​What we observed today when the president’s former lawyer and fixer Michal Cohen took the stand to testify under oath before the House Oversight Committee, as the beginning of the impeachment process of the Orange (the “OM”) currently residing in the Oval Office. 
 
Exposing the OM’s modus operandi as con man, racist and as a pathological liar and cheat, Michael Cohen also offered credible testimony of several crimes that the president has committed while in office, not to mention more than a few committed beforehand. Adding insult to injury, he provided documents including signed checks made out to Michael Cohen in repayment for the hidden illegal hush money payments Cohen made on the president’s behalf. 
 
Even the Republican members on the committee did not make one attempt to defend their president’s indefensible and illegal behavior; rather, they chose to focus again and again on the fact that Cohen was previously convicted of lying to Congress. But this very fact only underscores the fact that Cohen had no upside for coming clean in this session before Congress, only the downside of risking a substantial increase in his time in prison if he were caught in any way lying again. Cohen, instead, came to Congress this time with the truth and with the goods corroborating his testimony, as he told all about the heinous behavior of the criminally inclined boss he served and knew intimately for over a decade. He came with the receipts. He came with documents. He came loaded for bear.
 
While the Republicans had no interest in finding out what their president may have done before and after the election of 2016 to break the law, Democratic members used their allotted time to ask good questions, helping to expose the president’s potential high crimes and misdemeanors, which are adding up by the day.
 
It is clear that the resident in the Oval Office is a criminal. It was proven both by the corroborating evidence and the testimony that Cohen supplied today. And there were clear indications as Cohen answered questions, that this is not the end but rather just the beginning of the president’s legal, financial and political troubles. Clearly, there are many more investigations being conducted both by the SDNY and Muller’s investigation looking into the potential crimes committed by the president both before and after 2016. Why do we know this? Because Cohen indicated that there were several matters he could not discuss publicly as they are part of ongoing investigations looking into the OM.
 
This was such a barnstorming, history shaking and history making testimony before a congressional committee, it will probably be discussed in 200 years from now as the official first step toward the OM’s removal from office, as Chairman Elijah Cummings later indicated in his brief press conference after the hearing. 
 
In truth, Chairman Cummings heartfelt summation at the end of the hearing will go down as one of the most powerful speeches ever given by any chairman at any committee hearing in the nation’s history. Speaking extemporaneously and from the heart, Chairman Elijah Cummings spoke truth to power and called on the nation to return to sanity, saying that we must find a way “back to normal.” 
 
Nothing about this president of ours has ever been normal, and nothing about it ever will be. Nothing about his lies, his crimes, his demeaning of all of our institutions, norms and all that Americans should hold dear has been normal or will ever be normal. But Congress took its first step today toward holding the current president accountable for his crimes and for his lies and incessant deceit. For the OM, this is the beginning of the end. 
 
But way off in the distance I can see a new America rising from the Orange Monster’s swath of destruction. I see it in the removal of a cancer on the presidency, to use John Dean’s testimony in another congressional hearing many decades ago as reference. I can see it in a new commitment in Washington to a new and true code of ethics and in new laws designed to protect America from any president who ever again attempts to abuse his power as 45 has done almost every day of his presidency.
 
Given the courageous and heroic efforts that Michael Cohen made today on behalf of the nation’s healing, along with the patriotic and all-American way in which Chairman Elijah Cummings and the Democratic members of his committee conducted themselves today in their first step toward protecting the nation against a rogue president, I felt new hope today for our country. We can only hope that, in time, the repugnant ones who have attempted to subvert our nation and our democracy will be brought to justice, and that the truth and majesty of our democracy will one day soon be fully restored.

