Dispatches from Vilnius

What's His Trumpness to do when he can't glorify himself by searching Google for feelgood stories about his truly?  Outlaw Google of course.  As absurd as this sounds, that's exactly what our dear president is proposing after a search for himself yielded all sorts of unkind sentiments at the top of his results.  I don't know what it will take to expose his madness anymore than these early morning tweets . The Orange King tasked Larry Kudlow to investigate this incredible bias , first called out by PJ media.  Kudlow, his economic adviser, will also be probing facebook and twitter in regard to this "left wing bias."  Surely, Larry has better things to do. There are a whole bunch of theories for this latest twitter tantrum.  Most likely he was upset by the adulation John McCain was getting in the wake of his death and was hoping to find some kind words about himself when he woke up needing to relieve his swollen bladder.  I wonder if he peed blue...

We hear this phrase a lot, but when it comes to America it seems to be true.  Here in Lithuania I hear numerous reasons given why the Good Ship United States keeps chugging along, namely printing cash.  If that were the case, we would have seen runaway inflation like we did in Germany between the world wars or in Venezuela today.  No, the US keeps going because the Federal Reserve keeps pumping hard currency into the market.  To help cover the costs of the tax cut bill, the White House has borrowed an unprecedented trillion dollars from the Fed.  Of course, this is reflected in the national debt clock , which now stands at $21.5 trillion and counting. Fortunately for the US, much of the national debt is domestically owned.  About one-third is foreign owned.  We are still controlling our own destiny, not China or Saudi Arabia or other countries that buy up public holdings.  The fact that they do is also a good thing, as they consider this ...

Watching all the accolades roll in following his death makes me wonder what is going on here?  Did I miss something in him, or are people projecting in him the noble leader they so much yearn for?  Whatever the case, John McCain was all too human and hardly deserves all this outpouring of grief. He's even being hailed in Lithuania for his steadfast resistance to Russian aggression.  He had a chance to visit the country for the first time in December, 2016, giving his best wishes to the renegade state that had defied the Soviet Union in 1990. The Senator for Life ran again for office in 2016, despite probably knowing he had cancer.  Glioblastoma is not something that happens overnight.  According to the American Association of Neurological Surgeons, it is a  brain tumor that usually forms in men between the ages of 45 and 70.  When it spreads, it spreads quickly and is almost impossible to contain.  It could be he ignored the symptoms un...

You can be excused if you don't know who Robin Leach is.  He's been living under the radar for some time, but back in the mid-80s he brought the lavish "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous" into middle class living rooms across America.  You might say he was single-handedly responsible for elevating our aspirations and spurring the real estate market by making persons crave spacious bathrooms and kitchens, sunken firepits, walk-in closets, indoor-outdoor swimming pools, and other amenities to their modest homes.  The period between 1984-1995, in which the syndicated show ran, coincided with an unparalleled building boom in the real estate market.  Everyone wanted a bigger home with as many of the features of the jet set as they could get a second mortgage for.  The average size of a single-family home grew from 1700 square feet (170 square meters) to 2500 square feet (250 square meters).  Real estate agents pushed large bathrooms and kitchens, walk-in...

Rough week for the Donald, seeing both his former campaign manager and lawyer go down.  Not only that but the head of National Enquirer, David Pecker , flipped on him by supporting Cohen's admission that Trump was fully aware of the payoffs to the two bimbos in question.  Is there a more perfect name for the head of a rag like the Enquirer?  It's like something out of a bad mafia movie with Trump complaining that  there should be a law against flipping . One would like to think time is running out on the artful dodger, but I wouldn't hold my breath.  Even if the Democrats get the votes to impeach him in November, they would have to turn a dozen or more Republicans in the Senate against Trump and that is a very tall order.  Nevertheless, they finally have a crime to bring impeachment proceedings against Trump. Darling Rudy took time out from a round of golf to say there will be a revolt in the streets if the Democrats dare to impeach the people's pr...

Basically, your love or hate for Donald Trump comes down to whether you loved or hated the old Fox sitcom, Married with Children .  At its center was Al Bundy, a struggling shoe salesman trying to keep his high-maintenance family fed.  It could have been set anywhere, but the creators decided to put Al in the suburbs of Chicago.  It was a big hit, had a devoted following, and ran for 11 seasons. The show was purposefully over the top.  Al always wore that contorted look as if battling hemorrhoids.  The highlight of his dismal life was going to the local strip club , where he would tie a dollar bill on the end of string to lure the dancers over to his end of the runway.  You never really knew whether he had any feelings for his wife or teenage kids, not that it mattered since poor Al lamented everything.  He was the quintessential loser, personifying a large cross section of frustrated men across the country. Donald seized on that image during ...

