Author Archives: cuduke

About cuduke

I am a retired pharmacist with lots of opinions about a variety of subjects. I am two years into this retirement thing and decided I need a hobby. For better or worse this blog is it. I was born and raised in Sheridan WY, attended a Catholic prep school in Richardton ND, and obtained my pharmacy degree from Creighton University in Omaha NE. I married my lovely wife immediately after college and we have lived in Omaha ever since. I have a daughter who lives in San Francisco and a son who lives in Denver and we take advantage of their hospitality as much as possible.

Take That, Mr. Constitution!

Trump, from day one of his presidency, has been prodding and picking away at the sensitive exoskeleton of the Constitution.  But Mick Mulvaney’s blatant public announcement yesterday that the president did indeed attempt to coerce a foreign government to further his political interests,  well what you have there is the President of the United States clenching his fist and slugging Mr. Constitution right in the grapes.  We do have a constitutional crisis on our hands.  When the president of the county stands before us and proclaims Article Two of the Constitution gives him the right to do anything he wants, he has gouged the eyes out of the Constitution with an ice pick.  And yesterday Mulvaney didn’t stop the constitutional assault with that abuse of power and quid pro quo statement.  With nothing hesitant in his voice, he declared that the facility for the upcoming G7 conference that will host diplomats and staff from all over the world will be Trump’s own Doral Country Club. That is a  direct violation of the emoluments clause.  So bend over Mr. Constitution because here comes a Louisville Slugger straight up your patootie.

Gaslighting has been a favorite tactic for Trump.  Keep repeating something and pretty soon there will be people who start believing whatever was said.  And it’s pretty clear he is comfortable residing in chaos.  As we pass from one imbroglio to the next, it is easy to forget about all those that preceded.  But this political approach of shamelessly admitting to wrongdoing and somehow believing that makes it tolerable is something new, and frankly, alarming.  He is practically daring congress to impeach him on 25th Amendment grounds.  Publicly flaunting the law is not something a normal person does, and when you do that and you are the leader of a country, there is something wrong in your head.  It’s the kind of thing that labels a person a megalomaniac.

Of course without a critical psychological analysis it is impossible to make a judgment of competency.  But here is a read for you. Unfit for Office    It’s the very lengthly George Conway Atlantic article.  He makes the point that the President of the United States, particularly this president, is the most observable individual on the planet, and the general public should be able draw some observational conclusions.  The second half of the article (you will have to scroll down quite a ways) concerns narcissistic personality disorder.  Trump meets every criteria.  I don’t think this is mentioned in the article, but take note sometime how Trump claims ownership of the government.  It’s MY generals, MY military, MY economy, MY NASA, MY miners, MY farmers.  Even MY African American.  Yikes. Lest we all forget, it is OUR government.

We keep lowering and lowering the bar of acceptable conduct for this president.  Congressional Republicans have nearly placed the bar at ground level.  Jesus Christ most of you are attorneys. Wake up.  Go back and read the Constitution and the Federalist Papers.  You of all people should be well enough informed to realize this is a constitutional crisis and start speaking out.  Do your job.

Republic Under Presidential Attack  

by Admiral W H McRaven.  Whether you are a veteran or not, this article should resonate.

Hamilton

Last week my wife and I had the good fortune  (in both the serendipitous sense as well as enough money in our bank account) to see the American musical Hamilton that was playing in Omaha.  Like everyone I left the theater overwhelmed by its genius.  But there were many people, I would have to believe, that were also left with the nagging thought of how shocked the historical figures represented on that stage would be to see  how the corruptive influence of the Trump administration has laid bare the fragility of the form of government they so painstakingly strove to establish.

