Did I know her? You mean the cute 14-year-old girl with the long legs, blonde hair, green eyes, and the overdeveloped bossom? No officer, I never saw her.

Alabama Senate candidate Judge* Roy Moore....a special kind of odd.

*Is it proper to still call someone who has been a judge twice, and been removed from his bench twice, "Judge"?

If you keep up with the news at all you'll know that "Judge" Roy Moore is the Republican candidate running to fill the unexpired seat of former Alabama Senator and now Attorney General Jeff Sessions.  It's said he would be by far the most conservative member of the Senate if elected, which would make him someone the Republicans could count on to vote with their bare majority on things like tax reform, health care reform, etc.  He was their darling....until it was alleged he molested a girl back in 1979, when he was 32 and she was only 14.

That girl, now all grown up, is Leigh Corfman.  She has given details of the incident, and has friends from that time who say she told them of her "relationship" with Moore, but as of now it's legally nothing more than he-said-she-said.  There is no stained "blue dress" such as the one that tripped up Bill Clinton.

Judge Moore says he didn't do it and that it's all politically motivated, asking why all this has come out now, just weeks before the special election?  Fair point.

Background:  Mr. Moore is a graduate of West Point, and went on after his military academy graduation to serve as a MP, including a tour in Vietnam.  There he was so unpopular with his men (he was a Captain by then) that he admitted sleeping on his cot surrounded by sandbags, worried they would "frag" (kill) him with a grenade while he slept.

He later went to the University of Alabama where he received his Juris Doctor degree.  He eventually worked his way into the judiciary where he was twice elected to the Alabama Supreme Court, and twice removed, for not enforcing laws he personally objected to.

In 2002 he founded the non-profit Foundation For Moral Law, and between 2007 and 2012 personally received over $1M from his foundation, which somehow exceeded the amount of revenue listed on its public tax filings.

Here we are today, with candidate Moore being accused of sexual misconduct appearing on the Sean Hannity show, defending himself.  He did a pitiful job of it.  When asked if he dated teenage girls when he was in his 30's he said it "would have been out of my customary behavior".  He went on to say, "If I did, I’m not going to dispute these things, but I don’t remember anything like that".  

Ahh, not exactly a convincing denial there, Roy, but as mentioned, there hasn't so far been any evidence presented that a court could use to convict.  That's what his supporters are basing their undying support for him on.  "Prove it" they say.  Should you vote against someone just because they've been accused of something?  

Think of it this way:  If your job required you and your family to relocate to another city, and you needed to find a new OB/Gyn for your daughter, would you send her to a doctor who had been accused of sexual misconduct with a 14-year-old girl?

With the Alabama Senate seat likely to be the one to cast the deciding vote on many crucial social issues the Republican's will put forward next year, the country needs a thoughtful civil servant.  Judge Roy doesn't seem to fit that description IMO.

Still, he could win election.  Then the issue will be whether the Republican-controlled Senate will vote to seat him (Article 1, Section 5 of the Constitution says each house of Congress is the final arbiter of who it seats) or accept him and his all-important vote while gritting their teeth and keeping him at a distance from the rest of civil society....even the suggestion of sexual abuse of an underage minor is something hard to ignore.  This could get very interesting.  

The conundrum is, it's impossible to prove a negative...you can't prove you didn't do something that never happened.  But, regardless of his ideology, if you were an Alabamian, would you vote for Judge Roy Moore for the US Senate, or let Dr Roy Moore be your daughter's OB/Gyn?

S

The world's toughest job?

 

...Being President Donald Trump's lawyer(s).

Exactly how would you go about trying to keep Donald Trump quiet?  Break all his fingers?  Put him in a straight jacket and duct tape his mouth shut?  I really have no idea, and apparently neither do any of his high profile attorneys, as evidenced by the fact that their client got loose yesterday and gave an interview to the New York Times.  After what the President said, I'm sure his legal team headed straight to the nearest bar to get seriously liquored up.

Specifically, President Trump said...on the record no less...that his Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, should never have recused himself from the investigation of any Trump campaign/Russia collaboration.  He went on to say "if I had known he was going to do that, I would have nominated someone else.  I needed someone I could count on."

Uhh..."count on"?  Count on to do what?  Someone he could count on to call off the dogs, to stifle the investigation that was already underway?  Someone to fire the FBI Director if necessary and keep him out of it?  He said that out loud?  I can't imagine how else you could finish that sentence.  

To be so smart, that man says some really dumb things.  I don't think Donald Trump could have a worse enemy than his own mouth.

S

Have we put Cousin Eddie in charge?

I feel sorry for my conservative friends who are trying to divert attention away from President Trump and focus instead on what they think is a reasonable agenda.  They articulate something worthy of debate, and then the President dumps on their message with his regular 2 am stream of brain dysentery.

Our politicians all combined couldn't lead a 2-car funeral procession out of a parking lot.  Our healthcare situation is a mess.  The Democrat's answer was ObamaCare, and the best the Republicans can come up with is their ScrewYouAmericaCare.  That's it....Plan 1, ObamaCare; or Plan 2, ScrewYouAmericaCare.  

