Letter to Congress Warning against the Firing of Robert Mueller

In my opinion, any effort to halt the Mueller investigation will require mobilization of all freedom-loving Americans for a march on Washington, D. C.

Here is my letter to two of my own representatives in Congress, Senator Rob Portman and Congressman Steve Chabot.

Feel free to copy any parts you like.

                                                    December 18, 2017

Dear Senator Portman and Congressman Chabot:

As my representatives in Congress I want to say emphatically that you must not disgrace your high offices. You must not fail, in time of dire need, to do your utmost to uphold the rule of law.

It is incumbent upon you both to remember—and you, Mr. Chabot, clearly appear to forget—that you represent a check on the unfettered power of any executive, especially one so clearly bent on the abuse of power as is President Trump.

You have in the Oval Office a man who has called the courts of this great nation a “disgrace” and a “laughingstock.” He said our election system was “rigged,” until he eventually won. During his campaign and on several occasions since assuming office, the president has called for reporters who criticize him to be fired. He has vilified N.F.L. players who protest against him, and against racist policies, as if the protections of the First Amendment can be ignored according to his mercurial whims. He has questioned the findings of the intelligence community in regard to Russian meddling in the 2016 election, a position only a tool of Vladimir Putin or a complete fool would take. Now he insists the F.B.I. and the entire Department of Justice are not to be trusted and hints that Special Counsel Robert Mueller should be fired.

Even now, you and all other members of Congress should be alert to the machinations of this man. Senator Portman, I have some faith in you to stand up for the U.S. Constitution. As for you, Mr. Chabot, I hope you may uncover some residue of courage and in the end do your job.

As a Marine veteran who volunteered to serve in Vietnam (but was not sent), I have always believed this nation stands for transcendent values, even in times when we have failed to adhere to our own high standards.

I do not care today about tax reform or an improving stock market. It does not concern me whether we build a border wall or not. I do care very much to see the Republican Party tarnish a proud history. I do care to see so many elected officials, and I most assuredly mean you, Mr. Chabot, serve as the dupes of President Trump, a man guided by a single fixed principal: What’s in it for him.

Should you allow this most dangerous leader to fire Robert Mueller, when an ongoing investigation has already lead to an indictment of four of the president’s men, and at a time when two of those four have plead guilty and agreed to cooperate in ferreting out other potential crimes, you risk the future freedom of generations of Americans. You, sirs, will play a craven role in the ruin of a constitutional system which has weathered every storm since 1789.

I do, however, have one abiding hope and a warning if you fail. I sincerely believe if you and your party abet the firing of Mr. Mueller, without justification, that millions of freedom-loving Americans will march on Washington and in a peaceful fashion completely clog the gears and bring the business of Congress and the White House to an ignominious, grinding halt.

I will pray that you do your jobs. Failing in that, I will pray that the people of this great nation will rise and take a stand.

Sincerely,

John J. Viall

A Liberal Champions the Struggling Super-Rich

  

IT MUST BE TOUGH to be a billionaire or a loose-change kind of multi-millionaire in America today.

For that reason, I feel it is my duty as a card-carrying liberal who has seen the error of his fiscal ways, to convince others that we should all get behind the GOP tax reform plan now wending its way through Congress.

It has to sad to be super-rich.

If you are one of the aggrieved, you pay (in theory) 39.6% of all the money you make in federal taxes. If you are a leading hedge fund manager and earned $1.6 billion by the sweat of your brow in 2016, as did James Simons, you would have left only $966.4 million to spend on your next family vacation.

It can’t be much fun to be a billionaire at Christmas, either. Please, Daddy, can we finally buy a real boat, you hear your daughter say. If you are Paul Allen, you have been paying exorbitant taxes all your life. This has nearly destroyed your incentive to work. But you soldier on. What choice do you have? You have to provide the necessities for your loved ones.

Luckily, you have scrimped and saved and have a bit left over in the form of the NFL team you own, the Seattle Seahawks, and a total of $17.8 billion in assets, and this crummy little scow (see below).

