Goodlatte's office response to my question

In his reply, Bob Goodlatte quoted the Constitution to me (I had already read it several times) .  He pointed out that Donald Trump  was sworn in as the 45th President of the United States. Bob reminded me that, " ...he will have the power to execute the law under Article II of the Constitution.  Likewise, Congress will have the power to write the law under Article I of the Constitution.”  [And that]  “Our constitutional system of three co-equal branches of government and a Bill of Rights therefore prevent one branch from assuming too much authority without a challenge from the other branches of government." 

I have some information for Mr. Goodlatte; nowhere in the Constitution does it require US legislators to support crude, ignorant, stupid, mentally ill, and traitorous behavior by a president.  As Chair of the House Judiciary Committee, Bob has the Constitutional authority to question, and at times, push back against unlawful and destructive behavior by a sitting president.  In fact it is his duty to do so.

Instead, Mr. Goodlatte has been a staunch supporter of all of Trump’s actions to date and a chief attacker of those who do criticize the president.  Bob Goodlatte has abrogated his sworn oath of office to the United State’s House of Representatives.  

By the way, his staff sends out anodyne boilerplate responses to all enquiries from his constituents. They’re just doing their jobs, unlike Bob.

An open letter to Representative Bob Goodlatte:

Dear sir: 

I would very much like to hear your analysis of these comments by Donald Trump:

“I have broken more Elton John records, he seems to have a lot of records. And I, by the way, I don’t have a musical instrument. I don’t have a guitar or an organ. No organ. Elton has an organ. And lots of other people helping. No we’ve broken a lot of records. We’ve broken virtually every record. Because you know, look I only need this space. They need much more room. For basketball, for hockey and all of the sports, they need a lot of room. We don’t need it. We have people in that space. So we break all of these records. Really we do it without like, the musical instruments. This is the only musical: the mouth. And hopefully the brain attached to the mouth. Right? The brain, more important than the mouth, is the brain. The brain is much more important.”

Should we study the "very stable genius' " words? 

Since you are such a staunch supporter of Donald Trump, I’d like you to explain this presidential proclamation for us all.  I suggest that you do it while sitting up at attention. 

If you want me to have any respect for you, you must defend why you have any respect for the person who spoke these words; the person who once again declared himself to be a “very stable genius’ on the world stage.

I would suggest that defense of the indefensible is morally bankrupt.  Unless you supply me with a cogent explanation, (I expect that your staff might not have a boilerplate letter on hand for this one) I will have no respect for you, and no one, not even your children should either.

We're never to old to learn

I’ve been on my own for the last three days. 

When she comes home she’ll ask:  “So what did you do?”  Of course, I’ll answer with the list of chores that I accomplished (most of which were left in instructions for me to do before she left).   What I won’t tell her is; I played guitar for many hours and I pretended that I had an audience. 

You see, no one in my recent memory has asked me to play a tune for them.  I know that it’s not like I’m a tragically under appreciated talent.  I have a little talent; I can play 8 or 10 nice songs through without major screw-ups, maybe another 30 or so more not too badly.  I even have an “original composition” (something in EAB that has probably been played by thousands of other people before me) that seems to resonate with open strings as I move up the neck of the instrument.

We have a couple of friends that play and sing far better than I do, and I play along sometimes without anyone complaining.  One of them did recently ask me to play a tune as if it was the single one I would like to play (like I might die before we met again…)  I have been having some serious health problems lately.  I was unprepared to hear that surprising request at the time and didn’t do well, my only chance squandered?

So I have come to realize that I enjoy the guitar and singing along, but no one else has any interest in ever hearing me.  That’s OK.  It just took awhile.

So, when I’m all alone, I play out in my shop where no one can hear me.  Sometimes I remember the time I was 16 years old at the beach on Hatteras and there was a guitar and a beach fire and noone could play it.  I diddled with it, and in memory, didn’t do too badly. 

But now, I pretend that I can tune it correctly, and play that EAB thing up the neck and it blows them all away.  Oh well.