The man whose first priority is not to his country, but to his political party (but not necessarily to Donald Trump) is in Kentucky. That man’s name is Mitch McConnell, and he is supposed to be the Senate Majority Leader. Quite possibly, he got some help getting back to the Bluegrass State from his wife, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao. She's in charge of the FAA, which is responsible for getting airplanes safely from one place to another. Many air traffic controllers are calling in sick because they are not being paid.
Had he wanted to, McConnell could have told Trump to resign in favor of Mike Pence, who has previously served in Congress. Trump does not understand that in the United States, we are supposed to have three co-equal branches of government.
McConnell didn’t do that because he doesn’t trust Trump and he's waiting for Trump, who’s notorious for changing his mind every five minutes, to say what kind of a Deal he would accept on his Wall. Trump’s the one who said he would own the government shutdown which he caused, but now, all he does is refuse to talk to the Democrats in Congress, and blame them for not doing his will for his Wall.
And now, Trump and his minions in the West Wing are joyfully looking forward to extending his partial government shutdown until — shall we say, into the summer?
Trump, a classic, uncontrollable narcissist, can’t keep anybody around him sane, and there are many reasons for that.
Speaking of mentally ill people, there is a severely mentally ill man living in Colorado since 1998, and his name is Ted Kaczynski, the notorious Unabomber. Kaczynski, once a brilliant mathematician, is serving eight consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole at ADX Florence, a federal supermax prison in Florence, Colorado.
Because Trump is addicted to disruption in government, federal prison guards are being forced to work without pay — many have to work sixteen hours a day.
Associate solitary reporter Susanna Sherman is, at this very moment, with Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker, who just issued an all points bulletin, in which he announced, “The Unabomber is on the loose!”
Whitaker tried to blame the Unabomber’s escape on Nancy Pelosi, but Sherman spoke with David Berkebile, the Warden at ADX Florence, and Berkebile told Sherman that all the guards at his supermax prison have quit becauses of having to work double overtime shifts, without pay.
The other high-profile federal prisoner living in Colorado is the notorious Rod “Blago” Blagojevich, the former Illinois governor who infamously tried to cash in on the election of Barack Obama to the presidency. Blago’s in a low-security prisoin in Englewood, Colorado, a suburb of Denver. There, he is not known as Blago, but rather as Prisoner Number 40892-424.
Always eager to report all the news that didn’t happen, associate solitary reporter Lewis Thompson, the Moderator of the Unitarian Universalist Association, just texted us saying that Blago walked out of his prison after charming the exhausted guards there by telling him what a wonderful Democrat he is. Blago told Thompson that he likes Colorado because of its spectacular scenery and because of its marijuana culture, and that he plans to run against fellow Democrat Jared Polis, who became Colorado’s forty-third governor last week. But Blago will have to wait until 2022 to do that, so in the interim, he’ll open a pricey hair salon in the upscale Cherry Creek Shopping Center in Denver.
We scarcely have enough space to report on Trump’s meanderings in the highly toxic Middle East, but we are compelled to report that former Wichita Congressman Mike Pompeo is doing his best to undo the damage caused by Trump’s surprise announcement late last year that he’s pulling American soldiers out of Syria (so he can please Putin). Pompeo gave a speech in Cairo in which he said that when American forces leave, chaos follows. How Pompeo hopes to square that with the utter chaos Trump is causing in Syria, is a subject which we will continue to follow closely.