The 3rd is not too late to...

Today is the 3rd of January and that is not too late to send along New Year’s wishes to my friends here on da bulldog blog!

There’s no doubt that 2019 is going to be a very significant year. Although I don’t have a crystal ball, I think this nascent year is going to be a mixed bag, so to speak, but a year of great consequence.

I’m expecting some good things. Some really, really good things, in fact. I’m certain that the United States will have a new President in 2019. And well before year’s end.

And I’m quite sure we’re going to see some seriously bad events in the next 12 months. Many economists and pundits who cover that facet of human activity are saying that all the signs of a serious impending recession are right there for us to see.

I hasten to add that I’m hoping the economists and prognosticators are wrong about that. But the signs are not good.

Now let me get back to my original purpose for this post: I wish all my friends and folks who follow this humble blog a most happy, safe and prosperous New Year!

We will see a lot of change. I’m persuaded that a lot of those changes will be wonderfully, amazingly good.

I’m concerned that many will fall all the way on the other end of the spectrum.

But regardless of exactly how the year unfolds, I wish with all my heart that you’ll be smiling 50 weeks from now as 2019 draws to a close.



“Bulldog Ben” Basile




Ben is not the owner of the banner photo and believes it to be covered by Fair Use.

This Christmas is not the same

It's Christmas Eve as I write this and I'm in an unusual frame of mind. I can best describe my mood as peaceful and grateful but with an undercurrent of unease permeating my emotional landscape.

I'm not a traditional kind of Christian. Over the last 20 years or so, I've morphed into what might be best described as an ethical Christian. Don't buy into the heaven and hell stuff but believe strongly that the teachings and life of Jesus are a shining and unique example of how people should live.

The meaning of Christmas and the feelings it brings for many of us are still a very big deal for me. It gives me a real feeling of hope for weeks leading up the Christmas Day itself. I typically walk around feeling that peace and goodwill to men sentiment pretty strongly, with carols playing in my head all the while.

But this year, it's different.

This year,  there is a dark, ominous cloud hanging over those tidings of great joy.

It seems so foreboding that as we celebrate the coming of God's divine life living among us, our National life is being sullied and our collective peace has been torn apart by a hateful and dangerous demagogue.

The peace and goodwill part of the Christmas message rings hollow with a hateful and ego-driven man whose creed in life is to hit back ten times harder if offended or slighted purporting to lead our country.

A man who lashes out with fury and vitriol at any perceived offense or even when someone simply fails to sufficiently stoke his ego or sing his praises.

Reading of daily outbursts of that sort at this formerly-glorious time of year does tend to spoil the happy remembrances of the angels' song. I'm not hearing that hope-filled message of the Christ-child coming to earth, being born of a simple, humble maiden.

The angels, shepherds, oxen and lamb keep the sacred, awe-filled vigil as... as the rage-filled, spiteful, revenge-obsessed man-baby plots to sew more chaos throughout his kingdom and to silence and humiliate the critics, the non-believers who recoil from his twisted message or dare to resist his reign of vitriol and hate.

The story of the divine child in the manger is crowded out by the advent of this modern-day Herod who forces the infant to prematurely flee to Egypt, with Mary and Joseph cutting short their sojourn in the sacred stable, riding away on the ox that witnessed the Holy Nativity.

In my heart-of-hearts, I can't see the Divine One swaddled and laying peacefully in that humble altar of wood and straw; I can't hear the Christmas message of the word-made-flesh; I cannot feel the dawning of a new era of peace, hope and reconciliation.

I can only feel the hot breath of hate, the elevation of cruelty to the highest stratum of heaven and the gathering of the sinister storm which will pull the curtains from the temple, exile the children of promise and sully every teaching, every precept of goodwill, righteousness and reconciliation.

This Christmas is different. This Christmas is filled with a sense of fear and foreboding. This Christmas is sullied by selfishness and scorn; despoiled by a new advent of greed and cruelty.

This year the hopeful message of Christmas is drowned out by the droning of a baleful message of division, heartlessness and hate.

Child of the manger, deliver us from this darkness and despair!  Grant a new dawn of hope among all people of goodwill, all who still listen to hear the angels' song!




Ben Lawrence Basile

© 2018 Benjamin Basile

Mueller memo detailing Flynn's lies--a follow up

I wanted to post with a quick follow up to yesterday's piece.