​In deference to the 91stAnnual Academy Awards ceremony to be held later tonight, my nominee for Best Performance By A Con Artist goes to the Orange Monster (the “OM”) currently residing in the Oval Office. His performances as a Con Man over the first two years of his presidency have been novel, disorienting, and so utterly convincing that he has managed to bamboozle at least a third of the country. His achievement as a Con Man is, in fact, unparalleled in our history, having taken over one of America’s two largest political parties and silenced almost all resistance within his party. In fact, he has managed to so distort reality that many in America see their reality through his eyes. Whatever he says is what they believe. If the OM tells them the sky is green, then green is what they see! What a superb con artist he is. In fact, his entire persona and legacy is built on a con, and little else. Never as wealthy as he purported to be, never as smart, never a good or even competent negotiator, and never a successful businessman, but a bankrupt wasting the fortune he inherited from his father, he is truly and deeply successful in one and only aspect, as the very best and most effective con artist in the entire world. His performance as a con artist is indeed worthy of an Oscar, and perhaps several years in federal prison.
 
As we move closer to the release of the Mueller Report and the OM’s subsequent downfall, the OM’s incessant war with reality and the truth—as well as his many efforts to obstruct justice done in plain sight—becomes clearer with each new revelation of each new passing day, thanks to our media, that our 45thpresident is nothing but a thieving, lying con-man. 
 
The OM’s con jobs will become increasingly clear over the course of the next week as he meets with the North Korean dictator and attempts to con Americans and the world into believing that there is headway being made in the negotiations to bring North Korea to denuclearization. As the head of all of our intelligence agencies have indicated, in reality there is no progress being made whatsoever in this area. A handshake does not mean anything more than a handshake. The summit, in fact, is all about a photo opportunity and little else. It is highly doubtful in reality that this latest summit with Kim will bring North Korean any closer to denuclearization. But, given his con-job ways, the OM may choose to give more away to the Kim regime without getting anything in return, and that will indeed be news, not of progress but of more of our OM’s indecency, incompetence and of his ongoing con artistry.
 
At virtually the same time on Wednesday, the American people will witness the OM’s fixer and personal lawyer’s personal testimony before congress, under oath and on live television, in which the convicted felon will tell of all about many of the criminal activities that the OM committed before and after taking office, both in the president directing Cohen to lie to congress, as well as the president directing him to pay illegal campaign contributions on the OM’s behalf, to cover up his dirty dealings and hush money payments to at least two of his secret mistresses.
 
No doubt both events on Wednesday will be broadcast on a split screen, providing Americans and the entire world with two different aspects of the OM’s con-man persona, modus operandi and shenanigans. As a con man on the world stage, he will spin his incompetent, ignorant and idiotic behavior as a major win. Only the most gullible Americans among his ignorant and uneducated base will buy his con job; everyone else in the entire world knows he is a fraud. On the other side of the screen, the world will listen to the testimony of a convicted felon, who the OM chose to be his fixer, stooge and confidant, as Mr. Cohen details the OM’s ongoing career as con artist-in-chief. Truly it will be a two-for-one spectacle of presidential hubris gone amok, a true tour-de-force by a true con artist.
 
We can only hope that our 45thpresident will soon be given the total and rapt attention that his performance, on both the world stage and the domestic front, truly deserves.

As we move closer to the Orange Monster’s (“the OM’s) downfall, his incessant war with reality and the truth grows ever more clear with each new revelation of each new passing day, thanks to our media, The Protector of the People. 
 
We already know that Individual-1—thus far an unindicted co-conspirator in a felonious scheme to defraud the American people during the 2016 election—directed Michael Cohen and David Pecker, owner of the National Inquirer, to make illegal campaign contributions to his campaign by facilitating hush money payments to his mistresses. 
 
Now we know that Individual-1 fired U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions so that he could appoint a political hack, a certain Matthew Whittaker, as the Acting Attorney General of the United States, and then sought to have Mr. Whittaker step in, quite against the law, to un-recuse one of the president’s attorneys so that the SDNY’s investigation into Individual-1, and his family and business, could be stymied. This is just another one of the thousands of steps the Orange Monster has taken to obstruct, block, delegitimize, thwart or otherwise suspend investigations looking into his potential crimes and those of his family and his business associates. It is the latest attack in our president’s ongoing war with reality.
 
