Blog Archives

Day 731

1/27/2019

THE OTHER SHUTDOWN
How the Real (Not Trump’s) America Handles a Crisis

WHILE PRESIDENT TRUMP was pursuing his war against America by shutting down much of the federal government, we in Newport, R.I. were having a little shutdown of our own – of natural gas.
   About 7,100 homes and businesses had their service cut off after a gas transmission pipeline screw-up somewhere far away forced the National Grid distribution company to shut down much of its system in Newport and a neighboring town on Jan. 21 – which just happened to be the coldest day of the winter, with 5-degree temperatures.
   This appeared as a brief blip on the national news – Cat and I heard it mentioned on an early morning NPR roundup. But Big Media probably ignored it because nothing blew up and nobody died, a reasonable news judgement. And there was the distraction of Trump’s deliberate, mean, divisive, selfish, dangerous and politically engineered crisis that imperiled millions, not thousands.
   For our little house in Newport, in the country's smallest state, the gas shutoff was huge.
   We lost heat and hot water. Cat and I don’t really care about hot water, because we don’t shower. Ever.
   And as for the dishes, in a perfect world dishes should be licked, not washed.
   Cat and I probably weathered the gas crisis better than Our Humans, because we are essentially our own renewable, self-generating heat machines, curling into tight balls and getting lots of sleep.

FOR OUR HUMANS, you’d think the world had about ended. The Grouchy One and even the Nice One, seemed at times to be worrying themselves crazy: “What if the pipes freeze?” “Can we stay warm?” “Can we stay here?”
   That last one – about whether they'd ‘stay here’ – gave me more than a little chill. If the Humans were going to Leave the Building, what would happen to ME (Oh, yeah, and Cat)? But because I’m a dog and a doggone sweet one, I happen to be extremely attuned to human emotions. Like most dogs, I mainline human worry, human cheer, human doubt, nervousness, anger, anxiousness, happiness - the whole gamut.
   I don’t even know what “pipes” are, and I could care less about whether they “freeze.”   But I worried and fretted right along with Nice-&-Grouchy, wringing my paws about the state of the “pipes.”
   But here’s some of the things that happened:
   Our Next Door Human, custodian of my great friend, a Yellow Lab who goes by the handle “Truck,” lent us four electric "space heaters." Again, I don’t know what a “heater” is and what “space” has to do with it, since I always think of space as the “Final Frontier.” But apparently “space heaters” are good for “the pipes.”
   This loan was fortuitous, because Our Humans owned only two of their own “space heaters,” and early on Day Two, , the Grouchy One thought he would buy some more, and showed up at Home Depot the second after they opened at 7 a.m., thereby getting the jump on everyone else, only to be told that they had sold out of “space heaters” the first day. Grouchy drove to Seekonk, Mass., to get the final two heaters remaining on the shelves of a Home Depot there.

THEN ANOTHER FRIEND of ours showed up and explained to Grouchy & Nice that you should plug only one (1) space heater into one (1) electrical “circuit,” and he then led Grouchy to the cellar to show him the “circuit" board, explaining that by touching each “circuit breaker” you can tell whether the “circuits” are heating up, a sign that the “wires” are “overloading.”
   It's safe to say that all of this knowledge was as much news to Grouchy as it was to me and to Cat. But as a result, the house was reasonably safe and almost warm, as were the “pipes.”
   Meanwhile, since Nice-and-Grouchy have an electric stove, they were able to cook regular meals and heat water to wash the dishes after that, so that they seemed happy on that front.
   And, as I said, anything that makes them happy automatically makes me happy, although cooking has nothing to do with me and Cat, because whatever we eat is at room temperature or worse, and as a dog, I’ll eat anything, dead or alive, although I can’t speak for Cat.
   Also, since the "juice" was on, Nice-&-Grouchy were on their computers and smart phones and tablets constantly, and getting invitations from friends as far away as “Providence,” wherever that is, offering them a place to stay until the “crisis” was over. (One person, invited me and Cat, too, and she is, in Cat’s and my view, a friend in deed).
   From what Nice-&-Grouchy were saying to each other, we could tell that National Grid was on a roll. They were issuing news "updates" about what was going on. National Grid was working closely with the “Governor,” who was going to declare a “State of Emergency.”

