Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Posts Tagged ‘Donald Trump’

Dodging Rumors

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on March 31, 2017| 2 Comments »

It’s raining men here in the Blue Ridge. Well, not literally, but my spring spirit has dampened with another dreary, rainy day. And while some men are asking for immunity in order to testify in the Senate, my man has finished spreading mulch and planting ground cover. We’re hoping the pachysandra will take root and spread out in the Buddha shade garden; in the same way we’re hoping this Russian investigation will tie up all of Mr T’s loose, spidery, tail-ends of aides to the same conclusion.

The one about collusion with a foreign government to effect our election; the constellation of events all of our intel agencies have been telling us for weeks now. If the shoe fits, you’ve gotta convict, right?

Remember how well George W Bush could dodge a shoe at a press conference?

This president doesn’t have the timing, stamina or strength for that matter to dodge the kind of evidence that has been unfolding. And Sean Spicer can’t seem to stop himself from insulting women journalists. I’ve had to raise my hand plenty of times at Borough Council meetings over the years, and I’ve never had to endure the kind of humiliation we’ve seen currently at White House press briefings. I’ll shake my head just as much as I want, thank you very much! http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/3/28/15094444/sean-spicer-april-ryan-trump

Which leads me to my discovery, in the very back of the guest bedroom closet, of a Nicole Miller silk blouse that managed to survive two moves and many closet purges. It’s a multi-colored masterpiece of Warhol-style design I picked up in New York back in the day. The pattern consists of multiple newspaper headlines, and since I was a reporter, Bob gave it to me as a gift, while also buying a matching tie. Yes, we are that couple.

But standing out in the pattern is a young, smug-mug shot, the Donald when his hair was blonde and not orange…and the header reads: “Best Sex I’ve Ever Had!” 

When Andrea Wood pulled that gem out of its hiding place, she told me it may be the single best bit of vintage she’d ever discovered! I’ve begun to accept the fact that my early life of mid-century, ugly blonde furniture is now hip again, but my old clothes? So I took another look at that blouse, and decided to save it for posterity. Its tag said it was made in Korea in limited quantities, a New York edition, and would not be repeated. Maybe the Love Bug will wear it in high school?

We elected a guy who has to carry TicTacs at all times just in case a pretty girl comes within range of his id-driven personality. The old money, carriage set in Rumson would avoid publicity at all costs. But new money, like that young, bragadocious NY real estate mogul, would seek out the press, and play them to write his very own melody. That’s how he won the White House ultimately, and it may also be how he loses it.

This is what the New York Post was writing in 1990 about the Donald and Marla Maples back when he was still married to his first wife. He met Marla in 1989, about the same time I met Mr T at my brother’s NFL game, and the rumor was “a model” was in the wings. His divorce from Ivana was finalized in 1992. The sex quote was supposedly leaked by a friend of Marla’s, along with something she said about loving his hands.

“Donald is a believer in the big-lie theory,” his lawyer had told me. “If you say something again and again, people will believe you.”

“One of my lawyers said that?” Trump said when I asked him about it. “I think if one of my lawyers said that, I’d like to know who it is, because I’d fire his ass. I’d like to find out who the scumbag is!” http://www.vanityfair.com/magazine/2015/07/donald-ivana-trump-divorce-prenup-marie-brenner

Sex, lies, and rumors are candy to a certain kind of man. Like his weekends at Mar-a-Lago, his gilded age mansion once owned ironically by Mrs. Marjorie Merriweather Post, he is chasing a dream, or a nightmare, that nobody saw coming. Like Gatsby, his “Make America Great Again” pyramid scheme, built with Russian oligarch money on the backs of blue collar workers, will be his undoing.

IMG_0241

Read Full Post »

Betrayed by a Kiss

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, Public Policy, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on November 10, 2016| 4 Comments »

I’m living in a small sky blue speck, in a sea of blood red.

The Old Dominion voted for Hillary Clinton, as did most of the big cities and states on both coasts. But Trump’s clarion call swayed the majority of our electoral college, surprising my Democratic family and friends. Shocking me into a dystopian fugue state. Yesterday I actually felt like a zombie, which is to say I didn’t feel much. Great Grandma Ada asked me to explain it, and I had no words. My niece Lucia asked me what she should tell her daughters, and I had no words.

Whenever I am at a loss for words, I look to poetry, and so Bob Dylan came to mind given his recent Nobel Prize. I want to buy all his albums, in vinyl, and play them on an old fashioned record player, with a needle that gets stuck sometimes so you have to pick it up and put it down again. Because he spoke of the great divide, of the power elite who could send our boys to a swamp in Asia because our government, our country, thought we had God on our side. He called attention to the swath of red states, to the working class who today are called the vanishing middle class.

