Public Service

It had been a long time since Sebastian L'Arche had attended a support group for Iraqi war veterans.  In truth, he had come a long way since seeing the combat and prisoner abuses that had led him to retreat (for the most part) away from people and into a world surrounded by animals.  But something about Trump's Tweets this week had brought him back, and he wasn't the only one looking around in vain for an empty chair as people fanned out across the VFW hall looking for additional folding chairs.

"L'Arche!" somebody called to him, but Sebastian didn't recognize her.

"It's me, Ward!  It used to be Arthur Ward, but now I'm Athena Ward."

"Oh!" said Sebastian.  "Wow, okay, well, good for you."

"Shit hit the fan this week, you know?"

"You aren't still on active duty?" asked Sebastian.

"No, but this is messing with me badly.  I served my country!  I did, and nobody in Trump's family served!  Where the Hell does he get off saying trans can't serve anymore?!"

"It's messed up," replied Sebastian.  "The Attorney General met a couple of weeks ago with the folks behind that North Carolina bathroom bill."

"What!?" exclaimed another veteran, interjecting himself into the conversation.

"After all the shit that went down in Iraq," said Sebastian, "when the Generals just looked the other way about the WMD lies and the torture, what I don't get is why are they pushing back on the trans thing?"

"Why shouldn't they be!?" exclaimed Athena, angrily.

"Trump is bat shit crazy, is what I'm saying," replied Sebastian.  "They haven't taken the nuclear football away from him, but the generals are pushing back on the trans thing?  What the Hell is going on?"

"Maybe they never gave him those nuclear launch codes, you know?" said the stranger, who then introduced himself as Ed.  "I mean, if Scaramucci thinks Reince Priebus was a 'freaking paranoid schizo', what the Hell's the diagnosis for Trump himself?  I think this 'malignant narcissist' is a bit weak, you know?"

"And now DOJ says EEOC shouldn't be protectin' LBGT rights!" cried Athena.  "They aren't civil rights!  I'm a black trans vet, I served in Iraq, and nobody's got my back!"  Athena started crying, which startled Sebastian even more than her appearance, but he put his arm around her.  "I fought in that Hell Hole for what?!  He goes golfing at his private clubs every weekend!"

"My buddy in the Coast Guard says they're draining a tenth of the budget on these golf club outings," said Ed.  "He doesn't give a damn about protecting the country, never did!"

"It's all bullshit," said Sebastian.  "Trump decapitated Homeland Security because he needed a new babysitter at the White House!"

"Yeah, but Priebus was a moron," said Ed, "and he couldn't deliver Obamacare repeal."

"Anybody working for Trump is a moron!" sniffed Athena.

"I don't know about that," said Sebastian.  "This is what's freaking me out:  what if the military is plotting a coup, just waiting for the White House to get crazy enough to justify doing it?  Then they say North Korea or Russia are taking advantage of the chaos to go after us, and they need to take charge."

"That would be the best thing that could happen!" declared Ed.

"That's what they want us to think!" said Sebastian.  "But then we lose all control!  Congress becomes completely irrelevant!"

"They're already useless," said Ed.

"No, not yet!" declared Sebastian, more from philosophical conviction than actual observation.  "No, not yet."

Out at the Arlington home for the mentally challenged, psychologist Leo Schwartz was observing how the residents were interacting with their visitors during the backyard picnic, pondering whether it was fair to keep them relegated here while taxpayers funded the likes of Trump, Miller, Gorka, and Scaramucci blowing up the White House.  If he had a single one of those guys living here, he would be recommending them for psychiatric holds at the hospital!  Danger to themselves, danger to others.  He watched Millie the helping dog sidle up to Theresa to help her deal with the shrill mother that made her nervous.  He watched Buckner show his sister the home-made pickle relish he had made for the picnic.  He watched Cedric having a conversation with his stuffed bear Aloysius about the CIA, and the psychologist wondered how "crazy" would be redefined now that the American Psychoanalysts' Association had reversed their policy about not commenting on the mental health of public officials.  Public-official-completely-out-of-touch-with-reality-and-a-massive-menace-to-society-syndrome.

Back in the city, White House gardener Bridge stabbed angrily at the dandelions, listening to the ghosts vote on who would take responsibility for whispering into the ear of the new Chief of Staff.

