my jaundiced eye

be still thy beating heart

MJE and the OB&C keep an apartment in the big sleazy for reasons that are 1000% legit.business. First off, the apartment is the registered worldwide headquarters of our small intestinal bug biz. It’s location is entirely unrelated to the fact that louisiana has one of the lowest state income tax rates in the country as well as a well documented laissez faire attitude when it comes to regulating potentially hazardous materials. In summary: an excellent business environment for us.

We are located in the lower half of a duplex building in the uptown area of new orleans. Conveniently situated close to a large park, which provides relaxation and exercise opportunities so critical to the mental and physical health and well being of our employees, including the corporate canine. The proximity to excellent restaurants, venues for our many, many company team building get-togethers, is crucial. Our policy is to offer the finest food and drink to our hard working employees and in particular to our board members to encourage and reward their dedication and hard work.

There is however one major drawback to the building: the tenants occupying the upper space. They are a couple, one is a teacher and aspiring base player, the other some sort of environmental “consultant,” although what exactly she does is about as clear as the water that flows down the mississippi and right out of our taps. One thing we know for sure is that her home “office space” is a mere 12′ above our heads and that she heavily and constantly stomps about in bare feet. Her footfalls are so loud they sound like a forking budweiser clydesdale. And we are all now doubly blessed as she just issued forth a new baby! Not sure what the colt’s name is but understand it’s a stud. Too much joy for sure!!!

Those of you who have procreated understand that newborns are needy and require a good bit of attention. In the dark ages of MJE’s early motherhood we put our babies to sleep on their stomachs, transported them on the floor of the car so they wouldn’t fall off the seat, toted them in cheap carriers made of lead based chinese plastic, fed them food filled with additives, surrounded them with choking hazards and pushed them around in flimsy cloth strollers that folded into something that could fit in a fly rod case, and yet they survived. Some less well than others (see: albatross) but that’s a story for another post.

Today’s new mothers, including the aforementioned clydesdale, are far more aware of the perils of the world and how difficult it is for a recently hatched being to adapt to the less than comfortable environment outside the womb. In an effort to ease this transition some new parents resort to devices that mimic the mother’s heartbeat in utero. And that my friend is exactly what roused us this morning, after the clydesdale’s 4 am milking. Duh, dum…duh, dum…duh, dum…hum, for almost two hours. As we all know, the OB&C is deaf as a forking post and even HE heard it. At first we thought it was rain dripping from the gutter or a plumbing pipe but then it dawned on me, no man, it was big momma’s virtual heartbeat that woke us up, pissed us off and creeped us out all at once. What it did not do was lull us to sleep nor calm us down, in fact quite the opposite. It took all the restraint I could muster not to climb a ladder and pound on the ceiling screaming foul obscenities at mother and babe alike.

If the clydesdale could do either of the following it would immensely improve my quality of life.

Get a pair of really plush cushiony slippers or a pair of running shoes, and wear them all the time. No exceptions. A few nice thick rugs couldn’t hurt. Send us the bill.

Stop your goddam heart. Are you going to play that thing forever, say until he hits adolescence because that’s a pretty stressful time, or takes the SAT’s or goes off to college, or maybe after he graduates and can’t get a job. Or when he gets married and realizes that it’s not nearly as much fun as bar hopping and frat parties with his old girl friend. Or when he has his first kid and it won’t sleep…

But with my luck I’ll be like the narrator in poe’s tell tale heart, doomed to hear that heartbeat unto eternity regardless.

it’s carnival time, again

Good mardi gras to all. It is particularly welcome this time around as an excuse to stay blind drunk until the stock market settles its stomach and we get a new president. MJE and the OB&C have long since stopped walking the avenue mardi gras morning, although I do miss running into many of the neighborhood marching clubs that meander through the streets. And there is the occasional creative family lot who all dress as crawfish, or hotdogs or I suspect this year one of the conald’s wives, but sadly the tradition of dressing up is, like the louisiana marsh, slowly disappearing from the planet.