NATIONAL GRID seemed to be practically throwing out bales of cash from the backs of its trucks, offering anyone who needed to move out of their houses free hotel rooms and meals.
   The utility company set up an “Information Center” at a big Newport hotel, where people could find out what was going on and pick up some “space heaters.”
   There were shelters opening up for people, and the Potter League animal shelter was taking in pets, which something I was definitely NOT interested in. It's where Our Humans found me six years ago when they “adopted” me, and while I’m grateful to the Potter League for taking me in temporarily, for their match-making and for taking care of the paper work, that was the last place I wanted to go.
   There was a lot more going on. The Governor of the State of Emergency and others were holding press conferences. A fancy catering service was offering free box lunches. Two people from the National Guard came to our front door to do a “wellness check” on Nice-&-Grouchy.

NATIONAL GRID said it had 1,000 workers in the city – many from other utility companies in places I’d never heard of, like the State of New Jersey and the State of New York. And they went to each and every 7,100 places to a) leave messages; b) shut off the gas “meters" so that big gas lines could be “re-pressurized;” so that finally, c) “crews” could be sent to each and every building, where they – and only they - could turn the “meters” on and restart the "boilers."
   Cat and I could overhear the Humans saying that National Grid divided Newport into “zones,” and had people sitting in National Grid trucks all over the city, so you could visit one near you and get the latest information.
   Grouchy and I actually walked over to the van said to be nearest us, at the high school that’s across the street from the fire station. A National Grid lady was sitting in a National Grid van, along with a Rhode Island National Guard soldier wearing a camouflage uniform.
   The Grid Lady said things were going as scheduled and we'd be seeing restart "crews" soon. She was very glad to meet me, because she had a dog, but couldn’t bring him with her. I can understand the lady being glad to see me, because most Humans are usually are glad to see a sweet dog. But I couldn’t figure out why she couldn’t bring her own dog with her, because she was just sitting in that van all day, which any reasonable dog would be happy to do, too.

   JANUARY 27 was a Big Day For America, as most of you know, because on Day 35 of his shutdown, Trump caved in, giving up his demand that Congress give him money for a wall at the Mexican border, or he would keep the longest shutdown going longer.
    But even though he says he’s a big Big-Deal maker and tells people “you’re fired” and likes to grab ladies’ crotches, Trump folded like the spineless wet noodle, because one not very sweet little old lady, Nancy Pelosi, told him she couldn’t even discuss a wall unless he first agreed to open the government back up.
   As a result, 800,000 federal workers could go back to their jobs, collect their back pay and not be evicted from their homes. Airliners could stop being in danger of crashing, medical research could resume, national parks could operate again, tax refunds could be processed, and the bazillion other things that government does for every one of us could get going again.
   And maybe some Republicans could start wondering whether it was such a good idea to be Donald Trump’s toadies.

THE NEXT DAY, Saturday, Jan. 28, was Newport’s Great Day, at least for us.
   On Day 5 of our Newport shutdown, National Grid said every “meter” had been shut off, and now main lines could be "re-pressurized," and individual “meters” could be turned on again by the gazillion crews the company had invited from around the country.
   At 4:15 p.m., before I could even get off the Humans’ bed that I wasn’t supposed to be sleeping on so I could confuse them by barking furiously while furiously wagging my tail, a "crew" from the State of New Jersey came to our door and a) turned on the outside “meter," and b) restarted the “boiler” in the cellar.
   And the radiators were once again hot to the touch. Which made Our Humans extremely happy. And me, too, although Cat slept through that part.
   This was America at its best.
   National Grid – a regulated utility company – did its job. And it did it really, really well. The Governor of the State of Emergency did her bit. Neighbors helped neighbors. People invited other people into their homes. People smiled. Said nice things. Voices were cheerful. And Newport, R.I., as of this writing, has not become national news, since it hasn't blown up.
   This is America, the Real One.