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COMING UP:    
The dog days of summer in the secret Russia Caucus!

Make Americagate Again!

"What the Hell?!"

"I know," replied triple agent Charles Wu, who had just entered the limo of the very unhappy Chinese ambassador's car to drive around for awhile and chat.  "The State Department is simply not a major player right now."

"Trump confused us with Taiwan!" the ambassador griped.

"It was just his ignorance of the terminology, but he absolutely does not have China confused with Taiwan."

"Not when he is selling weapons!" said the ambassador, sarcastically.  "Then he sells them to Taiwan!  He is also very clear about blame for North Korea--then he says it is Beijing's fault somehow, even though it is not!  Does he think we want nuclear weapons launching from North Korea?"

"Trump doesn't think much, period."  (Wu was speaking with the ambassador in English because the Chinese ambassador did not like Wu's Hong Kong accent in Mandarin.)  "Wu is a very crude man, and whatever education he had in his youth, he has squandered it on a lifetime without intellectual stimulation.  He looks at a couple of things, then goes into a meeting and spouts off.  He has spent decades with sycophants and has no idea he is actually a complete ignoramus and national embarrassment."

"Is this what we are paying you for?" asked the ambassador testily, though he gestured for Wu to help himself to the mini-bar.

"Your Excellency, I have already passed a great deal of Russian intelligence to our interlocutor."

"Russian?  Where is the American intelligence?"

"There simply isn't American intelligence, right now, sir.   I mean that in both senses of the word."  (The ambassador looked puzzled.)  "The State Department policy desks are all grossly understaffed right now, the Secretary of State has zero control of the agenda and is constantly talking out of both sides of his mouth to try to clean up Trump's messes without being fired, the FBI is running a counter-intelligence investigation that encompasses its own Attorney General, the CIA is feeding intelligence to European allies as an end-run around Trump, the Pentagon and National Security Agency are furious that Congress and the White House had nothing to say after Russian hacks into nuclear power plants--your Excellency, American intelligence is paralyzed, American democracy is paralyzed.  The Republicans are so drunk on power they are poised to let spy compounds on U.S. soil be returned to the Russians.  The U.S. has been weakened considerably.  I can't tell you what the U.S. is going to do because the power structure is completely unstable."

The Chinese ambassador turned to stare intently at Wu.  "China cannot be hemmed in by a Russian-American alliance."

"I agree, absolutely," said Wu.

"China cannot be pulled into regional war if Pakistan is drawn into worsening Middle East conflict by Saudi Arabian aggression over Qatar and Iran!  U.S. is not holding back Saudi Arabia!"

"I agree," said Wu.

"Our hackers have found everything necessary to remove Trump from office, but still the imbecile is there!"

"He cannot be removed outside the normal processes, which are slow in a democracy such as this."

"Democracy!" scoffed the ambassador, shaking his head.  "The Republicans reek of corruption now, trying to pass this legislation of tax cuts and health care cuts opposed by over 80% of Americans!  They cause widespread unrest but allow the people to arm themselves, inviting a rebellion.  It is foolish!"

"I agree," said Wu.

"This will not be Russia's century!" the ambassador said defiantly. "If U.S. falls, this will be Chinese century!"

Wu nodded silently.

Ten minutes later, dropped off back in Cleveland Park, Charles Wu was walking the long way home.  Beijing was cracking down on human rights, and his mother was furious about what was happening to democracy activists in Hong Kong.  The Trump Administration would never say a word about any of that, and Beijing might actually become more authoritarian at home while simultaneously more aggressive overseas.  China, to his chagrin, had not followed his recommendation to go public with what they had hacked about the Trump family finances, and Wu was feeling less and less inclined to strengthen their hand globally.  The British were still gratefully paying for Wu's Chinese intelligence, but they were faltering as badly as Trump was on the international stage.  And there was very little Chinese intelligence he was willing to trade to the dangerous Trump Administration.  He caught the sound of his daughter's giggles while still at the corner of the block and stopped in his tracks.  He used to lecture Angela de la Paz about her naivety, but was he the one now in it over his head?  The juggling act used to feel like lightweight balls, but now they felt like bombs with lit fuses.  The other day Liv Cigemeier asked him for another grant to International Development Machine to fill vacuums being left around the world by a withdrawing U.S. aid presence, and Wu found himself shocked to be reminded that there were people in the world who had no idea where he really got his money and why he did the things he did with it.  He was a spy, damn it!  He had already changed the world, hadn't he?  Could he, still?  The problem was, if he got hold of the best secret in the world today, was there anybody he really wanted to sell it to?