When the time came for Flynn to be sentenced earlier today, his legal team begged Judge Sullivan to push everything back 90 days.

The Judge had expressed outrage about what Flynn had done, after the full extent of his misdeeds had been revealed. To get up-to-date, see yesterday's post or search "Flynn sentencing".

In light of Judge Sullivan's anger, Mr Flynn's attorneys wisely begged for more time. I'd call it a cooling off period, of sorts as they knew that Gen Flynn was at dire risk at that moment of being hit with a much stiffer sentence than he had faced before the contents of the government's FD-302 memo came to light.

So the report on Flynn's punishment is that there's no report!

Not today, at any rate.

Watch this space...



"Bulldog Ben" Basile


Don't feel like searching? Here's a link to a story that sums up today's court proceedings.

Mueller memo detailing Flynn's lies is released

Trump's disgraced former National Security Advisor Mike Flynn is about to be sentenced. As many of you know, Judge Emmet Sullivan will be imposing Flynn's sentence this week and had ordered the Feds to show their work, so to speak.

Flynn's attorneys had intimated that the FBI and prosecutors had essentially tricked Flynn into cutting his own throat by not explicitly informing him that bad things would happen if he lied to them.

Judge Sullivan is quite possibly the Federal judge most likely to bristle at the very thought of prosecutorial overreach. So it's certainly no surprise and there's been a ton of speculation about what would be in the docs once their contents were revealed in his courtroom.

Well, yesterday, Monday, December 17th, Mueller's team finally had a chance to show their hand. The release of their memo detailing Mike Flynn's deceptions in his January 2017 FBI interview has undercut Flynn's legal team's half-whispered claims that the bureau was biased against their client.

This story from The Chicago Tribune is very thorough and lays out clearly the details of this latest development in the proceedings against Flynn. 

Indie journo Marcy Wheeler dives a little deeper into precisely how Monday's memo--which is called an FD-302--lays bare this deception by Flynn's legal team. Their claims of alleged FBI bias against Flynn ring hollow once you know the back story.

I'm not sure you can blame Flynn's attorneys for trying to bamboozle the court now that Judge Sullivan is ready to sentence their hapless client.

But the gambit didn't work. And Mike Flynn is about to become the latest Trump underling to go down for being complicit in the boss's treasonous crimes.


"Bulldog Ben" Basile


© 2018 Ben Lawrence Basile

New Government report about the looming climate disaster is released

The just-released report about Climate Change and its consequences is called the National Climate Assessment and it doesn't paint a pretty picture this time.

Not at all.

Not only is the tRump administration showing complete indifference to the report, they tried to minimize its impact by timing its release for Black Friday.

Just what you'd expect from a president who has tried very, very hard to kill our nascent solar power industry, done everything in his power to shrink National Parks, green-lighted proposed drilling projects in extreme environmentally-sensitive areas and who believes that the very idea of climate change is a hoax cooked up by the Chinese government.

I am in that clique of passionate climate change-watchers who are science-literate, pretty well up-to-date on the latest developments and who have concluded that humans will never take the hard actions which would be necessary to keep the horrible, earth-killing consequences which are outlined in the assessment from happening.

The chances that humanity will act in time are very, very close to zero.

And it certainly won't be because we weren't warned.

It will be because business interests who are profiting from the status quo and corrupt and ignorant politicians were hell-bent on raping the Earth to safeguard corporate profits.

It's a dark, disgusting and dystopian story. One with a shitty, tragic ending.

And humanity is too cowardly and too subservient to its corporate overlords to keep the story from coming true.


To see the assessment in its entirely, follow this link.




"Bulldog Ben" Basile


© 2018 Ben Lawrence Basile

We are doomed but a day of reckoning is coming

Today's subject is Climate Change and, in particular, whether or not we can keep the planet from the catastrophic damage that our failure to decisively act is bringing ever-closer.

And it's how this is working itself out here in the U.S. that I'm mostly concerned with. The rest of the world is at least trying to take action. The Paris Agreement is, of course, the best-known evidence that citizens and governments are, at least, paying attention and are trying to do something.

