Regarding Jeff Sessions

Regarding Jeff Sessions

My letter to Senator Rob Portman- R. OH

Senator,

I’m deeply concerned about the conduct in your chamber.  I don’t care for Judge Sessions, but I expect that he will be confirmed.  That being said, the tactic employed by your colleagues to silence Senator Warren is unacceptable.

This process is intended to verify the character as well as the judiciary experience and credentials of a man who will spend the term defending the law of this land.

If we are to consider giving this man the power of membership in the highest department of legal defense authority in the land, whether a letter is condemning or praising cannot be considered as grounds to dismiss it.

It’s at once immaterial and highly pertinent that this letter was written thirty years ago.

On the one hand, you are, again, considering an appointment of great power.  If this man is to wield this power for possibly this entire presidency, then how he has wielded his power in the earlier part of his life must be considered.  It doesn’t matter if he persecuted the black community 5 years or 30 years or 50 years ago, it doesn’t matter if he was saying racially charged remarks in jest or in a court of law.  He’s being considered for a mighty appointment and the conduct of his entire lifetime should be open to scrutiny.

On the other hand, it is incredibly important that Mrs. King wrote this 30 years ago.  You and your colleagues by silencing Senator Warren have at once opened a discussion about the rights of women in the Senate compared with their male colleagues, but at the same time she has thrown into stark relief what it really is we are thinking about here.

Thirty years ago Mrs. King wrote these words and they evidently fell on deaf ears.  You and your colleagues are determining in these deliberations what progress has been made in that time.  

If you choose once again to turn a blind eye to these complaints, to indeed even forbid the suggestion that he behaved improperly, then you are not only failing to properly vet this man in the interests of the American people but you are also declaring that we have made no progress in these thirty years- that white people as a whole are still as rotten as ever, that if a white man obstructs the right of black people to vote it will go uninvestigated.

In the 80s he could still be nominated to a federal circuit with no serious questions asked about these matters.  Is that still true today?

I’m not telling you that you must reject this man, but I am telling you that you have no choice but to examine these allegations with the seriousness they call for.  It is absolutely unacceptable to once again sweep these charges under the rug.  This conversation needs to be had, and it is your duty to have it.  Indeed, even if you think that these matters were sufficiently addressed in 1986, it is time to re-examine them and see if he would pass muster under modern standards, to see if we really have become a better people.

Adam Locke

My First Email to President Trump

Mr. President,

I’m not sure if you’ve gotten my cordial and rather more conciliatory letters or if you have read them or had them brought to your attention at all.  Indeed, your staff has not even seen fit to respond in any fashion so far.

Regrettably, that is why this letter will not feature such a tone.

I have given you time to become presidential during your transition period and you failed.  I have given you time to walk back some of your most absurd and incendiary social positions and you have failed.  I have been quite patient in waiting for this dull, disciplined presidential Donald to emerge and you have failed to deliver.  

I liked having a cool, collected president with a deliberate attitude and a calm demeanor.  It was reassuring.  Hell for all his bungling I even appreciated George Bush’s childlike charm- you could at least believe that he was acting in good faith, to whatever extent his intellectual capacity might allow anyway.

You have not failed in comparison with Barack Obama.  That would suggest that you’re fit to compare with him, and you’re not.  I desperately want you to be.  I want you to rival him at being good at your job because it matters so much.  I seriously want you to succeed because if you fail the way you have been for any time longer the results will be a disaster for our country.

You’re off the handle in the way you address yourself to others.  You’re undisciplined in your approach to every aspect of this process and you have chosen people both fundamentally unqualified to do the jobs for which they are chosen but also with views antithetical to the existence of the administrative duties to which they are being appointed.

Your relationship with the press is even more concerning.  You antagonize them for routine scrutiny for man in your position- and don’t worry I’m not going to waste time on a meaningless psychobabble about your narcissism or whatever because it doesn’t fucking matter.  It bears repeating, whatever your psychological issues are they do not fucking matter.  What matters is that YOU ARE FAILING.

What’s the result of all this?  A highly ranked official within the Chinese defense directorate is calling a war with our country a “practical reality” that they feel the need to concern themselves over during your presidency.  This alone is your biggest diplomatic fuckup.  Wait I’m not so sure anymore because at the same time that you’re antagonizing the Chinese, our biggest global influence rival, you are also antagonizing fucking Mexico, our number two trading partner and a perfectly placid neighbor for many years.  OH!  And it gets even better!  I’m glad there is an aide to read this to you because I’m pretty sure you can’t read a letter when Vladimir Putin is balls deep in your mouth.