Downtown, Justice Department attorney Atticus Hawk had done a lot of questionable things over the course of his career, but selling state secrets was not one of them:  those he was patriotically giving away for free.  Most of the time he was leaking to the FBI about General Sessions--which he felt perfectly justified in doing since Sessions had ignored a court order to hand over information to Congressional investigators--but this week he had gone outside of his comfort zone to leak to the press that Sessions had secretly met with the people behind the transgender bathroom bills.  Every decent law-abiding American man knew you stared straight ahead while doing your business at the urinal, and only complete perverts would want to pass legislation about who was whipping out which private parts where!  That's the bro code!  Just because some repressed Republican had gotten pissed off by discovering his prostitute was transgender was no reason to invite the government into public restrooms!  And if Sessions was hiding the meeting, it was clearly because he was a pervert, too!

"Penny for your thoughts?" asked Jefferson Beauregard Sessions, causing Hawk to jump out of his seat.  "Didn't mean to startle you, son!  I wanted to get a head start on tomorrow's business.  Did you finish that memo on how to re-word the voting commission letter to the states?"

"I did, sir, General, sir, but I think it will only satisfy a couple of the states' concerns.  It's hard to argue with them about centralizing the voter data federally when every state holds the legal authority to run elections.  After all, if Obama had asked for Alabama voter data in 2012--"

"Don't be a smart-ass!" retorted the Attorney General.  "Trump wants to send that letter out again!  It's outrageous they won't answer it!"

"General Sessions, I'm not sure this is the right time to attempt another voter fraud commission letter.  After all, Junior just admitted meeting with Russians at Trump Tower to discuss--"

"I don't know anything about that!" interjected Sessions, angrily.  "I'm recused!  I don't read anything about the Russia investigation!"

"Which, perhaps, is why somebody not involved in the Trump campaign should be making decisions about our voting processes."

"I'm the Attorney-General!"

"Yes, sir."

"I'm in charge of the voting processes!"

"Actually, sir--"

"How can I be recused from our voting processes?"

"Russians might be involved in the voting processes, General."

"WHAT?!  That is fake news, and I'm shocked to hear it in the Justice Department!"

"That's what the Special Counsel is investigating, General."

"I don't know what he's investigating!  I'm recused!  And there's never been sustained, systemic collusion!"

Hawk's jaw dropped at the sound of Kellyanne Conway's propaganda piece's erupting from the General's mouth.  So now it's fake news unless it was sustained, systemic collusion?

Over at the White House, Kellyanne Conway was busy handing out more MAGA hats in preparation for "Made in America Week".

"I'm not wearing this," said Omarosa Manigault, handing hers back.  "Where are the ones that were made in America?  This says Made in China."

"Don't be a smart-ass!" Conway snarled.

"And I hope you're not planning to wear the Ivanka Trump brand all week!" Manigault exclaimed, pointing at Conway's sundress.  "They're made in Indonesia and--"

"Shut up!" Conway barked.  "Who do you think you are?"

"He promised to bring manufacturing back to the--"

"Don't tell me what he promised, missy!  I was working on the campaign while you were still begging for another reality television gig!"

"So does that mean you're entitled to have the campaign committee pay your legal bills, or is that only for Junior and Jared?"

"Maybe you can take that smart mouth of yours over to Capitol Hill and get the Congressional Black Caucus on the bus over here for a meeting!  That's the only thing you were hired to do, and it hasn't happened!"

"Maybe you need to send a bigger bus," replied Manigault (who had already resumed looking for another reality television gig, possibly something about ghosts in the White House).

Up on the White House roof, the hot snipers wiped the sweat from their brows and continued pacing nervously, listening more to the screaming voices coming from inside the building than to anything happening outside of it.

