Tag archive: Damocles

ian from space

Hurricane Season Heats Up

After a fairly somnolent summer, the Atlantic hurricane season has been working overtime to make up the deficit, with two powerful storms wreaking havoc up and down the east coast of North America in the last week of September.  Hurricane Fiona devastated areas of the Canadian Maritimes on the 24th, while Hurricane Ian pounded central Florida on the 28th with nightmarish winds and massive flooding, traversed the Sunshine State, then refueled in the Atlantic and turned its sights on the Carolinas.

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And So It Begins: Trump Indictment #1

On 21 September 2022, New York State Attorney General Letitia James won the race to be the first to charge Donald Trump with a crime.  The former US President faces legal jeopardy on a variety of fronts, and the civil suit brought against Trump, his adult children Don Jr, Eric and Ivanka, and the Trump Organization may be the least harrowing, though, if successful, would devastate his business.  A civil suit carries no threat of incarceration, but AG James stated in her press conference announcing the indictment that both state and federal laws were broken, and she will be making criminal referrals to both the US Attorney’s office at the Southern District of New York and the IRS.

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QE2dead triptych

Aster-Obit: Queen Elizabeth II

She advised 15 Prime Ministers, interacted with 14 American presidents and 7 popes, but the long life and seventy-year reign of Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II came to a peaceful close on 8 September 2022, when the 96-year-old sovereign passed away in her sleep at her private estate of Balmoral Castle in Scotland.  Most of the United Kingdom’s population – indeed, most of the world – cannot recall a time when Elizabeth was not Queen; her reign spanned the post-World War II era to our post-Modern society, and her life saw massive technological change, from telegraphs to Twitter.

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AAA Profile: Liz Cheney

If anyone had told me two decades ago that I would be admiring, let alone praising, someone with the last name of “Cheney”, I’d have said they were nuts.  But that’s just the sort of uncomfortable position many progressives find themselves in these days, when contemplating the recent performance of Representative Liz Cheney (R-WY), daughter of the former Vice President, vis-a-vis the actions of Donald Trump and the bastardization of the GOP.

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And So It Begins: DJT & the FBI

On Monday, 8 August 2022, FBI agents executed a legal search warrant of former US president Donald J. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago mansion in Florida, looking for classified documents still in his possession.  When leaving the White House in January 2021, Trump absconded with reams of classified material, in violation of the Presidential Records Act of 1978, and the National Archives has been trying to get them back ever since.  In February, 15 boxes of such papers were returned, but investigators had cause to believe this was not the extent of the purloined trove, and a legal pas-de-deux had been danced between the Justice Department and Trump lawyers for months since, with negotiations and subpoenas having little effect.

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Fore! The Sad Final Resting Place of Ivana Trump

She was once the toast of Manhattan society, but the recently deceased Ivana Trump, ex-wife of the former president, now rests in her gold-tone casket at a barely marked plot overlooking the first hole at her former husband’s Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey.

Why?  The tax break, of course!  The Donald (a nickname given to Trump by his erstwhile wife, and which stuck) never saw a write-off he didn’t like, or fail to grasp a grift.  In burying Ivana at Bedminster, the property now qualifies as a cemetery, bringing tax relief galore.  New Jersey’s tax code exempts all cemetery land from all taxes, rates, and assessments, and includes no minimum on occupancy, so one human remain would suffice (though allegedly plans are in the works to dump the entire family there in due “course”).  For now, Ivana’s grave is graced with a simple plaque bearing just her name, and the dates of her birth and death.

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