This place should not be vulnerable to the shifting winds of public opinion, like some sort of novelty windsock. The Senate was supposed to be like a saucer where the Founders could pour their coffee to cool it. Well, I don’t think this saucer would cool any coffee, because this saucer is BROKEN. And now this nation is covered in coffee. By God! (This was more stirring in my head.)
We are supposed to make compromises. We are supposed to listen. But these sad days, no one will. Not even me.
This is no way to proceed. Is anyone in favor of this legislation? Do we even know what this is? It is happening so fast that I cannot be sure, but it seems to benefit no one except taxpayers in high-income brackets and those who delight in human suffering. We are doing the legislative equivalent of throwing darts at a wall, but the wall is made of human faces.
I have no idea what is passing and what is being debated. Everything around me is chaos. Out of the wreckage of the parliamentary procedure rides Mitch McConnell on a pale horse sowing destruction in his wake. I think we just agreed to push all wheelchairs, occupied or not, over a cliff somewhere, but honestly I have no idea.
Will you just stand by and let this happen? You must not, because I will.
Where are the courageous three or four people who are willing to stand alone with me against this? I can’t do it without the cover of a courageous three or four people, and those people are nowhere to be found.
By God, what has become of the Senate? What has become of the nation’s greatest deliberative body? It is time that someone else took a stand. This legislation we are throwing frantically up for a vote is a disgrace to the country, it is cruel, and we arrived at it the wrong way, and so I will not vote for it more than once.
After all, I am here to serve my constituents by doing what I think, after deliberation, is in their best interests. I am here because I believe people working together across the aisle to tackle the challenges facing America can pass laws that make people’s lives better and easier. That is why I am here, in theory. And I will gladly stand alone against this shameful process that threatens all that I hold dear by issuing a series of scathing statements to reporters on my way to vote for whatever this mystery bill is.
We are the equal of the executive, but we don’t act like it. Well, we should start acting like it! Where is the brave man or woman who will go first? I eagerly await such a person.
This bill was not given the process it deserves. We should have deliberated in committee. We should have held hearings. We should have done this the right way. So I, for one, will fight it tooth and nail. I will do everything except vote against it.
Who will stand without me?
July 27, 2017
How Paul Manafort Came by $934,350 in Antique Carpets
Buried among the revelations in the indictment against former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort—charging him with conspiracy to launder money, making false statements to the FBI, and more—is the fact that he paid $934,350 to an antique rug store in Alexandria. Everything else about this story is also amazing, but I do not want to lose sight of this: $934,350, over a period of years, for carpets!
Is not the simplest explanation the best and most likely to be true?
Maybe Paul Manafort just loves carpets, and he was not deluding anyone in any way. $934,350 is a totally reasonable amount of money to spend at a rug store. You can easily see how this would happen.
FIRST, YOU WALK INTO THE STORE, thinking you need a small and simple rug to bring the room together. You have lots of cash, for some reason. You can spend some on a rug, surely. Or what was the point of all your work abroad?
You look at some carpets. They all seem about the same, so you pick one at random.
“That one,” you say.
The salesman nods sagely. “I see that you are someone with an eye for carpets,” he says.
You have never thought of yourself as someone with an eye for carpets, but you always hate to disillusion people who have positive opinions of you, even when those people are salesmen. “Well,” you say, modestly, spreading your hands. “I dabble. I like a good . . .” Frantically, you try to remember the attributes that a good carpet is supposed to have. “Piling.”
“Ah yes,” the salesman says, smoothly, “a good, tall pile. Then you had better come with me.”
“I’m taking that one, of course,” you add, gesturing at the first rug.
“Very good. That is, of course, $15,750,” the salesman says. Without waiting for your response, he leads you into the next room. These carpets are, frankly, more than you are looking for, but you don’t want to admit it. You point at a small one in the corner. “Seems good,” you say.
“Ah,” the salesman says, adding it to the stack, “you are more than a match for me! We must go to the special collection! Nothing less will do for a man like you.”
“Er,” you say. “I suppose we had better.”
He throws open the door to another room, covered wall-to-wall with carpets. You drop your wallet in your nervousness and it entirely disappears into the deep, lush pile of one of them. The salesman has to send a wallet-sniffing dog in to retrieve it, and this costs an additional $7,400. You
