Saturday Musings & The Shutdown Apocalypse!

The Diplowife is in Spain with her sister celebrating el dia de San Sebastian in, well, San Sebastian (Donosti if you prefer). She keeps sending me pictures of amazing food. Two kids have left for a sports bar in Raleigh; one for apartment hunting in DC; and one with his wife (read her stuff!) for some rightist event in Manhattan. I am left with the dogs, and tasked with folding towels, and running the washing machine. Tough duty. So, of course, I am at the computer instead.

I must first remark that this, the first day of the #SchumerShutdown, dawned cold and bleak; the sun struggled to make itself felt, and its weak light cast long, sinister shadows throughout the woods surrounding my house. Those shadows, of course, come from the dying trees and the gasping fauna, unable to survive without the EPA having a full budget. The streets, too, are now almost impassable from the stacks of dead bodies, and from those millions of zombie-like Americans and immigrants left helpless and hopeless from the government shutdown, wandering the avenues and boulevards, crying, pleading, begging, all to no avail . . . I write in the full knowledge that by the time I post this piece, there will be no survivors to read it. I, therefore, leave it as a testament which might be read by alien visitors hundreds of years from now. Aliens in the sense of folks from the planet Xenon, not Mexico, you understand . . . Well, actually, I guess I will be OK as long as the people who write those Foreign Service retirement checks are deemed essential . . .

The strangeness grows every day.

It SEEMS (please note that word) that there is some sort of memo in the hands of Congress that will blow the lid off the Russian collusion investigation and could result in some serious political, legal, and bureaucratic shake-ups. The Republican Congressmen who have read it swear this is so, the Democrats not so much, but argue that it must be kept secret for "national security" reasons. I love it when the Dems get concerned about national security. Release the hounds memo, and let the chips fall where they might.

The biggest threat to national security (aside from Mexican interference in our national life) is the ongoing turmoil caused by the Russian collusion story so assiduously pushed by the Dems. If this memo has something important to say about it, let us see. I have no doubt that if the memo contained the smoking gun PROVING Trump-Putin collusion, the Dems would have leaked it to the NY Times long ago regardless of any threat to means, sources, and methods. My experience is that these "bombshell" memos often turn out to be something less than that, but, yet, however, nevertheless, perhaps, maybe, possibly it might well be in the national public interest to release this one. Let the American people judge. FREE THE MEMO!

This government shutdown is truly the weirdest such shutdown in my lifetime.

The Dems are shutting down the government because the President won't give them what they want on DACA. In other words, the Dems are more "concerned" about hundreds-of-thousands of illegal aliens, than they are about the proper functioning of our government and the well-being of hundreds-of-millions of Americans and LEGAL immigrants. Their "concern," of course, discussed at length many times in this humble blog (example, example, example) is with bringing in millions of poor and dependent voters. That's all. The Dems are losing some of their traditional supporters and need to replace them. The GOP would be idiotic to give in to the Dems' demands on DACA. So far, President Trump has played the Dems masterfully and I just hope he is not betrayed by GOPers going "wobbly," in Maggie Thatcher's wonderful phrase.