Day 715

1/11/2019

UNSUNG GUARDIANS
OF THE OUTDOORS?
Dogs and their walkers get no respect

BY NOW, I BET YOU'VE heard the excellent news:
   Thirteen-year-old Jayme Closs has been found - alive - three months after her parents were murdered in their Wisconsin home. And her alleged kidnapper, 21-year-old Jake Patterson, has been arrested and jailed.
   As I was saying to Cat, I’m pretty sure that one prominent detail was viewed, but immediately forgotten, by most people following the story: the part about who was the first person Jayme asked for help when she got free - a woman walking her dog.
   According to early news reports, after somehow escaping the cabin where Patterson held her captive, Jayme ran out into the freezing cold – wearing oversized shoes and with her hair matted – and called out to Jeanne Nutter, who was nearby with her dog.
   The girl gabbed onto Nutter, then told her who she was. Nutter, a social worker specializing in child protection, took Jayme to the safety of a neighbor’s house and helped calm her while police were called.

AS I'M TYPING THIS, Cat is looking over my shoulder, and he blurts out the question that's probably your mind:
   “Okay, Phoebe, we know all of this and your point is?”
   “It's this," I said," Ms. Nutter was available to help the desperate teenager because she was out with her dog."
   “You think the important character is the DOG?” Cat said, his voice turning into a dangerous hiss.
   “One of the important participants,” I said. “It’s the dog-and-walker pair, the familiar but special team, that so often plays a key role in such stories.
   "All over America, all over the Planet, the dog-walker pairs are right there, on the spot, when nobody else is ‘out.’ Dog-walker pairs are making the outdoors less lonely and more friendly. They're there in rain or shine; in the hot and the cold; night and day. They are conducting rescues, picking up fast food wrappers and other litter, and they're even helping to solve crimes.”
    “Despite all of this," I said, "they get no credit, no respect."
   “Phoebe, you are such an idiot," Cat yelled. “Do you remember what we are here for? Does the name Donald J. Trump ring a bell? We're supposed to be tracking Trump, and you are writing about dogs and their walkers! The shame!”
   Cat was beside himself: “You understand, don’t you, that Individual 1 is about to 'exercise' his emergency powers to get his stupid border wall built, setting disastrous legal precedents that could undermine democracy?”
    I assured him that, indeed, Trump’s latest expected abuse of office undoubtedly will become Count XXVIII in the coming impeachment process.
   "But there are things of importance beyond Trump," I said, "matters that shouldn't be ignored, that will outlive the monster currently lurking in the White House."
    Cat, however, continued his tirade.
   “Even if you think Jayme's escape is more relevant than the Trump blog, than Trump himself, how does the dog figure in her story?” Cat snarled. “Ms. Nutter is the one who did all the work. The girl didn’t grab the dog. It was Ms. Nutter who took her to safety and used her social work skills to comfort her.”
    I swatted down that argument with an ironclad rebuttal:
    “Ms. Nutter wouldn’t have been in the right place, at the right time, to help Jayme if her dog didn’t have to – putting this in politest possible terms – if her dog didn't have to ‘go out.' "
   "What's more," I said, "there are hundreds, thousands of examples, where dog-and-walker teams do similar work."

CAT SNEERED.
   "How about just one example," he said. "And keep it short."
   “There was a horrible triple murder in 1991, right here in Rhode Island,” I said.
   “A man killed an entire family who lived in a wealthy suburb: fired three arrows into the father, strangled the mother and drugged their 8-year-old daughter. But while the cops arrested the murderer because of circumstantial evidence, they couldn't find the bodies.”
   “So what happened?” Cat said.
   “A neighbor, walking her dog, discovered the graves the killer had dug in a wooded area near the family’s home – a spot police had searched twice before during the last seven weeks,” I said. “It was the walker’s DOG who sniffed out the graves.”
   Cat shivered at the gruesome details. But he still was in an argumentative mood. Maybe it's a cat thing, not wanting dogs to win any praise.
   “You’re wrong in one aspect - that dogs and their walkers don't get credit,” Cat said. “In the Jayme story, the dog and the walker were in the headlines and in the first or second paragraph of lots of stories."

   “JUST TAKE A WALK with me and our Grouchy Human," I said. "Everywhere we go, like beaches and parks where we are most effective, there are obvious signs that we’re not wanted."

"At Middletown's Third Beach, right at the border where a federal wildlife sanctuary starts, this sign couldn't be more explicit. It may say 'No Pets,' but it shows a dog. We are considered a nuisance."
"At Fort Adams State Park in Newport," I said, "a sign doesn't say 'Keep Out,' but it doesn't exactly say, 'We're So Glad You're Here. Thank You For All You Do.' "

“Right after this sign, look at the huge ruts caused by some cowboy in a truck, who probably was drunk as he chewed public lands in the dark of night."