OF COURSE, IN A PERFECT capitalist society, which is exactly what we have in America today, as every Fox News viewer knows, the typical super-rich individual makes more money than the average worker because the typical super-individual simply works harder. He or she never bends rules or asks for government handouts, not even free football or baseball stadiums. In fact, these people create bazillions of jobs through their wealth for the average worker. Why, if we give them a tax break, they will create jobs for more lobbyists, to cite one irrefutable totally free market example. They will send fresh lobbyists to the nation’s capital, to help the 12,000 already there and those lobbyists will work only for the good of the American people.

For example, lobbyists from the drug companies will work tirelessly to see that drug prices come crashing down.

See how perfectly the free market works? The super-rich also create jobs for right-wing pundits, who sell the unwitting the bill of goods that anyone who says the system needs to be altered in even the slightest is actually a communist and wants to take away all their guns and make them stop saying, “Merry Christmas.” So, yes, this is absolutely the case. You deserve, if you are a company CEO, to make as much, on average, as what 335 of your employees makes every year.

If your workers don’t like it, this is capitalism, my friends, and you, the hard-working CEO, can ship a few jobs to Bangladesh, where workers know better than to expect pensions and health benefits.

Or paid vacations.

ALSO, YOU DON’T HEAR workers in Bangladesh complaining about a need for government safety regulations just because a factory collapsed on their heads and mashed 1,100 contented workers.

Government safety regulations stifle job creation!

And it may be even worse for the super-rich in America today, because I have also seen a shocking estimate that indicates top CEO’s make only 204 times as much as their average worker.

That would be tragedy atop catastrophe—making only as much, year in, year out, as your typical worker is going to earn over the next two centuries (assuming, of course, said typical worker doesn’t retire early).

We should also remember that with great wealth comes great responsibility. You have to decide, for example: Do I hide some of my multi-millions in the Cayman Islands. Or would a secret Swiss bank account be a better option?

Fortunately, the people of the Cayman Islands (population 61,559) know how hard you work. They’re not trying to reach in your wallet every day and steal a wad of your Benjamin  Franklins. So you can go down on your yacht and lounge around in the sun and talk to your Cayman Islands trust fund manager or visit one of the 200 international banking institutions located in this tropical land. You can also visit, perhaps, your company headquarters, or any of the other 95,000 headquarters located in the Caymans, which, if I do the math correctly, means your average corporate headquarters is producing 1 ½ jobs for every human being in the area. In other words, the people of the Caymans understand how a free market works and that is why they help guard $3.5 trillion in assets that you and other over-taxed, members of the top 1% have parked on the premises.

Be honest, now, my fellow liberal Americans!

WHAT WOULD YOU SAY to Alice Walton, the threadbare sister of the Walton clan, if you chanced to meet her? It can’t be easy for her, sitting down at Thanksgiving dinner and asking her snooty brothers to pass the mashed potatoes, knowing they look down on her because she’s a veritable pauper.

Don’t be obtuse! Alice Walton clearly needs a tax cut. And if she gets it she will rush out and create more good jobs for WalMart greeters. Her net worth, after all the crippling taxes, is a minuscule $38.2 billion.

By comparison, S. Robson Walton is worth $38.3 billion and Jim Walton is worth $38.4 billion.

In other words, Alice is hurting. If she spends $1 million every day she’ll be flat broke by the summer of 2121.

Do you want that? Do you really relish seeing Alice living in a cardboard box in some urine-soaked alley?

And think of Sheldon Adelson! He’s still slaving away at age 84 and donating wads of cash to GOP politicians. Buying politicians by the shopping cart full isn’t cheap and if you have to pay for politicians as a business expense, yes, you deserve a tax cut! A guy like Adelson donates $150 million in 2012 to defeat Barack Obama and gets nothing for his investment! So he has to donate $45 million to elect Donald J. Trump and assorted Republicans, exactly the type of men and women who are going to look out for the average blue collar worker. Plus Adelson has to chip in $5 million to help fund the Trump Inauguration and all he has left is a measly $35.4 billion.

THINK OF THE POOR Koch brothers, Charles and David, who got both literally and figuratively killed while Commie Obama was in office. In 2008 each brother was worth $19 billion and by the time Commie Obama left Washington their fortunes had dwindled to…$48.5 billion.

Each.

