“We entered this timeline 20 years ago with Bush v Gore.”
— Chris Hayes on Twitter
“I could do with a lot less US political commentary that presupposes a long-term, desirable equilibrium that has only recently been disrupted in an undesirable way.”
— Adam Kotsko on Twitter
Not gonna Pollyanna it: I have zero expectations Democrats in Congress will mount any effective opposition to Trump’s last-minute Supreme Court pick, no matter how hastily chosen and egregiously unqualified. Nor do I expect Democrats, should they take the Senate in the 2020 elections, to do any of the things people are urging they do to redress the balance of power: eliminate the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees, pack the court with additional justices, or add DC and Puerto Rico as states. I honestly think Democrats won’t do a thing; in fact I’m still amazed they impeached Donald Trump (and am firmly convinced they wouldn’t have done it at all had they thought there was a chance in hell he’d have been convicted).
Politicians will not save us. Institutions will not save us. The Constitution will not save us. It’s starting to look like the Supreme Court wont be saving anyone either, at least for the next 30-some years.
Shit is fucked up and bullshit, and there’s not a lot I can do about it. Vote? Live the best life I can? Try to be good? Yes, that.
I read Michael Cohen’s memoir, Disloyal: The True Story of the Former Personal Attorney to President Donald J. Trump. A friend recommended it, saying that of all the Trump administration tell-alls, this was the only one she’d read that seemed come from a place of atonement and regret, and that Cohen at least had a competent ghost-writer.
Its hard for me to think of Michael Cohen as anything but a scumbag (“I will make sure that you and I meet one day while we’re in the courthouse. And I will take you for every penny you still don’t have. And I will come after your Daily Beast and everybody else that you possibly know. So I’m warning you, tread very fucking lightly, because what I’m going to do to you is going to be fucking disgusting. You understand me?”), so I didn’t buy his book. The library had the e-book and no waiting list, so I downloaded a free copy to my Kindle.
Cohen says he’s remorseful, but it’s impossible to tell if he really means it, or if he’s merely upset with Trump for betraying him when the going got tough.
There’s little in the book that anyone who’s watched Trump in action over the past several years doesn’t already know. The only items of note, at least to me, were Cohen’s assertions that Trump in fact doesn’t drink (even though many have said the same, I never believed it) and that he’s privately pro-choice (I have my doubts there too, and think it’s more likely he simply doesn’t care one way or another). The rest of Cohen’s revelations on Trump’s bottomless lack of character are unsurprising … we already knew all that.
Michael Cohen’s wife and children stood by him through the Trump years and his inevitable downfall, and Cohen seems sincere in saying he wants to get back in their good graces. That much I do believe.
We’re thinking about visiting our son, daughter-in-law, and grandson in Las Vegas next month. We’d be driving, thus limiting our exposure to strangers, so it should be relatively safe for them and us. My son and I had originally planned to take off for a multi-day motorcycle tour of neighboring states, but the thought of eating meals on the road and overnighting in motels scared me off that idea. I still plan to trailer the motorcycle up, but we’ll just take day trips in the local area instead, no overnighters, minimizing our risk of exposure. I can afford to get the virus and die; my son and his family cannot.
And now Donna tells me her sister Georgianna and her husband Don want to drive out from Michigan and stay with us over Christmas. Driving is good; a lot safer than flying. By then Polly should be gone and in her own apartment, so we’ll have a guest bedroom again. Still, there’s considerable risk and we’ll have to take some precautions. But that’s equally true of us visiting our son and his family next month.
Why is everything so goddamn hard? Fucking coronavirus. It’s easy to understand why so many people want to pretend it’s no longer a threat and get back to normal life.
The animal hospital hasn’t called about a follow-on check of Mister B’s progress in fighting off valley fever. But you know what, he’s almost completely his old self again and if they don’t call I’m not going to sweat it. He’ll be on antifungal meds for a long while yet (the treatment can take nine months to a year), but other than that we’re back to normal: playing, long walks, the works … the only thing he doesn’t get to do is go back to his favorite park, because we think that’s where he got valley fever.