Certainly there are instances of our founding father’s own moral missteps.  Hamilton had an affair with a married woman that he tried to cover up.  That episode essentially ended his political career. Franklin was a renowned womanizer and had a bastard child. The national shame of slavery was in common practice during their time.  But all took very seriously the business of governing, and in constructing the Constitution they were as careful as they imagined possible and necessary in setting up a framework that would deter presidential corruption and insure qualified people assumed the office.  Sadly we have found the Constitution is not sufficient to restrain a lawless president.  You would have to assume it was inconceivable to those who wrote it that such a dishonest man would rise to the office.

Trump has punctured the guardrails intended to constrain presidential power and behavior. Our founding fathers sought to create a government dedicated to the common good.  Trump has conducted his entire adult life with little concern for anything but his own profit or protection.  He is a proven cheat and he lies with impunity. With him, the only thing that matters is what you can make people believe.  Facts are not absolute- they have alternatives.

And from my viewpoint,, taking all his corruptive conduct and all that is morally and ethically objectionable about this president into consideration, what is most troubling about him is his unbridled propensity to lie.  It is the defining character flaw that makes him totally unfit to hold office.  My personal definitive test to determine if I can have a logical, informed conversation with a Trump supporter, (and yes, I have actually had a few  of those that have been mutually productive) is that fact.   If you firmly believe Trump does not lie, there is no point involving me in any kind of discussion with you.

If we are unable to confront the truth, we are pretty much in a hopeless situation.  If we are governed by a man with such disregard for the truth, a man that is supposed to provide direction and leadership, it is inevitable that people will start believing his lies, whether the man promoting them believes them or not.  And I actually believe that a lot of the fabrication that goes on in Trumps mind are things he somehow twists into his own private reality.

And this is what is so dangerous and what is starting to play out right now.  Trump is starting to spiral downward into a world where he desperately wants wild conspiracy theories to become real.  He is so used to making things up he is potentially placing people and the country in peril.  Our laws that are meant to keep people safe are being disregarded by the very man who is supposed to make sure they are enforced.  Anyone who disagrees with him is potentially a traitor.  Civil war will erupt should he be removed from office.  His recent twitter tirades are gaslighting rampages that reinforce his narcissism and unfortunately  in many instances potentially plant the seeds of violent thought in marginally rational people.   You can easily make the argument that Trump’s distorted view of things  are manufactured in a disturbed mind.  As difficult and objectionable as impeachment seems to be, congress has no choice but to proceed with it to prevent more executive abuse of power and make it clear it will not be tolerated, now or by future presidents.

I am certain of three things about Hamilton, Jefferson, Washington, Adams, Monroe, Madison, Franklin, et al.  First, the chances of a President Trump ever happening in their time would have been extremely remote.  Second, If by some weird happenstance it did, articles of impeachment would have been initiated within a year of his inauguration.  And third, again if such an anomaly had occurred,  those men would have been shocked that all the drafts and revisions they made during the four months it took to finalize the Constitution somehow failed to check the abuse of power of the executive branch.  They would have summoned everyone for an emergency session of congress to patch, tweak, revise, and amend that document so that there would never again be such corruption and exploitation by a president of the United States.  Let us hope that at some point in the very near future congress will see to it that new constitutional and regulatory safeguards are established that clarify the intentions of our founding fathers.

Fun Fact:  Benjamin Franklin was the county’s first whistle blower

 

 

Fast Stepping Towards Autocracy

Unfortunately making fun of the President of the United States occupies way too much of my free time- something I have an abundance of.  It’s just too easy.  Many of the things Trump does are frightfully alarming, but like many people I try to make the best of his conduct by joking about it.  But every once in awhile I reach a point of saturation and my collection barrel of satiric fodder becomes a bitter trough overflowing with bewilderment and anger.   If the revelations about Trump in just these past few weeks don’t start sounding alarm bells  in the Republican party and our population in general I fear for the future of our democracy.

As I have stated before, there are certainly more qualified people out there editorializing about the Trump administration. But with so much perplexity and corruption emanating from this administration the challenge  to stay abreast of it all is Herculean.    For your convenience, what follows is a synopsis, and related episodic history, of revelations about our president that have occurred in just the past couple of weeks that really, really piss me off or frankly scare the shit out of me.  In the interest of everyone’s time I won’t go into details.  Just Google if something is unfamiliar  to you.