According to a new report in the Washington Post just today, the president is now considering firing the Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats. And why? Because the Director recently had the temerity to present an accurate presentation to Congress as to what intelligence assessments concluded regarding threats to the United States. Because Director Coats did his duty and told Congress the truth, and presented reality and facts that differ from the president’s view of things, the Orange Monster is reportedly furious with Coats and looking for a way to oust him next. It’s just another assault on reality, and on those who dare to tell the truth since it embarrasses the president publicly, making him look like a fool. So probably Director Coats will get the axe next, as Individual-1 continues to remove any and all truth tellers, who fail to conform to his distorted view of the world, from his administration.
 
This is just another step in our 45th president’s assault on truth and his ongoing war with reality, even as a veritable waterfall of lawsuits rain down on him, taking issue with his false assertion of a fake national emergency when we all know that there isn’t one. 
 
Even the sycophants that make up what is left of the GOP know this. Reality is reality, but our president constantly seeks to create his own reality—far more fake than the fakest news reports on the Fox Noise Channel—then asks all of his minions to adhere to and fall in line with the constant lies he presents as facts.

According to Andrew McCabe’s new book, we learned just this week that the president would not take the word of his own intelligence agents that North Korea would never surrender their capability to launch nuclear missiles as they see that as the only way they can stay in power. Instead, the president said he did not believe this reality. He insisted instead on the illusion that North Korea did not have this capability. And why? “Putin told me they didn’t,” he said. And he chose to believe Putin over United States intelligence. 
 
Again and again and again, the Orange Monster wants to believe the reality that works for him personally, not the reality that exists. Indeed, the many lawsuits arguing against the OM’s fake national emergency to build his ridiculous wall on the southern border, are actually attacks on our current president’s ability and willingness to alter reality at will, whenever it suits him, either to protect himself or to get what he wants at any cost, no matter how damaging to our nation or to our national security or our constitutional democracy. 
 
The OM’s latest and most audacious move to date: Using the declaration of a bogus national emergency—when there clearly isn’t one--so that he can to do an end-run around Congress, usurping their power of the purse, is clearly unconstitutional. As I pointed out in my last blog, our constitution makes quite clear that it is only Congress who controls the power of the purse. 
 
1Our Founders saw the three branches of government as separate but equal in power, and wanted each branch to act as a check and balance on the other two branches. This system has served the American people since the nation was founded. That is, until our 45thpresident took office. 
 
He Who Must Not Be Named defies reality, offends truth, and staggers our imagination in his ongoing deceit and never-ending corruption. 
 
Please, Mr. Mueller, hurry with your report and bring reality and justice to the guilty.
 

​I have long thought that the election of our current president would bring about the demise of the GOP. Indeed, his rise to power and his takeover of the GOP only indicated that the party was already in the throes of its last rites even then.
 
Now, as we move ever closer to the Orange Monster’s (“the OM’s) downfall, it becomes increasingly clear that the GOP Senate fully intend to go down with him. Increasingly, the seats on the Republican side of the Chamber of the United States Senate look more and more like the deck chairs on the Titanic.
 
Let’s just look at the OM’s latest and most audacious move to date: Using the declaration of a bogus National Emergency—when there clearly isn’t one, so that he can to do an end-run around Congress, usurping their power of the purse, simply because he could not convince the American people or their Representatives to pay for an unnecessary wall on our southern border that he promised over and over again that Mexico would pay for. This action is clearly unconstitutional. As our constitution makes quite clear, it is only Congress who controls the power of the purse. The Founders did not want to grant authoritarian powers to the Executive Branch. Rather, our Founders saw the three branches of government as separate but equal in power, and wanted each branch to act as a check and balance on the other two branches. This system has served the American people since the nation was founded. That is, until our 45thpresident took office.
 