All those White people with no college degree, going nowhere, feeling left behind in the Rust Belt. One third of the Latinos who voted the GOP line, because they didn’t want anymore workers coming over here for free, taking their jobs. All those Evangelical Christians, who voted for the least Christ-like candidate our country ever saw fit to nominate. All those old men who could just never trust a woman to do a so-called man’s job protecting this country. All that free-floating fear and anger, don’t matter if he pops some Tic Tacs and kisses the hell outta you.

Many are brandishing their firearms, wishing the liberal elites take the next plane to Canada. Making false distinctions between love of country and government. I wonder how long it will take them to hate the new GOP government. Feeling self-righteous, they know not what they have done. But while our country is divided, the power players are smiling and gracious, talking about our democracy.

You don’t need a weather man
To know which way the wind blows.

Only time will tell what this “Historic” election means for Women, for the Undocumented, for Muslims, for the Climate. Our system isn’t rigged when a despot can win 279 electoral votes but not the popular vote, right; and the gerrymandering that flooded both houses on the Hill with red shall never be undone. Lobbyists are fleeing DC like rats from a ship.

But hark, the Dow is going up folks, because the Market hates uncertainty, so Wall Street must think they have a friend in this lustful Billionaire. After all, he could shoot someone and get away with it, he’s got God on his side! When President Obama shakes his hand on the White House porch today, I just may lose my lunch.

In a many dark hour
I’ve been thinkin’ about this
That Jesus Christ
Was betrayed by a kiss
But I can’t think for you
You’ll have to decide
Whether Judas Iscariot
Had God on his side.

The Groom told the Love Bug that, “Everybody gets a turn.” And even though we all thought this was Hillary’s turn, the people voted so now it’s Trump’s turn. And I would add the  biggest, loudest bully on the block will need to face Pocahontas, aka Senator Elizabeth Warren in four years, so we better get busy. The Boston Globe reported Warren saying: “I’m intensely frustrated by the apparent likelihood that, for the second time in five elections, a Democratic nominee will have won the popular vote but lost the presidency in the electoral college.” 

And just like Gore, I’m devastated. Just like McGovern and Humphrey, I’m feeling left behind. The wind is blowing brown oak leaves past my aviary window, circling and bobbing to their death, they are being tracked into the house. But the sun came up this morning. And my fingers found words again. img_5313

Read Full Post »

Tripped N Fell

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , , on May 27, 2016| 2 Comments »

That’s the funny name of a farm near here. It never fails to tickle me each time I pass by, it speaks to the klutz in me, and to that part of me that thinks, “Well, you could step in …..!” The promise of an opportunity in the midst of a screw-up.

This morning we have one presidential candidate who would like to hold his taxes in close to the vest, and another who thinks everybody deserves to have private emails. The problem is that when you decide to run for the highest office in the land, everything is fair game. I cannot imagine anything Hillary might say in a private email that would (excuse the pun) trump the Donald’s oversized ego and grandiose public talking points.

He speaks in Twitter, full of incomplete sentences and contradictions. And he gives friends and enemies alike nicknames, as if he were a twelve year old boy. Try to think what would happen if Hill spouted any of his nonsense. Imagine Madame Secretary calling Senator Elizabeth Warren “Pocahontas.” Trump later Tweeted:

“I find it offensive that Goofy Elizabeth Warren, sometimes referred to as Pocahontas, pretended to be Native American to get in Harvard.”

Personally, I’d take “Goofy” over “Pocahontas” any day, as Jenna Johnson reported in the Washington Post. A Native American journalist, who called Trump’s remarks offensive, said: “It’s absolutely ludicrous in this day and age that we’re recognized as high cheekbones, the stereotypes of what you would see in ‘Dances with Wolves,’ ” Robertson said, referencing the 1990 movie. “Pocahontas — it’s so overdone. Like, come on. We’re living in a day and age now where that whole image and the romanticism around it and her portrayal — really it wasn’t a good story if you look at the history of Pocahontas.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/05/26/donald-trump-gets-called-out-for-calling-elizabeth-warren-pocahontas/

No, the story of a Native woman who was captured by English sailors and used as a pawn to broker peace for the Jamestown Settlement, was later converted to Christianity and married to John Rolfe (even though she had already married a Native Pamunkey man named Kocoum), moved to Henrico, VA, and died from tuberculosis or pneumonia she contracted after visiting England at the age of 22 is not a good story.