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Washington Water Woman is heading out of town for a bit, 
and expects to return to blogging in a couple of weeks....

Up in the Air

Brittani was back at trapeze school in Southwest, and Glenn Michael Beckmann didn't know what to do with her.  A 15-year-old with an annulled Virginia under-age marriage, still too young to work, uninterested in getting her GED, constantly talking in her sleep about some demon she thinks lives in the basement of Southwest Plaza, and now obsessed with becoming a circus performer!  It could be a year before her scrawny arms and abdomen built up enough muscle to get good at this, and Beckmann was pondering hitting up her father for some money to cover these trapeze school fees.  After all, Brittani's father had a good-paying job working security for Steve Bannon at the White House, while Beckmann's Bad Asses security firm was not exactly making Beckmann rich.  And he needed to pay for a lot of drugs to work out the ever more confusing conspiracies oppressing the United States people!

As his blog (written in code as "Beckmann's Floral Cushions") made clear, Beckmann had no doubt that Donald Trump had been installed by aliens as a puppet king to weaken and confuse the will of human beings so that they would succumb easily to a full-scale invasion by alien overlords.  But the Resistance did not understand this!  The Resistance was still talking about: civil rights; the free press; White House corruption; Trump's kissing Putin's ass in a closed-door meeting; the G20 leaders creating responsible economic partnerships while the U.S. got sidelined by sending Ivanka's boobs, stilettos, & plastic surgery in to negotiate; Melania Trump's talking to Putin at dinner about cyber-bullying (how he got bullied about Election hack) and their new plan for U.S.-Russia cyber cooperation....But far too people were rallying to Beckmann's argument that the people of Earth needed to prepare for the alien invasion.  Trump was just a distraction!

Over at the White House, Brittani's father, Randy "Bubba" Blaylock, was not fully under the spell of Steve Bannon (who had sold his soul to Satan) because Bubba had been wearing a cursed Rolex since he and Beckmann had rescued Brittani from her deranged husband (the previous Rolex owner).  Trump rarely left the country, and Bannon was spying on Vice-President Pence, who was taking advantage of the POTUS absence to run helicopter drills for the 25th Amendment ouster of Trump.  As Bannon grew more and more incensed at the sound of Pence's Indiana National Guard alumni crews choppering in circles around the White House (shooting blanks at the snipers on the roof), Bubba was starting to worry that his time in the White House might end prematurely--before he could usurp that damned fashionista Gunther Zimmer as Melania's lover.  That was the reason Bubba was rummaging through the bedroom that served as Melania's closet (she needed a 20' x 20' closet) trying to find incriminating evidence against Zimmer. It was then that he found Zimmer's sewing basket and realized it had no normal thread:  only the clear nylon parachute thread used by Navy Seals.  "Who the Hell is this guy?!" he exclaimed out loud, not thinking to check the sewing basket for CIA bugs.  (The CIA does not spy on U.S. citizens, but considers Melania Trump an illegal alien.)

Meanwhile, a Congressional caucus was running a covert helicopter operation of its own:  that is, to say, certain rogue members of the anti-Zombie caucus had used Zombie-fighting activity as a cover to commission a helicopter for a non-Zombie purpose.  So, while Paul Ryan was busy telling sleeveless reporters to put on more clothing in the July heat and humidity, and Mitch McConnell was again postponing the Obamacare repeal vote so that Republicans could first purchase stock in the health care companies that were going to benefit from the bill, Congressman Herrmark's Chief of Staff, Ann Bishis, had ordered the helicopter to transport into the country the Syrian Kurdish refugee twin brides of Herrmark's twin bodyguards, Nick and Costas, from an offshore vessel.  Ann Bishis had never flouted a law in the manner she was flouting the Trump travel ban, but Greek blood (hers and that of her cousins, Nick and Costas) was thicker than water...or anything else.  And so it was that Syrian illegal aliens entered the country in a helicopter that was supposed to be fighting Congressional zombies.

Out on the river, Barbara Hellmeister (out of her job as mistress and Special Science Adviser to Donald Trump since the arrival of Melania and dismantling of the White House science office) sat in the bridgeman's quarters not far above Ardua of the Potomac, stroked her Trump/Hitler DNA-infused womb, and pondered her next move.