Unwilling to follow the law and to obey the constitution which he took an oath to protect and to defend, the OM has refused to stay in his executive lane from the beginning. From the outset, he has done all that he can to subvert the power, sustainability and the legitimacy of both the legislative and the judicial branches of our government. For the first two years of his presidency, the GOP controlled House and Senate went along with every claim he made for more power, cowering like frightened rats before the Orange Monster, even as he swerved beyond and then through every guardrail and norm of our government and society.
 
Then came the midterm elections when the American public overwhelmingly returned the House of Representatives to Democratic control, so that a check and balance on the executive branch could finally be restored. And thank God! But have the members of the GOP, what remains of them in the House and Senate, learned any lesson from their defeat in November 2018? Apparently not, since Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has now acquiesced to the OM once again. Where McConnell was warning the president against declaring a made-up and fake national emergency last week, he now says that he is all for it! 
 
That Nancy Pelosi will bring to the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives a resolution against what she rightly calls a “power grab,” is certain. Nor can there be any doubt that the House will pass the Resolution declaring 45’s emergency declaration both fake and dead on arrival. Then, Leader McConnell will be forced to bring the Resolution to a straight up or down vote in the U.S. Senate. No doubt every Democratic Senator will vote against the president’s unconstitutional move. But whatever are the wimps that masquerade as Republican Senators ever going to do, particularly after they wailed for years against the executive actions taken by President Barack Obama’s during his tenure. Even the most Republican among them would have to admit that what 45 is attempting goes far, far beyond anything President Obama ever tried. The OM’s power grab, if successful, would provide a precedent making the powers of the president more like that of a Dictator than that of a leader of a democracy. This simply must not be allowed to happen. Not if we intend to still have a democracy of any kind when the OM is removed from office.
 
So, the gutless wonders otherwise known as Republican Senators will have a choice: They can defend our Democracy and protect the powers of the legislative branch, or they can side with their president and give him the powers of a Dictator. This, of course, will be a hard call for most of them, since they have shown over the last two years that they always will choose party over country. No power grab has been too much for them to get behind, simply to maintain their own power. But this time will be different, as each of their senate seats will be on the line. Choosing wrong could very well cost them their power and their job. 
 
Now, thank God, they will be asked to choose between their Tyrant or the Constitution, to keep their congressional authority preserved or to hand it over to their unhinged leader, all the while knowing that the American people will be watching their vote perhaps more closely than any vote ever taken in the history of the Senate. When they cast their vote, they will know that they can choose to please both the president’s crazy Republican base and the American public at large. They will have to choose which they want to win: A primary or a general election, because in many cases they won’t be able to win both. What will be more important to them: their own power or the rule of law?
 
Interestingly, there are many more Republican Senators up for reelection than the Democrats during this coming election cycle. How each Republican Senator votes may well determine whether or not they keep their seat. Now that their own power is on the line, will they choose Dictatorship or Democracy?
 
Sadly, given the past behavior over the last two years, many will no doubt choose Dictatorship. Having already given up any standard of reason or sanity, they will no doubt willingly go down with the ship. Many others, however, will be forced to rethink their priorities and positions and what it is they want to stand for before it is too late. Maybe enough of the GOP Senators will choose to survive and vote against their president, perhaps even mounting a veto-proof majority to stop his unconstitutional power grab, and put him back in his highchair where he belongs. We can only hope and pray that enough of them choose this path. It would be shocking if these spineless worms found their spines after all, but it would be extremely good for our country. And this might portend that they would be willing then to vote for the impeachment trial that will obviously come within the year. But let’s not hold our collective breath, since the Republicans are a repugnant bunch.
 
But regardless of how Republican Senators vote now, whether on the president’s unconstitutional power grab or at his forthcoming impeachment trial, no prayers will be able to save the GOP from itself and its own destruction. Nothing Republicans do now can in any way redeem them from the unforgivable pact they signed with the Devil more than two years ago. Having already proven that the GOP is unable and unwilling to govern, nothing can redeem them from the evil contract they made, nothing can save their party from extinction. Like a wounded whale out of water, it is already breathing its last breath. The stench of its carcass will soon be dead and buried.
 