   "But there are no signs saying: 'Truckers, Please Keep Off the Grass. Huge Fine, etc., etc.' Where’s the fairness, the respect?"
   By now, Cat realized that he was talking to a crazed special interest creature, and he changed the subject, again.
    “That Rhode Island story was just one example,” he said. “Purely anecdotal. Proves nothing."
    “There's a modern way to settle this,” I said. “Why don’t you Google these four words: dog, walking, found, body."
   To his credit, Cat marched (waddled is more accurate) over to the laptop we share, and within .44 seconds, the computer screen showed what Google calculated were 511-million “results.”
    Here’s a sampling:

July 24, 2016 - A dog-walker found a 35-year-old woman dead in the bushes in a Brooklyn ....
May 10, 2018 - Flint police are investigating the discovery of a body found by a man walking his dog.
July 28, 2018 - A resident walking a dog came across the dumped body at a sporting field in Shellharbour, south of Wollongong, at about 9.45am Saturday.
Dec. 28, 2018 - Two people walking their dogs in a wooded area on Christmas Eve found the body of a Norfolk man who had been reported missing earlier this ....

“Okay, okay,” Cat said. “You can stop now. Too many corpses.”
“But there’s also some happy examples,” I said. "Let's continue:"

Nov. 2, 2018 - A man out walking his dog rescued an unconscious woman from a ... He found a 63-year-old woman who had been knocked unconscious.
Nov. 25, 2018 - A dog walker has made a hero of himself by performing CPR on a man who he found on a beach after being talked through the process by a ...

“What's more, there are risks," I said. "Dogs and their walkers put their lives on the line every time they go on patrol. Consider:”

Feb. 19, 2018 - A 67-year-old man fell to his death while walking his dog at Thornton Beach in Daly City on Monday morning.
June 9, 2018 - She was walking her dogs along the lake when a 12-foot gator grabbed ... her body has been found, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation ...
Oct 17, 2018 - A man was shot while taking his dog on a daily walk in Houston Heights Tuesday, police said. Gunfire erupted after an unknown person pulled ...

BY NOW, CAT was really disgusted.
“Here’s an idea,” he said. “While Trump is planning to assume dictatorial powers and cause terrible legal and Constitutional headaches, why don’t you, Phoebe, and Grouchy take another hike. This time without me."
“And, by the way, be careful!" Cat called. "Stay away from high places, alligators and gunfights... or don't."

Day 707

1/3/2019

INSIDE TRUMP'S BRAIN FOR A TERRIFYING THIRTY-FIVE MINUTES
Have you ever actually listened to him speak?

HAVE YOU EVER LISTENED to President Trump?
   I mean REALLY listened to him for an extended period of time. Not just heard some sound bites, watched a video clip or looked at a Tweeted quote.
   I'm talking an eternity of Trump speaking. Thirty-five minutes, with no interruptions, no commercials, no intermissions, just straight up Trump.
   Cat and I did just that today, and even though we listened to "only" 35 minutes out of the total hour-and-a-half cabinet meeting that he held yesterday to kick off the new year, it fried my brain, as if Trump's brain had infected mine, leaving it scrambled, unable to focus, with just fragments of thoughts running into one another and another.
   The occasion was one of those times when Trump let the media into one of his official event-performances. This despite his frequent charges that the media is the enemy of the people. There they were, with cameras rolling, right in the White House, although I’m not sure that the phrase “cameras rolling” is appropriate these days, like it was when newsreel cameras recorded images and sound on actual film, in contrast to today's media equipment that's all-digital, not that I actually know the difference, since I’m just a dog who's not technically proficient.