Come to think of it, I am often reminded by my dear conservative friends that I should thank President Trump because he is foregoing the $400,000 annual salary he is owed as Tweeter-in-Chief.

And that saves taxpayers plenty.

Fortunately, he has made ends meet since the election by ordering a modest increase in membership fees at Mar-a-Lago. With 500 members, and a doubling of the fee to $200,000, you can see why Mr. Trump and all his friends at this exclusive golf club can’t survive without a tax cut.

By now, I trust all my readers are weeping profusely. So let’s finish with a few quick examples to show why the super-rich need relief. Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross (estimated worth: $2 billion) needs a cut so he can hire a good accountant and hide even more wealth in offshore tax havens. Martin Shkreli needs a break so he can keep the single recorded copy in the world of Once Upon a Time in Shaolin by the Wu-Tang Clan, for which he paid millions. This will allow him to focus on his work and stick to raising drug prices by 5,000%, which he did do.

Yes, my liberals, it is time to eat some delicious crow.

IT IS TIME TO ADMIT the GOP tax reform plan will make America great again. Call it: The Revenge of the Robber Barons!

The CEO of General Electric will get the tax cut he needs and be able to make the hard decisions with a clear head, decisions like laying off 12,000 more workers. Or contacting suppliers in China—where, for some odd reason, all GE light bulbs are now made.

If Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin gets a tax cut he and his wife will be better able to afford the cottage they bought recently in the nation’s capital. Also, she will be able to afford more $15,735 clothing ensembles.

The humble Mnuchin abode on Massachusetts Avenue: a bargain at $12.6 million.

Last, but not least, economically speaking, if the GOP tax plan passes as currently written President Trump himself will save an estimated $1 billion dollars.

Or to put it in perspective: his tax cut, which he will have earned by draining the swamp and filling it with gold bars for billionaires, will be equal to what 20,558 ordinary workers make annually in America.

And that, my friends, is exactly how we make America great again. 

That and by electing Judge Roy Moore, an accused sexual predator, to the United States Senate!  

Judge Roy Moore and the Good Old Days of Slavery

TUESDAY, ALABAMA VOTERS will find themselves impaled on the horns of a dilemma. Do they send Doug Jones, an accused Democrat, to Washington, D.C. to fill a vacant U.S. Senate seat?

Or do they send Judge Roy Moore, a religious zealot and accused serial abuser of teenage girls?

Tough choice.

Polls indicate Moore will win a narrow victory. This has something to do with the fact Alabama is a deep red state. It’s a place where a Republican governor had to resign rather than face impeachment, where a Republican leader in the House of Representatives was convicted of a dozen felonies…but people still prefer Republicans to Democrats. Also, evangelical voters, a powerful voting bloc, love Roy Moore because, like President Trump, he wants to make America great again.

Now we learn that during a campaign rally Moore was asked what he thought it meant to “make America great again.” 

When was the country great, a black man in the audience wondered? Moore was ready with a nineteenth century kind of answer. “I think it was great at the time when families were united—even though we had slavery. They cared for one another. People were strong in the families. Our families were strong. Our country had a direction.”

WE HAD A DIRECTION, true. We were headed for a bloody Civil War.

Certainly, Moore loves his Bible. Indeed, he loves it more than he loves his U.S. Constitution. Moore wants to make America great again, as during the 1850s, when apologists argued, for example, that the Good Book trumped all articles of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights put together. 

On what basis did they claim the right to own slaves? Why, you could look it up in Leviticus (25:44-25:46):

Both thy bondmen, and thy bondmaids, which thou shalt have, shall be of the heathen that are round about you; of them shall ye buy bondmen and bondmaids.

Moreover of the children of the strangers that do sojourn among you, of them shall ye buy, and of their families that are with you, which they begat in your land: and they shall be your possession.

And ye shall take them as an inheritance for your children after you, to inherit them for a possession; they shall be your bondmen for ever...

That’s when America was great! Ask Judge Moore.

And what about all those families sticking together, thick and thin, and in the case of black families despite the occasional whipping? Gustavus Vassa could tell us something about that. While a boy, Vassa was captured along the coast of Africa. Loaded on a ship by slave traders he never saw his family again.