  1. Topping the list is undermining national institutions, in this case “Sharpygate.” How something so petty could be so bothersome to Trump only shows how dangerous an out of control ego can become, and how detached from reality he seems to be.   For Trump, no mistake is too small  to disavow.  He has intimidated one body of the legislative branch into near impotence, has managed to install a subservient attorney general and  usurp much of the countervailing power of the judicial branch, attacked the press, intelligence departments and the Federal Reserve.  But questioning the National Weather Service?  Are you shitting me?  And then  threatening the department employees unless they back him up?  That both Wilbur Ross and Mick Mulvaney were involved in Trump appeasement demonstrates how intimidating life must be serving under this president. Inserting himself as chief administrator of the IRS would be a logical next step for Trump.   I would not be surprised if Trump thought it only fair that he did control the weather, as well as the rotation of the earth.
  2. Emoluments violations.  We have known this has been going on since he was elected.  But the discloser that the U.S. Air Force has been sending planes to an airport in Scotland that services his golf course in order to prop it up and then billeting air crews at that very golf   course is absolutely galling.  Oh wait.  I forgot about Doral.  Trump brazenly promoted that golf course in front of a national TV audience.  Give me a break.  Who can keep up with all the graft.  Both of these golf courses are losing money, so it would only make sense to a greed infested monarch to assume the taxpaying peasantry would be more than happy to subsidize his personal business ventures.
  3. Undermining national security. Where to start? Nevermind that he uses unsecured cell phones and Ivanka has used a person email account for WH business (lock her up!).  Trump’s recent tweet of a classified photo of the aftermath of the explosion at an Iranian space center is just one of a half dozen of national security leeks of his his own volition.  He was in office less than two months and he revealed classified intelligence to Russian diplomats.  Shortly after that, he bragged to Philipine strongman Duerte about the presence of  U.S. nuclear submarines off the coast of North Korea, stunning the Pentagon which has a policy to never discuss submarine locations.  After the subway bombing in London, Trump tweeted out information about Scotland Yard and was rebuked by the prime minister. But the new revelation that there was a secret exfiltration from Russia of a valuable American intelligence asset in 2017 because there were fears that Trump’s cavalier handling of intelligence information could lead to his exposure is startling.  Though I personally believe Trump has some financial involvement with Russia,  I don’t think there is anything overtly  treasonous  going on with the guy as related to national security. He is simply a bungling boob.
  4.  Which might explain why Trump actually believes a simple fix to the threat of hurricane destruction is to make it radioactive. Trump has no clue when it comes to understanding the workings of the natural world.  His environmental policies are tragically counter intuitive.     With Flint  and Newark problems fresh in the news you would think he would at least put his roll back of clean water protections on hold.  And now he’s dicking around with  tailpipe regulations that not only make sense for environmental reasons, but rolling them back will give car manufactures mind-bending migraines.

It is a logical assumption that if President Obama ever did just one of the crazy things Trump has done the Republicans would be screaming for impeachment.  Trump gets a pass from supporters apparently because he is an “outsider” who is adjusting to the office and/or has a different approach to governmental affairs.  It’s been three years.  By now we should all realize what Trump has learned while in office is how to take advantage it.  It is often wondered if  his head scratching antics have some grand strategy.  Critics who seem to know him best think not, and I believe those people are correct. He has no strategy.  His decisions are generally impulsive, his policies scattered and incoherent.  Donald Trump deals with life in only two ways- for self promotion or self protection.  Republicans in congress need to show some balls and pump the brakes on this maniac.

