Yellow is always the first of the colors to punch through the grey drear of the New York winter. Mind you, it never fully disappears during the long cold months. Taxicabs and school buses keep yellow’s presence alive during the long dark season, but it keeps its head down.
Seemingly with the first clear day near spring, though, yellow is everywhere. Forsythia bushes all at once decide on a day to arrive, and they all come out together. Daffodils, sometimes while there’s still snow on the ground take the first hint of warmer days as a promise and suddenly, there they are, too.
Living so close to Central Park, I am lucky enough to be able to see the natural cycle unfold every year. I’ve never been so acutely aware of our seasonal wheel as I was during the pandemic. Those strange days forced me to slow down to the point that I could experience it.
I’m extremely fond of my place on the couch. It’s where I sat during the shutdown and where I’m sitting now. From here, it seems easier to see the world at large than when I am out in the middle of it. Slowing down and letting the sensation of being alive fully register has certainly changed my outlook on many things. Even when I am out walking, if I just let my pace lag a bit, I start to see things I would have missed speeding by.
As much as I think about it, try as I might, I cannot begin to see the appeal of the man the Republicans have all but confirmed as their nominee to run for President this year. What is it that they are seeing? What is it about him, that makes all these people want him to represent them?
I keep coming back to this and the more I do, the less I can wrap my head around it.
Any one of the hundreds of scandals this guy has embroiled himself in would have derailed anyone else on the planet. Why, again, did Senator Al Franken resign? That there was more outrage when President Obama wore a tan suit to some political dinner than there was over his successor being found guilty of sexually assaulting a woman in a department store changing room means that every norm that we used to guide our lives has fallen by the wayside.
Adolph Hitler was freely elected by the German people. He was seen by them as a way out of the financial ruin and instability that plagued post-war Germany. We don’t have those problems here so that can’t be the reason.
The unemployment rate in our country has fluctuated between 3.4% and 3.9% since President Biden took office. The pandemic, of course, trashed the economy before that, but some of the blame for that must fall on the previous Administration’s shoulders for their delayed and often inept response to it.
Our 45th President was the first in history to leave office with fewer American jobs than there were when he came in. He also left behind a higher unemployment rate than there was when he began his term. The same thing happened during the tenures of both Bush presidents, so there is a case to be made for that to be a tendency during Republican periods in power, regardless of whether there’s a pandemic.
The Republicans have been desperately trying to launch impeachment hearings against President Biden since the midterms. Just yesterday they finally began signaling that they don’t have nearly the number of votes or, in fact, any evidence of wrongdoing at all, to make that happen. They are frantically figuring out how to backpedal out of it without losing more face than they already have.
While Joseph Biden does not appear to be guilty of much of anything other than doing his job, the same can’t quite be said of the presumptive Republican nominee.
I was going to write about this in my last post, but I couldn’t bring myself to face it. This morning, however, I was up early for a Zoom call. It’s grey, rainy, and cold outside so a walk is going to be borderline miserable. I’m on the couch, I might as well knuckle down and get to it.
Here’s where things stand on our 45th president’s current 91 felony counts and the judgments against him in the civil suit and the defamation suit. Thank you to Atlantic magazine for summing most of this up.
The first of the lot is New York Attorney General Leticia James’s civil suit against 45 and his two adult sons and an aide named Allen Weisselberg for fraud. In February a judge ruled that were guilty. They were inflating the value of their real estate holdings to obtain loans using them as collateral, and they were, in other cases, lowering their value to avoid paying taxes. The judge set the penalty at $355 million plus interest.
To appeal the case, 45 would have had to post a bond for $464 million. On March 25th, the last day he had to post the bond, an appeals court reduced the amount he would need to $175 million. The appeals court also gave him an extra ten days to raise this money so it remains to be seen what will happen. On the plus side, at the same time, the judge dismissed the ex-president’s claims of misconduct against the district attorney’s office.
The other thing that happened on Monday was that a date was set for the trial about the hush money he paid to porn star Stormy Daniels. Jury selection will start on April 15. This is maybe the least potentially damaging case to 45’s empire, but despite that, it looks like it might succeed. It could land him in prison.