But, hey! Didn’t all those slaves get a free ride to America! And if they survived everything was Jim dandy in the land of the free and the home of the brave, in an era when nobody knelt during the National Anthem. Captain Theophilus Conneau, who made several voyages in slavers, described the business. On one trip he carried 800 men, women and children, packed below decks. Midway across the Atlantic several showed signs of smallpox. The disease swept over his “cargo” and the dead had to be carried out and dumped overboard. “Our misfortune ended,” he said, “only when 497 living skeletons were left out of eight hundred prime Negroes shipped a few weeks before in good health.”

Families "stuck together." Well, since they were chained up, they didn't have much choice.

Yes, America was great  when you could buy and sell human beings like pigs and sheep! America was great when you could pick up a paper and see an ad offering bargain prices on “several small boys without their mothers.” America was great when a Lexington, Kentucky slave owner could post notice to be on lookout for his escaped slave: 

Ranaway from the subscriber, living in this city...a negro, named Dick, about 37 years of age. It is highly probable said boy will make for New Orleans, as he has a wife living in that city, and he has been heard to say frequently that he was determined to go to New Orleans.

How great was American? 

Solomon Northup, writing in the 1840s, was witness when his owner sold a boy named Randall. Randall’s mother tried to reason with the buyer and then her master without success: 

Over and over again she told them how she loved her boy. A great many times she repeated her former promises—how very faithful and obedient she would be; how hard she would labor day and night, to the last moment of her life, if he [the new owner] would only buy them together. But...the man could not afford it. The bargain was agreed upon, and Randall must go alone. Then Eliza ran to him; embraced him passionately; kissed him again and again; told him to remember her—all the while her tears falling in the boy’s face like rain.

Clearly, Judge Moore is exactly right! In slave days traditional values prevailed. Solid families all around. Mary Boykin Chesnut, wife of a slave owner, writing in her diary, noted that female slaves had little protection from lusty owners: “The slave woman was to be had for the taking. Boys on and about the plantation...learned to use her, and having acquired the habit, often continued it into manhood.”

Traveling in South Carolina, James Stuart fell in with a group of gentlemen drinking in a tavern. They freely admitted they used slave women for sex. With each tale told they carried on like teenage boys bragging about their exploits. Keep in mind, by law, that if a child resulted, that child was the slave of the father.

Think the Access Hollywood tape was bad!

One drunken lout informed Stuart that in his home he “was frequently waited on at table by his own children.” He then added, without shame, that he “had actually sent some of them to the public market to be sold as slaves.”

Finally, we might mention Frederick Douglas (and, no, President Trump, Douglas is not still alive). His father was his mother’s owner and they never met. Often, as a young boy, he was sad because his mother lived on a farm twelve miles away. Sometimes she walked over after work finished. As a treat she once brought the boy a sweet cake “in the shape of a heart, with a rich, dark ring glazed upon the edge.” It was a joyous moment and Frederick never forgot. But when he arose next morning his mother was gone, headed back to her master’s farm. In a sense, he once wrote, slavery made “strangers” of mother and son.

I do not recollect...ever seeing my mother by the light of day. She was with me in the night. She would lie down with me, and get me to sleep, but long before I waked she was gone. Very little communication ever took place between us. Death soon ended what little we could have while she lived, and with it her hardships and suffering.

So, the moral of this story is perfectly clear. If the people of Alabama want America to be great again, they must send a sexual predator to the Senate.

Once there, with luck, Judge Roy Moore will do his utmost to uphold old-fashioned values. With luck, he might delve deep in his Bible again and offer up a bill calling for burning witches, executing homosexuals and stoning adulterers.

He is that kind of guy.

Happy times in America!

Catch-22: President Trump Endorses an Accused Child Molester for the U. S. Senate

AS A RETIRED AMERICAN, I have ample time to fritter away. This afternoon I decided to fritter half an hour away and watch Sarah Huckabee Sanders explain why President Trump endorsed Judge Roy Moore in the Alabama special election next Tuesday.

At the daily press briefing, White House reporters wanted to know what Trump thought about accusations of child molesting, lodged against the candidate.

Sanders said the White House found these accusations “troubling.”