Yeah there’s a weird relationship with that Mexican border and various legal situations, especially if you learn about Mexico from Robert Rodriguez films, but we have generally enjoyed a long friendship that did not include trying to shake each other down to pay for bullshit building projects.  Frankly you will never bully a machismo culture into paying for this wall with the whole world watching and I expect that all you have done is ensured that mexican border patrol efforts are going to become even more lax than they already are, just to spite us over this bullshit policy.  Fuck it, let’s just launch nukes at Canada and call it a day, then we’ll be about as thoroughly isolated from the rest of our own fucking continent as we can be.

And now of course you’ve done just as you said you would, proving wrong every even-keeled conservative I’ve spoken to, and you’ve banned people from muslim majority countries from entering our borders.  I’m sure you have a bunch of lawyers and advisors and so on trying to come up with a way to make this make some kind of legal sense but let me help you out with something more succinct:

What you have done is in direct opposition to our first amendment- which you are required to uphold by the way- is vastly unpopular in this country as well as abroad, and is as a moral choice the most cowardly, disgusting thing for a US president to do since the japanese internment camps of the second world war.

I apologize for this becoming a longer letter than I had in mind but you’re fucking up at a rate of 1 dumbass fuckup per minute so I have a lot to address.

Let’s talk about nazis for a minute.  You’ve got nazis supporting you, openly, in the streets, celebrating in Washington.  Now you could have taken the time, in either a press conference or a video address or whatever to condemn them and formally, explicitly make it clear that they have no place among us.  Instead, you have pronounced a policy of brown-people-exclusion that they are jerkng off to right now as you read this.  Nazis jerk off to your ideas.

As if to ice a cake of fucking nazis, you have kicked the joint chiefs from the security council and replaced them with Steve Bannon, your propagandist.  If you were trying to not look like Hitler lately putting Joseph Goebbels in a position of this kind was another example of your failure.

I know, Bannon is not literally Joseph Goebbels.  Goebbels was nowhere near as fat and he had the good sense to blow his own brains out.  

I expect that for Bannon we will have to end out deposing you and put him through a lengthy trial on the taxpayer’s dime before we shell out even more money to have him executed in some infuriatingly humane chemical process after he’s done convincing your supporters that everyone has a sacred duty to burn down mosques or something.

Honestly the only thing that is missing is that you have not yet tried to annex anybody and you’ve yet to commit your first war crime.  I suppose I can at least say you’ve not made those fuckups yet.

I’ve tried to make this an entertaining if not flattering read because I know that you’re not one for reading more than 140 characters, so it’s my hope that one of your staffers with a sufficiently dry, deadpan delivery will perform a reading of this letter for you so that your attention can be kept long enough to get to the action points below.

1. Stop antagonizing the Chinese.  Seriously.  We are involved in a war in Afghanistan you need to clean up before starting any new ones.

2. Fire Bannon and immediately make an appearance at either a press conference or by direct video rolling back this absurd immigration policy and denouncing the nazis that are cheering for you.  I’m dead serious.  The longer you delay heeding this advice, the closer you come to going down in history are the nazi president.  I can’t believe I’m having to write these words.  It’s fucking surreal that you have not already nipped your nazi problem in the bud.

3. Veto any bill that comes to your desk repealing Obamacare that has not also in it an immediately prepared and budget office approved replacement plan.  I agree that there is room for healthcare reform.  There were good ideas and lousy ones in Obamacare, that’s why we review and change.  I happen to like seeing the calories on a menu for example.  You cannot afford to fail at this.  Your chances of reelection are already astonishingly slim- because you have been failing for a week- and you will not be up against an easily vilified Clinton next time.

4. You get your head on straight about Russia.  They do not want to be buddies with you, they want to see you squirm the way they squirmed in the 90s.  They want to be an ascendant superpower once again and their goals are consistently incompatible with ours, not to mention international law.

5. The TPP, imperfect though it was, was a vital part of our approach to China.  You get a replacement plan in the works and you get it to congress by the end of February.  Don’t worry, you’ll have the time because you’re dumping this wall bullshit to focus on it.  You cannot make the approach to China a military approach.  You need to do it with careful trade and building a support network in the Pacific and you need to do it deliberately and with a plan.

6. Review the  1st, 9th, and 14th amendments and make damn sure your supreme court nominee is very familiar with them.  I retain to myself the right to marry whoever the hell I damn well please, and I’ve got three amendments between me and whoever wants to argue otherwise.

7. You get on the horn with the pipeline companies and explain to them in no uncertain terms that they may indeed have their pipelines- but they will not run through these lands that are sacred and that mean so much to the people of our country.  You tell them they are, at their own expense, to reroute these pipes through areas that are not controversial.

