Adam Schiff should be our President

The Trump Impeachment trial continues.

I am depressed as I predict that the Senate will not allow witness statements, and then will acquit Trump.  This means that we have a Dictator in the White House.  What that means for our nation is terrifying for me to consider.

Adam Schiff, the Democratic congressman from California and one of the prosecutors in the trial, gave an impassioned closing argument that should go down in history.

Here is the transcript:

Adam Schiff: (00:00)
But even now, our ally can’t get his foot in the door. Even now, our ally can’t get his foot in the door. This brings me the last point I want to make tonight, which is, when we’re done, we believe that we will have made the case overwhelmingly of the President’s guilt. That is, he’s done what he’s charged with. He withheld the money. He withheld the meeting. He used it to coerce Ukraine to do these political investigations. He covered it up. He obstructed us. He’s trying to obstruct you and he’s violated the Constitution. But I want to address one other thing tonight. Okay. He’s guilty. Okay. He’s guilty. Does he really need to be removed? Does he really need to be removed? We have an election coming up. Does he really need to be removed? He’s guilty. Is there really any doubt about this?

Adam Schiff: (01:09)
Do we really have any doubt about the facts here? Does anybody really question whether the President is capable of what he’s charged with? No one is really making the argument, Donald Trump would never do such a thing, because of course we know that he would, and of course we know that he did. It’s a somewhat different question though to ask, okay, it’s pretty obvious whether we can say it publicly or we can’t say it publicly. We all know what we’re dealing here with this President, but does he really need to be removed? And this is why he needs to be removed. Donald Trump chose Rudy Giuliani over his own intelligence agencies. He chose Rudy Giuliani over his own FBI Director. He chose Rudy Giuliani over his own National Security Advisors. When all of them were telling him this Ukraine 2016 stuff is kooky, crazy Russian propaganda. He chose not to believe them. He chose to believe Rudy Giuliani. That makes him dangerous to us, to our country. That was Donald Trump’s choice. Now, why would Donald Trump believe a man like Rudy Giuliani over a man like Christopher Wray? Okay. Why would anyone in their right mind believe Rudy Giuliani over Christopher Wray?

Adam Schiff: (02:49)
Because he wanted to and because what Rudy was offering him was something that would help him personally. And what Christopher Wray was offering him was merely the truth. What Christopher Wray was offering him was merely the information he needed to protect his country and its elections, but that’s not good enough. What’s in it for him? What’s in it for Donald Trump? This is why he needs to be removed. Now, you may be asking how much damage can he really do in the next several months until the election? A lot. A lot of damage. Now, we just saw last week, report that Russia tried to hack or maybe did hack Burisma. Okay. I don’t know if they got in. I’m trying to find out. My colleagues on the Intel committee, House and Senate, we’re trying to find out, did the Russians get in? What are the Russian plans and intentions? Well, let’s say they got in and let’s say they start dumping documents to interfere at the next election.

Adam Schiff: (04:01)
Let’s say they start dumping some real things they hack from Burisma. Let’s say they start dumping some fake things they didn’t hack from Burisma, but they want you to believe they did. Let’s say they start blatantly interfering in our election again to help Donald Trump. Can you have the least bit of confidence that Donald Trump will stand up to them and protect our national interest over his own personal interest? You know you can’t, which makes him dangerous to this country. You know you can’t. You know you can’t count on him. None of us can. None of us can. What happens if China got the message? Now you can say, he’s just joking of course. He didn’t really mean China should investigate the Bidens. You know that’s no joke.

Adam Schiff: (05:00)
Now maybe you could have argued three years ago when he said, “Hey Russia, if you’re listening, hack Hillary’s emails.” Maybe you could give him a freebie and say he was joking, but now we know better. Hours after he did that Russia did, in fact, try to hack Hillary’s emails. There’s no Mulligan here when it comes to our national security. So what if China does overtly or covertly start to help the Trump campaign? You think he’s going to call them out on it or you think he’s going to give them a better trade deal on it? Can any of us really have the confidence that Donald Trump will put his personal interests ahead of the national interests? Is there really any evidence in this presidency that should give us the ironclad confidence that he would do so?

Adam Schiff: (06:00)
You know you can’t count on him to do that. That’s the sad truth. You know you can’t count on him to do that. The American people deserve a President they can count on to put their interests first, to put their interests first. Colonel Vindman said, “Here, right matters. Here, right matters.” Well, let me tell you something, if right doesn’t matter, if right doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter how good the Constitution is. It doesn’t matter how brilliant the framers were. Doesn’t matter how good or bad our advocacy in this trial is. Doesn’t matter how well written the Oath of Impartiality is. If right doesn’t matter, we’re lost.

