pardon me

i have seen this all before...and it is just as fine an object lesson in the debilitating stupidity the emanates out of swamptown as anything from tricky dick's era...however king richard is a good place to start in analyzing trumpy's bombast and miscalculations ( rudy giuliani is not helping this at all by the by...nixon was a lawyer and his legal team were at least competent even though the arguments they came up with were doozies...as we will be seeing ) after nixon fired archibald cox and eliot richardson took the high road and resigned ( the peanut from alabama would not ) nixon was forced to appoint a new special prosecutor and leon jawarski got the job...he got a subpoena from judge john sirica of the federal district court of the district of columbia ordering nixon to turn over tapes and documents over his knowledge of the watergate break in...nixon tried an end run releasing transcript of the tapes and then sent his lawyer james d. st. clair into sirica's courtroom task him to quash the subpoena because he maintained the transcripts fulfilled its terms...while in open court st. clair said: "my client ( notice he pins the blame for this on nixon...he wasn't going to argue this ) wants me to argue that he is as powerful a monarch as louis xiv, only four years at a time, and is not subject to the processes of any court in the land except the court of impeachment"...the argument for the divine right of presidents did not sit well anywhere from the public to congress ( congress had a vestige of integrity then...the rat fucks there now are basically a criminal enterprise )and nixon resigned to avoid the inevitable impeachment...so...does trumpy have the "absolute power" to pardon himself...in a limited fashion he can but not in the absolute...the president can pardon people convicted of federal crimes...not those of a state...so he could conceivable pardon himself of those...any state crimes are beyond his power to pardon...he can be indicted but not tried until his term in office is complete ( impetus for "president for life"? ) in office he can only be tried by congress ( so nixon was correct about that ) and can only be arrested by the sargeant-at-arms of the senate...nixon let ford pardon him ( in the absence of any indictments ) and, no doubt pence would pardon trump if the time came...trump only thinks his powers absolute...he will continue to do so as long as the co-conspirators in congress allow it.

obviously we are a threat

i hear that the department of homeland security has put a call out for companies that can create a database of journalists and bloggers ( one wonders if this would include twitter accounts that indulge in patent distortion and outright bullshit...know what i mean ? ) in an alleged effort to control the dissemination of "fake news"...as opposed to officially sanctioned "real news" ( which i would term a corporatist sort of propaganda heavily skewed towards an addiction to consumption ) from the crypto-fascist fox network and the fucktards at sinclair...i have a number of blogs and the only one i purport to have any factual "news" on is the gardening one because it is mostly about what is going on in my yard and my basement...the others ( some of which have not seen much activity of late...although, for one, that will be changing very soon, one is actually defunct because the garden it was about is no more ) are simply viewpoint with the occasional vituperative rant tossed in to keep the adrenaline going....i want this made clear...opinion..and my opinion is that homeland security are pretty much a bunch of nosy control freaks with an overblown perception of their mandate...i imagine you have to know who the enemy is ( or who the potential "other" is...goebbels and himmler understood this...they were control freaks who were pigs for data too )...in today's n y times maddy albright says don's a fascist...i am not so sure..i am inclined to think he is an entitled immature self-absorbed jerk who can be led by fascists or authoritarian wannabes...i mean look at fucking bolton...in any event i will continue to express my views ( which you may or may not accept...it is still a free country...be advised you do not have the intellectual tools available to you to change my views...they have not been arrived at without some study...people in russia have begun to call putin "vozhd"..this is not a good sign..look it up ) until some bureaucrat decides i am a threat because of said views...this seems unlikely to me...i am not tremendously influential...still authoritarians are micro-managers...there could be a rumpus.

