We couldn’t help but notice while Mulvaney bumbled, sweated and strained in front of the press, telling them to ‘get over’ the quid pro quo, that with his bulbous, balding head, whiny expressions and round glasses he resembles the annoying school counselor from South Park Mr. Mackey. He’s even developed his own Mackey-esque catchphrase: “Quid pro quos are good and you people will have to get over it . . .mmmmkay.”
But she’s not the first advocate for climate change. Jimmy Carter actually talked the talk and walked the walk back in the 1970s but thanks to conservative patron saint Ronald Reagan, the nascent green energy movement was ridiculed and quashed before it even got started. Of course, many other intelligent people have stepped to the forefront over the last forty years pushing for alternative energy, only to be ignored and vilified by the powerful oil, gas and coal industries and their Republican (and some Democrats) lackeys in Congress.
A few posts ago we noted how so many modern-day conservatives were against conservation, thus making themselves colossal hypocrites. But it’s much more complex than that, of course. It’s the collective, monstrous egos of our planet’s most intelligent (allegedly) species, homo sapiens, that have done the most damage. When you put it in that context, each and every human being on the planet is responsible for the demise of life on Earth. We are all to blame and if we’re to rectify the problem, we need to all get on the same page.We all need a giant philosophical paradigm shift and that starts with the realization that unregulated capitalism is killing the planet and all the life on it.
But Bolsonaro is only doing what other third world countries do when they want to play the capitalistic game. They see the wealth of the exploitative, industrialized first world countries and they want some of that action. Or, he who has the most money wins the game. Of course, once you place living, breathing ecosystems and wildlife as a commodity to be bought and sold for profit, human’s greed and hubris take over with devastating results. There are numerous examples throughout history. Most scientists believe it was humans who killed off megafauna like the mammoth, giant sloth and the saber-tooth tiger. We’ve killed off the Tasmanian tiger, the dodo and the carrier pigeon in the last five hundred years. We almost drove the American buffalo to extinction in the 19th century. We’ve killed off over 60% of species since the 1970s. Greenland is melting at an alarming rate which places its wildlife in peril. Climate change is killing the Great Barrier Reef as is human pollution. A new study has indicated that since 1970, bird populations have fallen 29% or 3 billion fewer birds. All because we ‘intelligent’ humans greedily lust for an abstract commodity; monetary wealth.
But how and why did having money become the most important thing in our world? Because we’re humans, goddamn it! We’re superior creatures! What are we humans supposed to do with our time? Go hiking in the wilderness, relax and enjoy life? Boring!!! We must grow, grow, grow! Bigger, bigger, bigger! We’re taught from day one that we must utilize our superior brains every second of the day or else we’re failures. We can’t just sit around doing nothing. Or can we? If you ask any sane person what their idea of paradise is, they’ll usually respond some idyllic tropical island like Tahiti or some mountain retreat with little to no development and lots of nature or some small remote village where people live simply. So, why are we constantly destroying nature and building ugly concrete and steel structures and athletic stadiums which only last for twenty years? Because we can; as a monument to human ingenuity and greed.
But just because we can do something, doesn’t mean we should. Would it really be so bad to just not build a new multiplex shopping center? Would it be so bad to adopt a simpler lifestyle and enjoy nature and the great outdoors? Would it be so bad to tear down some of our ubiquitous, ugly strip malls and skyscrapers and plant urban forests and farms? Plant an urban garden where that stupid parking lot is. Have a nature reserve where that stupid golf course is. If we combine this with a global effort of birth control and contraception, we can get things under control again. We need fewer humans, not more humans on this planet. Humans, especially ones from industrial, consumptive nations are at the forefront of environmental devastation. We’ve created so much waste that we’re exporting it to third world countries with poor waste management systems. If third world countries become like first world countries, then our planet is truly doomed and we can all kiss our materialistic asses goodbye. We need to dial our greed back from 11. We need to curb our consumption and learn to be content with fewer material possessions and simpler lifestyles. This is the only planet we know of that supports life. We need to put the welfare of our planet before our own wealth, because without the planet, how can we enjoy the wealth?We need to stop worshipping the greedy, egotistical and avaricious and start respecting and caring for nature and our environment. Those paradises we yearn for are right under our feet; we just don’t recognize them because of all the concrete, asphalt and steel.
