“I want Schiff questioned at the highest level for Fraud & Treason.”

“Was this person SPYING on the U.S. President? Big Consequences!”

“What miserable drones and traitors have I nourished and brought up in my household, who let their lord be treated with such shameful contempt by a low-born cleric?”

Henry II, referring to ol’ Tommy Becket

It’s sad and scary that the President of the United States seems completely unhinged

Continue reading “Trump says making fun of him is treason!”

Depending on its path and whether it peters out over the Bahamas, it could become the fiercest storm ever to hit the East Coast.

As of this moment, the storm has completely stalled over Grand Bahama Island, which may result in an unprecedented disaster for that island.

From my e-mail:

I just wanted to send out a quick hello as we all watch the developments surrounding Hurricane Dorian along the East coast.

As of Monday at noon, we are under a precautionary, mandatory evacuation for all of Beaufort County. That said, given the uncertainty of the storm’s path, we anticipate a good many people may take a wait-and-see position into Tuesday and Wednesday before possibly leaving the area.

If/as you are interested in getting more detailed information about how the storm may impact the Lowcountry, I’ve compiled a list of resources below for your consideration:

Town of Hilton Head Island:

Town of Bluffton:

Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office:

South Carolina Emergency Management Division:

Weather Updates:

Please feel free to let me know any questions or comments you might have, and please join all of us here at CGR with your best wishes and prayers for the protection of the Lowcountry during this storm event.

I’m still writing this from a hotel room, but my house has power and internet now, so I check out in a few hours.

OK, I’ll be honest. The hotel has a really great breakfast, so I’m going to pig out, then leave! Yesterday I made an incredible microwave sandwich out of fresh croissants and brie. (The breakfast starts at 6 and I was there as it opened. The brie was gone about 6:02!)

My house and yard were undamaged. I lost no shingles from the roof and no trees at all (and I have more than 30), although I would not have complained if the winds had ripped out my effin’ plum tree. I hate that gnarled mofo, which spreads outward at an astounding rate and must produce 500 seedlings per year. It certainly keeps my chainsaw and my hedge-trimmers busy, pruning the bastard. If I ever have a chance to create the Uncle Scoopy National Forest, I’m going to just donate that one tree, and there will be a forest there in about five years. But the freakin’ thing was basically unaffected by the storm.

My neighbors were not so lucky. The neighborhood is filled with fallen trees, debris, displaced patio furniture, etc. Some major streets are still working with reduced lanes because of fallen trees or power lines.

The National Weather Service summed it up:

The worst damage appears to have been associated with a ‘macroburst,’ a large downburst of straight-line winds that affected locations from Wood/Portage counties eastward into the Fox Valley and lakeshore. Many tens of thousands of trees were snapped or uprooted, resulting in damage to dozens of homes and cottages. NWS says an EF-1 tornado was recorded in Hortonville (near me) with winds reaching 90 miles per hour.


I read that only nine tornadoes actually touched down in Wisconsin, even though they were visible everywhere, so almost all of the damage was done by winds and pelting rain. This was far better than our last tornado scare, which cut a swath down my street, tore out some of my trees, and ripped many shingles from my roof. Here’s a story of how tornadoes work. I had a large pine, maybe 30 feet tall, close to my garage. Next to it was a very large spreading maple. When the storm was over, that pine was lying on its side – on the wrong side of the maple (!!), about fifty feet from where it had once stood. The stump of the pine almost looked like it had been severed with a saw. I would love to see a video to see how the pine could possibly have gotten there, because the logistics seem impossible. My garage was undamaged, so my best guess is that the pine was uprooted, rolled out into the street, then rolled back into my yard. Meanwhile, the maple lost a few leaves and suffered no damage to any limbs thicker than a pencil. Tornado damage is so localized!

Well, that was the past.

Bottom line on this week’s storm: life is back to normal with minimal consequences. Thanks for all the good wishes.

Trump lied that he attempted to stop the chant Wednesday night by resuming his speech “very quickly” after it started. When he makes up these lies, he must think there is no visual record of his standing there, nodding and listening to the crowd for 12 seconds. All that was missing was holding his hands to his ears, ala Hulk Hogan.

“What would you do if the president said, ‘I am a racist. That’s why I said it.’ What would you do? Would you still support him as president?”

Kobach paused. “Uhm. I don’t know.”

Chris Cuomo kinda went ballistic on that answer, but I have to say it’s refreshing to get it out in the open.

Coronavirus mapped and quantified:

The bill would make it a crime for doctors to perform abortions at any stage of a pregnancy, unless a woman’s life is threatened or in case of a lethal fetal anomaly. There are no exceptions for rape or incest victims.

Assuming the law is enacted: If Alabama were a separate country, it would be have the least sophisticated abortion policy among major countries in the developed world. (Ireland had approximately the same laws, recently repealed. See the comment section.)

Of course that’s assuming Alabama would even be in the developed world without the welfare it receives from the richer states. Alabama is one of the nation’s major freeloaders, receiving more than $3.00 in Federal funds for every dollar it contributes in Federal taxes.

Obvious enough, right?

But the details are absolutely terrifying. Author Michael Lewis (Moneyball, The Big Short, Liar’s Poker) went around the government to study the so-called Deep State, and this book “The Fifth Risk,” details what he found.

Two things stand out as terrifying:

1. The non-existent transition: “Lewis describes the scene inside the Commerce Department the Monday after the election, where ‘dozens of civil servants sat all day waiting to deliver briefings’ to Trump’s transition team about their agencies’ role and responsibilities, ‘that would, in the end, never be heard.'”

2. The disappearing facts: “A lot of government data is now disappearing from government websites, data on climate change at the EPA, on animal abuse at the Department of Agriculture, on violent crime at the Department of Justice. ‘Under each act of data suppression,’ Lewis writes, ‘usually lay a narrow commercial motive: a gun lobbyist, a coal company, a poultry company.'”