There’s the story of the guy who thought he was happily married until he began to pick up on a dishonest vibe from his wife. Despite trying to shake his suspicions, he only becomes more certain something is going on. When he confides his concerns to his best friend, his buddy laughs and promises there is no way his wife would stray. Reassured, the guy decides it’s just his imagination and vows to let it go, ashamed of himself for doubting his beloved.
However, as time goes by, try as he might, the husband just can’t shake the feeling there is deceit afoot. His wife seems evermore distant and preoccupied, nothing he can put his finger on, but disturbing nonetheless. He again confides in his friend, who again fully rejects the notion, this time admonishing him and warning obsessions like this ruin marriages. Nobody wants to be married to a jealous maniac. Get a grip on yourself, he orders.
Regardless, despite full self-loathing, the guy can’t ignore his doubts. Finally he decides to put the concerns to rest by following his wife to confirm she is true. He tells her he’s going on a business trip overnight and merely drives around the block and waits down the street. Less than an hour later she pulls out and heads into the city. Sure enough she pulls up to a hotel and gives her car to a valet who seems to know her well. The husband quickly tails her inside and his knees buckle as she embraces his best friend in the lobby. He then watches them disappear into the elevator and hustles to see what floor it stops on.
As he exits the elevator a few minutes later at the floor of their tryst, he almost immediately hears his wife’s unmistakeable lustful exclamations. He stands outside the door pondering what to do, wondering if standard hotel doors will withstand his attempts to imitate Dirty Harry. But then he sees a housekeeper down the hall and convinces her he left his key in the room. When he enters, there they are, caught in the act, nothing to the imagination.
“How could you do this to me? What about the vows we exchanged? And you… we’ve been friends since high school, you looked at me twice and lied to my face. Here you both are, screwing like rabbits! What do you have to say for yourselves?! “ The wife, stark naked, looks her husband right in the eye and declares “….I want a divorce. I won’t stay married to a man who doesn’t trust me. I can’t believe you followed me around. We’re done!” Stunned, the guy looks at his former best friend, who shrugs and matter-of-factly reminds him “I warned you she wouldn’t stand for it. Nobody but yourself to blame.”
Lisa Murkowski of Alaska is who those looking desperately for a GOP Senate “moderate” not fully under Trump’s thumb pin their hopes on. They may want to look elsewhere. Coming into this week, Murkowski had voted with the President 75% of the time. Given how extreme this White House’s agenda has been, particularly its slate of judges for the federal bench, three out of four really doesn’t cut it in the profiles of courage department. Put another way, Joe Manchin (D-West Virginia), presumably Murkowski’s opposite number as an outlier swimming upstream against his party’s agenda, voted against Democratic wishes 54% of the time. A real DINO vs. a phony baloney RINO.
Modern America has only been a two-party system. Sure, some independent candidacies have made their mark. In fact, the leading contender for this year’s Democratic nomination is at heart an independent. Yet and still, the vitality of our republic depends on healthy competition between the Republicans and Democrats, with a fidelity to honor and fairness, defined and enforced by the rule of law and the constitution that informs it. And make no mistake, the absence of one will kill the other and leave US democracy – the world’s ultimate stable currency – up the creek sans paddle. A rotten legislature is far more dangerous than an unleashed executive because it passes the laws meant to keep each honest. The corruption of both, in service to each other? Sayonara democracy.
Trump’s 2016 campaign was shocking in its flagrant, forget mere disregard, but outright disdain of established practices meant to promote civility and temper division, not to mention respect for the sacred electoral process. What rendered his victory as something less than an existential crisis to many was bipartisan confidence that his worst would impel at least a percentage of the GOP to hold him accountable. At the time, even with control of both chambers firmly in Republican hands, the belief even 10-15% of either GOP caucus would at least give others pondering dissent a refuge for thwarting the worst few doubted he was capable of provided essential reassurance for getting on with day-to-day routines.
Last Friday’s vote to bar witnesses from an impeachment trial with a foregone conclusion confirmed how delusional such assumptions were. Worse, caught in the bedroom, buck naked and fornicating with a despicably corrupt nation wrecker, unfaithful public servants like Murkowski want us to know it’s all our own fault. Who do Democrats think they are trying to hold Trump to account? How dare the House put Senate Republicans in such a position. Send us impeachment with no GOP support will you; who cares if he’s guilty?! Or, er… the transcript of the call…. I mean, why didn’t you wait and get Bolton to testify to you?! That’s it…. shoddy and lazy work. Doesn’t rise to impeachable anyway. So there! No witnesses!
Murkowski made a great show of both her indecision and seriousness at weighing the arguments throughout the trial, taking copious notes and asking numerous questions. Yet and still, in the end, her lame justification for denying witnesses was no different than Trumpie eunuch Rick Scott’s, just issued in more sincere tones. While Scott whined about refusing to “do the House’s job for them,” Murkowski solemnly derided “the partisan nature of this impeachment from the very beginning and throughout…” The articles of impeachment were yet another chapter in the relentless victimization of our martyr President, according to Murkowski:
“…. I have come to the conclusion that there will be no fair trial in the Senate. I don’t believe the continuation of this process will change anything. It is sad for me to admit that, as an institution, the Congress has failed.”
It’s hard to imagine a more comprehensive and impressive presentation than House impeachment managers put forward. The difference between drunken Lindsey Graham foaming at the mouth and Murkowski’s soft sell doesn’t mean anything when the result is the same. It’s like two golfers bogeying the same hole. One drives it right down the middle, chips on in regulation, putts to within three feet but then blows the par putt. The other guy drives it in the woods, chips back out to the fairway, hits it in the bunker, blasts out and makes a 25-footer for his five. One was uglier than the other, but each carded the same score.
The sham winds down this week, but this national nightmare promises to endure. When Trump finally does get his full party-line acquittal, one thing will be certain: his facilitators will all be in that hotel room with him. Each will be just as corrupt as the others, albeit some a bit more painful to discover. The blatant shamelessness of ruin. BC
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