Son of a Bitch!  Just when I thought I was ready to publish and had things tidied up for us, guess what? Along comes another WH scandal.  You knew that would happen, right?  Add this one  to category 3. Wait.  I’m hearing this might be bribery or extortion.  Gotta hand it to Trump.  He’s certainly not afraid to try something new.  The story so far is Trump made a secret “promise” of some sort during a phone call to a foreign leader that prompted a whistleblower to rat it out, and of course details of the episode are being suppressed by the justice department.  WTF?  And House Democrats! WTF was up with your pathetic Lewandowski interview?  That slime ball has no executive privilege protection.  You should have thrown the asshole in jail!.  God damn it!  Congress has got to hold this administration accountable to the laws of the land. I need a nap.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Brazilian President Reportedly Very Receptive to President Trump’s Offer to Fire-Bomb the Amazon Rain Forrest

It has emerged that Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro is seriously considering President Trump’s recent offer to carpet bomb the Amazon Rain Forrest with state of the art incendiary explosives.  Though Bolosaro is renowned for rejecting any kind of foreign interference, it is widely known the two presidents have similar isolationist political agendas and mutually admire each other.  “I think President Trump’s intension is to create some sort of back fire to slow down all the wildfires going on, but if it doesn’t work out, all the better,”  Bolsonaro stated.

This latest proposal by President Trump to use military ordinance to mitigate natural disasters follows on the heels of his  recent suggestion to drop a nuclear bomb into the eye of hurricane Dorian.  “We have all these terrific bombs just laying around,” the president stated.  “Why not put them to good use?”  Asked if he was disappointed that his idea to nuke a hurricane was so universally rejected by his advisors, the president replied that that was a set back, but it was just  a matter of time before he had the “best people” in place who are in total agreement with his aggressive policy of bombing Mother Nature into submission.

 

 

President Trump Defies Presidential Order

Citing an ambiguous 1977 economic emergency act, President Trump issued an edict   demanding U.S. companies move out of China and urged them to return to the United States. “We don’t need China, and we’re  far better off without them,” the president tweeted.    When asked how quickly he thought he could move his Chinese golf cap, neck tie and travel mug manufacturing back to the United States, the president disdainfully replied, “The president can just kiss my ass.  The president of the United States can not tell the president of the United States what to do.  You can’t just pull out of country on a whim. There’s equipment to move, arrangement have to be made for raw materials, and with Chinese  labor I make much more money than I can employing American workers, believe me.  The president should know this demand  is something that the president should never realistically be expected to obey.”

President Trump perceptively pointed out that regardless he was sure that there was  some other obscure law he could enforce that would prohibit him from going to all that trouble.

 

 

 

 

Trump Fed Up with Freeloading Animals

Leaving no stone unturned in his quest to make America great again, President Trump has announced he is taking a hard look at the animals listed in the Endangered Species Act.  In a brief conversation with reporters from the grounds of his New Jersey golf course, the president indicated that it was time to stop coddling so many members of the animal kingdom.   “We have to do something,” the president said.  “You look around and you see all these wild animals holding up progress and squatting on land that has precious oil reserves. What do they do for us?   There aren’t many wild animals contributing anything to this country, believe me.”

When one reporter challenged his interpretation of progress and contribution, the president was quick to point out that in many places there aren’t many wild animals around anymore anyway.  “Look at wolves.  They’re disappearing.  It’s like they’ve given up.  There are winners and losers.  What would you rather have anyway-  a hand-full of slimy otters or a mile long train-load of  beautiful, clean coal.  Beavers haven’t given us anything  since felted hats. And let’s say you’re building a big, beautiful golf corse and then all of a sudden you can’t complete the 36th fairway because of some stupid eagle’s nest.  Give me a break!”

EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler defended the president’s position.  He bluntly stated that  animals just are not pulling their weight.  “Wild animals are becoming a nuisance.  It only makes sense to establish something like the ‘public charge’ standards that we’re doing with immigration.  We let these wild animals roam around, a lot of them going into places they’re not wanted, eating our nuts and berries, even vandalizing property and dumping over garbage cans.  Pretty ungrateful if you ask me.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Who Killed Epstein

Does this piss you off or what?  So many of the rich and famous must be feeling they indeed  live a charmed life.  I’m not a big conspiracy theorist.  Looks to me like this is just a total clusterfuck by the personnel at this prison.  But if you are one of those who just can’t imagine this as anything but a murder conspiracy, right now the two front-runners in the conspiracy sweepstakes apparently are  Presidents Trump and Clinton.  Seems about right- two powerful men who had connections with Epstein, who both have documented instances of seamy sexual behavior and are at the opposite ends of the political spectrum.  The whole thing gets even more disturbing when you consider we have a sitting president reprehensibly involved in spreading a conspiracy theory about a predecessor.  Of course that would not be the first time he’s done that.

I don’t know about Clinton, but honestly I would  have to rule out Trump if I were on the conspiracy bandwagon.  I mean get real.  What thug in his right mind is going to do the dirty work for Trump when he knows damn well he’ll never get paid.

 

President Appalled at Abysmal State of Baltimore’s Inner-City Golf Courses

President Trump made it clear today  there was no kind of racial intent behind his twitter remark that Baltimore was “a disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess.”  The president said he was merely reporting the facts.  “I’ve been there,” he said.  “You should see how those people live. I bet the only golf course in the whole district is one of those miniature ones.”  President Trump went on to point out that it was obvious Baltimore residents were sorely lacking money management and investment skills.  “My tax cuts were historic,” the president mindfully remarked. “These people in Baltimore can’t call up their broker for a decent stock tip?”

As the president spoke from the dining room of his Mar a Lago resort, patrons there were eager to validate his observations.  “Everyone here will tell you they’ve never had it so good, am I right?” the president stated.  The comment generated frenzied nodding and raucous applause.

The president has convinced Mar a Lago patron Mariam VanderThorpe that more golf resorts in the inner city would go a long way to solve the city of Baltimore’s problems.

 

 

 

 

Nation Relieved to Find Out President Trump Is Not a Racist

With what is being described as one of his finest tweets, President Trump assured the American public that he is definitely not a racist.  “This should finally put an end to the vicious attacks the fake news media  has relentlessly subjected the president to,” declared presidential spokesperson Kellyanne Conway.

The controversy came to a head when, in a previous, marginally received tweet, the leader of the free world suggested that four congresswomen, who happen to live with an amount of melanin that is confusing to him, go back to where they came from.

The president deftly tamped down the firestorm with the subsequent, highly celebrated tweet, in which he unaquivaclay stated he did not have a racist bone in his body. ” If that doesn’t clear things up I don’t know what will”, said Lindsey Graham.  “The country knows the president is a man you can take at his word.”

America is always re-assured by President Trump’s calming words and trustworthiness

Man is Super Excited to Lead “Lock Her Up” Chant During Upcoming July 4th Celebration at the National Mall

Alabama native Herb Grunk says he can’t wait to attend President Trump’s “Salute to America” 4th of July Celebration in DC next month.  ” I just hope he brings up Hillary’s e-mails right quick.  That’s always a crowd pleaser,” Grunk said.  He seemed  confident breaking out the usual boisterous calls to incarcerate the former Secretary of State as well as  espousing deafening declarations concerning the suction proclivity of both CNN and AOC would provide a nice supplemental form of entertainment to the more traditional pyrotechnics.   Lady Liberty may never be more confused.

So set aside your sparklers and bottle rockets everyone.  Its time for pitchforks and torches, as frequent MAGA rally attendee and former sheriff David Clarke is fond of saying.  This will be a different kind of 4th of July.  But then, presently  this is a different kind of America.

Politicizing Independence Day did not work out so well the one other time it was tried.  Crowd enthusiasm for President Nixon’s 4th of July “Honor America Day” in 1970, was inconveniently dampened by irritating clouds of  of police tear gas.  History does have a way of repeating itself.