Lindsey, sex, lies, and other Trump-related disasters

A Fifteenth Century vision of hell by Hieronymous Bosch.
Imagine if he were around to see the Trump Administration.

Shall we begin with Senator Lindsey Graham? You know, the Republican Senator who stood up in outrage — outrage  — against the attempt by Congress to impeach Donald Trump. 

That was when Trump did in fact get himself impeached for trying to grab a big handful of quid pro quo over missiles for which the U.S. taxpayers had shelled out to help Ukraine stave off a Russian invasion. No dice, said Donald to Ukraine, unless you first make a big fuss pretending to investigate Joe Biden’s son. You remember. Burisma and all that.

Now Graham is whining that he has become, in his own campaign’s words “the number one target of the radical Left.” 

How do I know this? I got myself put on Graham’s mailing list under a nom du guerre. That gets me not only mailings from Graham, but everybody else on the planet who’s right of center, from Susan Collins to the NRA. Say this for Republicans, they may not be good about sharing the wealth, but they sure share mailing lists.

Oh no! Not Hillary

And Rosie O’Donnell!

“From former colleagues in the Senate like Hillary Clinton and Claire McCaskill, to a whole slew of liberal Hollywood donors such as Rosie O'Donnell, liberals are lining up to send to attacks our way,” whines Graham. 

Hmm. Hillary and Rosie and even Claire — all women, mind you — in the same sentence. And not one of them is in a position of political power, or any other kind of power, any more. Is that the best, and most potent, enemies list Graham can come up with? 

‘Fraid so. He doesn’t have much to go on, except to raise the same old tired names and hope to get my gastric juices flowing. But why bother?

One sentence in his urgent-sounding e-mail to me explains it all. “Senator Graham’s Democrat opponent is raising record-breaking amounts of money, and he outraised Team Graham by over $5 million last quarter.” 

He did? Oh good! And for the record, that opponent's name is Jaime Harrison.

The big dummy’s guide

to diplomacy

It’s a time-honored tradition of both political parties that U.S. Presidents reward big campaign contributors with ambassadorships. Nevermind that some of the contributors know zilch about diplomacy. 

You send them to a country where they presumably can’t do much damage because not much of urgent political or strategic importance to the United States is currently going on there. You also install an entire cadre of seasoned foreign service officers under them to do any serious work that needs to get done in the embassy, freeing the ambassador to show up at diplomatic cocktail parties and play at being a bigshot. Come the following election, he contributes twice as much to your campaign.

That whole time-honored system just went to hell in a handbasket, thanks to Donald Trump’s appointee to the Ambassadorship of Iceland, Jeffrey Ross Gunter, whose previous experience is in dermatology, presumably squeezing zits and freezing off peoples' little cancerous thingies. According to a journal called The Iceland Review

US Ambassador to Iceland Jeffrey Ross Gunter is reportedly so concerned about security in Iceland that he asked the US State Department to apply for special permission for him to carry a firearm, CBS News reports.  

The Global Peace Index currently ranks Iceland as the most peaceful country in the world, but this does not seem to have put Ambassador Gunter’s mind at ease about his personal safety. Indeed, dozens of diplomatic staff and officials interviewed by CBS said that he’d been “paranoid about security” and the US Embassy in Iceland recently placed an ad in local papers seeking applicants for full-time bodyguards. The former dermatologist and Republican Party donor—who only days ago drew swift criticism for retweeting a presidential tweet referring to COVID-19 as the “Invisible China Virus”—also floated the prospect of establishing door-to-door armored car service and suggested that he should be outfitted with a “stab-proof vest.”

All this has upset some Icelanders who consider reference to the virus as Chinese a reflection of racism and whose impression of the ambassador's paranoia about their peaceful country and fellow citizens they find offputting. So where are the cadre who keep the Ambassador in control? So glad you asked.The Iceland Review has the answer:

Ambassador Gunter has had seven Deputy Chiefs of Mission since his arrival in May 2019—one of whom prepared for over a year for the position and spent a considerable amount of time studying Icelandic only to be blocked because the Ambassador “didn’t like the look of him.”

Yoo hoo, Mr. Yoho!

The contretemps Florida Congressman Ted Yoho launched when he called New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez “a fucking bitch” doesn’t surprise me at all.

After all, look at Mr. Yoho’s name. It’s the exact greeting certain pimps use to greet women. Don’t jump all over me about this. I’m just sayin.’

Did Donald Trump commit 

rape of a minor child?

All I know is what I hear on this lengthy but wildly scandalous video.

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