Adam Schiff: (07:14)
If the truth doesn’t matter, we’re lost. Framers couldn’t protect us from ourselves, if right and truth don’t matter. And you know that what he did was not right. That’s what they do in the old country, that Colonel Vindman’s father came from. Or the old country that my great grandfather came from, or the old countries that your ancestors came from, or maybe you came from. But here, right is supposed to matter. It’s what’s made us the greatest nation on earth. No constitution can protect us, right doesn’t matter any more. And you know you can’t trust this President to do what’s right for this country. You can trust he will do what’s right for Donald Trump. He’ll do it now. He’s done it before. He’ll do it for the next several months. He’ll do it in the election if he’s allowed to. This is why if you find him guilty, you must find that he should be removed. Because right matters. Because right matters and the truth matters. Otherwise, we are lost.

The days have daggers

art by Phyllis Emmert



Here's a chilling poem by Christian Wiman:

All my friends are finding new beliefs

All my friends are finding new beliefs.

This one converts to Catholicism and this one to trees.

In a highly literary and hitherto religiously-indifferent Jew

God whomps on like a genetic generator.

Paleo, Keto, Zone, South Beach, Bourbon.

Exercise regimens so extreme she merges with machine.

One man marries a woman twenty years younger

and twice in one brunch uses the word verdant;

another’s brick-fisted belligerence gentles

into dementia, and one, after a decade of finical feints and teases

like a sandpiper at the edge of the sea,

decides to die.

Priesthoods and beasthoods, sombers and glees,

high-styled renunciations and avocations of dirt,

sobrieties, satieties, pilgrimages to the very bowels of  being ...

All my friends are finding new beliefs

and I am finding it harder and harder to keep track

of the new gods and the new loves,

and the old gods and the old loves,

and the days have daggers, and the mirrors motives,

and the planet’s turning faster and faster in the blackness,

and my nights, and my doubts, and my friends,

my beautiful, credible friends.

Source: Poetry (January 2020)

A Winter Bluejay

photo by Robin Allen


Today is the anniversary of the death of the poet Sara Teasdale.  Here is one of her bird poems:

A Winter Bluejay
Sara Teasdale

CRISPLY the bright snow whispered,
Crunching beneath our feet;
Behind us as we walked along the parkway,
Our shadows danced,
Fantastic shapes in vivid blue.
Across the lake the skaters
Flew to and fro,
With sharp turns weaving
A frail invisible net.
In ecstasy the earth
Drank the silver sunlight;
In ecstasy the skaters
Drank the wine of speed;
In ecstasy we laughed
Drinking the wine of love.
Had not the music of our joy
Sounded its highest note?
But no,
For suddenly, with lifted eyes you said,
“Oh look!”
There, on the black bough of a snow flecked maple,
Fearless and gay as our love,
A bluejay cocked his crest!
Oh who can tell the range of joy
Or set the bounds of beauty?

photo    Jim Ridley

More January poems

Art  by Amanda Clark

Winter Song

"Rain and wind, and wind and rain.
Will the Summer come again?
Rain on houses, on the street,
Wetting all the people's feet,
Though they run with might and main.
Rain and wind, and wind and rain.

Snow and sleet, and sleet and snow.
Will the Winter never go?
What do beggar children do
With no fire to cuddle to,
Perhaps with nowhere warm to go?
Snow and sleet, and sleet and snow.

Hail and ice, and ice and hail,
Water frozen in the pail.
See the robins, brown and red,
They are waiting to be fed.
Poor dears, battling in the gale!
Hail and ice, and ice and hail."

- Katherine Mansfield, Winter Song

Nicholas Hely Hutchinson      Garden in Winter



The Garden In Winter

Frosty-white and cold it lies
Underneath the fretful skies;
Snowflakes flutter where the red
Banners of the poppies spread,
And the drifts are wide and deep
Where the lilies fell asleep.

But the sunsets o'er it throw
Flame-like splendor, lucent glow,
And the moonshine makes it gleam
Like a wonderland of dream,
And the sharp winds all the day
Pipe and whistle shrilly gay.

Safe beneath the snowdrifts lie
Rainbow buds of by-and-by;
In the long, sweet days of spring
Music of bluebells shall ring,
And its faintly golden cup
Many a primrose will hold up.

Though the winds are keen and chill
Roses' hearts are beating still,
And the garden tranquilly
Dreams of happy hours to be­
In the summer days of blue
All its dreamings will come true.

Lucy Maud Montgomery.

Jemma Jameson        End of a Winters Day

The End Of A Winters Day.