8. Announce immediately that you are abandoning this absurd wall project and that instead you will be investing that 15 billion projected cost in a new project to construct homes for homeless veterans.  You will explain that this project will put to work many blue collar construction workers and that we will be bringing back into the housing market and therefor the workforce some of the most dedicated workers to be found anywhere by finally looking after the vets that we should be the most ashamed of letting go unattended.

Take care of these bullets.  Put up the twitter.  Quit fucking up.  You need to get this right or I guarantee you will not even run for reelection because you will get impeached and that impeachment will have you deposed.  This order you signed this weekend is already unconstitutional as per amendment 1 and frankly the American people are not going to need any further grounds.  The only reason I’m not looking to have you impeached already is that I hate instability and ruckus, and fixing your dumbass is better solution.  Like renovating a tenement for 85k instead of trying to build a new complex for 200.

Adam Locke

P.s. As you may note in the bullets, I’m really rather moderate and willing to compromise on a number of points.  Having a fuckup for a president is not one of them.  I know you’re new, I know you will stumble, but if you can keep it to one dumbass fuckup per quarter at least we can at least get back to Bush levels of incompetence.  Tighten it up or start revising your resume.

In Which I Upbraid the New Years Naysayers

The simple turning of the year does not create some kind of clean slate that makes change or growth possible where it was not the day before.  There are some people who are interested in breaking out of patterns of stagnation and who take this to mean that they should begin immediately regardless of the hour and there are those who take this to mean that the magic of the new year is simply not for them and accept a continuation of the status quo.

Increasingly, I find myself disliking this second kind of person.  I understand full well that the new year creates a certain kind of unfair expectation, like a sort of annual high school reunion, especially now as we all see what one another are doing in the social media.  It’s the defeatist attitude that gets me, the notion that “new year same me” is simply the way that things are and if the magical new year cannot motivate one to grow then nothing can.

Truly, I have very seldom come upon a person who started with a new year’s resolution and followed it through entirely.  This doesn’t really surprise me because the kinds of fundamental things people try to change in their lives all at once demand some extremes in discipline that I have always found I had to sort of ease into, gradually.  If you cannot quit smoking cold-turkey, what leads you to conclude that getting suckered into the planet fitness bargain is going to stick?

I will touch on fitness goals (though not exclusively) in this discussion because it’s such a common pick that I have some experience with, but more because I feel that the Planet exploits this misled idea of the clean slate in order to profit from working people.  The average PF facility is designed to allow about 50 people to do cardio at once and has benches, ropes, dumbbells and so on to accommodate perhaps a further 30 or 40 to be training with the weights.  The average membership of a PF facility is expected to be between 800 and 1000 individuals.  If every one of you committed to lifting every day you’d be stumbling over each other and waiting 20 minutes for the lat pulldown.  Every gym has crowding problems at some time of day, but the PF solution is to set the membership fee so low that slacking off doesn’t feel like a wasted investment.  They hope you will forget about being slowly bled the same way you might forget about that recurring Spotify subscription you forgot to cancel.

Am I saying you ought to go invest 300 bucks a month at a crossfit gym to be successful in your resolution?  No, but if you make the investment in a proper gym you are going to be motivated to get your money’s worth even if all the right reasons to go to the gym fail you on some occasion.  If you want to succeed dear new years resolution devotee - and I want you to, I am rooting for you- take your time in choosing a facility that will provide you with all the things you need to get where you want to go.  Or, maybe you have no idea where to go but you know you want to start walking, in which case you should look for one that offers a knowledgeable staff that can introduce you to several disciplines or sports that catch your eye.  Another thing the Planet profits off is the idea that other gyms are not inviting or interested in your success, and this is filthy lie.

I reckon the new year where goals are concerned to start on the 1st of November, shortly after my birthday and after I have completed my offerings to the Halloween spirits. As the shadows grow and my birthday approaches in late October, my Hour approaches when I will look upon the goals I have set since last year and decide where next to go.  After a fashion, this is my new years resolution time.

These aren’t all necessarily fitness goals- I set out to become a homeowner in 2016 at roughly the same time I decided to miss no weeks at the gym, last year I made a decision to plan a salsa garden for the spring and pay off my car.  This past October I resolved to compete at bodybuilding next year, rearrange my finances to tighten up my spending, and go back to school to pick up some new job skills.

Which leads me to today, roughly two months after making those decisions.  Firstly, I have concluded that practicing the compulsory poses is the most boring work I have ever done in the gym, but I appreciate the precision of it.  Secondly, I have just made my first payment on my schooling for the spring term because the thirdly part of realigning my financial posture succeeded when my paycheck came through this morning and I paid down my credit balance, bringing an end to some 2 months of carefully moving money around and executing some deliberately planned transactions and payments instead of just mindlessly dumping money into the bank.  Reclaiming some 150 dollars a month.

