Two competitions of gargantuan proportions reached simultaneous apogees on October 22, 2019, as the World Series of Baseball kicked off in Houston, while in the nation’s capital the House Impeachment inquiry garnered the testimony of a key diplomat involved in the Ukraine “arms for dirt” scandal. While the outcome of both contests is still in doubt as of this writing, it’s beginning to look more and more like the underdogs may emerge the winners.
At 5:04 PM EDT on Tuesday, 24 September 2019, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, fresh from a Democratic Caucus meeting, stood before the nation and announced that the US Congress was beginning formal impeachment investigations against Donald J. Trump. Critical mass had been building for this step in the caucus for a week, since the revelations of Trump’s outrageous breech of ethics, convention and quite possibly laws, in requesting aid from a foreign government in his 2020 US presidential reelection.
Perhaps more surprising, Mitch McConnell supported a unanimous nonbinding resolution in the Senate requiring the White House to release the full report logged by a national security whistleblower concerning Trump’s interactions with the Ukrainian president. Has the worm truly turned?
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) is perhaps one of the most disliked, and most effective, politicians in the country. First elected in 1984 in a squeaker election which he won by less than one percent, McConnell has won reelection five times, and faces another race in 2020. He was tapped to replace outgoing Senate Minority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) in 2006, and became Majority Leader when Republicans took over the Senate in 2015.
The self-styled “Grim Reaper” of the Senate, Mitch McConnell is where legislation goes to die. Through a combination of stonewalling, pigheadedness, and obscure parliamentary tactics, McConnell has done his level best to frustrate Democratic administrations and agendas for decades.
In last year’s Solar Return, I opined that 2018 was the critical time – if he made it through that solar year, Donald Trump would likely finish his term in office, and could possibly be re-elected. Despite the Mueller Report’s scathing details of impropriety and actions which would be judged criminal coming from anyone not shielded by the office of the presidency, Trump has hung on. Impeachment in the House may still be on the table, but with a GOP majority in the Senate which refuses to budge on its support for the 45th president, conviction and removal from office is unlikely.
Reflecting that earthly reality, the skies seem to have parted somewhat for Trump, and the 2019 Solar Return puts a more favorable light on his prospects going forward. Believe me, I evince no pleasure in reporting this, but an old friend which has sustained The Donald since birth is once again stepping into the breach, fortifying the Lucky Schmuck with its substantial staying power and grace.
At precisely 11 AM EDT on May 29th, 2019, former Special Counsel Robert Mueller finally spoke publically about his investigation of Russian interference with the 2016 presidential election, Russian contacts with the Trump Campaign, and Donald Trump’s efforts to hamper that investigation, more than two years after it began. It was Mueller’s first public statement on the matter, and it fell into the body politic with a resounding boom.
On April 29th 2019 The Washington Post, whose Fact Checker database has been tracking Donald Trump’s lies, misrepresentations, and false or misleading claims, announced that the 45th President had reached a new milestone, with 10,000 falsehoods uttered. Apparently it took Trump some 601 days into his presidency to make 5000 such statements, an average of 8 per day, but only an additional 226 days to double that figure, raising his rate of deception to 23 per day over the ensuing seven month period, which included the buildup to the 2018 Midterms, the government shutdown, and the release of the Mueller Report.