This mardi gras, as in years past, family and friends whom you rarely see and care about even less, appear out of nowhere suddenly dying to reconnect. This year the atlanta circus opted out of the annual visitation based on the lousy weather forecast. Just as well, feeling very old every time I look at the 3 ton wooden ladder and child’s parade seat, so glad not to be dragging that behemoth back and forth from parade routes. Not to mention the requirement to provide and keep ice cold (or piping hot), multiple beverage types (no light beer! lots of sauvignon blanc!), food items (no nuts! and no lucky dogs, decibelle is a vegetarian) and the attendant assorted paraphernalia required to feed a crowd on the run. Happy to hop to it when someone decides to pay me a caterer’s wage but this gratis (and generally unappreciated) business is definitely on its way out.

But we weren’t entirely solo, OB&C’s niece mike and her wife loosy along with their immaculately conceived toddler whom they call cheeto (truly) showed up with two other gals, the married margies plus another woman whose leanings remain obscure. The OB&C and I were definitely, and in his case literally, odd men out. Let me be perfectly clear, the sexual practices of my fellow human beings holds no interest whatsoever for me, in fact the less I can think about it the better. Turtles and giraffes okay but people, no.

So on we march toward tuesday’s bacchanalia of the fatted calf and even fatter population after the ceaseless eating and drinking involved. God I hate that. And apparently so does she because the hammer’s coming down hard on wednesday. Ashes, ashes, they all fall down, which is pretty much what most of the populace will be doing. The good news, and this is not fake I swear, there is a now a drive through option to get your forehead smeared with holy ashes to show off your piety. But if you never leave the car or hang up your cell phone are you truly redeemed?

Hmmmmm……….

like, genius in chief

The conald, during his “executive time” watching fox and friends had someone read him exerpts of the scathing new book about the dysfunctional trump white house and the low regard with which his staff and cabinet members regard his intellect. He countered that he is a genius or in his words, “like, really smart,” furthermore in his own assessment “a very stable genius.” He had previously thrown down the intellectual gauntlet to his secretary of state, rex tillerson who had referred to him as a forking moron, by daring him to take an iq test to see who is in fact the smarter cookie.

I am sure his staff shifted into super overdrive figuring out how they could create an intelligence test that could possibly display the conald’s superior intellect. Their solution was to have have both men sit for a stanford-binet test of intelligence. The test for mr tillerson would contain actual sample questions from the real test whereas the conald’s test would contain a somewhat different series of questions. For added insurance, the president’s test would consist of ten questions and mr tillerson’s 135 questions. But in the interest of fairness, both men would be given equal time to complete their tests.

MJE has obtained copies of the tests and is happy to share a sampling of them with her loyal readers…

The real questions are listed first with multiple choice answers, followed by the conald’s “alternative” questions and answers:

Four individuals form a business and create a contract to divide the profits equally among the four. Gary invests $11,000, Neil invests $4,000, Jill invests $5,000, and Steve invests $8,000. The profits at the end of the year are $5,600. How much less does Gary receive than if the profits were divided in relation to the amount invested by each owner?

Answer: $1000, $1400, $800 or $2200.

Alternative trump question:

Four individuals form a business and create a contract to divide the profits equally. How much of the profits does each investor receive?

Answer: one tenth, one fiftieth, one fourth, zero. Contracts are for losers. I would get 100%. Winners don’t share.

The number, “three thousand, eight hundred, sixty-eight,” when written backward, is read, “eight thousand, six hundred, eighty-three.”

Answer: true or false

Alternative question:

Spit written backward spells tips.

Answer: true or false

Tony gets married next month. One year ago from the date he will get married, Tony was away in Spain for New Year’s Eve. What month is it?

Answer: October, November, January, February, December

Alternative question: Where is Spain?

Answer: Paris, Equador, the failing European Union or Manitoba

Do the words credit and acclaim have opposite meanings, similar meanings or no relation?

Answer: opposite, similar or no relation

Alternative question: What is credit?