   I SUPPOSE THAT YOU want to know why it’s important to listen to Donald Trump speak for 35 minutes, nonstop.
    First of all, you shouldn't hold me to the actual time that Cat and I watched and listened. It's a guess, okay? Maybe I read that he spoke for a total 90 minutes somewhere, maybe I heard that from someone else, who heard that on Fox News, which is something I don't do, although Cat and I - twice in the last two weeks - have seen an actual fox marching up the sidewalk in front of our house, in broad daylight with impunity, as if this fox thinks that he owns the sidewalk.
   The actual length of the cabinet meeting isn’t as important as the act of actually of listening to the President for an extended period of time, because it’s important to know how the brain of the President works, because his brain often is the brain of the United States.
   His words tumble from his usually scowling face, although it's hard not to get distracted, given that hi-def TV shows each of the individual strands of Presidential golden hair, which is woven into his signature swirling comb-over, forcing you to wonder how and who does that?
    His sentences and sentence-fragments sometimes can seem to be steadily on course, like that confident fox marching up our sidewalk; other times, his words lurch sharply off- road, as if his GPS has suffered a catastrophic electronic failure, skipping, weaving, doubling-back, somersaulting, vaulting from one subject to another.

HOW DID WE get into this, you're asking? Maybe you're not asking, but I'll tell you anyway, because it's a great story, maybe the greatest you're going to hear today, at least on this blog:
   This morning, the Grouchy One is reading the paper, and his eye catches a headline that describes the cabinet meeting as “rambling.” So Grouchy says he's going check this out for himself, and he finds a video on YouTube, which he plays, not just on his laptop, but somehow beams the sound part into our house's stereo system, which has speakers not just in the living room where Grouchy, Cat and I are, but in the kitchen, too.
   As it happens, the Nice One is having her breakfast in that very same kitchen, and she comes into the living room, and, in a voice that actually isn't all that nice, she asks why “WE” are listening to "THAT."
   Grouchy says he wants to hear how Trump’s brain works, and the Nice One says, “Oh.” A couple of minutes later, though, she's back, and she presses a button on the stereo that turns off the kitchen speakers. The Nice One says: “He really scares me.”

ON THE VIDEO, Trump starts reading from a paper about how he thinks he can work with the Democrats now in charge of the House to end the shutdown of the government and how important a wall at the Mexican border is to national security, because a wall is the only effective way to stop people from coming into the country, because if illegal immigrants, including killers and drug couriers and children who get sick on the long trip to the border knew there was a wall, they wouldn’t dream of making the trip in the first place, coming from places like Honduras, which is why his administration has been reducing aid to Honduras.
   Trump is saying that over the weekend, when a bunch of immigrants tried to rush the border, they were able to be stopped because at that particular place THERE IS A WALL, and he was talking with Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel, who told him how well Israel’s wall is working and that Netanyahu can't understand why our country doesn’t realize how effective a wall is, the answer is that it's 99.9 percent effective.
   What’s more, illegal immigration costs the United States billions of dollars, and the savings that would come from having the complete wall at work keeping immigrants out will pay for the wall in just a couple of months.
   Trump is disappointed that Mitt Romney criticized him in a newspaper op-ed earlier in the week, since Romney seemed grateful for Trump’s support when he was running for the U.S. Senate from Utah, where he says that he (Trump, not Romney) is extremely popular, and he certainly had expected that Romney might have waited longer to say what he said in the paper, but that he expects Romney will be a team player, although if he isn't, it won’t matter, because look what happened to Republican Senators who had criticized him in the last two years, like Jeff Flake, who not only didn’t even dare to run for reelection, he's now doing something like selling real estate. I'm thinking that's kind of a weird insult for Trump to make, given that real estate is what did before he won the election (and maybe is still doing, we'll see) and it's how he earned a fortune, although just how much money Trump has is hard to figure, since he won’t make public his income tax returns.
   Speaking of team players, there are plenty of those at the cabinet meeting, including the acting Attorney General, Matt Whitaker, who tells Trump and the rest of the cabinet how much he appreciates that Trump remained in the White House over the holiday weekend during the government shutdown, in contrast to some members of Congress - who left town “on vacation.”
   Trump is saying that he’s in no rush to pull all American troops out of Syria, but that they will be pulled out eventually, and he’s disappointed that American generals haven’t solved the problems in Afghanistan, even though he's given the generals all the money that they wanted, and that he (Trump) knows “more about drones than anyone.”

