Today is Wednesday, April 6, 2022. This is my first blog since Sunday, April 3, where Elliot and I traveled to our friends in Highland, New York, on Monday morning to spend some time with them before leaving today after having coffee with them in their spacious apartment on Vineyard Avenue, in Highland. Our time with “Ted” and “Peter” whooshed by oh so quickly that Wednesday arrived before you could exhale. But we had a lovely time exploring the town of Woodstock on Tuesday, walking into novelty shops and the town’s one bookstore, The Golden Notebook, where Elliot bought a new book by Douglas Stuart called Young Mungo. His first book, Shuggie Bain, won the 2020 Booker Prize and was praised by critics all around. Stuart is a Scottish author whose book was a disguised account of his own childhood in Glasgow, Scotland. Elliot actually read this book and was blown away by the novel. So when he saw this new work by the Scottish author, he jumped at the chance to purchase his new book in hardcover.

We also spent about two hours alone in New Paltz where we browsed two used bookstores there, Bower Books and Inquiring Minds, where I bought Doris Lessing’s The Fifth Child in honor of the prolific British author and Barbara Ehrenreich’s Natural Causes, which is a polemic against our national obsession with wellness and longevity. So what did I miss these last two days?

When we were staying with Ted and Peter, the television was tuned to MSNBC or CNN, so we didn’t exactly have a news blackout these last two days. The war in Ukraine is still raging. The campaign of repugnicans against bedrock American values is also still raging.

On the January 6th front, the House voted today to hold two of Dumpf’s top advisers – Peter Navarro and Dan Scavino – in criminal contempt of Congress for their months-long refusal to comply with subpoenas issued by the House Select Committee investigating the January 6 Capitol attack. The approval of the contempt resolution, by a vote of 220 to 203, sets the two Dumpf aides on the path toward criminal prosecution by the Justice Department as the panel escalates its inquiry into whether the ex-president oversaw a criminal conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election. This development is reported in an online article for The Guardian entitled “House votes to hold Trump duo Navarro and Scavino in contempt of Congress.”

Congressman Jamie Raskin, a member of the Select Committee who introduced the contempt resolution to the House floor, said the select committee needed the House to advance the measure in order to reaffirm the consequences for defying the January 6 investigation. Talking about these deplorable characters’ refusal to comply with their subpoenas, Raskin said, “These two witnesses have acted in contempt of Congress and the American people; we must hold them in contempt of Congress and the American people.”

If the Justice Department decides to convict the Dumpf aides, the consequences could translate into a year in federal prison, $100,000 in fines, or both – though it would not force their compliance, and pursuing the misdemeanor charge could take months.

Raskin delivered an impassioned argument as to why these two men should not be allowed to go scot free after snubbing a Congressional subpoena for their testimony, “This is America, and there’s no executive privilege here for presidents, much less trained advisers, to plan coups and organize insurrections against the people’s government in the people’s constitution and then to cover up the evidence of their crimes. These two men are in contempt of Congress and, we must say, both for their brazen duties and for our laws and our institutions.”

One of the men, Navarro, was seen attending an event at the Florida resort of his Golden Idol, and seemed to dismiss the impending referral to the Justice Department, saying, dismissively, “Oh that vote,” when a reporter mentioned it to him. Let’s see if he will be as dismissive of his contempt of Congress citation if he’s thrown into jail for a year.

I just heard this tidbit regarding the ever-repulsive Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who proudly sides with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin in his atrocities against Ukraine, being pitted against the ever-resolute Maryland Representative Jamie Raskin who was introducing the proposal to hold both Dumpf advisers in contempt of the body. This disgusting, incoherent batshit-crazy “lawmaker” actually heckled Raskin during his address to the House on the occasion of citing the two men for criminal contempt of Congress.

The blonde bimbo called out, “What about Ashli Babbitt? What about Russian collusion?” Did she mean the collusion with the Orange Menace in this case? So what in the hell did she mean by this outburst? Also, as you recall, Babbitt is now the right’s January 6 martyr who was justifiably killed during the riot by a Capitol Police officer as she was trying to break into the building.

Of course, Raskin, who is a former constitutional law professor at American University Washington College of Law, did not take the bait of this brain-damaged, highly uneducated woman. He slapped her down with, “The gentlelady, I think, said something about ‘the Russian hoax,’ or ‘Russian collusion.’ I accept the heckling, Mr. Speaker. That’s all right. Because if she wants to stand with Vladimir Putin and his brutal, bloody invasion against the people of Ukraine, she is free to do so – and we understand there is a strong Trump/Putin axis in the gentlelady’s party.” He continued to shred the asshole’s interruption, saying, “If she wants to continue to stand with Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, that is her prerogative.” Well said, Mr. Raskin. Let this piece of slavish Russian manure sulk into her Putin corner after trying to prevent the American people from getting at the truth of her own Golden Idol’s January 6th insurrection.

So I would like to finish earlier today. I have to go to bed slightly earlier today since our contractor, “Cameron,” is coming back tomorrow to continue work on the kitchen. He had another job to go to on Tuesday and Wednesday.

I hope to have new photos of the kitchen’s progress tomorrow.

Stay safe and be well.