Where's Plan 3?  "Oh, there isn't a Plan 3" they tell us.  That's because we don't have leaders who can count beyond 2!  What they've proposed amounts to putting a band-aid on a sucking chest wound.  Not only can't they think outside the box, they can't even find the damn box!

Of course we need to control our borders.  Every country does.  But proposing a 21st Century "Maginot Line"-like wall to keep the "murdering, raping Mexicans" out, and then expecting the murdering, raping Mexicans to pay for it is about the most ridiculous thing I've ever head of.  Somebody please enroll Donnie John in a Dale Carnegie How To Win Friends And Influence People course.

Trade agreements need to be beneficial to all involved, but over time they sometime lose their fairness.  Calling all parties to sit down together and negotiate a mid-course re-alignment is reasonable, but that won't work if our Negotiator In Chief is slinging personal insults and threats at the other participants.  Make that a remedial How To Win Friends And Influence People course!

With the end of the Cold War many of our NATO partners let their guard down.  With just a few exceptions they spent their tax dollars on everything but their own national security, thinking America always had their back.  Asking them to step up now and contribute more to the alliance is reasonable, but it should be done in respectful negotiations, not by lining up our allies and lambasting them in public. That was cringe-worthy.

We have many serious issues that need attention requiring a top notch team.  So who does President Trump choose to be on his team?  Gen. James Mattis at Defense....OK, he got that one right.  And Rex Tillerson at State....I must say he's doing much better than I expected (although reports are he's about ready to throw in the towel.)  But the rest of them aren't worth shooting.  Steve Mnuchin at Treasury?  Remember the big economic meltdown back in 2008?  Then we had a team of outstanding economic minds who, together, pulled us through.  Mnuchin was one of those who got us INTO that mess, and certainly not one who has the credentials to get us out of the next one.  God help us!   

Beauregard Sessions as AG?   Does anyone think he'll last the year?  And how about Tom Price, the architect of that great healthcare reform plan that enjoys the support of a whopping 17% of the people?  And last but not least, Betsy DeVos, Education Secretary only because her family is a mega-$$$$$ Republican contributor.  Of all the possible excellent talent he had to choose from, President Trump chose these? *sigh*

As I said, conservatives deserve to have their agenda fairly heard and debated, just as liberals do.  But where are today's composed, articulate leaders like Kennedy and Reagan, leaders who were respected if not always agreed with?  Even hardcore Republicans who have been chewing on their tongues for months trying to defend Trump are beginning to turn on him.  He's an embarrassment!

It isn't necessarily the message*, but Trump as the messenger that is threatening to send the Republicans into the political abyss, to join Nancy Pelosi and her Democrats who have already made themselves at home there. 

I feel like we're living one of those movies where both pilots have flatlined and left the plane, and the passengers, to fend for themselves.   You think Air Traffic Control will be able to talk us down?

S

* Well OK, maybe some of it is the message. ;)

Just like they planned it...

Damn you Hawkins....don't you know we have a reputation to uphold?

For the past few months, and I'm sure for many more months to come, the United States, and much of the rest of the world, too, has been fixated on what Donald Trump and his band of merry men have been up to.  Is Putin using a condom?  Where are Prez Trump's tax returns?  Did he lie?  On and on. 

And in other Breaking News, we're still all hot and bothered about which bathroom transgender people can use, whether same sex marriage should be allowed or smacked down, whether Black Lives Matter more than any other lives, whether or not Kim's butt is getting bigger, whether you pronounce Qatar "Cut-er" or "kuh-Tar", etc.  All those things together pretty much take up all 24 hours of our modern 24 hour news cycle.

But SURPRISE...there's more going on in the world than they've told us about we've been allowed to know, namely that the BANKS have been scheming relentlessly behind the scenes to get control of what little money they DON'T already have.  Example in point, from today's BBC news:

"An international group of bankers, lawyers and stockbrokers - reportedly with links to the City of London [Europe's major financial center]- appears to have fiddled the tax system, employing practices which were at best unethical, at worst illegal [italics added].  Ultimately they may have deprived the state [Germany] of nearly €32bn (£28bn; $36bn)."

And they almost got away with it, until a young administrative assistant in Germany's central tax office noticed that she was receiving claims for huge tax rebates from a single US pension fund.  BUSTED!

Closer to home, the US House of Representatives last week voted to gut most of the Dodd-Frank banking reforms put in place after the financial meltdown back in '08.  The banksters have pretty much already poked D-F full of holes anyway, but this is just their way of kicking the rest of us in the teeth.  While we were all looking left, they quietly ran right for the win.

If you're keeping count, since 2008 the 20 largest international banks have been fined over a  QUARTER TRILLION DOLLARS for their illegal activities....and they're not the least bit ashamed of it!  

Meanwhile we sit here glued to the TV wondering whether Trump's Atty Gen, Jeff "Goober" Sessions, had grits for breakfast this morning?  *sigh*

Let that soak in for a minute.

S