YOU CAN LISTEN and watch this yourself. Here’s the link to the YouTube video. And good luck. Hopefully, your brain WILL recover, like I'm hoping mine may be doing.
    Here's something to consider, as I was saying to Cat:
    At least during the 90 minutes Trump is talking at his cabinet meeting, he isn't exercising his Presidential powers, like summoning the aide who always hovers nearby with “The Football,” the nickname for the case that has the codes and devices that allows any President of the United States to launch some or all of the nation’s arsenal of nuclear missiles anytime he pleases, and there’s nobody who can say to him: "Please, don’t.”
   Every 90 minutes the President’s brain isn't thinking abut the Football, is another 90 minutes the Planet doesn't have to worry about being blown to bits.
   Cat doesn't disagree.

Day 705

1/1/2019

OUR NO. 1
RESOLUTION
FOR 2019
PLUS, A WORD FROM SOMEONE WISER AND MORE ELOQUENT…

* Correction: The first name of the columnist referred to here is Richard Cohen of the Washington Post. Earlier versions incorrectly said his first name is Roger. Roger Cohen is a columnist for the New York Times.

JUST a quick Happy New Year from the entire staff here at On Trump’s Trail, which would be me, Phoebe, “A Sweet Dog,” and Cat, “A Cat.”
   Like you, we approach 2019 full of reservations, I mean, resolutions.
   Our No. 1 Resolution is to not be as lazy, indolent and undisciplined as has been the case for the past two years, which is to say, our goal is to publish more frequently and, when we do, to be less long-winded.
   That being said, tradition demands that we waste not a minute in breaking such resolutions.
   And we do so, in all candor, because we have nothing prepared for you today, and we’re exceedingly partied out from New Year’s Eve and in anticipation of an upcoming event this first day of the year.
   In all candor, we should also acknowledge that one of the realities we’ve faced in producing this blog in the last two years is that there are a lot of folks out there doing what we aspire to do, but doing it a lot better. Among the many is Richard Cohen, of the Washington Post.
   So, today, lazy louts and shirkers that we are – since we are the same dog and cat as we were a day ago, we refer you Richard's column of New Year’s Eve most recent.
Richard herein demonstrates that he has not - not in the least - lost his anger and outrage at Donald Trump, the most dangerous and disgraceful man on the planet, and his disgusting enablers who have inflicted his presidency on the rest of us.
   Among Richard's most eloquent lines:

   Trump’s one certain achievement will be to leave his successor an America that will become greater just by his leaving office. A president who does not lie, who does not try to buy the silence of a porn star, who makes his taxes public, who leaves moneymaking behind, who does not turn his political party into a beer-hall collection of ideological goons, who rages at the murder of a journalist by a foreign country, who respects the importance of a free press ... such a president will make America greater just by showing up.

   Here’s the link to the full column.

AND A WORD TO DEMOCRATS from a cat and a dog:
   Do not rip yourselves to shreds.
   We know that you are capable of doing just that.
   We know that’s what you so very, very much want to do.
   But please, please, for the sake of the future of the Planet, just for once, behave yourselves.
   With that, Cat and I bid you adieu.
    We pledge to adhere to our Resolution No. 1, at least to the degree that mere mortals as a sweet, domestic dog and a simple household cat can do.
   And we'll try our best, until such time as Individual 1 tweets from somewhere, anywhere, but 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., Washington DC 20006.

TO ONE AND ALL:
HAPPY
NEW
YEAR

A "sweet dog" confronts the catastrophe of the Trump presidency

The Tracker

PHOEBE might have remained a “sweet” and apolitical dog but for the Trump crisis. Now, like millions of Americans, she wrestles daily with the challenge of what to do about it. With no illusions about the impact, she founded and is the principal writer of the Tracking Trump blog.

In Memoriam

CAT, a cat and Libertarian was Phoebe's co-author. He died Nov. 14, 2019. His self-described role was to leaven Phoebe’s naiveté and idealism with “common sense." He is remembered and missed.

Day 731

THE OTHER SHUTDOWNHow the Real (Not Trump’s) America Handles a Crisis

Day 715

UNSUNG GUARDIANSOF THE OUTDOORS?Dogs and their walkers get no respect

Day 707

INSIDE TRUMP'S BRAIN FOR A TERRIFYING THIRTY-FIVE MINUTES Have you ever actually listened to him speak?

Day 705

OUR NO. 1RESOLUTIONFOR 2019PLUS, A WORD FROM SOMEONE WISER AND MORE ELOQUENT…

TO ONE AND ALL:HAPPYNEWYEAR