Catching Up On Some News

It seems that Michael Cohen promised an IT company tens of thousands of dollars to influence online reader polls  in Trump’s favor. Those poll results would be repeated by media outlets, conservative figures like Sean Hannity and Trump himself.

Online reader polls have no value. There’s no scientific criteria to establish an objectively verifiable source for the polling. People tend to gravitate to online sites that support their point of view. If you’re running a right wing website where you post a lot of content that equates Hillary Clinton to Satan, I think Donald Trump will do well in a poll on that website.  If actor Jim Carrey went on Twitter tonight and set up a poll to determine if you think Li’l Donnie is a great president or a raging moronic asshole, I’m pretty sure “raging moronic asshole” will win by a fairly sizeable margin. 

Oh, one more bit of info on this story: the IT company did not get paid what they were promised. Yet another company stuck with an unpaid  bill on behalf of Donald Trump. 

Speaking of polls: Current polling data on how Trump is faring during the big government shutdown is… well, it depends on who you ask. 

Overall, the numbers ain’t good for Li’l Donnie. Most people blame Trump for the shutdown. Now it you drill down a bit and just ask Republicans, the numbers look better. Guess which numbers Trump’s looking at? No surprise there. As I noted on this blog back in the early days of 2017, Donald Trump is not the President of the United States; he’s the President of the parts of the United States that voted for him.

I am still so bothered by the partisan blindness in this country. Republican or not, it is clear to see that the shutdown is bad for the country. And nowhere is that more clearly demonstrated than at the  Coast Guard Academy on Thursday where servicemen and servicewomen showed up at a pop-up food pantry after some 42,000 Coast Guard members missed their paychecks for the first time since the shutdown began on Dec. 22.  Make America great again? How great is it that people who serve this country in the Coast Guard are lining up for help to get food? All because Trump won’t let up from his temper tantrum for his precious border wall. 

Speaking of the border, it seems that separation of kids from their families was worse than we thought.   An investigator with the Department of Health and Human Services inspector general's office told reporters Thursday morning, "More children over a longer period of time were separated at the border than commonly known. How many more children were separated is unknown, by us and HHS because of failures to track families as they were being separated.” 

Trump’s pleas for border wall money has been of late predicated on an humanitarian crisis at the southern border. Well, yes, there is an humanitarian crisis, one precipitated by Trump and his administration is an ill-conceived, poorly planned, bad executed endeavor to block any and all immigrants from entering this country, illegally or not.  

While the government shutdown debacle continues on, it is important to note that while Trump instigated this due to his insistence for $5.7  billion in funding for a border wall, it is not just on his hunched shoulders that the shutdown rests. Over in the Senate, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell continues to resist any efforts to bring any budget bills to the Senate floor for a vote that Trump will not sign. As Nancy Pelosi and the House of Representatives keep passing bills to reopen all or at least part of the government, McConnell continues to swat these efforts away, using his authority as Senate leader to keep these bills from the floor. With the totality of 48 Democratic  Senators and at least a 3^rd of the Republicans who have had quite frankly enough of this shit, funding legislation would pass the Senate. Collectively and with bi-partisan support, Congress can pass funding legislation to re-open the government. If it doesn’t include wall funding, Trump can veto it but Congress does have the power to override a veto. Even it there were not enough vote to override the veto, the message would be clear that the government being closed is all on Donald Trump and whatever sniveling sycophants in Congress lacking the balls to stand up to this moron.

This would be embarrassing to Trump and Mitch McConnell is working hard to keep Trump from being embarrassed, even if he has to do it on the backs of 800,000 unpaid government employees. 

Mitch McConnell is working hard for Donald Trump, not the American people.  And he’s doing this in hiding. 

Members of Congress, including our Congressional ball of fire Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC), went over to the Senate to deliver a letter personally to McConnell demanding the government be re-opened. But McConnell was nowhere to be found. AOC and other reps chronicled their search in Twitter, mocking the Senator for his absence and his corwardice.  Mitch could not be found in the Senate chambers, his office, the coat room, the commissary, the gym, the bathrooms. Mitch, lacking the courage of his convictions to save Donald Trump from embarrassment, was hiding from the House of Representatives. 

Oh, before I wrap this up, I have to comment on the Clemson Tigers' visit to the White House where Donald Trump greeted the NCAA College Football Champions (GO, TIGERS!) with a fast food feast of Big Macs, Whoppers and more. There was Li'l Donnie, grinning broadly as he stood behind a banquet of boxed burgers. He thought this was a good idea! 

Young men do like their fast food, don't they? Nothing gets a young collegiate athlete going than Big Macs under a heat lamp, am I right?

Look I  can't speak to college athletes but I will confess to consuming a lot of fast food when I was in college mostly because I was counting pennies. If I ate a Big Mac, it was not my fondest wish to do so, it was what I could afford. 

Objectively, Trump looked stupid serving up packaged fast food to these visiting national champions. But Trump supporters took issue with the criticism was the product of elites who could not fathom the dietary habits of real Americans who don't care for escargot and kale. 

Really? Look, no one says a spread at the White House has to be some kind of exotic cuisine. But show some respect for the damn visitors, the Clemson Tigers who won the fricking NCAA Football Championship. Step up the game a notch! Don't you have some Trump Steaks in a meat locker somewhere?  

By the way, a big deal was made about Donald Trump paying for the fast food feast out of his own pocket: $3,000.00. 

Whoo! The big billionaire ponied up all of $3,000.00? Or should I say the big "alleged" billionaire?  

Look, I'm not a billionaire or a millionaire or even a thousandaire. But if the NCAA Football Championship Clemson Tigers were coming to my house, even I could come with $3,000.00 to feed 'em. And I wouldn't do McDonald's. Nah, I would take the team out to raid the buffet at Golden Corral. 

By the way, Michael Stahan of Good Morning America took the guys out for lobster.