It will take a few decades after the GOP’s final collapse in 2020, to rebuild, reform and restructure a new conservative party in the political wilderness. But given the destruction that they and their president have wrought upon the country and upon our democracy everywhere we look, they will have nothing better to do with their time. Without any party or power or political base left, they will have plenty of time to repent and regret the day they ever took power of all three branches of government in 2016, and perhaps by 2050 or so, they will have found a soul and a conscience and a new reason to begin anew. 

​As we move ever closer to the Orange Monster’s (“the OM’s) downfall and his removal from the White House, I believe it behooves our country to look at why we as a people allowed someone as corrupt, vile and utterly incompetent as the OM to become our president in the first place. In truth, his corruption mirrors our own. His pay-to play schemes reflects on how corrupt our political parties and our government in Washington, DC had already been corrupted by dark money and, in particular, by billions upon billions pouring in illegally from foreign adversarial governments. The OM is only a con man, emboldened by an already corrupt system. If anything, the OM’s candidacy and presidency shone a bright light on the network of oligarchs, both foreign and domestic, who have stepped into the void to attempt to take over and control all of the resources of  the entire planet.
 
In truth, the OM’s rise to power is forcing us to look at this insidious network of oligarchs, including those from the USA working with those from Russia and Saudi Arabia for example, and how they have begun to lay claim to all that there is. The wealthiest 400 of the world’s oligarchs now hold far more wealth than most of the entire population of the Earth. This is theft in plain sight on a massive worldwide scale. And thanks to the OM, we are beginning to see how it works as an enemy to democracy and to the majority of the American people. 
 
As I pointed out in my last blog, thanks to the OM it has become ever more clear that many in our federal government may have been bought and paid for with laundered Russian money or with Saudi Arabian blood money or perhaps with both. We are under attack not merely by foreign governments but by the most powerful and wealthy oligarchs throughout the world. And, as I have pointed out in recent postings, it becomes clearer every day that the OM won’t be running for reelection in 2020. The evidence of his crimes, including his many acts of Obstruction of Justice and Abuse of Power are out in the open for us all to see. It is only a matter of time before the wheels of justice remove him from office, probably before the end of 2019.
 
But the larger and far more important question is “Why?” Why did we as people elect the OM? Why does over a third of our countrymen see things his way and believe in him still, after the nearly 9,000 documented lies he has told since taking office? What do we have to learn from all of this?
 
The Lesson is here for the learning. As Americans, we have collectively taken our eyes off the ball for too long, not trusting enough or caring enough in our democracy to vote in numbers that would truly reflect our society. We have allowed our government to be sold out from under us to the highest bidders. A government of the people, by the people, and for the people cannot endure without active participation from its people. We as a people need to insist on truth, justice and fairness in our politics, in our media coverage, in our leaders. Having turned our attentions away from the very institutions that have insured and guarded our freedom, the same freedom that American patriots have paid for with their very lives, we risk having it stolen out from under us.

The comparatively large turnout in the midterm election in 2018 was a heartening sign that America is waking up and accepting the critical dangers to our system of government, returning some checks and balances to the system by replacing the deadbeat and morally bankrupt Republican control of the House of Representatives to the Democrats, as was the Women’s March of 2017 and 2018. The lessons we are learning from the very fact of the OM’s presence in the White House, has brought a new Resistance to all of the corruption at hand. We are beginning to learn the lesson.
 
We will need to learn many more lessons from the current political debacle we find ourselves in currently. Once the OM is removed from office, we will still have many lessons to learn, and there will be much that will be needed to change in order to recover from the destruction that the OM has brought to our institutions of governance. But the OM is not the cause of all of our problems; he is merely a symptom of the corrupt system now in place, and he is the beneficiary. Once he goes, we will have many fights ahead. His true believers will not go quietly into the night. They will need to be both fought and taught, and brought back to some level of reason and sanity. The entire system will have to be changed, cleansed and taken to task. The GOP as it is currently constipated, will need to removed entirely and torn from our cultural landscape like the bad seed that it is.
 
