I Bless the Rains Down in Africa

"To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else."
Theodore Roosevelt

You know, I'd love to write a eulogy for this Astros baseball season.

My love of Jeeps, Movies or Guinness stout.

I'm sad that Robert Redford and Claudia Cardinale are gone and would love to write about that.

But the nonsense that is Washington today makes it impossible and I mean every week. For example, as you read this there will be a meeting taking place at the Quantico Marine base in Virginia. It has been called by Pete Hegseth, the least qualified ex-soldier in command of a huge military since a former corporal ran a powerful country in the '30's.

At this meeting are all the generals and admirals in the US military. Roughly 800 high ranking officers will be there at the cost of millions of dollars. Now the President will be there, too, adding to the cost of security. I don't know what the topic of Hegseth's talk will be, but the military has elaborate and secure means of communication that could have been used. And using what amounts to a super secure zoom meeting would have left command officers at their posts.

And to what end? Trump described it to NBC Sunday...

“It’s really just a very nice meeting talking about how well we’re doing militarily, talking about being in great shape, talking about a lot of good, positive things. It’s just a good message,” Trump said. “We have some great people coming in and it’s just an ‘esprit de corps.’”

So, we are bringing in all high ranking officers from hot spots around the world to one big hall for a pep rally. FDR didn't even do this in the middle of WWII. It's too risky.

When David Selznick was casting Gone With the Wind, every major actress in the business auditioned. One wag observed as she looked at a room full of famous names being made up for screen tests, "If they drop a bomb on this place, they'll kill every leading lady in Hollywood."

Meanwhile, we are, according to one report, making plans for military action in Venezuela. Yes, really, Venezuela. F-35 fighters have been flown to a base in Puerto Rico and the US has deployed a naval flotilla to the area, including Aegis guided-missile destroyers, landing dock ships, and an amphibious assault ship with over 4,000 personnel. The US military is also preparing for potential strikes on alleged drug targets within Venezuela.

In the meantime three speedboats have been blown out of the water, international waters, in the last couple of weeks. Were they carrying drugs? Oh, probably. Were we sure? No. But the video really looked cool, well, except for the dead guys. It did seem odd though, that if we are sure they were drug runners, we didn't track them and if they were headed to the US, alert the Coast Guard, who are pretty good at this drug interdiction thing.

The drug Venezuela exports is mainly cocaine, which is not the big priority it was in earlier years as Fentanyl is now the export of choice for the cartels. So, why this focus on Venezuela? Nicolas Maduro is indeed a bad guy, but are we aiming for regime change here? I mean, it's worked so well before. And invading Venezuela, which sounds completely ridiculous as I type the words, will not help Trump's Nobel Peace Prize campaign.

Which brings us to the United Nations. This year's session opened this past week, and it is a time traditionally when world leaders step up to that green marble podium and for roughly 15 minutes each, outline their view of the problems facing the organization, like war, hunger, disease or speedboats being blown up.

For the President, who rambled on for an hour, it was another campaign rally where he lauded his administration's economic efforts, immigration controls, deportations and the myths surrounding the 2020 election and January 6th. He also called climate change a big scam and took the now obligatory shots at President Biden . He also said the Mayor of London is awful. Why the Mayor of London? Well, his name is Sadiq Khan, so you can assume the rest of the answer.

He complained that he didn't get the remodeling contract for the UN building. Yes, really.

He also repeated the required recitation of the 7 wars he supposedly stopped. Most of them are not stopped, including two in Africa, and in only a couple did he make some phone calls. One of them involved Armenia, which he called Albania.

I understand that in the press conference with RFK, Jr, he kept saying Tylonol because when he tried to say acetaminophen, it came out Albania.

The wars he had promised to end, in Ukraine and Gaza, are still going hot and heavy and he seemed to hand over responsibility for Ukraine to NATO and Europe. He called the UN useless since they haven't stopped any wars or blown up any speedboats.

Incidentally, in washing his hands of Ukraine, Trump is violating an agreement signed by his predecessor in 1994.

To solidify security commitments to Ukraine, the United States, Russia, and the United Kingdom signed the Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances on December 5, 1994. The memorandum included security assurances against the threat or use of force against Ukraine’s territory or political independence. The countries promised to respect the sovereignty and existing borders of Ukraine.

In response, Ukraine gave up the third-largest nuclear arsenal in the world, including an estimated 1,900 strategic warheads, 176 intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), and 44 strategic bombers.

To do that, we promised to defend them, and the Russians promised to leave them alone. But, hey, that was 30 years ago. Nobody even remembers these guys.

Oh, and the President's own videographer ran up the UN escalator to get dramatic shots of Melania and him coming up, and it seems he accidentally triggered the emergency stop button, forcing the Trumps to climb up one flight of stairs. And there was a glitch in the teleprompter at the beginning of his speech. The teleprompter, by the way, was being run by White House staffers. He claimed anyway that the UN sabotaged him, and wants an investigation.

We have indicted the former FBI Director James Comey in a case that will not go well for the new lawyer Trump assigned to Virginia. Her name is Lindsey Halligan, and her experience is basically in insurance law. The reason she is on the White House staff should be obvious.

And to end the week, the President is sending army troops to Portland, Oregon. Why Portland? To be honest, I don't have an answer to that, as it is a pretty peaceful place. But maybe, like Washington, the National Guard can clean litter in the parks, or something. National Gardeners?

Actually, though, I do have an answer to the big generals meeting, Venezuela, the UN, Comey and Portland. It's to distract us from asking about FBI files on a person whose name begins with the letter "E."

And it seems that pressure is working. The President, at long last, after much public clamor, is going to release every bit of information the government has on Amelia Earhart. At last our long national nightmare is over.