Another sign I pass frequently in my travels around Charlottesville is the birthplace of Meriwether Lewis, President Thomas Jefferson’s personal Secretary and later leader of the Lewis and Clark Expedition – a little tour de force that relied heavily on another kidnapped Native woman named Sacagawea. It’s almost ironic that Lewis’ first duty for TJ was privately screening officers in the Army with a code he wrote next to their names. He was a trusted neighbor who was born about ten miles from Monticello, right down the street from me, and after a bitter political fight between the Federalists and the Republicans, President Jefferson needed to know who was on his side! From Monticello’s website:

The roster of all commissioned officers, dated July 24, 1801, that was supplied to Jefferson featured curious symbols beside each officer’s name. Historians have identified an accompanying key that gives a meaning to each symbol as being written in the hand of Meriwether Lewis. From this it has been concluded that one of Lewis’ first duties was to assist Jefferson in determining the worthiness or unworthiness of officers, and in some instances their political leanings as well.

So secrecy and intrigue are not new to the political machinations of our fair country. I can only hope that Trump might trip himself up eventually, and say something he cannot walk back. Something, anything indefensible. Or maybe he’ll laugh like John Dean?

We chose Misty Gray for our basement. You can barely see our ghostly, gray mountains this morning, but the sun is OUT and the view from our basement under the deck isn’t half bad. Have a great Memorial Day Weekend folks, and try not to trip and fall into your local ER!

IMG_4453

Read Full Post »

True or False Memory

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , on February 16, 2016| 1 Comment »

It’s a well known fact that we adults like to highlight the trauma we claim to remember as children. My brothers would argue over who the Flapper beat more, yes in those days getting a good beating was good for you! My foster father would tell me if he messed up in school, and the nuns beat him, he would face an even bigger beating at home. They actually seemed proud of having survived such a vicious childhood relatively intact. Of course I don’t know how much of this was true, whether a beating involved a belt or a slap on the behind. By the time I was born, beating a child had gone out of fashion.

And although raising “good” children may have changed in the 21st Century, what we remember of the recent past is always up for interpretation.

Bob and I watched the recent Republican debate, for instance, in awe of Donald Trump. There he was, in all his pomp and swagger, telling it like it was to Jeb Bush. The crowd was having none of it, they booed him mercilessly. His brother George, in fact, did NOT keep us safe “before” 9/11, and when he went into Iraq “after” on a (excuse the pun) trumped up WMD charge, he destabilized the entire region. Oh the humanity – but,but, didn’t George keep us safe? http://science.time.com/2013/11/19/remember-that-no-you-dont-study-shows-false-memories-afflict-us-all/

Maybe Trump is a Democrat! I was wondering for a second if Trump was channelling Michael Moore! We all remember what George W Bush did right after his aide whispered to him, while he was sitting in a FL elementary school classroom, that our country was under attack, right? That a second plane had hit the Twin Towers. He waited for over 5 minutes while children read a book about a goat, and then he and Air Force One took off to an Air Force base in Louisiana. And by mid-afternoon POTUS was in Nebraska…

In a book about the Secret Service, author Philip Melanson will later comment on the president’s failure to promptly return to Washington: “If the president appeared less than resolute at any point… it was the fault of agents who were overzealous in their desire to protect him, administration sources have offered.” Yet, “The Service, whose first duty that day or any other day is to protect the president, has never publicly pointed out that Bush could have overruled them at any time and ordered Air Force One to Washington, DC.”

In fact, secret service literally hauled Cheney by the arms to a bunker beneath the White House, while allowing Bush to sit in a school room trying to ponder the enormity of that morning. Michael Moore, I can’t wait to see your latest documentary, “Where to Invade Next.”

Granted my memory probably isn’t as good as it used to be. Large swaths of information have been known to fall out of my brain in order to make room for another password. But like Donald Trump, I was there on that September day, running around like a mad woman, trying to find my son, talk with my daughter who was working in a government building in DC, phoning my nephew and my sister in NYC. Waiting to hear if Bob was meeting ferries with injured people from the Wall Street dock. I went to my neighbor’s empty-casket funeral. While Bush and Karl Rove were circling the Gulf of Mexico trying to decide where to land.

As much as I hate what he stands for, Trump has the illusion of power. He IS Oz, pulling back the curtain and striking at our deepest, darkest secrets. I imagine he was hit as a child, that was his generation after all. And he’s not going to shield us from the truth. He tells it like it is – he is everyman! He’s playing “it’s us against them,” in a similar Bernie vein, only he knows that he’s not really everyman, he is the exceptional man! One of the 1%. He thrives on his money and power and polls. Trump played equally well with Democrats and Republicans, with beggars and saints.