The lessons are for learning, and for teaching. 
 
In having a president as corrupt and criminal as the OM, we have learned much and we will have many more hard lessons to learn from in our near future. As a people, we will continue to have to struggle with our homework assignments that our current presidency has brought to all Americans. Indeed, we still have much to learn about civics and government and a new way of funding campaigns. We will need to fight to get all money out of politics. We will need to fight for our democracy and the freedoms that most lazy Americans, largely uneducated and illiterate, have for too long taken for granted. In that, like all other great civilizations that came and went, we are victims of our own success. In this, can we learn from our mistakes or are we destined to repeat them perpetually until we finally succumb completely to our own stupidity?
 
The lessons of our mistakes are here now, front and center, for our collective learning. But will we as a nation choose to learn? Will we choose as a nation to grow and change and mature? Or will we, like much of our media outlets, remain stuck on stupid? 
 
Let’s hope we can learn from the lessons before us, and make the changes required of us as a people to become a more perfect union, before it is too late.

ith every new detail we learn from our free and fair press in the United States of America that the Orange Monster (“the OM”) in the Oval Office is running our government in the same way that he always ran and continues to run his business, as a mob boss at the head of a racketeering organization. 
 
Every day it becomes clearer that the OM and his adult children may one day be prosecuted under RICO laws for the ongoing racketeering involved in the OM’s private business, his campaign and his presidency (annihilating the very Emoluments Clause of the Constitution that he took an oath to defend), his foundation, and how he now conducts his foreign policy in a pay-to-play manner, probably using his inaugural committee to add to his purportedly ill-gotten gains.
 
To compare the OM to our most disgraced president, Richard Nixon, who was forced to resign, is to greatly discredit Nixon. We have never had anyone in the Oval Office who can credibly be accused of behaving like a mob boss the way the OM has and continues to do. 
 
Now, with the recent courageous action taken by Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon and the owner of the Washington Post, in revealing that he was being blackmailed and extorted by David Pecker, owner of the National Enquirer, the extent of the OM’s potential willingness to go far beyond any bounds of legality, comes deeply into focus. Since Pecker has already admitted that he and his company have aided and abetted the OM in committing a criminal felony, the OM’s dirty little fingerprints seem to be all over this latest criminal act, along with the fingerprints of MBS and of the murderous Saudi Arabian regime. 
 
That the richest man in the world may be a victim of such extortion and blackmail as dished out by the sleazy criminal worldwide conspiracy involving Russia, Saudi Arabia, and the OM’s Administration, perhaps along with many prominent elected Republicans who may have knowingly accepted illegal foreign contributions from Russia and Saudi Arabia, is astonishing and frightening, but not surprising. After all, if Jeff Bezos cannot protect himself from this type of tyranny who among us can?
 
For years we have had the best government that money can buy. Now it becomes clear than many in our federal government may have been bought and paid for with laundered Russian money or with Saudi Arabian blood money or perhaps with both. This should surprise no one. We are under attack by foreign governments, who are seeking through illegal and underhanded means to subvert our government’s actions and foreign policy. This was and is an attack as serious as if we were being bombarded and blasted by Russian, Saudi Arabian and perhaps Chinese missiles, not filled with nuclear warheads but filled with billions of dollars of laundered money and bribes. As much as a nuclear war, this is perhaps as dangerous and far more insidious. The attack comes in dead of night, in dark rooms and with dark money, enabled by the best bought and paid for Supreme Court, who gave us Citizens United, opening the floodgates for such dark money.
 
Since we now have a federal government for sale to the highest bidder (say, for example, to the cabal of Russian Oligarchs and American Oligarchs like Robert and Rebekah Mercer—who hoisted Cambridge Analyitica, Wikileaks and Breitbart and the OM himself on the American public—along with the Shyster-In-Chief Rupert Murdoch, owner of the Fox News (Fox Noise) Channel, and other questionable members of what looks more and more like an international conspiracy, we should not be surprised when an attempt is made not only to overthrow our democracy but to end or distort every other democracy on the planet, and to break apart our democratic alliances like NATO. Can anything less than world domination be their goal? I seriously doubt it.
 
