Dear Steve Bannon

Dear Steve Bannon,

Chelsea Clinton says you "fat shamed" Sean Spicer.  And I have no reason to doubt Chelsea Clinton on this.

For the record, Sean Spicer is - by far - the least creepy-looking of anyone in Trump's confederacy of dunces.  And I'm including Jared and Ivanka.  (Maybe especially Jared and Ivanka.)

You, on the other hand, are a bloated, warty toad.  Possibly with alcohol- and/or drug- induced brain damage.  And you look like you smell bad.  

So there is no good reason for you to be anything shaming anybody.

Go away,

Underemployed

Processing Time

Today my husband turns to me and says, "Remember Trump's Cabinet meeting?  The one where everybody was crawling on the floor to lick his shoes?  That was.  The most.  Disgusting.  Thing.  I've EVER seen.  In my whole life."

My husband:

1. Is 85-years-old, and that's a lot of life,
2. And he's a former employee of the government of Cook County, IL.
3. So he knows of which he speaks, 
4. Because Cook County is basically Chicago,
5. The government of which has always been - more or less - disgusting.

When this man uses superlatives in reference to government, one listens.

I agree with him, though I didn't require as much processing time.  And I've since pondered what the individual motives might have been for the performances.

Here's what I've come up with:

1. Greed.
2. And/or fear.
3. Except for Mike Pence, 
4. Who - I'm pretty sure - is what we sometimes euphemistically refer to as "simple minded".
5. But he's from Indiana.  Therefore, no one notices.   

In case you missed it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCMigZq0_zE

Maybe just a tad too "Supreme Leader"?

Who Needs a Russia Probe?

I think the Health Care debacle should be enough to bring about the Republican Apocalypse.

Dear Ivanka

Dear Ivanka,

Please allow me to impart a bit of wisdom to you.  It's the kind of wisdom one generally acquires before the age of six, if one is not a billionaire and/or has body guards.

"If you're gonna dish it out, make sure you can take it."

I'm not hopeful you know what that means. Especially after listening to you describe to your friends at Fox News how you were "not expecting the viciousness" that a number of people are directing toward your father.

So let me explain it to you.

On Planet Earth, people - for the most part - are not vicious unless somebody gives them a good reason to be.  Some of these reasons are:

1. Insults;
2. Disrespect;
3. Theft;
4. Sexual harassment;
5. Falsehoods;
6. Threats;
7. Mockery;
8. Betrayal;
9. Displays of extreme ignorance;
10. Ketchup on steak.

Your father is guilty of all of these.  Under normal circumstances, he would not have achieved adulthood in full possession of his teeth.

However, when someone is very rich, there are people who will apparently choose to overlook the offenses.  I say "apparently" because, in many cases, they will simply opt for a more subtle form of revenge.  I know this because I am Sicilian.  And we invented revenge.

What exactly were you expecting?  That all of your father's victims would just roll over and play dead?  A natural expectation, I suppose, given the embarrassing performance of his Cabinet recently.  Unfortunately for your father, though, there are more Americans than not who would rather see him on a one-way trip to the Sombrero Galaxy than in the White House.

Three million more, at last count.

I am guessing that we are to believe you are "the smart one" amongst the children of Trump (though my money's on Tiffany).  Given the field, it's not much of an accomplishment.  And you probably think you are doing wonderful things for the world.  

But I promise you, you are not.  You are simply putting a pretty face on an ugly situation.

Perhaps you believe that your father's behavior is normal.  But We the people - because we were raised right - are not accepting it as our new normal.  

We're dishing it right back at him.  And we will continue to do so until he takes his toys and goes home.

Because that's how you handle a bully.

Regards to Jared,

Underemployed

Across the Pond

Theresa May has caught my attention recently.  

I understand very little of the parliamentary system of government, but I have the distinct impression that she is behaving oddly.

Namely, she should be gone by now.  In a nice, polite, parliamentary-sort of way.

However, she is desperately trying to hang on to her position.  So desperate that she is trying to make a deal with the Devil Himself, the party of Ian Paisley.  And I might not know a lot about UK politics, but I do remember some things about that asshole.

In fact, she's acting a lot like...Donald Trump!  And what do Theresa May and Donald Trump have in common?  I mean, besides really, really bad hair?

They were both beneficiaries of election victories that should have never happened outside of an alternative universe.

Ah.  Brexit.

Coincidence?  You decide.

Let's Think About This

Dear American Christian Right,

I write to you because some of your offspring have chosen this beautiful day in June to hold "Anti-Sharia" demonstrations in cities across the country.

(What would Jesus do?  I'm pretty sure he would cringe.  Likewise, Thomas Jefferson.)

Now this is just a view from the cheap seats, but I have noticed several discrepancies in the rhetoric with which you seek to preserve "traditional American values".

We'll start with the Sharia law thing.  Personally, in spite of (or maybe because of) twelve years of rigorous religious schooling, I am perfectly content with the Constitution and would prefer not to have an additional set of rules and regulations telling me what to do.  But I understand that there are people who prefer otherwise, and so be it.  This is (more or less) a free country.

So, no, I don't want to live under Sharia law. 

But I don't want to live under the American right-wing Christian version of it, either.  You know, the version that tells us who we can sleep with, what we can smoke, what kind of medical care women should be allowed to have, what bathrooms we can use, etc., in spite of the fact that the American right wing takes every opportunity they can to bemoan "Big Government".

I'm also perplexed by the Right to Life/Pro Death Penalty paradox.  And vice-versa.

However, what really flabbergasts me is this:  

How is it that American right-wing Christians are so fucking terrified of Muslims (even though we are in much more danger from our trigger-happy fellow Americans), but seem to have NO PROBLEM WHATSOEVER with the Kremlin choosing our "elected" leaders for us?

Let's think about this.

And thank you for your consideration,

Underemployed

Sometime in the Very Near Future...

Dear Mr. Trump,

You have definitely put yourself between a rock and a hard place.

The Rock:  "James Comey better hope that there are no 'tapes' of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!"

The Hard Place:  There are no "tapes".  

I know there are no "tapes".  You know there are no "tapes".  And "tapes"-gate is going to be like that little Obama "wire tapping" comedy, because you will point out that you used "quotation marks", so you can say anything you want and don't have to "worry" about it being taken "literally" by - oh, let's say - a "special counsel" during the course of an "independent investigation".

Now, or "...sometime in the very near future", you are going to have to 'fess up.  In public.  To a lot of people.  Most of whom will laugh.

Anyway, you will have to confess one of the following things:

1. You just made that shit up.
2. The voices (the ones that only you can hear) told you there were tapes, and the voices are never wrong.
3. If Sean Spicer were doing a better job, you wouldn't have these problems.

Dude, here's a flash:  EVERYBODY knows there are no tapes.  But everybody is pretending that there might be tapes because everybody delights in ridiculing you.

I hope that clears things up.

Until then, Happy Golfing!

Underemployed