Does Trump yearn for old Everly Brothers tune; “When will I be loved?”

I’m sure the people in our society who gave us Donald J. Trump as our president (the 46 percent who actually voted for him) are wondering right about now what it would take to appease the rest of us.
 

COMEY: Trump got to fire somebody

For many of us are disgusted with the conduct of now-former FBI Director James Comey. Some of us believe it was his handling of an investigation into those “dreaded” e-mail messages by Hillary Clinton that gave a last-minute momentum push to the Trump campaign to put it over the top on Election Day.

THE POINT BEING that many of those who are saddened that we’re not now experiencing the deep spiritual experience of our nation having its first female as a chief executive aren’t going to feel much sympathy for the fact that Comey is now among the ranks of the unemployed.

Although it will be interesting to see how quickly somebody manages to put him on their payroll as an adviser or consultant or some other make-work post that enables them to provide him with something resembling an income.

The ideologues probably want to believe that all of us (the majority of the electorate that wanted Clinton or someone other than Trump to be president) have now got our way, and we ought to just “Shut up!” about our Trump criticisms or anything else we have to say.

Of course, the conservative ideologue type usually just wants everybody to “Shut up!” and do what the ideologues tell us to do. So there’s nothing new there.

BUT THE TERMINATION of Comey’s employment did manage to catch the nation off-guard, what with its timing Tuesday night. I’m sure there were conversations taking place across the country during the evening hours by people speculating on how erratic the behavior of our president truly is.

There is the speculation that Trump fired Comey so as to thwart any investigation the FBI might be doing into whether or not Russia government officials or operatives in any way committed any acts that might have influenced the election outcome.

Did the thought of a woman as U.S. president so bother the thought process of Russian leader Vladimir Putin that he felt compelled to get involved?

 

TRUMP: Wants our admiration, even if by force

Other people are bringing up the “Saturday Night Massacre” of 1973 when then-President Richard M. Nixon wanted to fire a special prosecutor so as to try to knock down investigations into the Watergate burglary, and wound up having to fire several levels of officials in the attorney general's office before he could find someone (William Bork, remember him?) who was willing to do the presidential “dirty work.”

BUT A PART of me wonders if it is something more basic, in that Comey in recent weeks has continued to talk about his actions with regards to Hillary Clinton and e-mails and why he was bothered enough by what he learned to keep the issue alive in the public eye.

He recently made statements indicating he was bothered by Clinton spouse (and former president in his own right) Bill having that private meeting with then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch, which he said created the perception that HE was trying to tamper with FBI investigations into his wife’s behavior.

The point being that by continually bringing the issue up, Comey was reminding the public that it was NOT a majority of people who wanted Trump to be president. Although supposedly being the factor that made Trump president, he was becoming the reason some of us will NEVER regard this Age of Trump as being a legitimate expression of the sentiments of our society.

Whereas if Comey could have kept his “trap shut” and let the issue wither away, the reality is that most of us would have forgotten the details. Then Trump with his knack for “alternative facts” could have come up with a version of reality that would make us think we “like me, you really like me” as much as Sally Field felt at that Academy Awards ceremony of long-ago.

BUT THAT IS likely never to happen, although it is also true that we’re likely to never know the truth of what really happened, or how Russian operatives could have tampered with our electoral process or if it was more our own incompetence that could let something happen.

Yet this is Donald Trump, the real estate developer from Manhattan who likes to build gaudy structures around the globe and brand them all with his name – thinking that it means we associate the mention of himself with class, elegance and sophistication.

Instead of just tacky trash that comes in overpriced.

Which is why I often get the image in my brain of our president in some secluded room, singing to himself that 1960 hit by the Everly Brothers – “When will I be loved?”

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Will people who once would have deplored U.S./Russia tie now be Trump's biggest partisan backers?

It seems that President-elect Donald J. Trump has picked a corporate executive-type person to be secretary of state, and now we’re hearing the allegations that this person is a Russian sympathizer, of sorts.
 

Who's who in this relationship?

Which also combines with the weekend news reports that say the Russian government, in what seems to be its own warped idea of a prank meant to display the inferiority of the Democratic way of life, managed to cause enough havoc with computer hacking to alter the Election Day results of a month ago.

WE’RE NOT SURE just how, or to what degree. But the implication being that some will now believe that Russian premier Vladimir Putin had more of a say in Trump being able to defeat Hillary Clinton than did the will of the voters.

If this were the old days, I’m sure we’d be hearing all kinds of hostile rhetoric and threats calling for the impeachment of Trump before he could even be formally confirmed by the Electoral College and Congress as U.S. president.

We might even hear talk of “commies” and all the other Cold War-era trash talk. Except that technically, Russia isn’t Communist any longer.

Heck, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics hasn’t existed in decades. There are young people who cast their first ballots in this year’s election cycle who would have no first-hand concept of what the Soviet Union was.

AND AS FOR some older people, they are inclined to think there is no real difference.

Particularly since Russian head Putin does date his own government service back to the USSR (which wasn’t just the subject of a Beatles song that itself was a takeoff on all-American Chuck Berry’s “Back in the U.S.A.”).

If Trump/Putin are Robin/Batman, was Clinton some sort of Catwoman turned good?,

For Putin was a one-time head of the KGB and an intelligence official within the new Russian Federation.