leaks? nixon called a plumber ( and look where that got him )

from allegations of sexual misconduct to leaks regarding a phone call ( which may or may not have been made...alternative facts...fake news...all very orwellian and we will get back to that soon enough ) congratulating vlad putin on an election result that allowed him to barely squeak out another term ( "it is enough for the people to know there was an election. the people who cast the votes decide nothing. the people who count the votes decide everything" joe stalin ) the trump administration seems to be having some trouble finding a calm center where the master of the "art of the deal" can work his magic...there is a solution to all this that is so obvious it beggars the imagination that it has not been forcefully proposed...well..someone has to bite the bullet so here it is...bring g gordon liddy back from retirement...or from the dead if necessary...an old hand at plumbing leaks and a venerable fixer from the 1970s he could set things in whoretown straight for the big guy"...he has a sterling track record folks...from a wonderfully choreographed "black bag job" on the office of dr. lewis j. fielding in an effort to discredit daniel ellsberg...which was blundered in keystone kops fashion by his cuban operatives who jimmied open a file cabinet with a crowbar only to find no ellsberg file...they threw pills around the office to make it look like "junkies" had broken in trying to find drugs and then celebrated a "clean" job later with champagne...competence like this is not an everyday occurrence...hard to find a good plumber ( and this was only one example of the good work he did for the president )..woman problems? after liddy left the white house staff for the greener pastures of the committee to re-elect the president ( creep ) his plan called GEMSTONE to disrupt the democratic national convention ( with the cubans taking part again to sabotage the convention center air conditioning and roast the democrats out..a nice touch john mitchell liked but refused to fund ) included a sub-heading titled CRYSTAL which entailed floating a barge off miami to serve as a listening post to electronically surveil the democrats' headquarters and as a bordello staffed with, in liddy's words " the finest girls from baltimore" to entrap democratic delegates and blackmail them...someone with these credentials could make the the president's troubles disappear...such a valuable asset to the administration should not be overlooked...implausible? break out the newspeak dictionary and look up doublespeak and doublethink...they are daily events in whoretown these days...there is no going back...the only way out is through...the time for talk is over.

divine right

“I, of all people, am aware that there is some irony in the fact that I am leaving while a man who has bragged on tape about his history of sexual assault sits in the Oval Office, and a man who has repeatedly preyed on young girls campaigns for the Senate with the full support of his party.”_____________al franken___________shades of tricky dick…it isn’t illegal if the president does it…nixon invoking the divine right of presidency…well…hypocrisy is a common weapon of power and we are up our necks in it vevery day…al franken may indeed have used a position of celebrity to unduly impose himself on women ( I don’t know…i wasn’t there…neither were you…or kristie gillibrand for that matter ) and there may indeed be some with cause to be angry over that…that isn’t the issue in the senate however…I believe franken when he says his intention was to represent all the people of his state...even though the system would never allow that…what franken’s problem was is that he brought a sense of critical thinking and heterodoxy to an august and thoroughly orthodox institution...the government set up by the constitution was never meant to represent all the people…it was the successful counter-revolution put up in the face of the assumption of the mass of people that the “spirit of 1776” was the valid grounding for the government "by and for the people” ( shay’s rebellion, among other events )…when he wrote “the fundamental constitutions of carolina” in 1669 john locke ( putative philosophical godfather of the framers ) wrote that his intent was to “avoid erecting a numerous democracy”…in other words the franchise should be limited to what the federalist paper called “the best men”...read white male landowners ( and there is a significant movement in this direction in the present era )…you cannot survive questioning the prime directives of an oligarchy posing as a democracy…wealth and special interest have always been at the heart of congress…during the first congress there was considerable debate over the “impost” ( tariff ) bill that was to serve as a financial basis for the federal government…merchants in congress haggled, debated, and delayed the bill until they could land the cargoes they had at sea to avoid paying the proposed tariff ( it eventually passed ) all the while charging customers higher prices to cover the cost of the proposal…one hand has always washed the other in swamptown…or wherever the capitol has been located ( for a clearer understand of how all this came to be, a three book reading list..the federalist papers[dreary as it may be at times]. An economic interpretation of the constitution of the united states by Charles beard…and William maclay’s journal of the first congress )...so roy moore...oligarch wannabe and cracker…will be elected...oh the urban areas will reject him…the rural cracker will not…and he will be seated in the senate because he will do the bidding of his handlers just like the rest of the whores...there is nothing unusual in this…northing unexpected if you pay close attention…it is the way of things and the institutions are buttressed against change…minority rule over the “ interested and overbearing majority” [madison federalist X] was always the intent.