Answer: A way to buy things with money you don’t have, a piece of plastic that gets you free stuff, how you build a business with other people’s money and never have to pay them back, or all of the above

Three painters can paint three walls in three minutes. How many painters are needed to paint 27 walls in nine minutes?

Answer: 3,6,9,12,15

Alternative question: Where is our really fantastic amazing president going to build a great big beautiful wall and who’s going to pay for it?

Answer: Between Dallas and San Bernadino-paid for by St. Louis, between Brooklyn and Reno paid for by Minneapolis, between us and them-paid by them, obviously, or between Florida and Nebraska-paid for by Spain.

Both tests are extremely difficult, but from comparative percentage of correct answers provided by mr tillerson and mr trump it is clear that mr trump’s intellect and reasoning power are superior. His ability to reduce complex problems to the least mentally taxing analysis is unprecedented and when it comes to “thinking outside the box” he literally has no equal.

fired and furious

It is never wise to turn your back on a poison toad (genus bufo) or to lick his back for that matter. Toads are notoriously vengeful and easily slighted. They are particularly sensitive to comments about their personal appearance, warts specifically, as well as their grooming habits. Any criticism of their intellect, strategic political acumen, or past business success will be met with fire and fury the world has never seen.

Bufo bannonensus was at one time the white house top toad and the most important amphibian in the world. He squatted on the shoulder of the president and acted as his most trusted advisor. Because the current occupant of the oval office is a pretty empty vessel, bufo banno was able to whisper noxious notions into his ear and help tailor american policies to his nationalistic and xenophobic world-view.

Bufo banno was dead set against draining the swamp for obvious reasons, no amphibian with half a brain, is going to deliberately obliterate his own habitat. Hell no, he’s gonna fill that sucker up with like-minded creatures with whom he can easily machinate and maneuver the levers of power. Bufo banno became the apex amphibian for a reason, brother.

A large part of bufo banno’s ideology that the hominid president seemed to find attractive is territoriality and the exclusion of what are considered to be lesser species. Frogs, newts, and salamanders need not apply. The big bufo believes that in the ideal ecosystem there would be an actual wall around his personal space whose perimeters he considers to currently be way too porous. He does not subscribe to what he regards as the misguided notion that a diverse population is beneficial to the overall health and well being of any environment. He views those who support that theory as nothing more than a bunch of loser reptilians bitching about their lot.

Bufo banno also thinks that it’s high time our swamp quit subsidizing other less fecund wetlands. Not our problem. His message is “get your act together, show some initiative you pathetic parasites …we’ve done everything we can to underfund regulatory agencies and peacekeeping organizations, support autocratic regimes, extract ourselves from onerous goody two shoes alliances, not to mention abandoning our allies, so as we toads like to say, hop to it. “

In an amazing twist of fate big bufo got himself thrown out of the swamp, he apparently was too fetid for even that morass. Yet despite his absence the muck continues to ooze along just fine. Turns out that poison toads are a dime a dozen in washington. But two things that make big bufo both unique and particularly dangerous is that he knows who did what to whom and where they dumped all the carcasses. And last, but by no means least, he can sing like a veritable canary when threatened.

MJE strongly advises her readers and their loved ones to steer clear of poison toads and, no matter how tempting, and not to lick them. Ever.

a totally positive 2018!

MJE tends to lean to the dark side in life but decided to start 2018 with some awesome positive predictions for the new year:

Totally positive:

That congress will work diligently in a bipartisan effort to annihilate the other side.

That the OB&C will wear his pajamas inside out every other day, trust me on this.

That e-vanka will continue to breathlessly pursue her life goal of empowering women who work, except the ones in bangladesh and vietnam who slave away 12 hours a day in dangerous factories to slap together her eponymous fashion crap.

That the conald and congress will open up every national park for oil drilling and natural gas extraction and pursue any potential disney projects.

That the conald will continue to trade insults with dim sum oon about who’s the bigger bad ass, or who in fact has or is the bigger ass in general.