Trump thinks we can all handle the truth. He is our Putin, and we better get ready to defeat him.

images

Read Full Post »

I Knew Donald Trump

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , on July 29, 2015| 2 Comments »

Well, not really “knew” him, but I did meet him once, at a football game. It was back in the ’80s, after we’d moved home to NJ. My brother Mike was the President and General Manager of the Minnesota Vikings, and he invited us to an NFL game in Giants Stadium when the Vikings were playing an exhibition game against NY – they are in different leagues. I think.

Really, I know nothing about football. I don’t even like to watch it. I love watching basketball, and soccer because I played those sports as a girl. But football, even in high school, didn’t interest me in the least. Bob, on the other hand, loves watching football and was excited to get up close and personal.

Except we were seated way up high, as far away from the field as the press, in the owner’s box. Butlers served us food and drink. I know it was around Halloween because a pre-teen Bride was wearing a pair of cheap skeleton earrings in that picture. The one I took of her with Trump. The one I can’t find for the life of me. He was larger than life, and his hair wasn’t an issue yet. The rumor going around was that he’d broken up with his wife, Ivana, and was dating a model.

In fact, soon-to-be wife number two, Marla Maples was supposedly waiting for him in the wings of the arena, hidden from photographers. Some NY paper later published the headline, “Best Sex I Ever Had,” referring to his new conquest. I remember this too because I bought Bob a tie with that headline enmeshed in some other text.

Trump was sweet to my daughter, generous with a warm handshake, and some polite small talk, before turning to my brother to talk business. There was an energy shift when he walked into the room; as if one gladiator, one titan of industry had come to see another. They were there to cement a friendship and to see if there was a team Trump might be able to buy.

Which is why it didn’t surprise me to hear Trump defend the Patriots and Tom Brady this morning. He does love the NFL, he walks in those owner’s box corridors of power.

And after listening to network media try and figure out what Trump’s allure is to Republican voters, I found my answer on Piers Morgan’s Twitter feed. Morgan was the first winner of The Apprentice, he worked closely with Trump for months and knew him pretty well. He’s also an old style newsman, who is not afraid to say what he thinks. In a nutshell, Morgan thinks Trump has a double digit lead in the polls for one reason – because he doesn’t apologize.! 

It’s literally not in his DNA to ever say he’s sorry. I watched him squirm under the Today Show’s repeated questions around his “hero” remark:  “Well, then why did Savannah start off by saying that I said that he was not a war hero? I never said that. I said he was a war hero, Matt,” Trump said. “So you misrepresent — just like everybody else.” http://www.businessinsider.com/donald-trump-john-mccain-controversy-2015-7#ixzz3hHuJJY3s

And he didn’t say Mexicans are rapists; he said the Mexican government sends us their criminals, some of whom are rapists, and on and on – he clarifies, equivocates, and turns the table, but he never EVER apologizes. I once heard him say, “I try hard not to ever make a mistake.” And that was about the best he could do. He’s like that guy who says, “Honey, I’m sorry IF what I said hurt your feelings;” which implies it certainly didn’t hurt his feelings, if he had any to begin with… except Trump won’t even say that!

And we Americans love a good Master of Ceremonies, someone who can bring the three ring political circus we call the Hill under control, the benevolent Boss Man who has to fire people from time to time, the shark in the water who never looks back. No Apologies. We love that charismatic guy with the funny hair and the balls made of steel, who thinks nothing of a little deflate-gate. He’s larger than life, with the money to play and an ego to match, and God help us if we elect him President.

My Big Brother Mike

My Big Brother Mike

Read Full Post »

The Big Time

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , on December 6, 2011| Leave a Comment »

It was about the time of his first divorce. The headline read, “Best sex I’ve ever had!” And it was rumored his model girlfriend was waiting in a private box. Yes siree, we met the Donald once at a Vikings football game.

Now he’s buying up a respected family vineyard in Cville and about to moderate yet another GOP debate. If they could tell me something other than “Obama will be a one term President,” or “No taxes on the 1% or corporations,” or “We’re going to demolish Obamacare,” I might actually listen.

Millions of people are out of work, millions face foreclosure, and all because of greed; a deal is a deal is a deal! It was around 1990. There is a picture of my brother Mike (aka Mr Big and then Vikings President/Manager), the Donald and an 11 year old girl. Even though I’ve tossed the house I can’t seem to find it. Maybe it was given to the Groom’s Mom for the rehearsal dinner? It is prescient that this picture was taken around Halloween – the Bride was wearing her skeleton earrings? Scary right? Check back, It’s sure to turn up.

Read Full Post »

%d bloggers like this: