than a quick hit. I gave up the idea that Lydia would ever use the little house…

…which just shows to go ya. For no visible reason, today she's sleeping in the cat house. First time I've ever seen her in there. I took this photo about fifteen minutes ago…

Did you see John Oliver last night? It was a great episode about the attempts of the Trump administration to make the National Weather Service — which is paid for by us and which works for us — to instead be paid for by us and work for private industry. The N.W.S. is a super-efficient, right-more-often-than-you-think operation which gives away its expertise for nothing. Private weather companies take the N.W.S. data and process it further, making it more specific or tailored to paying clients, and profit off it. But what they'd really like is for the N.W.S. not to give away their forecasts for free to the public at all so they [the private companies] can sell it to us.

This is not new. Back in those wonderful pre-Trump days, companies like AccuWeather fought for this. On this blog in 2005, I wrote about how then-Senator Rick Santorum had introduced a bill that would make it illegal for the N.W.S. to make its forecasts available for free on the Internet. It was, of course, just a coincidence that Santorum was from Pennsylvania, AccuWeather was based in Pennsylvania, and AccuWeather had contributed lots of bucks to Santorum's campaign fund.

That didn't succeed but now Trump is trying to put one of the chief execs of AccuWeather in control of the National Weather Service. Trump has never believed that The Public Good ever takes precedence over someone increasing their profits. Ever.

So I just decided, while writing the above paragraph, that I ought to embed Mr. Oliver's report for anyone who didn't or couldn't see it. Keep in mind that the National Weather Service saves lives and property. To me, putting its resources under the control of those who want to make big money from it would be like letting a private, for-profit company take over the Fire Department in your town…and when your home was on fire, you'd have to call them and get an estimate on them sending someone over to put the fire out…

Today's Bad News for Donald Trump
Trump keeps citing Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, who in a tweet said there was no quid pro quo regarding the Ukraine call. But later this week, Sondland will reportedly testify that he wrote that there was no quid pro quo, not because he knew that to be the case but just because Trump told him.

Today's Outrage by Donald Trump
Did you catch any of Trump's rally last Thursday night in Minneapolis? There's more than a year until Election Day and he's hurling mud like an infinite number of monkeys flinging their poo. And he's getting it from the same place.

A Question About Donald Trump
Trump complained a lot about that Fox News Poll that showed that a majority of Americans want him impeached. He's been saying, "Fox News isn't working for us anymore," right? So what is he expecting? Is he angry that Fox News, having received those numbers from their pollsters, didn't just fib and adjust them in his favor? Is that what he expects of the news media? No wonder he doesn't like any of them.