That john kelly will either quit as the conald’s chief of staff, have a nervous breakdown or both.

That jared kushner will announce he’s transgender.

That bannon will prove to be the worst political frenemy in human history. He and the conald are a match made in hell. Gotta love it.

That tillerson will quit and move to a deserted island without wi-fi and outside of range of north korean missiles.

That e-vanka will wake up one morning and realize this orthodox jewish stuff just doesn’t add value to her brand and will say fork it and order in pulled pork for shabbat.

That melanoma will have a safe room installed in her residential quarters should the conald get any randy notions after watching the hotties on fox and friends. Run melanoma, run like the wind.

That the democrats will be their own worst enemy in the mid-term elections. There’s only one roy moore after all.

That the planet’s future is totally dependent upon the conald’s inability to hold a thought including what the secret codes are for launching a nuclear attack.

Stay positive!

the trump interview

I saw that prince harry has just interviewed president obama and it occurred to MJE that an interview with the conald might make for an interesting contrast…

ph: Good morning mr president thank you for agreeing to this interview.

dt: No problem. Now that I have single handedly passed the biggest most phenomenal tax cut in history for our downtrodden hedge fund managers and real estate magnates, my calendar is freed up a bit. But, I am still incredibly busy monitoring fox and fake news and tweeting out word salad blasts about my totally unfair coverage. If I get punched I punch back twice as hard, just ask the mooch.

ph: So mr president, has becoming president been a difficult adjustment?

dt: Absolutely, it’s 100% harder than I thought it would be.

ph: Really, in what regard?

dt: Well harry, like you, I made my money the old fashioned way, I inherited it, handed to me on a plate like a beautiful really well done omaha steak. I called the shots in my companies, no stockholders to worry about and the bankruptcy courts in the us are a gift from god. Invest other people’s money, if things go south, not my problem. Investors lose, contractors lose but I come out smelling like a rose. The other thing is that you and I both live in palatial homes with lots of gold and own an amazing amount of real estate. Best of all, we don’t pay any taxes! Only losers pay taxes.

But now I’ve got the democrats, the generals, mccain, scarborough, flake, the blacks, the mexicans, the women, the gays, the transgenders, whatever they are, the aclu, the freedom caucus, the liberals, the conservatives and the un-american public all bitching about how I can’t do this or can’t do that, chewing on my ass bigly. Plus I have to live in government subsidized housing. Wish it was like you guys, you just issue a royal decree or something and boom! Done.

ph: Well mr president that’s not exactly true, royals don’t make laws, parliament is the actual governing body.

dt: What? Are you sure?

ph: Yes, mr president I’m sure, the royal family is really just a figure head.

dt: Well that sucks. Seems like you and I are more alike than you think.

ph: I certainly doubt it, but tell me how do you think we’re similar?

dt: Well, you and I are both scrappy second sons overshadowed by the first born. Also we both like to marry dark foreign women, although your gal is a lot darker than mine, you know what I mean? By the way, congratulations on your engagement, that meghan is one great looking piece of ass! I bet she’s a tiger in the sack, am I right? Sure hope it works out better than your parents’ marriage, boy was that a mess! I could never understand why your dad decided to get rid of your red hot mama for that cow camilla. I’d have grabbed your mother’s poodle in a heartbeat. She was definitely smoking hot, and not shy about spreading it around either.

ph: Perhaps we could move on mr president.

