The End?

A report out of Washington today (from a web site called "The Hill," under the byline of one Alexander Bolton) says that:

Senate Republicans, including those who do not plan to vote to convict former President Trump, say this week's impeachment trial has effectively ended any chance of him becoming the GOP presidential nominee in 2024. 

Maybe that's true. I hope it is. But what those Senators don't seem to realise is that voting to acquit Trump may well be the end for themselves, as well. 

Pretty much anyone who has paid any attention to the political shenanigans of the latter-day Trump regime has seen his tweeted call to come for a wild time in DC on January 6. We all heard his bullshit warnings in October that the election would be stolen from him; we didn't believe it then, most of us (and those who do, frankly, are determined not to be swayed by fact), and we don't believe it now. We heard his November claims, as they escalated in lunacy through more than 60 failed court cases unsupported by a single material shred of evidence, that the election was stolen from him. We who think for ourselves recognize it as the purest sort of self-serving crap. We suspected then, as we know now, that the Republicans in the Senate are mostly toadies living in fear of "getting primaried" by the reactionary fringe. (Who, in all honesty, can still believe that Lindsay Graham has any kind of political backbone? There are less supple jellyfish off the shore at Myrtle Beach.) And we heard what Trump said to the little army he had gathered on the Ellipse on January 6, and we saw what they did to the Capitol on receiving their marching orders.

A vote to acquit, after the case that the House Managers have presented this week, will be certification that the Senator casting that vote would endorse a self-serving lie at any cost to the nation, rather than acknowledge the obvious; and that they would rather try to save their own asses than the representative democracy this nation is so justly proud of. 

When they come up for re-election in two, or four, or six years, America will remember this vote unlike any other the Senators may have cast in their careers. Maybe they will get "primaried" by the far-right; maybe they will survive that. They need to take that risk, for the sake of this Nation.

But when most Americans get into the voting booth for the general election in 2022, or 2024, or 2026, the question they will have asked themselves beforehand -- the thing that will be the most determinative of their decision -- will be, How did this Senator vote on Trump's second impeachment? A vote to acquit should prove inexcusable. 

The Republican Party is already feeling the turmoil caused by being hijacked by its lunatic fringe. If Trump is not convicted in this open-and-shut impeachment -- and I suspect he won't be -- the GOP will be unable to survive. It will have to splinter into at least two groups: one will be a collection of far-right lunatics who would support the likes Ted Cruz, Rand Paul and Josh Hawley (it being better to reign in hell than serve in heaven); the other will be a more mainstream group of conservatives who have had enough of the schlock-show not just of the last four years, but of the last twelve. Neither group will have enough support to govern, and the Democratic Party will have its own way for the foreseeable future. 

As a Republican (almost but not quite a former Republican), I think that would be better for America than what we have had lately. I'll take it.

A Prediction

I read today in an AP story that “The Republican numbers are going to pick up,” according to a Republican pollster. This hopeful comment was prompted by the "avalanche" of early voting, mostly by Democrats.

I doubt it. I suspect that many, if not most, Republicans -- that is, the reasonable portion of the Republican party, not the rabid reactionaries of Tea Party ilk -- will quietly stay home, unable to bring themselves to cast another vote for the stock clown that won the race four years ago. That, plus the diminution of help from Russia, will result in a win, possibly even a landslide, for the Democrat.

Will it be as bad as it could be? Will the Republican party also lose its majority in the Senate, as voters turn from scaramuccia to arlecchino? Will enough of the spine-challenged members of that once-august body find themselves dragged down to defeat on the coattails of the fact-challenged incumbent? As a Republican, I hope not; as an American, I hope so. And as a Texan, I wish it were Cruz, the 21st-Century McCarthy, running for re-election this year instead of Cornyn.

It is what it is.

Blog Posts from the Park City Trip

To read the posts from this trip in order, click on this link, then click "newer post" when you get to the end.

To see the pictures from the trip, click on this link.

And by the way, I got the last two counties in Utah on this trip. That makes 34 states completed.

Oh, and in case you're curious: no, I didn't make it home on Saturday. Had a flat tire outside Lordsburg, had to drive to El Paso at 50 mph on the spare tire to get a pair of rear tires. Front tires will be replaced next year. (And, some good news: turns out my deductible for the slashed roof is only $100. Having that car insurance is finally going to pay off.)

...And the Rest: Park City Trip

To read the posts from this trip in order, click on this link, then click "newer post" when you get to the end.

To see the pictures from the trip, click on this link.

After another breakfast at our now-favourite bagel place, we both started off on Wednesday feeling the need for some exercise, so I checked my All-Trails app and found what looked like a trail suitable for a fat ol' guy with mobility issues, at a place called Willow Creek. It turned out to be a nice easy mostly-paved two-mile-long path around a small city park out in the northern reaches of Park City. We followed that up with a stop at the Kimball Art Center, which is listed as a museum but isn't; it's a bunch of small studios where Suburban Housewives (if such exist) learn to make the kind of ceramic and painted projects that were once the special province of eight-year-olds at summer camp.