You may have seen this cowboy philosopher, especially if you have Southern friends.  Chad has become an internet hit with his wit and wisdom on what it is like to be a good ol' Southern boy.  I got into a little scuffle with friends over one of his latest vlogs , as Chad didn't see anything wrong with corporal punishment, saying that maybe if we threatened the belt more often there wouldn't be so many "bratty kids" running around in restaurants. I find Chad's whiny voice more annoying than I do kids, and we have a daycare center next door.  More often it is the parents or guardians who make me cringe with their awful songs, childish antics and other attempts at placating their kids, when maybe if they just treated kids as persons, they might respond better.  Chad, like so many others thinks the kids are the ones out of control. Of course, it is a thinly veiled attack on Millennials, going after their kids, who have been dubbed Generation Alpha .  The ...

Given that half of his base thinks the moon landing is a hoax , you have to wonder why Trump and Pence are so keen to kickstart the space program.  Just the same, there was Mike Pence unveiling the new "space force"   last week. This has been a pet project of Republicans for some time now.  Newt Gingrich was pushing for moonbases during his ill-fated 2012 run for President, earning him the nickname Moonbase Newt.  But, where Newt wanted to colonize the Moon and even Mars during his proposed presidential administration, the Trump administration has something more along the lines of Reagan's Star Wars in mind, only with Russia and China as the new "evil empire" to contend with.  It didn't help that North Korea launched one of its intercontinental rockets well into the thermosphere last year.  Far higher than anyone expected they could reach. While there are reasons to worry, do we really need a separate arm of the military to deal with it?  ...

The pattern emerging is that the Democrats can make it close but they can't win crucial seats.  Of course, none of us would have paid much attention to Ohio's 12th district special election had not Danny O'Connor saw an upsurge in the polls over the summer suggesting Troy Balderson was vulnerable in this normally reliable Republican district.  So, all eyes turned to the suburbs of Columbus to see if a "blue wave" would roll over Ohio.  As of this morning , Balderson holds a narrow advantage in the race, but it is doubtful the provisional ballots yet to be counted will tip the election to O'Connor. The Democrats were able to force the Republicans to spend heavily in a district they didn't make much of an investment in.  The GOP had to bring out all its firepower, including Trump, who appears to have rubbed just enough mojo on Balderson to give him a badly needed victory.  Kasich says the president was never invited to Ohio , but turned up anyway, thr...

I remember my first political rally.  It was for Bob Sikes.  He was your quintessential Southern Democrat, representing our district in Northwest Florida in the US Congress.  Our high school was pretty small.  The rally was in an old gym, which sat maybe 500 persons in the fold-out wood bleachers.  There was a stage recessed into the opposite wall, the curtain drawn over it to hide all the weights and other gym equipment.  Mr. Sikes spoke from the floor of the gym.  We all were impressed, lined up to shake hands with him afterward. That's as close as we came to our representatives.  What we saw of them was mostly on television, which was only four channels at the time.  The PBS station out of Pensacola was usually "snow," no matter how much my mother tried to adjust the aerial.  I asked my father if he was going to vote for him.  He said, no.  Typical Democrat, although it was pretty hard to tell Southern Democrats and...

There was a bulletin for a 40-year high school reunion on my facebook timeline this morning, as if we don't hear enough from each other on facebook as it is.  I really don't see much value in attending, but I said yes just the same. I've de-friended some of my classmates, as they have de-friended me over religion and politics.  Some became Seventh-Day Adventists and are trying to impose their strict new beliefs on others, forgetting what they were like as high school students.  Others have solidified their political views, or rather these political views have become ossified to the point they need not repeat them, as just seeing their name pop up on my timeline is enough to know what they have to say.  Many of these I have unfollowed, so I don't feel compelled to respond to their posts. I last attended one of these things 20 years ago.  It was a mini-reunion with ten or fifteen classmates at a friend's house, as I wasn't able to attend the official reun...