We’ll move on when I say so, so just cool your jets little prince. There’s one more thing. You and I were both pretty bad boys in the good ole days. Man, those pics of you in the nazi get-up looked sorta bad, but I don’t get why everyone jumped all over you. After all, it’s no big secret that you’ve had plenty of nazi sympathizers in your family, right? Your grandfather’s a kraut and your granny’s uncle ed, gave up the throne to marry a nazi whore with a face like a horse and absolutely no tits or ass. So people just need to get over it. Plus hitler, despite a few missteps, sure made the trains (especially to buchanwald, dachau and treblinka) run on time and infrastructure is a bitch, trust me.

ph: Well, that is a frightening thought. But moving on, what comments do you have about the numerous alleged connections to the russians?

dt: Look harry, that is all a bunch of fake news. Never happened. Don’t believe a word of it. It is true that I have a soft spot for eastern european beauties and autocratic rulers, but that doesn’t mean I have a man crush on putin, although he does have a hellova handshake and looks damn good half naked on a horse. Plus he’s got the scary dead eyes of a shark. But he’s way too short for me. In the situation room his code name is teeny penie.

ph: So neither you, your family nor your businesses have any financial relationships with russia?

ph: Harry, why in the world would I or my family or businesses have any direct financial dealings with russia or any other dirty money sources when I have stooges like manafort and flynn around to take the fall? I’m not a moron, despite what that worthless asshole tillerson said.

ph: It does looks as though those two associates of yours folded pretty quickly when the fbi came calling, does it worry you that they might incriminate you?

dt: Absolutely not harry, as I said during my campaign I could shoot someone in the middle of fifth avenue and not lose a vote

ph: But you could get indicted or impeached, right?

dt: I believe in a prevent defense kid, I’ve already got pardon papers signed and ready to go for myself, jared, junior, pence, sessions, huckaby sanders, preibus, spicer, what’s his name, the coffee boy, hope hicks, kelly anne, sebastian gorka, lewandowsky, and of course flynn and manafort, even though honestly, I wouldn’t recognize those two in a line up. And knowing what I know, I have a few other signed blanks in my hip pocket just in case meulie starts to hit real paydirt.

ph: Well mr president this has been a very enlightening conversation, perhaps we’ll talk again when mr meuller’s investigation finishes up. If you are still president.

dt: What the hell do you mean by that you little ginger prick? Ever wonder where that head of orange brillo of yours came from? Bet you’re a bastard. You sure look like it. And trust me I know a goddam bastard when I see one.

Now get out of here you royal pain in the ass and grab me a diet coke while you’re up.

holy horndog batman!

Can you believe it! Men and women have been sexually harassing and or assaulting their underlings in the workplace and beyond since adam and eve donned their fig leaves. Who knew that powerful men and women might use their power and position to take advantage of those who work for them or their organizations?

Quite frankly the outrage over this is akin to capt. renault’s “shock” at the fact that there is gambling going on in the back of rick’s bar. Give me a forking break…when all the chips finally finish falling, MJE suspects that there will not be a single man or woman willing to self-righteously opine about this taudry state of affairs, knowing that sooner or later his or her dirty little secrets will also become public.

But what I don’t understand is the alleged indignation expressed by women (for the most part) who worked with these creeps and express horror (horror, I tell you!) that this sort of thing was going on right under their cosmetically perfected noses. Really, just stop it, no one believes you. Admittedly it is kill or be killed in the corporate world, but it takes a village to protect the beastly behaviors of those at the top. And in a particularly machiavellian scenario, those who know and don’t tell have the edge.

But as we have come to “normalize” our president’s lies and simply move along to the next goof ball tweet that pops out of his anus, at some point we will just say okay, got it, we cannot stand it anymore. You are all dirty and you make me sick, could we please worry about kimchee’s nukes or melanoma’s sartorial eccentricities. Not to be overly jaundiced but there will ultimately be very few innocent parties here. There will be the perps, the enablers, the silent complicits and of course the overlords, all of whom bear responsibility.

Oh yeah, and the victims.

say what?

Lordy, MJE is glum. I was feeling sort of okay this morning having worked in the garden yesterday and gotten in touch with nature, or rather they got in touch with me via the chigger community outreach program. Then I foolishly turned on the idiot box and heard the transcript of our dear leader’s interview with two NYT reporters. His answers to the questions were so strange and disturbing that I googled the 25^th amendment to figure out what it would take to extract him from the oval office.