We took the radical step, then, of driving into downtown Park City, the congested five or six blocks of Main Street that, heretofore, we had experienced only on foot. During the day, parking is free, which was a nice surprise, so we found a place on Swede Alley and walked over to the Park City Museum, an unexpectedly large building containing three floors dealing with the city's history, from its founding in the 1880s as a silver-mining center, through the customary Tragic Fire That Destroyed Most of the City, to its rebirth in the 1950s as a ski destination. Notably, Park City was the home of the first and last skier's subway, as a mining company tried to repurpose its existing tunnels and shafts for access to its new ski runs on the mountains above its defunct mine. The experiment lasted but a single season, as the mine was so leaky that soaked passengers on its 16-passenger train would step out into the freezing atmosphere of a Utah winter and "immediately freeze like a popsicle." And of course, the Sundance Film Festival figured prominently in the most recent parts of the town's history.

After a couple of hours at the museum, we walked up the hill to our preferred people-watching spot. Unfortunately, there was a gigantic SUV parked in front of that spot, so we retreated across the street to a bar that offered seats right by a window looking out onto the sidewalk, and there we indulged ourselves with beer and diet coke (and a $5 hamburger special that turned out to be one of the best burgers I've had in a long time). The best thing about people-watching isn't the people -- they are ordinary in every way -- but in the conversation and memories they provoke. How else could two people sit for an hour or two, watching tourists and dog-walkers traipse up the steep slope of Main Street, Park City, and back down? It's not like these were celebrities promoting their films; that happens in late January, when I, for one, am unlikely to ever be in a snow-prone area.

After a spell back at our condo, watching Star Trek: The Next Generation and doing laundry (just because), I made Curtis pick a place for dinner. He stoutly resisted making a decision until it became clear to him that if he didn't pick a place, we weren't going anywhere. He finally made the painful choice, a place called The Boneyard up on Kearns Avenue, which is The Other Major Street in town. Turned out to be a pretty good choice. I had a chicken pot pie that was too much food, and got to watch the Netherlands:Mexico friendly on delayed broadcast from across the room.

Our plans for the final day in Park City involved a trip down to Jurassic National Monument, which is two and a half hours south of our condo. We decided, for that reason, that rather than come all the way back up to Park City just to check out on Friday, we'd check out on Thursday and then stay that night in Panguitch, which is a lot closer to Las Vegas. And a room in Panguitch isn't much more than the money we would save by not having to drive that distance. (The Sacramento Jag uses premium gas. One of the odd things I've noticed is that, while regular gas here costs way more than what it costs back home, premium is about the same price in both places. Go figure.)

So we packed up the car, turned on the dishwasher, and headed off to see the fossils. Grabbed coffee at a 7-11 (best coffee I've had in PC) and picked up some bagels at a place in Heber City (French Toast -- not good -- and Asiago) to eat in the car. We stopped to see Bridal Veil Falls just outside Provo

and then let Google Maps take us to the country's newest national monument.

Instead, it took us to the Bureau of Land Management Field Office in Price, Utah, where the one guy working there wasn't surprised to see us. He showed us where the monument is on the map, and explained the route in excruciating detail, of which my mind focussed on the thirteen miles of "well-maintainged dirt roads".

The monument is a working dig site at a place called the Cleveland-Lloyd Quarry. Like Dinosaur National Monument, but on a much smaller scale, it has two small metal buildings covering the active dig sites, where hundreds of bones are being excavated in the painstaking way of modern paleontology. There are a number of hiking trails that take you around the monument, some quite long, but that might be a project for another trip, when I'm not wearing a brace on my ankle. And when I'm driving the Subaru, which I don't mind taking on dirt roads (aka gravel roads), well-maintained or not.

The most interesting facts about the place, to me, are these: (1) the proportion of preserved carnivores is much higher than the proportion of preserved herbivores, and there's almost no preserved plant matter; and (2) no one has yet come up with an explanation for why so many fossils would be preserved in this particular spot. It wasn't a marsh or watering hole, it wasn't a bend in a river where carcasses might wash up, and it wasn't the site of a disaster -- in other words, the fossils were laid down over a long, long time, not in a single cataclysm. There's no discernible reason for this particular fossil field to exist.

The only other stop we made was at Butch Cassidy's boyhood home, right next to the highway in Centerville, Utah, a few miles from Panguitch. A local somebody has contributed to the preservation of this part of the famous criminal's history, which is a one-room log cabin and a small outbuilding. Interesting factoid: the real Butch Cassidy was better-looking than Paul Newman, while the real Sundance Kid was no Robert Redford.

Leaving Panguitch this morning (Friday) I took Curtis through Cedar Breaks, which I had seen eight years ago and thought as beautiful as Bryce Canyon. Curtis agreed.

I then dropped him at his house in North Las Vegas and headed east towards home. Thanks to a number of slowdowns on the highways for construction and accidents, I've only made it as far as Tucson, which is now my Least Favourite Place In The Whole World: dusty, somewhat sleazy, and thirteen hours' drive from home, so I may not make it back tomorrow.

And here's a link to all the pictures from this trip.