My point being that it astounds me that the ideologues of our society who once would have been scared out of their wits out of the very mention of Russian influence within our government are now going to be the ones who will speak out the loudest in Trump’s defense.

 

CONWAY: Does she believe anything she says?

AFTER ALL, HE’S the guy with the “Make America Great Again” vision that mostly consists of ignoring anything that white people don’t particularly feel like addressing.

Trump spokeswoman Kellyanne Conway officially denounces the talk of Russian influence over the elections as “laughable and ridiculous.” Because I’m sure the last thing that she’d want to admit is that Trump is more than capable of falling for the nefarious pranks of a potentially-hostile nation.

As for the new secretary of state, he’s the former head of Exxon-Mobil. Rex Tillerson has been CEO since 2006, and Trump says he likes the idea that he has negotiated deals for that company with foreign governments – including Russia.

Of course, he’s been used to negotiating deals that could focus on a certain bottom line that would benefit the stockholders of his own company – and certainly didn’t have to take into account the concerns of the United States of America as a whole.

ALTHOUGH IT SHOULDN’T be a surprise. If you think about it, Trump is a corporate-minded person who is inclined to think government gets in the way of his own business dealings. Why shouldn’t he be expected to pick a batch of corporate-minded people.

That’s what the people who managed to give Trump a majority of the Electoral College vote should have realized they were creating for this country’s leadership when they marked their ballots for Trump accordingly. They voted for “Robin” to Putin’s “Batman.”

 

CLINTON: Did Russia "fear" her?

I’m sure the ideologues, now that it suits their partisan interests, will claim that the past is the past and that we’re all friendly with Russia, even though British Defense Secretary Michael Fallon said Saturday to the BBC that Putin’s interests are in propping up his own nation and that the U.S. shouldn’t be so eager to treat it as an equal partner.

Then again, a Trump presidency was eager to aggravate China by talking openly with Taiwan just a few weeks ago and now says he doesn’t feel bound by the “One China” policy the U.S. has held for years – making me wonder if that was merely because the Chinese government didn’t offer similar assistance in his desire to beat Clinton. And whom we should now think of as the “real American” whose presence the Russians would have feared!

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A DAY IN THE LIFE (of Chicago): Rooting, for once, for the inmates

This might be the one time that the ideologues of our society who like to rant and rage about us being “soft on crime” might have been rooting for the inmates at the Cook County Jail.



Beats finding a 'shiv' in a cell

Then again, maybe they think chess is too soft an activity – and they’ll still rage!

I WAS AMUSED by the Chicago Sun-Times report about how inmates at the county jail this week played inmates held in prisons across Russia. It wasn’t face-to-face. Our inmates were in the jail’s law library, while the Russian inmates were in their own prison facilities. The games were played on-line.



Not the typical chess championship setting

And it seems that the criminal element of Russian society is just as masterful at chess as their international champions – as they beat the bulk of the Cook County inmates. One inmate went so far as to tell the Sun-Times that the games felt, “like an ambush.”

Personally, I find the idea of inmates spending all their spare time (which is what they have while being incarcerated) playing a board game to be encouraging. There are worse things they could be doing.

Although I couldn’t help but notice some people using the anonymity of the Internet to complain that these inmates should have been doing something that resembles hard labor.

THEY PROBABLY WOULD only be pleased to see inmates wearing black-and-white striped uniforms and swinging big hammers. Personally, I’d be concerned that they’d use those hammers as weapons against their guards.

As Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart told the Sun-Times, chess is harmless because they can’t really, “beat someone with a rook.”

And as for those who wonder about the whuppin’ the Cook County inmates received this week, there’s one encouraging factor. They have nothing but time to continue to practice and get better – should there ever be anything resembling a rematch.

What else was notable amongst the activity taking place Thursday on the southwestern shores of Lake Michigan?

SOME SENSE PREVAILS?: It has been a month since the Cook County courts imposed their new ban on people being able to bring their cellular telephones into the courthouses, and a part of me is relieved to see that some semblance of sense prevails in terms of that policy’s enforcement.



Deputies showing some sense in phone enforcement

My duties as a reporter-type person took me Thursday to the courthouse in suburban Markham, where deputies were allowing people to keep their phones on their persons inside the building.

They were requiring anyone wishing to make a call to go outside to do so. But the idea of people with business before the court having to surrender the phones wasn’t quite so rigid as the “letter of the law” implies.

Although within the courtrooms, judges were saying that anybody whose phones rang during session would have them confiscated. And I did see one individual try to use his phone during court. Deputies confiscated it from him, but returned it when he left for the day.

THE YOUTH VOTE?: It’s now in the hands of Gov. Pat Quinn as to whether 17-year-olds will be able to cast ballots in elections in Illinois.



Not the favorite setting for youth

The state Senate this week gave the final legislative approval required for a bill that allows 17-year-olds to vote in primaries – IF they can document that they will be 18 by the time the general election comes around.

Yes, I’m aware there are a few youthful types already on their way toward becoming government geeks who will be all worked up about the chance to cast their first ballot a few months earlier than the law currently allows.

But those officials who say they support this as a way of bolstering the percentage of those who vote? It sounds like wishful thinking to my mindset, since the rule of thumb for political professionals trying to turn out the vote is that it is the old folks, so to speak, who are the most reliable when it comes to showing up at the polling place.

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