In the interview, when quizzed on the matter of jeff sessions, our button eyed attorney general, the conald actually said out loud that if he had known that sessions was going to recuse himself (in other words, follow the rule of law) from all russia/trump campaign related investigations on account of his not mentioning that he’d met with some of them russians, but dadgummitt clean forgot about it when questioned during his confirmation hearing, the conald woulda for damn sure picked some other more compliant doofus. Wow, that was really long run on sentence but I couldn’t figure out where to cut it up. Now I am no fan of sessions, the good ole racist from the great state of alabama, but when I heard that trash talk from the conald he went up about ten points in my estimation. He’s still in the low teens but…

Then our dear leader went on to denigrate virtually every top official in the justice department; rosenstein, the acting attorney general, then mccabe, the guy who took fired comey’s place and of course mueller, the head of the special investigation into russia’s “meddling” in our election. He publicly put them all on notice that they are on the chopping block should they start investigating the conald’s real ties to russia.. I guess the up side to this is that the conald is so unable to control his id that we all know what he’s up to. Conceivably it would be worse if he were savvy enough to contain those thoughts, yet act on them without public knowledge, a la nixon. It’s a sad day for america when you regard your president’s broadcasting his corruption as a good thing.

I just re-read the transcript of the whole interview and it is like james joyce on acid, an incoherent rambling rant about how fabulous he is and how every world leader loves him and president macron just wanted to hold his hand the whole time, and how terrific the military parade in paris was what with all the jets and we ought to get an arc de triomphe, then he threw in some curious nonsense about napoleon having designed paris (and later, probably trump tower) then invaded russia but farted around and froze to death the next day. Napoleon: the untold story!

Without prompting, the conald moved on to the subject of his extemporaneous meeting with pootin after the g20 dinner. After blathering on about the seating arrangements, the length of the table and the fact that mrs abe of japan couldn’t speak a lick of english (pot calling the kettle black, eh) he just toddled over to visit with melanoma who was seated next to pootin. With the help of a japanese translator (wouldn’t be my first choice when speaking with a rooskie but what do I know) they had a great discussion about russian adoptions, which was, in his words very interesting. You know you are in the upside down (see: stranger things on netflix) when rooskie adoptions are code for lifting sanctions against russian oligarchs. Surely even donjo finally figured that out after the hub bub over his meeting with that room full of sketchy slavs. But it is totally understood that he and dear ole dad never, no way, no how discussed that whole nothing burger.

meeting, what meeting

MJE has serious whiplash from the avalanche of absurdities that tumble out of the trumposhere on a daily or often hourly basis. The newest entry is right smack out of a rocky and bullwinkle cartoon. Just to bring MJE readers up to speed on the inhabitants of that fictional world I include below a short rundown:

The lead characters and heroes of the series were Rocket “Rocky” J. Squirrel, a flying squirrel, and his best friend Bullwinkle J. Moose, a dim-witted but good-natured moose. The scheming villains in most episodes were the fiendish spies Boris Badenov, a pun on Boris Godunov, and Natasha Fatale, a pun on femme fatale. Other characters included Fearless Leader, the dictator of the fictitious nation of Pottsylvania and Boris and Natasha’s superiors, Gidney & Cloyd, little green men from the moon who were armed with scrooch guns; Captain Peter “Wrongway” Peachfuzz, the captain of the S.S. Andalusia; various U.S. government bureaucrats and politicians (such as Senator Fussmussen, a recurring character who opposed admitting Alaska and Hawaii to the union on grounds of his own xenophobia).

The latest real life rhubarb is a doozy. It starts with gob gallstone, our boris in this taudry tale. Gallstone is a corpulent music producer who works in russia and who has a history with donjo. He sets up a meeting with an alluring rooskie lawyer, ms putineska (our natasha) to hatch a plot to procure a compliant idiot (that would be our badass bullwinkle) inside the white house to be a submissive partner with pootin (fearless leader). Admittedly the list of potentially pliable quislings is boundless but they ultimately settled on donjo, the morally and intellectually challenged #1son of our dear leader. Boris dangled the offer of some of shrillary’s dirty knickers to entice donjo into meeting with an ever-growing list of sketchy slavs. The revelation of this meeting comes after months of righteous indignation from all conald-related hacks at the widely held suspicion that there was collusion between the conald’s campaign and russia.