"The leaves drift toward the earth like ships to land,
A voyage launched from timbers' great lofty berths,
Toward harbors safe, concealed from raider bands,
Of icy galleons coursing wintry dearth.
Squirrels don thick coats against Wind's numbing dare,
Mount last determined searches 'long the ground.
Brown grass conceals the season's paltry fare,
As hopeful birds scratch for what may be found.
Through frosted windows glow the hearth's warm light,
As fading day casts shadows 'cross the lawn,
And grey meets grey as winter gathers might,
Undaunted as the chimney starts to yawn.
Farewell brave day as twilight draweth nigh.
Perchance on morrow sun will gather high."

By Dan Young.

.

Two poems for January

"It's not the case, though some might wish it so
Who from a window watch the blizzard blow

White riot through their branches vague and stark,
That they keep snug beneath their pelted bark.

They take affliction in until it jells
To crystal ice between their frozen cells ..."

-  Richard Wilbur, Orchard Trees - January 

"O thou whose face hath felt the Winter's wind,
       Whose eye has seen the snow-clouds hung in mist
       And the black elm tops 'mong the freezing stars
        To thee the spring will be harvest-time.
O thou, whose only book has been the light
       Of supreme darkness which thou feedest on
       Night after night when Phœbus was away,
       To thee the Spring shall be a triple morn.
O fret not after knowledge - I have none,
       And yet my song comes native with the warmth.
O fret not after knowledge - I have none,
       And yet the Evening listens. He who saddens
At thought of idleness cannot be idle,
And he's awake who thinks himself asleep."

-  John Keats, O Thou Whose Face Hath Felt the Winter's Wind  

Things are not good

Australia is burning up.

and Trump gave some orders that bring the United States to the brink of war with Iran.

some are asking :  why now?  why not last week?  why not next week?

this political cartoon cuts too close to the bone:

On January

but it's not like this in our area ; at least, not yet.


Dylan Thomas wrote this about January:

"In the sniffed and poured snow on the tip of the tongue of the year
That clouts the spittle like bubbles with broken rooms,
An enamoured man alone by the twigs of his eyes, two fires,
Camped in the drug-white shower of nerves and food,
Savours the lick of the times through a deadly wood of hair
In a wind that plucked a goose,
Nor ever, as the wild tongue breaks its tombs,
Rounds to look at the red, wagged root."

-  Dylan Thomas, January, 1939

Meanwhile, our world is in a bad way. Australia is burning up.

Trump is fixing for war with Iran.

I do not want to think about what happens next.

All the President's Men, Revisited

Dear God, how young they were!  How young I was when this movie came out!

I actually purchased it on itunes and have watched it probably five times.  It's one of my favorite films.  Now when I watc.h it, I watch the facial expressions as well as the dialogue.  I also watch the "period clothing and hair".  It's interesting how men's shirts and ties and pants look the same to me now ( probably there are differences, but I can't see them).  But the women are so different.  The hairstyles for both genders are very different.   And the technology, or lack of it!   The reporters still use typewriters and there is one TV in the newsroom.  And most amazing,  the absence of cell phones. The reporters stop to use pay phones along their way!   And yet, what they accomplished that reporters cannot accomplish today.  Today the news is so widespread and so twisted by the political stance of the news reporters that people aren't sure what the truth is. I blame this on Trump and Fox News,  but other people blame it on MSNBC and the liberal newspapers.  Who is right?

Compared to today, those were innocent times.

For the Anniversary of My Death

Here's another poem from W.S. Merwin  that haunts me:

FOR THE ANNIVERSARY OF MY DEATH

Every year without knowing it I have passed the day
When the last fires will wave to me
And the silence will set out
Tireless traveler
Like the beam of a lightless star

Then I will no longer
Find myself in life as in a strange garment
Surprised at the earth
And the love of one woman
And the shamelessness of men
As today writing after three days of rain
Hearing the wren sing and the falling cease
And bowing not knowing to what

– W.S. Merwin,“For the Anniversary of My Death” from The Second Four Books of Poems (Copper Canyon Press, 1993). Copyright © 1993 by W. S. Merwin. Reprinted with the permission of The Wylie Agency, Inc.

Happy New Year 2020

No one ever regarded the First of January with indifference.  It is that from which all date their time, and count upon what is left.  It is the nativity of our common Adam." 
-  Charles Lamb   

Here's a poem by one of my favorite poets, W.S. Merwin:

To the New Year

With what stillness at last

you appear in the valley

your first sunlight reaching down

to touch the tips of a few

high leaves that do not stir

as though they had not noticed

and did not know you at all

then the voice of a dove calls

from far away in itself

to the hush of the morning

so this is the sound of you

here and now whether or not

anyone hears it this is

where we have come with our age

our knowledge such as it is

and our hopes such as they are

invisible before us

untouched and still possible

W. S. Merwin, “To the New Year” from Present Company (Port Townsend, Washington: Copper Canyon Press, 2005). Copyright © 2005 by W. S. Merwin. Reprinted with the permission of Copper Canyon Press, www.coppercanyonpress.org.