tools of opulence and ambition

"viewing the subject on its merits alone, the freeholders of the country would be the safest depositories of republican liberty. in future times a great majority of the people will not only be without landed, but any other sort of property. these will either combine under the influence of their common situation; in which case the rights of property and the public liberty will not be secure in their hands, or, which is more probable, they will become the tools of opulence and ambition; in which case there will be equal danger on another side." james madison. the records of the federal convention of 1787. max farrad ed. vol.II p.203___________like jay or hamilton, madison doesn't have much faith in the ability of "the people" to actually rule themselves...and at fist glance, given the current state of the presidency, it may seem his prediction has a touch of prescience...except for the "freeholder" part...it starts to come unglued there...a freeholder, in this context, is someone who holds real property...a landed individual...a member of the upper crust...the elite in varying proportions...but of a superior class than the industrial masses...elite rule, of which republicanism is a milder form than say oligarchy...but elite rule none the less...that the "great majority" was kept "without any other sort of property" through policies promulgated by that "republican liberty" ( especially the upward redistribution of wealth that has been going on for the last thirty-six years ) which was allegedly established to represent those self-same "people" was of little consequence to madison since he equated "property" ( which would not be "secure" in the hands of the people ) with "the public liberty" ensuring that, in his view, the unpropertied could not grasp "liberty" and so could not rule themselves much less the country...as much as some of the elite may loathe him, don trump is of that elite..no less so than clinton is...or madison was for that matter...unfortunately for madisons analysis "the people" are more than able to see the deck is stacked against them and they are irate...trump manipulated that anger to his and the elite's advantage...there is nothing new here people..nothing at all.

divine right of presidency

i have read recently that the presidents legal team has claimed that don's tweets about the non-existence of any "comey tapes" constitute evidence that they do not exist...if true it is a wonderful example of magical thinking and one of the best attempts at evasion of an issue since old dick nixon offered to allow the stone deaf john c. stennis listen to his white house tapes and...when that failed had his counsel argue in open court that the president was above the law for four years at a time...effectively arguing that the divine right of kings had been democratized into the republic...this did not work incidentally...of course this was in the days before "alternate facts" existed ( or, at least were termed such...plenty of orwellian machinations and "special vocabularies " back in the 70s children...this is nothing new...in fact it is laughably familiar )...one supposes that this puny and almost mindless effort will not either but the politically "uneducated" are howling and the national psyche grows stupider by the day...the best i can come up with is the trump team has opted for the "chaos defense"...if the marx brothers were still alive they'd be top advisors.

time to get out of dodge

okay...history does not repeat itself...the variables of non linear causality prevent that...things never happen exactly the same and the dialectic grinds on...like it or not...but christ on a bike the parallels are getting weird...richard nixon was not a stupid man..he was utterly twisted and he believed fervently that the president was above the law for four years at a time ( he was wrong and when he ordered his counsel to plead that defense in open court his lawyer damn well made sure the judge understood it was his client that was saying that, not him )...even believing he could do anything he pleased he was astute enough to know he had to be quiet about it...inverse of the current washington freak show masquerading as a national government but coming off as being venal as a low-rent county board of commissioners...is this hubris or just stupid? i know where my opinion falls on this...you may come to your own decisions in your own sweet time...but don't dawdle...one of these days is going to be a fast one and you will bludgeoned by events so warped you'll need fun house mirror to see them straight..so..where is this screed going? just a note to point out that old dick flew off to saudi arabia and then israel in june of 1974...in a strong international diplomatic position reflective of his "outhouses in peoria" outlook on public affairs...he cam back and resigned the presidency on august ninth...

( i always keep a copy of dick's resignation handy..have one up on the wall )...repeat..history does not repeat itself...hope spring s eternal too...of course that would leave us with mike pence...hope may be deffered.