(Even in this White House, apparently, it’s going a smidge too far to admit it and say, “All we care about is cutting taxes on billionaires. We can’t worry about a few children who were molested.)

 A reporter from ABC wonders, “Then why is the President endorsing him?”

I shout at the television, “Because the President is a sexual predator.” 

Sadly, Sanders couldn’t hear me.

On screen, I watch her reply in full Catch-22 mode, “We believe it’s up to the people of Alabama to decide.”

A reporter asks, “If you want the people of Alabama to decide, why is the President endorsing Moore?”

SANDERS COUGHS AND PAUSES a moment to sip a glass of water. She’s clearly suffering from a cold, likely brought on by the stress of defending the indefensible. “The President has made it clear Judge Moore supports his agenda,” she replies.

“But, if the President is troubled by the accusations, isn’t there a moral calculation here, to say that one vote is more important than predation against children?” another member of the “fake news” brigade inquires.

A pained expression briefly cloud’s Ms. Sanders’ visage. She draws a deep breath and says, “The President believes it’s up to the people of Alabama to make that calculation.”

I don’t know about reporters, tasked with making sense of unadulterated bullshit, but my head is already hurting.

A representative from CNN raises a hand and asks, “Would any person running on the GOP ticket be preferable, no matter what the moral questions in their background, if they supported the President’s agenda?”

“We think the people of Alabama would have to make that decision,” Sanders replies. I have a feeling she really wants to add: “Catch-22.”

Instead, she seems satisfied to grimace again.

In the back of the press room, a foreign correspondent is next to try to crack the nut. “If you say you want the people of Alabama to decide, why is the President endorsing Moore? Isn’t he trying to influence that decision?”

“We believe the people of Alabama should make this decision,” says Sanders.

AT THIS POINT, I BEGIN to have a weird out-of-body experience. I see myself floating above the scene. Somehow I am able to ask questions. “Sarah,” I wonder, “would President Trump endorse O. J. Simpson for a seat in the U.S. Senate if he was running?”

“That would be for the people to decide,” Sanders says. Only now, in my dreamlike state, when I look at her she's a robot.

Deep down inside, I still have faith. I believe Robot Sanders must harbor vestiges of her core Christian values. She can’t really enjoy lying for Trump every day. So in my dream state, I feed her what I think is a no-brainer. “What about Sergey Kislyak?” I ask. “What if he was running for the U.S. Senate? And before you answer, remember, Sarah, Kislyak is not a U.S. citizen. He’d be ineligib…”

It’s no use. 

Sanders has already started to answer: “President Trump has made it clear many times,” she says in an odd mechanical voice, “that there has been no collusion with Russia. And, again, it is up to the voters of whatever state to decide. If they want a Russian in the Senate, and that Russian supports the President’s agenda, naturally, the President would endorse him.”

A collective gasp escapes from the press corps.

I’m dogged in my dream. I want to understand what’s at stake. I try other names. Would Trump endorse Bernie Madoff?

Al Capone?

Benedict Arnold?

Three times, Robot Sanders says he would.

I KEEP TRYING. Even a robot press secretary can’t possibly blow the next one: “Would Mr. Trump endorse John Lee Gacy, who molested and murdered dozens of boys, for a seat in the Senate, if he was running?”

Robot Press Secretary asks: “Is Gacy’ s hypothetical opponent a Democrat?”

I admit she is.

“Then yes.”

I try one last time. I want to believe Robot Sanders still has some kind of heart or soul. “What if Jeffrey Dahmer was running down in Alabama. What if he was alive and we already knew he had killed and eaten a number of innocent victims? Would Trump still endorse him, just so long as he was a member of the Republican Party, and willing to toe the Trump line?”

“We would find accusations of cannibalism ‘troubling,’” Robot Sarah groans. “But it would be up to the people of Alabama to decide.”

With that, her electric circuits short out and smoke starts pouring from her mechanical nose, mouth and ears.

Then I snap out of my dream and realize, I’m sitting on my couch in my living room, and that, in reality, Donald J. Trump is now the leader of a party that sacrifices all principles to support pedophiles.

NO STRANGER, REALLY, than my dream.

Judge Moore reaches for another teenage girl.