Ah. I could live for days like this. A gentle rain, the rumble of distant thunder, the scent of a cleansing on the earth…

But it isn’t tranquil. Too much is happening for me to be lulled by it.

Out there, it’s a nightmare. Maybe you live somewhere that’s trapped in a nightmare. To see the news this morning took every good thing out of me.

Watching Morning Joe was no fun at all. I like that program. Particularly when Joe gets on an angry tear. What a speaker. Mika sometimes sighs and says, “here we go,” and it’s funny, because they’re married. I always get a chuckle when she does that.

Today was a day I didn’t hear anyone get that riled. It was a bad day. Yesterday was a bad day and every day before it was bad.

I suspect anyone who does a news and commentary show is deflated right now. The wind ain’t gonna come to those slack sails, you know?

Which story did you want to cover first? Toss up there, Mika. Did you ever think you would see a day like this? Did you ever really imagine this? All of this?

The dawn over the Bay area in California on Wednesday looked like a scene in the Keanu Reeves film “Constantine” when he goes to Hell. It’s a chilling scene, no play on words intended. But waking up, seeing that, whoa. How do you even handle that?

The latest update I could find is actually on Wikipedia’s update page and counts ten deaths so far. Dont tell me climate change isn’t real. We know by the extended dry season in California and the violence of the storms providing lightning strikes. We know some of the fires were caused by human activity including, for pity’s sake, a pyrotechnic display. That’s goddamn irresponsible, but it’s done, and its effects are far from done.

In another time, this would not be happening. We’ve seen terrible fires before, but never anything like this, and there’s really no stopping it. The wikipedia references the amount of acres, or hectares, burned. That those numbers have increased while I’m writing this staggers my imagination.

I’m personally very frightened for people I know, and one relative, who are out there. But my concern is for everyone. It is a truly hellish scene. I’m horrified by what you’re going through out there.

According to a tweet by the NWS, there’s no model to account for the future of the smoke, which today is darker and closer to the ground in some places. They were asking for people’s observations to try and sort out what they could.

NWS, as I suspect NOAA and every other organization that deals with weather, are having a tough year. If 2020 was a weather system, they’d all say that it sucked. Not very professional, but honest.

The hurricane season isn’t over and keep in mind, October is not here yet, and some of our worst hurricanes have occurred late in the season. Right now, there’s tropical activity and more to come. This, after Louisiana has been hit hard. They cant take another hit like that. Not that any state can, but hey, the news ain’t gonna tell you much about that state while so many other horrors are going on. Keep a weather eye. Literally.

BOOKS

Yeah. Everybody’s got a book out. For a price, you can now read things about Donald and Melania Trump that in all honesty we should have been told about long ago.

Melania is a terrible person. She’s illiterate and cruel and driven by greed to put up a false facade. For years we speculated on why she would slap her husband’s hand away and whether she was a battered wife and too scared of losing custody of her son to leave him. We were foolish to think these things; not only are they untrue, but she never deserved the slightest bit of our sympathy. The book to read: Melania And Me.

Then comes the shocking (not really) book Rage by Bob Woodward. We’ve heard the audio with Trump admitting that he knew COVID-19 was seriously contagious and deadly but he played it down to “avoid panic” and that he’s still playing it down.

Except that, one day after the audio was released, Trump was asked why anyone should ever believe him again. He denied saying what he said and added, “I meant we have to stay calm.”

Sorry, Mr. President, but trying to keep people calm doesn’t cover constant lies, toxic cure suggestions, withholding monetary aid to states and forcing them to order shutdowns, or begging all over the world for PPE and ventilators. You did that, against all the common sense and decency everyone else had but you lacked.

You know what? The administration just took federal taxes off the withholding payroll for government workers. They have no choice and even though the money has to be paid later, this is the probing, the overture, to breaking Social Security. He’s already on his second or third attempt at having pre-existing conditions removed from the ACA. And when the money has to be repaid, you think anyone’s going to be able? No. And their debt will accrue interest. It’s a sin.

There’s a shit storm of revelations about Trump coming out like the ones in Cohen’s new volume. He calls Trump a cult leader and claims to have been a member of the cult. I’m not sure.

Certainly not the first lawyer to go overboard for money and prestige, he’s coming off a bit dishonest to me. I don’t think he’s telling the whole truth. The book: Dishonesty. Quite appropriate.

All these and more are books that contain staggering revelations about the Trump presidency. It’s horrific, and yet, all of the facts that they contain are things that, had they come to light sooner (in March, Woodward knew that Trump was lying about COVID-19 despite being fully aware that it was going to kill a lot of people) would inarguably have saved lives and the economy.

Cohen’s book reveals much about Russia and Trump. It’s every bit as bad as we were sure it was, only worse. Back in 2016, and onward, we were sure that Vladimir Putin had something on Trump. Something he didn’t want to ever become known. This of course, as I wrote back then and since, is the Russian way. They compromise, record money transactions or anything else they can use, and then threaten to reveal it. In Trump’s case, we knew that he had pursued relentlessly some business deals with Russia. He was vocally impressed with Putin and then something happened. Rumor had it that he was taking golden showers, that it was on video and Russia had the proof.

This fits. But it isn’t enough. First, he once visited son Eric at university and the boy came down from the dorm in a sweatshirt, and Trump slapped him. He said “A Trump wears a tie! Go get dressed!” It’s always been about image with Trump. So a video of him engaged in water sports would embarrass him no end. His skin is thin. But I never have thought that was the true nature of it all. There had to be more. It was about his true amount of financial debt or it was sexual, and either way, it was hardcore. In the case of a video, I maintained it had to be egregious, like having sex with a minor. Something he could never get away from if it was made public. In light of his ordering intelligence to move on from investigating Russia and to instead concentrate on China, I believe this to be another smoking gun, telling of the level of corruption in the White House. Barr taking on Trump’s defense? More corruption of our government.

I started this post this morning. It’s almost midnight. Time to publish without any ending thoughts, but I’m not sure I even have any. We’re in big trouble. Microsoft published a report on Russian and Chinese interference in the election. I need to read up…