As I pointed out in my last posting, it becomes clearer every day that the OM won’t be running for reelection next year. He will have been removed from office by then. Earlier today, Senator Elizabeth Warren talked about this very reality in a speech given in Iowa, already on the campaign trail. Indeed, she pointed out that the OM might not even be a free person when the 2020 election rolls around. 
 
Not unlike any other criminal organization brought to justice under the RICO laws of the United States of America, the mob boss at the head of the criminal conspiracy will go down the hardest, but when such an evil and villainous leader goes down, his entire  enterprise will fall with him.
 
In this case, I would suggest that Mr. David Pecker and what little is left of his despicable National Enquirer (which should really be renamed Blackmail, Inc.), will be among the first members of the OM’s vast international conspiracy to fall. 
 
The many other shoes to drop when the big boss falls, long after the indictments of Flynn, Manafort, Gates, Stone and the other already indicted folks, may soon include Don, Jr., Ivanka and Jared, Mike Pence (who was, after all, handpicked by the Russian-appointed Campaign Managter Manafort, perhaps at Putin’s approval), the Mercers, Cambridge Analytica, Steve Bannon, Rupert Murdoch and his tribe of manipulators at Fox Noise, particularly Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson, the Saudi Arabian government, and elected Republican enablers who aided and abetted Obstruction of Justice including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, former House Speaker Paul Ryan, and perhaps the most despicable on the least, Representative David Nunes. And that’s just the short list. Soon indictments will be falling in Washington, DC, like a heavy spring rain, beginning in late winter through all of the spring and into the summer of 2019. 
 
Long before 2020 arrives, the Don of this criminal cabal will be forced to leave his office, and will probably end up in a supervised padded cell somewhere, when he finds that the plea of insanity or of onset dementia rather than a pleading of guilty, will prove to be too hard to resist. A padded cell is, of course, far more comfortable, even wearing a straitjacket, than it is living in a cell without padding. And it’s far warmer, but not as warm as the spot already reserved for him in Hell.

As predicted in my last blog posting on Sunday, February 3, the president’s State of the ​Union address on Tuesday night was absurd and ridiculous, made even more laughable by the disclosure in the press of his comments made during a meeting earlier in the day on Tuesday where he publicly ridiculed the Democrats in general and the Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer in particular, while also taking aim at the late Senator John McCain who was laid to rest only six months ago. Apparently, he is still smarting over their victories over him, and cannot let any perceived slight go … ever. So much for his call for unity on Tuesday night!
 
In truth, watching and listening to the president’s buffoonery on full display on Tuesday night during his State of the Union address to the nation, in which he called for national unity in the House Chamber felt as though I were in 1939 Nazi Germany watching Hitler beg for humanitarian assistance for Jewish and homosexual German citizens—you know, at the same time that he was busy planning their extermination.
 
The dangerous incoherence, utter stupidity, incompetence and downright laziness of the current occupant of the Oval Office, on full display on Tuesday night only confirmed his status as Liar in Chief to the entire world. Again and again, he told whopper after whopper while the sycophants representing what is left of what was once the Republican Party, stood and cheered, greeting each and every lie with applause. Out of one side of his forked tongue, the Orange Monster (“the OM”) called for unity, while out of the other side he threatened Democrats not to attend to their sworn constitutional duty to provide oversight of the criminal cabal that is his administration and cabinet. 
 
As I predicted on Sunday, when the OM stepped onto the platform of the House of Representatives to address Congress and the nation last night, he had no credibility left and risked being laughed out of the place. To underscore the absurdity of his call for unity, only a few hours later the president was at his usual divisive attacks again, referring to House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff as a “political hack” who had no business looking into his potential crimes, i.e., in kickbacks, bribery, extortion, and the extensive money laundering that has propped us his so-called business for decades. 
 
When he spoke of a national emergency on the southern border during his speech last night, a groan could be heard throughout the House Chamber. When he lied about the need for his border wall, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi kept herself in check to keep from laughing out loud, by shuffling through papers and lowering her eyes.  
 
As I predicted on Sunday, the speech was indeed worth watching, if only to observe how all of the Republicans groveled before their leader, still doing their level best to pretend that the Emperor was wearing clothes, even when he stood before the nation obviously naked and quite intimidated by the women dressed in white in the House Chamber. 
 
Naked as he was, for the entire world to see, with his lies exposed, and his scandalous and corrupt campaign, administration, Inaugural Committee, business and foreign policy all exposed for the frauds that they are, he addressed the nation as the most naked and exposed blight on our democracy that the nation has ever witnessed. In short, he is a national disgrace, whose days in office are numbered. 
 
It becomes clearer every day that this president won’t be running for reelection next year, since he will be removed from office by then, either by impeachment or by his forced resignation. The Orange Monster is going down, and he will take all of the Repugnant-Ones and the Fox Noise Channel with him in 2020, much the way the Iceberg took down the Titanic. And that, folks, is the true State of the Union!

​It’s Sunday, Super Bowl Day, February 3, 2019. As I take a break to write this post, and my thoughts take me to the State of the Union address that our current president is scheduled to address in the House of Representatives on Tuesday night, I realize what an absurd and ridiculous event it will be.
 
By now everyone knows that the president is a pathological liar and that he has surrounded himself in the White House and in his cabinet with sycophants who will willingly lie for him, and that not a word that he utters can be trusted. 
 
All of the leaders of our president’s intelligence community spoke truth to power last week and were then publicly ridiculed by the Orange Monster in the White House.
 
Christopher Wray, Director of the FBI, and Gina Haspel, Director of the CIA, and Dan Coats, National Intelligence Director were reading from the Worldview Intelligence Report, prepared in advance and culled from the work of thousands of diligent and dedicated employees from all of these national intelligence agencies, AND they were televised giving testimony under oath before a committee. They were not misquoted. Anyone with eyes to see and ears to ear could see and hear each of them assess the threats to the United States in a very different way than the president does. Isis is still a threat they say; the OM says they are not. According to the intelligence community professionals Iran is living up to its agreement made with President Obama not to develop nuclear weapons; OM says the opposite. They say that North Korea has not curtailed their nuclear programs, while the OM holds the opposite view. When our idiotic president was confronted in a TV interview about how his view of things is not how all of the intelligence community sees things, he lied about that too, saying that they had all later told him that they were misquoted by the fake news media. This lie shredded any last bit of credibility that the president should have with anyone who lives in a sane world of facts. You can believe your lying eyes and lying ears, or you can believe the current occupant of the White House, but you certainly cannot believe both.
 
So when the OM steps onto the platform of the House of Representatives to address Congress and the nation, he has no credibility left and risks being laughed out of the place by both Republicans and Democrats. When he says there is a national emergency on the southern border, how will even the gutless wonders in the Republican Party avoid smirking? When he lies about the need for his border wall how will the Democrats present keep from laughing out loud? How will House Speaker Nancy Pelosi keep from cracking up at our cracking-out, hyped-up, lying Commander In Chief? In truth, it may be worth watching only to see how all of these people continue to pretend that the Emperor has no clothes. He will be out there on that platform, exposed and naked as hell of the whole world to see, and it will not be a pretty sight.
 
So how is the State of the Union? Absurd, ridiculous and endangered by an out-of-control president who should already have been removed from office. As for the occasion of the State of the Union address itself? In the very least it will be Theater of the Absurd, even more ridiculous than any Ionesco play ever was. At least we will have a return to reality when Stacey Abrams addresses the nation after the president’s lies have spewed forth out of his mouth.
 
Meanwhile, enjoy the game!