Has it always been a tool in the box? You get caught red-handed in a bald-faced lie, but you simply deny everything.

This apparently is common practice for politicians and media moguls, among others. You know– special people with a lot at stake. Get accused, then simply, with as much righteous indignation as can be mustered, lie your ass off. Or let your lawyers do it for you.

Donald Trump doesn’t know anything of Lev Parnas? The pictures would say otherwise. Yet Trump feels totally comfortable refuting what’s there for all to see. Lying and breathing are all the same to him. Seamless, shameless deceit.

How does he do it?

I’m with Bill Maher when it comes to the nightly news. There’s really only a few minutes of actual news and the rest is sensational, voyeuristic, heart strings fluff. And weather.

Every single time someone in the Trump administration claims they are doing the will of the American people, then every single time they have to know they are kidding themselves. They need to qualify that statement and acknowledge the asterisk. No doubt there are many who support Trump and his League of Assholes, but it is by no means a majority. They have carried on as if they won by a landslide in 2016, choosing to ignore the fact that they lost the popular vote by ALMOST 3 MILLION. Not three thousand, not even three hundred thousand.

3 x 10 to the 6th.

3,000,000.

Apart from the fact that the Electoral College is your enemy until it’s your friend, being on the short end of a 3- million-vote deficit doesn’t exactly give you bragging rights.

Let’s talk royals. As in Meghan and Harry and their latest rough patch.

Who the f**k cares?

The royal family is mind blowingly inconsequential, yet why the fascination? Is it because people want to be them? Is it just envy of a lifestyle? It’s a glaring anachronism, from the queen on down. Just another example of holding onto something that serves no purpose anymore. The world’s worst soap opera.

I’ve never understood the mystique. I’ve never understood the lingering affection for Diana or her offspring. It’s beyond rational, somehow. At some level it seems to be about envy and fantasy, seeing someone live the life many apparently dream about. A harmless diversion, I guess, like Hollywood. More palatable than Trump, but certainly not newsworthy.

And how can Donald Trump be tied with Barack Obama for most admired in America? Donald Trump and “admired” shouldn’t appear in the same sentence. Yet here we are. 

Why is this situation with Iran happening now? What are we going to learn twenty, thirty, forty years down the road about the timing of these hostilities? Is it really just that Trump needed a diversion amidst all the impeachment heat? Pretty heartless and cold, if that’s what’s happening. Though it would be the perfect example of “Trump being Trump.”

A real and true glimpse of the man. Child.

Seven days into the new year, but it already feels old and familiar.

Congress needs an enema, or a heart transplant. Australia is on fire, twenty-five dead, half-a-billion animals gone. Iran is shouting “Death to America!”, but what’s new there? I don’t know whether to laugh or cry when the news out of Tehran is that many were trampled to death in the frenzy to mourn Soleimani. What the hell did they expect would happen when they’re packed like sardines into a confined space? Is this genuine grief or just thousands of drama queens being ridiculous for the cameras? 

The only thing I get from the ready availability of news is that nothing is normal. Everything is measured against some standard of shock value or sensational, over-the-top craziness. I’m tired of extremes. I’m tired of feeling like we’re watching the world collapse before our eyes.

Normal is a non-existent category. There is no frame of reference for normal.

So the U.S. recently took out a key figure in the Iranian military, along with some others.

Great. Many more years mired in an unwinnable war. Happy New Year, everyone. It’s gonna be a bumpy ride. And look who we have to lead us through it. When the Bible prophesies “a little child shall lead them,” it isn’t talking about Donald Trump.

What is the endgame here? Is Trump feeling pressure regarding impeachment? Is this some ill-conceived distraction? Someone just say “enough already.”

Imagine the trillion$ wasted on war. But war is good for business. What a loathsome, rotten, and tired way of thinking. Any thought given to the lives that will be lost? Any thought at all?

How about swords into plowshares? Otherwise, greed and fear and blind nationalism will yet do us in.

2020. Does this portend a year of clarity, when people take off the rose colored glasses and realize they elected a monster? Doubt it. The first day of a new decade, though. The year we elect a president. God help us.

No, Vlad, you’re not God.

So, Christmas come and gone again. It doesn’t hold the same lustre it once did. Every year, we try to capture its essence, but that’s an elusive thing. It’s never the same as it once was, and no playing of seasonal songs and carols can call it forth. It was always a feeling. Anticipation of the 4am reconnaissance missions, being nestled in, being cozy on a cold winter’s night. But lately it’s winter in name only. Yesterday it smelled and felt more like Spring. 

It’s difficult to keep looking at Christmas with the eyes of a child when you’re not a child anymore.

It remains nearly impossible for me to embrace this mystery that is support for Donald Trump. It approaches an almost mythical level of gullibility and misplaced hope. It runs counter to assumptions of what is proper and sensible and wise. The only way it begins to make sense is as an ill-informed reaction to perceived assaults on the “American Way,” whatever that is.

It’s a tenacious holding-on to the past, a debilitating, Bible-fueled narrow-mindedness, a refusal to acknowledge what and who America really is or can be. It is an allegiance to the pocketbook and superficiality. A hook, line, and sinker loyalty to a snake oil salesman. Or maybe it’s simply a thumbed nose to liberalism.

There has been no swamp-draining, and Trump is the farthest thing from a breath of fresh air. From all appearances, he is incapable of caring, dead inside. All he has done is brought his own entitled emptiness to the nation’s highest office, and landed a pile driver deep into a psyche that reveals cracks and fissures and signs of irreparable damage caused by being fed a constant diet of bullshit.

What is the endgame for Trump supporters? What do they want this country to look like when he is finished? If he wins or finagles a second term, what more are they expecting him to “accomplish?”

The possibilities don’t so much boggle the mind as cause one to grieve.

The six-page letter from Trump to Pelosi had to be written by Stephen Miller and company. It couldn’t have been Trump himself. He neither has that many words in his vocabulary, nor the ability to use what he does have.

He’ll most likely be impeached in the House at some point today, but it won’t matter at all. The Senate will exonerate, and then His Ugliness will go on the warpath.

This allegiance to a scumbag misfit is beyond infuriating, though not difficult to understand. The Republicans are in power where it matters. Period. And they’d like to keep it that way, even if it means compromising their values and walking around with their heads firmly up Trump’s ass.

Wow. We are in serious trouble. Blatant self-interest will be our downfall yet.