MJE would like to put forth an hypothesis: the louder the conald & co.’s outrage over any given fact, the greater the likelihood it is true.

After being outed by the fake news purveyor new york times, donjo admitted that he, his bro-in-law jarred and the conald’s campaign manager pall manafart (a man too sleazy to even warrant a cartoon character) did indeed meet with ms. putineska among others. The rest of the colorful cast of characters crammed into this clown car include a russian pop star, a russian lobbyist and a translator. But there’s more! Turds continue to bob to the surface with every passing hour. The latest of which was interestingly enough, a rooskie real estate magnate with an unsavory history of laundering rubles through, among other things, fake bank accounts in delaware and, wait for it! acquiring properties in manhattan. Which brings us back to dough-re-mi…(with apologies to julie andrews).

The fat lady ain’t sung yet my friends, but MJE is pretty sure that the entire conald-pootin bromance begins and ends with one thing and one thing only: personal enrichment.

founding fathers

Lordy, 4^th of July done and gone, this year Independence day felt more like a national day of mourning instead of a day to celebrate our throwing off the yoke of twitter tyranny. Founding fathers, if you’re listening, please send up a flare, because we sure as hell we need some help down here. Of course, you lot only had to break away from an empire, fight a bloody war, establish a new country based on democratic ideals, codify those in a constitution and bill of rights meant to endure through the ages and finally create a unified nation of peoples who were in most cases more different than alike.

It’s quite another thing to combat an endless barrage of electronic lunacy emanating from an increasingly unhinged president delivered in bursts of 140 characters. Talk about mismatched adversaries! It’s like fighting a thousand acre wildfire fire with an iv drip. Founding fathers, I know this doesn’t make any sense to you, well join the club.

Quick recap: last year lots of people in the country were mad at their elected representatives and government, they wanted to have a president who knew as much about the three branches of government and how they work as they do so they voted for a person they had seen on a thing called a tv. With me so far? What they didn’t realize is that person they saw on the tv was just acting like someone who was capable of running our country but who really just wanted lots of people to tell him how terrific they thought he was. He promised everything everyone wanted to everybody and they were so excited that they chanted “make america great again!” I apologize. That must be hurtful to hear, take a moment if you need it.

So we now have a president who knows virtually nothing about governing, is not interested in finding out anything about it and who’s single most driving life force is feeding his fragile ego. But, props to you guys (in hindsight, coulda had a woman in there but that’s a discussion for another day) you set things up in such a way that the president, even one as potentially harmful to the republic as this one, cannot sink the ship of state by himself. He needs help from congress and the supreme court. And this is where we seem to be in a potentially wicked pickle, because both houses of congress and the supreme court are nominally on the same political side as the president.

So what do we do now? MJE believes that things will eventually sort themselves out but a lot of damage can be done in the meantime. People will realize that all those promises they were so desperate to believe were just a trick to get their votes. And others who were so angry about government being overly involved in their lives will start to lose the safety nets it provides like health insurance, help paying for food, medical care for the poor, housing assistance, loans to pay for education, financial protection for the elderly and many more. Well technically, founding fathers, you don’t get full credit for those things but you did create a democratic society that encouraged them to exist. So an assist on that.

Because, after all, you pretty much spelled it out right from the get go:

We the people of the united states, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity do ordain and establish this constitution of the united states of america. Then frankly you got into the weeds…not to be critical but it is a bit wordy, and sadly people just don’t have the attention spans they used to. Think bullet points.

My guess is that your advice to mje would be something along the lines of don’t just talk the talk, walk the walk girlfriend, Go put on your big girl pantalets and get moving.

Got it.

Hope you don’t mind if I check back every so often, I do feel better. Thanks.