Welcome to the second of my “when I fell like writing it” blogs. I wrote it in Quartzsite, AZ, a place I have visited in my RV every January without fail for over 30 years. Why do I visit? For the RV, Sports, and Recreation Show. And I am not alone. In January each year for the ten days of the show perhaps 100,000 RVs will roll through here. RVs are strewn all over the desert. Why did I write In Quartzsite? It was 3:00 a.m. I couldn‘t sleep. It was dark and I was sitting in my RV in a field of dirt. I do not think there is a patch of grass anywhere in Quartzsite. What else could an insomniac do in Quartzsite at 3:00 am?
From RVTravel: A Hillbilly was driving through Alabama when he was pulled over by a highway patrolman. “Got any ID“ asked the cop. “Bout what” asked the Hillbilly.
I want to apologize. Half of my readers may have been inundated with emails of the first blog. The other two readers, maybe not. I am still learning and did not always push the right buttons.
I have my first contributor. Or al least, my darling sister-in-law Mara has promised to contribute. She is an expert on Medicare plans and issues and has promised to write about them. I anxiously await her first contribution. If you have questions for her, you can ask them through the “contact me” button. (Her contributions will be reasons to keep anyone from saying that there is nothing worth reading in the The Geshrey.)
I didn’t get the feedback I expected from my first blog. There was one comment from Mara. “It was to long.” One daughter admitted that she had not even read it. (Thanks, Beck.) Perhaps I did not offend enough people with my use of the word “Rump.” I will try to be more offensive in the future. President Rump is offensive everyday and he has millions of supporters who relish his every tweet and hang on to his every word in his speeches.
I hoped more than one person to give me feedback. I was sure I would hear from Judy, a close friend who was enthusiastic when I announced my intent to write a blog. But she and I have very different political leanings and she may not have appreciated the way I expressed myself in the first blog so perhaps she is tuning me out. Sorry Judy, but as my wife said when I asked her if I should continue using the word Rump, “it is your blog.” Judy can, of course, respond. All she has to do is use the “contact me” section. I promise to take her comments seriously.
Also from RVTravel (1/21/20) is this hint: Do not put your home address in your GPSso that it is identifiable as your home addresss. Use another address, perhaps even the closest police station. This way, if the GPS is lost or stolen no one Will know where you live. Remember, if you lose it the person who ends up with it will know you are not home. Not a big deal if you lose it close to home and expect to be home that day, but a big deal if you are on vacation far from home.
Why am I using “Rump” to refer to you-know-who. Because if I use the word “ass” I would be defaming donkeys. I respect donkeys and do not want to hurt their feelings.
One thing is really perplexing me and every person with whom I brought this up. Why do Fundamentalist Christians support Rump? Why are they the core of his base? He epitomizes everything bad when measured against the Ten Commandments; adultery, theft, and bearing false witness. How many fundamentalist Christians would feel comfortable if he was dating their daughters, knowing what they know about him?
Actually, I am not really perplexed. He gets support from the Christian Right because he panders to it. Here are some examples of his pandering. He appoints as federal judges people on a list given him by a fundamentalist Christian organization. This includes but is not limited to Supreme Court Justices. He has aligned himself with adoption agencies that will not screen same-sex couples (some will not screen couples of different religious persuasions.) He maligns other religions (think of his attempt to exclude Muslims from the U.S.) The Christian Right – self-described as the most persecuted majority in the U.S. – just loves him.
There was criticism by Joe Scarborough on MSNBC’s Morning Joe directed against Ken Starr and Alan Dershowitz. Per Scarborough Rump should not have hired them for his impeachment trial defense team because they were part of the defense team for pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. This is not a fair criticism. They are lawyers and did their job by defending Epstein. However, they do carry baggage. In August 1998, on national television, Dershowitz said an impeachable offense does not have to be a crime if you have someone who corrupts the office of the President of the United States and who abuses trust and who poses a great danger to our liberty. He also said the framers of the Constitution used the term “high crimes and misdemeanors” as an equivalent to the English description of “great offenses against the state.” Now Dershowitz is claiming that there must be a crime to be impeached.
Starr corrupted the impeachment process in his work against Clinton. Clinton allegedly committed perjury. But this charge was not a “high crime and misdemeanor” because it was not an act that only a president could commit. It was not a great offense against the state. Even the lowest person on our societal scale can commit perjury. But only a President of the United States can hold back Congressionally allocated money with the intent of forcing Ukraine to announce an investigation of Biden, a political rival. If Starr thought perjury was an impeachable offense how can he claim that trying to extort Ukraine is not an impeachable offense?
One last thought. When the Constitution was adopted there were no federal criminal statutes. The first federal criminal laws were not enacted until April of 1990. To state that only crimes are impeachable activities would have meant that George Washington was immune from impeachment for the first year of his first term because he took office in April, 1989. Under the Articles of Confederation the only criminal laws the U.S. Government could enact related to piracy and other acts on the high seas.
I leave you with the following thought. “Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress; but I repeat myself.” Mark Twain.