Transparency

     Government Shutdown, Trump's new reality show.  He expects hundreds of thousands of federal employees to continue showing up to work, but without pay.  I guess it's deferred payment, but it means people who need them aren't getting food stamps.  It means the National Parks are getting trashed with some likely illegal hunting going on because there are no Rangers to stop them.
     I've heard talk of a possible TSA strike.  That would shut down air travel in the United States.  It would probably get the government going again.
     The shutdown is Trump's play at getting funding for his Wall.  Schumer, the senator from New York who works for Wall Street interests, offered $1.7 billion for the construction, but that's well short of the likely $20 plus billion it will probably cost, if it ever gets into the ground.  All eight of the wall section prototypes inspected by Trump, while wearing one of his profit-making Make America Great Again baseball caps, failed, as in people can foil all eight of these possible walls.  One of them is vulnerable to a metal-cutting saw.  There are hardware stores in Central America.
     Absurdity, but with people suffering.  Making people work for free is a form of slavery.  No one in the news media, as far as I know, has made that connection in this case.  The government is referred to, in relation to the shutdown, as "dysfunctional," which can mean "not operating normally or properly."  Congress and the Executive Branch in their normal practice don't represent the people so this really is normal.  It certainly isn't proper, though.  Theoretically, our government is supposed to help people in need, from great needs to minor ones.  Tax returns will be affected.  We might not get our refund checks for a while, along a period when we'll probably need them most because the fucking government is shut down due to the incompetence of Trump and much of Congress.  They all still get paid, too.  There's just no end to how those motherfuckers can add new twists to their psychopathological behavior.  To be a politician is to serve the richer.
     I read an illustrated piece in some internet news service about Melania Trump's "creepy" red Christmas trees decorating part of the White House last month.  Lacking ornamentation, they're red Christmas trees of a shade slightly lighter than the color of fresh blood.  Interpretations of her decorating tastes can't explain anything.  Why she does what she does when cameras are nearby is anyone's guess.  She went to visit Central American migrant children in their prisons near the border, was shown kids who were in the best shape--not the ones neutralized with anti-psychotic drugs--and she was photographed getting into her plane wearing a jacket with the words, I Really Don't Care.
     Take her at her word.  After all, she married a demented pig for his money and then had to become First Lady, a highly scrutinized position in society.  She feels pressure to be a friendly face for America to enjoy, the softer side of Donald, perhaps.  She doesn't want to do anything as First Lady, however.  She took on the cause of heading an anti-bullying campaign in connection with something called Be Best.  The bullying irony may have been her way of sending a message to her husband, but it obviously didn't influence him.  Be Best seeks to bring about well-being in youths, including the discouraging of drug use.  Cyberbullying is also on her mind as a serious problem.  Once again, her husband is a cyberbully, but she's directing her attention and the occasional speech at children.  President Trump also may be a child whose brain stopped growing at age six.  It would explain a lot.
     Mr. Center of Attention, thinks the world revolves around him.  His wife is a trophy, someone to use during the campaign as a goad to an opponent, like when he compared Melania to Mrs. Ted Cruz.
     Trump in that tweet was saying, "Which one would you rather bang, America?"
     Cruz, outraged, spoke of the vileness of Trump bringing his opponent's wife into the race, and in such a crude, insulting manner.  He was right about that, but Cruz later became a Trump ally, never explaining how he managed to swallow his vomit and cooperate with the Republican nominee.
     I saw recent video of Cruz, sporting a beard to look more serious, a wise statesman who in college wanted to ban sex toys on campus, standing by Trump in McAllen, Texas, home to thousands of illegal immigrants locked up in concentration camps and cages in ICE-run facilities where they sometimes drop dead for want of proper doctoring and needed drugs.  Or they get sexually abused by guards.  Heartwarmingly, the for profit prison industry is doing good business along the border.
     Melania was a model.  One gossipy website refers to her as a "former D List model."  Pictures offered of the 1990s Melania, before she dated Trump, look very similar to modeling shots.  I can't tell if she was bad at the job or not.  She possessed that "I may have nothing to say, but that could mean I'm not a thinker."
     Yet, she speaks four or five languages, three or four more than I do.  If we could hear her interviewed in Slovenian (she's from Slovenia, where the band Laibach is from, and Mojca Zugna, bassist of Clan of Xymox too), accurately translated, get to know her in her original language, she might become human, instead of a gossip object.
     Entertainment news outlets and the "serious" news spend time on nonsense about Melania Trump.  She's the Marie Antoinette in this scenario of government shutdown.

                                                                              Vic Neptune