Hitler spent some time in prison. That’s where he wrote Mein Kampf. He then got out early. Putting 45 behind bars may not be the solution everyone’s hoping it will be.
In May of last year, 45 was found guilty of sexually assaulting E. Jean Carroll and was ordered to pay her $5 million in damages. This past January he was then found guilty of publicly defaming her and was ordered to pay her an additional $83.3 million in restitution. 45 has appealed both cases and has been able to come up with the bond to cover the guarantee. The second case doesn’t seem to have taught him anything about what you can and cannot say about a person, so there is a very real possibility that there may be a second defamation suit coming his way.
There are 37 counts against 45 in conjunction with the boxes of privileged documents he took with him when he left the White House and which were found stored in a bathroom, among other places, at Mar-a-Lago.
The judge in this case, Aileen Cannon seems a bit shady. She was appointed to her position by 45. A trial date has not been set yet and the judge seems to be in no hurry to do so. IF 45 wins the presidency again, this could go away in January when he takes office. He could just dismiss it all. There is a clock on this one.
Okay. Then we have the charges against him in Georgia for election interference. This one got messier than it should have when it was discovered that Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis who initiated the case, was sleeping with her lead prosecutor. While that, in and of itself, isn’t necessarily criminal, there was some possible misconduct involving trips the two took together and who paid for them.
It was decided that Willis could remain on the case so long as her lead prosecutor did not. While I guess that could be deemed a victory for Willis, 45’s defense team now has something that they can keep shoving back in everyone’s faces.
There is still no trial date set, but Fani Willis has asked for it to happen on August 5.
In August of last year, a Grand Jury indicted 45 for election interference in Washington D.C. resulting in 4 felony counts. The trial was supposed to happen about three weeks ago, but 45 appealed. The Supreme Court of the United States of America is going to decide whether a former president should be immune to prosecution. Their decision will determine if this trial moves forward or not.
More than 30 states have tried to get 45 removed from their ballots. On March 4th, the US Supreme Court ruled unanimously that that power did not lie with the states, but rather with the federal government.
The Supreme Court also ruled against disqualification after the fact without Congress first passing legislation allowing them to do that. This was only voted for by the conservative majority in the chamber. The liberal minority all voted against it.
That’s what’s in process now and where they all stand. This is the man that Republicans want to put behind the desk in the Oval Office.
On March 8, the Republican National Committee voted in its new leadership. The two co-chairs were both hand-picked by 45. Michael Whatley is a Republican (of course) from North Carolina who has echoed 45’s claims of 2020 election fraud every chance he’s gotten. His co-chair, and I still can’t really believe that this has happened, is 45’s daughter-in-law, Lara who is married to his son Eric.
What this means is that all the funds in the RNC can now be used to help pay for 45’s mounting legal defense bills and judgments. 45 now has complete control of the RNC. And they willingly gave the reins to him. They are still going to need a small fortune to get their guy elected. What will be left after they spend everything to try to keep him out of prison?
Yesterday, 45 began touting a God Bless the USA Bible that is retailing for $60. While he claims he won’t make any money from its sales, he actually will. He will get a royalty from each sale. There is also a commission fee for using his likeness that will go right into his coffers.
The Bible has the American flag on the cover, our Constitution and Declaration of Independence inside it along with the hand-written lyrics to Lee Greenwood’s song, God Bless the USA.
While promoting it, 45 told reporters, “It’s my favorite book.”
All of that seems the stuff of an improbable movie. Sitting on the sofa and taking in what’s going on in our country doesn’t make it any easier to believe. It’s hard to sustain the level of incredulity that I currently have, but I’m working on it.
I can’t stop yawning. The cat is curled up in my lap. Rain is hitting the top of the air conditioner and the sound of it is lulling both of us to sleep.
Yesterday while I was walking, I noticed that some of the cherry blossoms were out. One big tree near the Delacorte Theatre in Central Park was almost fully in bloom. I hope the rain doesn’t knock them all to the ground.
I am going to go out in a minute. I am. First, though, I might just close my eyes for a minute…
Bruce has just become Canadian again, Richard. It’s much easier than facing the barrage of questions re 45😳
Can’t wait to see you in June. Jx