Now the cash that I have reclaimed in this way is not disposable, it just is what is necessary to allow me to continue meeting with trainers and also pay for school at the same time.  The cash is not the end goal, it’s a tool to let me do the things I want, and it didn’t just miraculously happen on the first of January any more than did my school enrollment or my abs.  It was the result of meticulous planning and careful execution of that plan, with the guidance and input of many people in my support networks.  Proper investment of time, careful planning, and right guidance is needed to achieve the difficult things, so don’t be ashamed if you don’t see the fruits of your resolution until March.

Which brings me back to the “new year same me” crowd.  I could not accomplish all these things if I didn’t have a personal cheer squad in my friends and colleagues or without the guidance of my trainers and bosses.  Therefor, if you are looking to pursue some kind of transformation or change in your life (I refuse to use the very-quickly cliched concept of the fitness journey) there are two ways that these folks are hurting you that you need to take action about.

If you are one of these people but you long to change something, if you’ve decided that resolutions are too mainstream, that you’re too cool for the whole thing, or if you’re honest with yourself enough to say that these attitudes are just excuses for your fear of failure, then stop it.  Instead of focusing on how very far the distance is between where you are at 95 pounds squat or a shitty karaoke solo, think instead of what plan is going to get you to all the way to 225 in a few years, what singing opportunities you have to practice with.  You can do that thing you want, and you are not too old or whatever those other people say that has been holding you back.

You’re not just getting yourself down and robbing yourself of precious time to do something you are passionate about, you are affecting the people around you with that attitude of resigned passivity.  Your friends and colleagues who do want to make a change of some kind, even if you do not, aren’t looking down their nose at you, and you’d do well to stop looking down yours because it does have an impact when you try to impose on other people your excuses for why you aren’t trying that thing.  Don’t rob someone else of their chance to succeed at a personal commitment of some kind by infecting them with your tired, predictable and frankly quite gauche disdain for effort.

Because Rob Portman is Evidently My Pen Pal

Senator,

I think that most Americans aren’t racists in the purest sense.  I need that to be true right now more than ever.

Every white person in America of conscience has to have a moment where you realize that you just used a racially charged word or grammatical flourish in some awkward way or you avoided the black dude walking down the street and not because he seemed angry or aggressive or you passed over the immigrant in favor of someone who looks more like you for dating, despite equally astonishing muscles.

All of us apart from innocent children at some point have to have this slimy moment when we realize that we’ve also been infected, that some of the pervasive racism that is the hallmark of our society has seeped its way into our own behavior despite the best intentions.

What is going on in the Presidency is not this “ambient racism” for which we might be tempted to forgive ourselves.  These people do not have good intentions.  This is a president who cannot unequivocally condemn nazis.

I mean you’re a politician, you tell me, what red-blooded american politician wouldn’t absolutely revel in the opportunity to literally be up against nazis.  It’s basically a chance to frame oneself as opposed to the devil.  Even for the most cold-blooded conservative, condemning literal, swastika waving nazis should be easy as pie because of all the benefits one could reap politically with sound bytes and media coverage.  “Sure I voted against healthcare for millions of people but I was there when we needed to stand up to nazis.”  Even the most bare-faced, opportunistic snake should be able to seize this.

It’s the easiest kind of statement a person could make in politics, “I don’t like nazis” is a no-brainer- which this president has made into an international incident that has scandalized our allies.

This isn’t a question of being politically adroit or even one of incompetence from a famously incompetent man.  He’s not condemning white supremacists and literal nazis because he is in league with them.  It is known that Bannon specifically instructed him not to criticize the nazis too heavily to avoid alienating them.  And he listened to that advice.

Equivocation and waffling and malignant moral ambivalence clothed as an anemic respect for the first amendment, that’s what we’re getting.  This White House isn’t just influenced by the ambient racism of America, it’s an active agent in the causes of xenophobia, oppression, and white supremacy.

Frankly I think that the only cure for our country is Mr. Mueller’s work to remove the infected organ.  However, you are in a position to provide our country with treatment to ease the symptoms.

You must strongly and publicly call for the removal of Mr. Bannon from this White House.  

It won’t cure the sickness that has infected our highest office because the entire tumor must be excised, but the removal of this man and his cadre of jingoistic racists would go a long way to creating a White House wherein more moderate or at least sane voices influence the presidency unopposed by the vile rhetoric of a nazi propagandist.

Make no mistake: Donald Trump has thrown in with the nazis and should be impeached at the soonest opportunity.  However, I have long held that he is basically incompetent and that any political position he appears to take is an accident of circumstance or the result of advice from others.

Bannon’s ouster is needed now.

in case you’re wondering, colin baker’s being wonderful on twitter