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COMING UP:    Triple agent Charles Wu walks 
delicate line as Beijing cracks down on Hong Kong
and begins revenge for U.S. arms sales to Taiwan.

The diary of FBI agent Dulles Samuelson

It's nice to see Angela napping in the sunshine, soaking in some sunshine and salt air.  She's had so many bad dreams lately, though I liked the one she had last night where Obama declared a 2020 Presidential run and Trump went completely out of his freaking mind!  

So glad I passed the six-month probation mark at FBI!  What an insane time to become an agent.  When I started, I had the typical rookie assignments, but things have changed a lot since Comey got fired.  Most people were labeled friends-of-Comey or not, and the newer people like me are the only ones viewed as neutral.  I'm not neutral at all, but I keep my mouth shut most of the time.  People start talking about the partial travel ban now in effect?  I'm a sphinx.  People talk about Trump's lawyer withdrawing the threat to go after Comey for leaks?  "Really?" I say, like I hadn't heard anything about it at all!  People talk about the legality of Trump's having a re-election campaign fundraiser in his hotel building he's leasing from the federal government, I just say, "that's for the lawyers to figure out."  People talk about Trump's flirting with the Irish reporter or denigrating the MSNBC reporter?  I just raise my eyebrows in a way that can be interpreted any way they want to.  Comments on Eric Holder's Tweet encouraging FBI and DOJ to stay strong for duty, honor, country?  I tell them I'm not on Twitter!

But the "WSJ" Trump-Russia collusion article that came out?  That was different.  Things went berserk at the Bureau!  That was no "Clinton News Network" #fakenews story--it was the freaking "Wall Street Journal"!!  Everywhere you went, somebody had taped a copy to a men's room mirror or pinned it to a kitchenette bulletin board.  It might disappear for awhile, then reappear again.  I finally caught one guy in the act by accident:  Atticus Hawk from the A.G.'s office!  He started sweating, then saw my name badge and relaxed.  "Your dad was a CIA agent, right?"  I asked him how he knew that, and he said his was, too.  

Then he asked me to pass some information to Mueller about Jared Kushner!  Finally!  I'm in the loop!  Of course it was in a sealed envelope, so I didn't really learn anything.  The Russian bank stuff?  Blackmailing Joe Scarborough?  I guess I'll find out later.  

I tried to ask him about why the GOP budget will zero out funding to the Election Assistance Commission while this new Pence-Kobach voting commission is asking for detailed voter roll information from every single state in the country, but his brow beaded up again and he said he had to rush off to a meeting with "General Sessions".  "General Sessions?" LOL!!!  I would have loved to tell him we call the Deputy A.G. "Dagwood", but I'll save that for next time.

The truth is that some FBI employees are lawyers and some are not, and when I do hear conversations about this stuff, it can be pretty confusing.  If DOJ goes nuts, what does "law enforcement" even mean anymore?  Arizona's ex-sheriff Arpaio is now on trial for ignoring a federal court order, but Trump has been lambasting court orders for months and his supporters think Arpaio should have been appointed head of the FBI!  If Trump actually ignores a court order, what happens?

On the drive from DC to the beach, I asked Angela if what the FBI is doing even matters in the bigger scheme of things:  demons, ghosts, all this crazy stuff out there.  She said those worlds aren't supposed to overlap, and I still need to do what's right in the one I live in.  I guess that's what she is:  a sheriff trying to enforce the rules against overlapping.  I know she's been going into the Dreamtime a lot, so I asked her if she's discovered that it's not just Trump and Bannon who sold their souls to Satan.  She looked really sad and just nodded.

Meanwhile, back in DC, TFFT (too fat for television) reporter Holly Gonightly was filming a segment on "Circus Life" at the Smithsonian Folk Life Festival on the National Mall when temporal lobe epileptic John Doe suddenly pointed at the swinging trapezes and began screaming, "The arc of history is bending!  The arc of history is bending!"  Then he fell into a silent trance, listening to the ghost of Henry Samuelson.

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COMING UP:    Donald Trump meets with Vladimir Putin
to talk about the Trump-Russia collusion nothingburger,
 #fakenews, garbagenews, witchhunt!  
(....And Slavic babes.)