So, poor wittle Turtle Boy better get used to being called Moscow Mitch because he will be called Moscow Mitch up until he loses his seat next November. But fear not; after he loses, at least Moscow Mitch can move to Russia to stay with Vladimir Putin and his Russian oligarch pals.
So Britain now has it’s own Donald Trump. We here at the Bucket see Putin as a James Bond Super Villain who dispenses helpful hints for those wanting to remake western democracies into Putin-style oligarchies. All you have to do is buy off wacky haired, egotistical, narcissistic, populist, capitalist megalomaniacs like Boris Johnson and Trump, who love money, fame and power. Oh, and don’t forget those wacky haired communist leaders like Kim Jong Un.
But fear not Wilbuuuuurrr fans. We’ve noticed that this filthy rich plutocrat bear a striking resemblance to the Cryptkeeper from the classic anthology series Tales from the Crypt. We have no doubt that if Hollywood decides to reboot this series, Ross would be a natural. He’s already shown adeptness at keeping the swamp in Washington D.C.; we’re sure he’ll be able to entertain all the boils and ghouls with his rapid fire wit and ghastly puns.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also seems to be supporting the idea of war with Iran but for a different reason. Pompeo is one of those looniest of loony evangelical christians called a rapturist. In the warped mind of these nutbags, the end times are a-coming which means that all good christians will be slurped up to heaven while the rest of us ‘heathens’ will be left to toil on Earth. One of the pre-cursors for the end times, according to ‘biblical scripture’, is that Jerusalem is recognized as the capital of Israel, which Donald Trump did last year. Now, according to the end times mythology, a great war will occur and Jesus Christ will come again which will facilitate the ‘rapture’. Many prominent Republicans are rapturists including Pompeo, VP Puritan Mike Pence, former Teabagger darling Sarah ‘Ubetcha’ Palin, former Attorney Confederate General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, housing secretary Ben ‘Mr. Sandman’ Carson and energy secretary and brain fart expert Rick Perry. So, with a normal, logical, reasonable Secretary of State, war is usually and wisely avoided. But with this evangelical loon, conditions are being forced that would result in a catastrophic conflict in the Middle East. This would mean that biblical prophecy would be ‘proven’ correct and all the ‘good people’ (christians) will get their just desserts in heaven and all the bad people (the rest of us) will suffer in lakes of fire here on Earth.
Of course, these wack jobs fail to consider that the people who wrote the bible lived two thousand years ago and didn’t know jack about the Earth or the universe. We’ve mentioned before that religious people connect to a tiny bronze age database while scientific people connect to a colossal, 21st century database chock full of knowledge. We’ve gained so much knowledge about everything in the last four hundred years. To ignore science, scientific inquiry and scientific methods is sheer lunacy and any person advocating radical ideology based on two thousand year old babble shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near the corridors of power in this country. We guarantee to all those rapture loonies that unless you’re vaporized by a nuclear blast you’ll still be here left to toil on the Earth with the rest of us.
We’ve commented before about how poor people view themselves as temporarily embarrasses millionaires and are cajoled into voting against their own self-interests by right wing propagandists, like Fox News, blaming everyone else but the real culprits (plutocratic capitalists) for their conditions. The scapegoats are always the same: minorities, people of color and people of different religions other than christianity – you know, people who are ‘different’. So these right wing, racist, conservative christians, although they are in the same boat financially as blacks, hispanics, other non-whites, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and atheists, will support politicians who create laws and policies that decimate the middle class and make their own lives even tougher. For example, the Trump administration has destroyed consumer protection regulations which make it harder for Americans to stand up for their rights and easier for corporations to do whatever the hell they want with no repercussions. With higher insurance premiums and no voice to change them, we’re all getting screwed. But it doesn’t matter to the racist Trump supporters, because at least non-whites are not becoming better off than them. So much winning. . . for corporations and plutocrats!
