Slow to believe, and slow to cherish.  Maturity is recognized in the deliberateness with which a man adopts his creed. …   Gracian #154

George Rebane

Trump needs a court jester.  In olden days wise kings employed a court jester to provide scheduled entertainment and also ad hoc off-the-cuff remarks during court proceedings.  The court jester was most likely one the wisest people in the kingdom, and his function was to be the commissioned observer of courtly affairs, national politics, and a sanctioned critic of the king.  He performed all those functions through the use of humorous and witty metaphors, allegories, parables, etc – all carefully composed and delivered so as to avoid lese majesty at all costs (e.g. losing his head), yet assuring that the message was understood by selected audiences that always included the king.  Around our dinner table we frequently lament that President Trump lacks a court jester, or better, a close friend who in private can tell him, ‘Donald, cut that crap out, you again stepped on your good news, and allowed your enemies to instead focus the news cycle on your recent asinine tweet.’  Readers know that I am a supporter of almost all of the president’s policies, but no fan of the brash and seemingly thoughtless persona that he projects.  Employing a modern version of the court jester might help.  (more here)

The Trump/Russia affair has now become a tangled web of events, pronouncements, discoveries, statements, etc all resulting in a mish-mash from multiple sources at various times over the last years that antedate the 2016 election.  For those of us who dabble in debates about all the ins and outs of this affair, knowing and keeping straight what happened when instigated by whom and so on becomes a necessity to keep from sounding like some overzealous naif.  NPR has performed a public service to provide this information in an accessible graphic timeline that can be accessed here.  Enjoy your research.  (See, I can say something nice about a news outlet with a marked list to port.)

‘Congressional Reform Act of 2018’ is an email making the rounds that spells out how a reformed Congress should be term-limited and compensated.  The basic message is that congress critters should get reasonable wages, benefits (e.g. healthcare, SS, retirement, …) like the rest of us, and no extraordinary sinecures that make politics a career from which politicians become millionaires.  I shared this with a longtime close friend who is also a debate buddy because he is well-read and sits a bit left of my perch.  His concern about such a reform is that it “would complete the takeover of the US Government by the wealthy classes as only the independently wealthy people could afford to hold a Congressional seat.”  First, it appears that this argument promotes the established congressional careers of politicians of modest means becoming rich beyond their salaries in the course of their service.

My concern is that such riches are accumulated by the money-grubbing politicians by doing ‘favors’ to special interests that result in the misspending of public billions so that they can garner their private millions – ‘Always make as much as quickly as possible since you may be thrown out in the next election.’  I tend to favor the well-to-do politician over the pauper.  The well-off can afford to practice the ideology that they touted while running for office; that has been true since the days of our Founders.  And in general, these same folks are more likely to be better read and aware of what’s happening in the nation and the world.  By making politics a regular job for dedicated people, instead of a get rich quick career for hucksters, we would avoid double dummies like Maxine Waters and Hank Johnson (‘Guam would tip over.’) to decide public policies and how tax dollars should be spent.

[22aug18 update]  President Trump definitely had a bad day yesterday with the guilty pleas and findings of Cohen and Manafort.  Cohen’s pleading guilty on two counts of ‘election fraud’ for the payoffs to two women for their silence on their alleged encounters with citizen Donald Trump are politically most damaging, and possibly could even be legally damaging.  There the charge is that his payoffs to salvage his image as a candidate were really unreported and illegal spending to influence the election.  That’s now just an allegation by his former lawyer Cohen, but if it becomes a legal finding, then we have entered onto a very slippery slope that drops off to no one knows where.  Many people will then reasonably argue that any such unreported spending by a candidate to improve or maintain his image in the eyes of the voters would be judged an equally culpable attempt by the candidate to influence the election.  Qualifying acts of crime would then range from spending to have a facelift in order to appear younger to hiding monies spent for surreptitious medical procedures that cover up any sort of infirmity that would reduce the suitability of the candidate in the eyes of the electorate.  I could go on, but you get the picture that all of such ‘cosmetic applications’ would then come to question as possible criminal perpetrations of fraud.

[23aug18 update]  We note that our ever racially sensitive lamestream is totally ignoring the violent land grab by South Africa’s socialist cum communist government, taking without compensation the lands of people of the wrong skin color and giving it to those with the correct skin color.  It follows perfectly their far-left agenda – thou shalt not criticize collectivist policies no matter how incoherent.  The sad thing is the continued silence of our own feds both at State and the UN.

The Dems’ bankable bureaucrats are a gift that keeps giving.  The most recent is the timely revelation of Duncan Hunter (R-CA) embezzling campaign funds during 2009-16 that was tracked for months and could have been exposed long ago.  But such findings and announced indictments by a left-leaning deep state are not to be wasted, instead they are banked until the most fortuitous time for exposure.  I would like to see someone delve into possible communications between the investigators and the Dem leadership regarding the timing.  The decision when to release such valuable dirt was not made by some faceless snuffy in some faceless building.

The law and related jurisprudence is a foggy field that fills the coffers of charlatans aka lawyers who can argue equally any side of an issue that promises profit.  The example du jour is today’s circus of legal beagles buzzing about whether using personal funds for hush money is legal or not, even if the bought silence about a past non-criminal act may bear on the outcome of an election.  From here this seems like a straightforward question with an easy answer.  Instead, barristers from notable law schools take totally opposite positions on the media, so that viewers are left with more evidence that not only is justice blind, it is also totally arbitrary (ignorant?).  It isn’t the law that decides the matter, but them that can afford the best mouthpiece.  Exit question: do you really think that all the lawyers arguing the issue really believe what they are spouting, or are some of them in the bamboozle-for-bucks business?