It was great to see someone make Sean Spicer squirm.  He's been out promoting his new book and trying to drum up support for a talk show. He's received a friendly audience for the most part, but not Emily Maitlis.   She let him have it in a BBC interview . Spicer benefited to some degree from Melissa McCarthy's hilarious portrayal on SNL.  People loved him if nothing more than for this caricature.  He even used it in a cameo appearance on the Emmy Awards show, which Maitlis referenced.  She noted that this led to an acceptance of his toxic mix of fact and fiction that she didn't feel he deserved. Yet, Sean keeps making the rounds, even when he gets confronted at a book signing in Middleton, Massachusetts.  Book reviews haven't been very good either. So how did this guy go from being the Easter Bunny during George W. Bush's administration to press secretary under Trump to urban folk anti-hero following his abrupt resignation?  The g...

From The Economist, June, 2018 Trump is doing his best to channel Miley Cyrus, as he tries to drag down the whole country to his level.  Apparently, Wall Street no longer reacts to him.  How else to explain a nearly 200 point rise in the Dow on the same day he announces a $12 billion bailout to farmers to cover the cost of the retaliation to his tariffs?  Trump just swings back and forth like in Miley's video, singing the same song over and over and over again. In one of his latest tweets, Trump proudly proclaimed "Tariffs are the Greatest!"  I'm surprised he didn't put it all caps like his love letter to Iran.  He told a Kansas City audience that he would have Europe crawling to him for relief.  It seems he was referring to the planned visit of Jean-Claude Juncker today.  The White House is expecting some kind of trade offer, but the EU Commission said there is no deal on the table.  Most likely the two will trade barbs and Trump's tea...

While some conservatives pine for the days we had a real president, some progressives lament the missed opportunities under Obama.  Max Boot said Obama's recent speech marking the 100th anniversary of Nelson Mandela was a real watershed, as it profoundly illustrated what a President should sound like.  George Soros invested a lot of money in Obama's 2008 campaign and didn't get the return call he expected.  He was hoping to be part of the administration, but instead "he closed the door on me."  Soros felt there was a lot he could contribute, especially in regard to Russia and Eastern Europe, which Obama and his inner circle knew very little about. Soros is probably right in that Obama badly misread Russia's intentions in Eastern Europe, thinking he could restart relations with Medvedev, who briefly served as President, while Putin rewrote the Constitution in the Duma to allow for his comeback.  It seemed Obama put little stock in the Russian annexatio...

There's something about a sexy red head wielding semi-automatic weapons that just makes conservatives salivate.  That's certainly the case with Maria Butina , the latest Russian spy to have infiltrated the conservative establishment, notably the NRA.  She will no doubt get some kind of sweetheart deal to return to Russia, and if she is made to face charges in America, Trump will most likely pardon her. You just have to wonder if these organizations and conservative figures do any background checks.  As it turns out you don't even have to be sexy, just full of gun-toting bullshit to get an audience with these guys, as Sacha Baron Cohen discovered.  He managed to get no less than five Congresspersons, active and retired, to take part in his "Kinderguardian" promotional video, where he arms four-year-olds to defend themselves in preschools. So why are conservatives so gullible?  We see the occasional liberal getting punk'd but nothing like what happe...

Trump may have been onto something when he played REM's "It's the End of the World as We Know It" over and over again at his rallies.  It's an  incredible song  as it foreshadows a Trump administration, even if Michael Stipe was pissed off he received no royalties from its use. The chaos and confusion that spills out in the song is a very close approximation to what we see day to day from Trump.  We think it couldn't get any worse, but somehow he finds a way to top himself, or bottom himself as the case may be.  As bad as his NATO summit and meeting with Theresa May went, nothing compares to the Helsinki summit, in which he capitulated to Vladimir Putin in the worst possible way, laying our country prostrate before the Russian leader's feet like a vanquished opponent in a virtual reality Medieval battle. We have no way of knowing what deals were struck, what level of infiltration occurred, what degree of collusion took place during and after the 2...

What have we learned about Trump on his latest European trip?  He doesn't like women, at least those who would be consider his peers.  He doesn't like immigrants, especially Pakistanis who become important mayors.  He doesn't understand that you are supposed to come before tea time, leaving the Queen checking her watch on the royal stand.  And, he hates to be mocked, but then we already knew that. Trump left a lot of persons scratching their heads this time around.  Determined not to be a wallflower again, which he was when he attended the NATO summit last year, he immediately ripped into Germany at breakfast the first day , claiming that it was "captive" to Russia because of the Nordstream pipeline.  This had less to do with Germany's reliance on cheap Russian natural gas than it did his animosity toward Angela Merkel, who had stolen all his thunder at the last NATO summit.  He was determined not to let that happen again. Then came the infamo...