The mask has been removed from Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and as it turns out, it doesn’t seem that he’s not all that committed to rule of law as his title may imply. Many details have come to light about how Rosenstein had to walk a political tightrope to mollify our petulant, man child CEO/Dictator, Donald Trump. And he even became angry at the press for treating Trump unfairly. Oh, boo-hoo! You’re supposed to uphold the law and instead you let Trump piss all over the constitution. As one ex-DOJ critic summarized, Rosenstein was weak. “He shouldn’t be talking to the president about an investigation into the president under any circumstances and he shouldn’t be giving him assurances about how that investigation will end and he especially shouldn’t be doing it at a time when he’s begging and pleading for his own job… The way to understand Rod is he’s weak, and he’s always been weak. He was weak at the beginning of this investigation when he signed off on the Comey firing and gave the president the excuse, despite––we now know, having read the Mueller report––that he knew why the president was firing Comey, that it was over the Russia investigation.”
We here at the Bucket noticed Mr. Rosenstein’s stone face demeanor at Bill Barr’s pre-Mueller report release con job party where the Republican obfuscator attempted Jedi mind-tricks on the American people. And we wondered to ourselves, is that Rod Rosenstein or a deer in the headlights? Many people have speculated about the thoughts running through his head as Barr misled the public. We think he was saying, “Oh oh…now everyone knows that I’m just a pro-Trump stooge.” We’re looking forward to your retirement, Mr. Rosenstein! We have no doubt you’ll get a comfy position at Fox News, a.k.a. the Republican Propaganda Network.
The redacted version of the Mueller report has been released and boy is it a doozy. While Attorney General and Republican obfuscator Bill Barr has erroneously touted that the report ‘clears’ American CEO/Dictator Donald Trump of collusion and obstruction, just reading the unredacted portions paints a decisively different picture of what happened. And if the redacted report paints a damning picture of Trump can you imagine what the complete report says?
According to this article at Vox, 7.25% of the report has been redacted. After downloading and scanning through the report, we’ve come up with a handy dandy redaction guide to try and translate what the most common redaction phrase ‘Harm to Ongoing Matter'(HOM) means to the average American. The acronym appears repeatedly throughout the document, especially in Volume I dealing with the Russian conspiracy to sway the 2016 election toward Donald Trump and from what we can gather it translates to ‘Donald Trump is guilty as hell.” Why else was his initial reaction to the appointment of the special consul, “This is the end of my presidency. I’m f*cked.” Would an innocent man say that?
In Volume II of the report, Robert Mueller cited ten cases where obstruction of justice could be applied to Trump. Why did he not just come out and say he obstructed justice? According to the Department of Justice, you can’t indict a sitting president. So basically, Mueller set up the pins on a narrow lane and gave the Democrats a bowling ball the size of a beach ball so they could mow down our corrupt, megalomaniac leader. But, in true Democratic fashion, Democrat leaders are already talking about not pursuing impeachment and concentrating on the 2020 election. You know the Republicans wouldn’t hesitate to impeach if the situation was reversed. They did so with Bill Clinton twenty years ago on much lesser charges.
So lets briefly review the low-lights of the Republican party in the last 50 years: Nixon knows about the Watergate break-ins and attempts to cover them up, Gerald Ford pardons him; the Reagan administration sold arms for hostages in the Iran-Contra affair, G.H.W. Bush and Bill Barr issue pardons for those involved; Dubya and Dick Cheney knowingly deceive America about false WMDs in Iraq prompting an invasion which cost millions of lives, trillions of dollars and destabilizes the whole region and Democrats do nothing. Donald Trump obstructs justice and continuously pisses on the rule of law and Democrats are seriously considering doing nothing…again. In short: Republicans repeatedly screw the country and repeatedly get away with it. Is it any wonder this country is so botched up and people have no faith in our democratic institutions any more.
Hopefully the Democrats will grow a spine, put justice first and impeach this lying, manipulative, con artist before he does further damage to the White House, the rule of law and the prestige of the United States. But then again, the Democrats have an uncanny ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
So what can we conclude from his testimony? That America’s Attorney General is quite a trolling con artist and not as just and proper as his supporters claim he is. The Mueller report lasted 2 years and cost the taxpayers almost 5 million dollars. So you no what? Americans have a right to see every bit of that report. We paid for it, we get to see every sentence, every word and every period…NO REDACTIONS!!!
We here at the Bucket also noticed that the corpulent Attorney General bears a striking resemblance to portly, cartoon troublemaker Peter Griffin from the animated sitcom Family Guy. But don’t worry folks: Bill Barr is only trolling America for fun and profit – heh-heh-heh-heh.