As far as how this is going here in the U.S., it pains me to say this, but big business and their bought-and-paid for "scientists" are so effective at brainwashing the average citizen--and, more importantly, the decision makers in whose hands our collective fate rests--that I truly believe there is zero hope of staving off a complete catastrophe. We're doomed.

But, it is also true that when common people who've believed all the bullshit they're being fed by big business and climate change deniers finally "get it", there will be hell to pay!

That is also inevitable. And I believe we're going to get there sooner than most people think.

It's a truly dreadful thing to say, but it's looking more and more like witnessing that "day of reckoning" will be the only "good thing" we who are watching this looming disaster can hope for.

This is instructive: Italian citizens executed Mussolini and then strung up his corpse in a public square for destroying Italy in the Second World War.

Can you imagine what people will do with the ones who destroy the earth?

Let me be clear: I in no way advocate or promote violence for any reason. I'm merely pointing out that karma--like the Earth--gets to bat last and it's going to be very, very ugly. Corporate interests, their talking heads and the climate change denialists have already taken this too far for there to be any other outcome.

I'm hoping and praying that I'm wrong. But all the signs are there and most of us are just not willing to see it. We are way, way ahead of the timeline as far as all the consequences that climate scientists predicted.

If I may be permitted a brief recounting of how all this affects me personally: I carry around a great weight of heaviness because of this seemingly-hopeless situation. And that's true for so many ordinary people who clearly see what awaits and feel like they're watching that proverbial train wreck about to happen.

The unfortunate truth is this: sometimes the bad guys win, there's no remedy, no solution and everything sucks. Like the ending of a Guy de Maupassant short story.

What I can say with absolutely certainty is that the business interests who are trying every trick they know to keep citizens and governments from taking decisive action--something which many large corporations rightfully believe could harm their bottom lines--those interests are winning that fight. It's not even close.

This is a serious problem all over the globe but is especially true here in the United States.

The part I'm not 100% certain about is whether those citizens and their governments can turn the tide and force the concerted and decisive actions which could stave off or at least mitigate the looming disaster.

There is very, very little evidence that they can or will.





"Bulldog Ben" Basile


© 2018 Ben Lawrence Basile

These Trumpkins L.O.S.T. on November 6th!

Yes, there certainly is a List Of Shitty Trumpkins who L.O.S.T. in the Blue Wave that washed away a boatload of sorry Rethuglican pols yesterday!

Bulldog is happy to throw out his own personal list that includes--but is not limited to--these shitty GOP losers who will not be missed by the citizens or constituents of their states or congressional districts.

The List Of Shitty Trumpkins who L.O.S.T. in the mid-term wave of 2018 includes California Congressman Dana Rohrabacher who's packing his shit now and heading for an extended vacation with his man-crush, Comrade Vlad, in an exclusive Crimean resort where all the coolest treason-weasels from the US House of Reps go when they have no official duties to which to attend!

Don't forget the sunscreen, Dana! And the KY!

The List Of Shitty Trumpkins who L.O.S.T. on Nov. 6th now includes ex-Attorney General Kris Kobach from Kansas who happily served as the head of Adolph Shitler's famous and totally-crooked Voter Fraud Commission.

Stalwart Dem Laura Kelly sent Kris packing last night, besting him in their much-watched contest to be the next Governor of Kansas.

But just when you thought we had driven a silver stake through this beast's shitty heart, here's the kicker to the story: brother Kris is reportedly on tRump's short list to replace Jeff Sessions as the Attorney General of the United States! Sorta makes you want to toss your Victory Party cookies, doesn't it?

The List Of Shitty Trumpkins who L.O.S.T. when the votes were all counted last night includes Scott Walker, Wisconsin's soon-to-be ex-gov who was successful at busting all of Wisconsin's public sector unions in his first term back in 2011.

Democrat Tony Evers is the long-time administrator in public education who defeated Scotty boy. The citizens of Wisconsin will now have a Governor who understands education and will work hard to enhance it.

Quite a contrast to Walker, who cut education funding to the bone to spite the teaching and admin professionals whom he hated with a white-hot passion.

Our L.O.S.T. list now includes Kentucky's own Kim Davis, the Clerk of Courts in Rowan County who got sent to lock up back in August of 2015 for refusing to issue marriage licenses to gay couples after marriage equality became the law of the land.

In a complete vindication of the hitherto-unproven Theory of Karma, Ms Davis was sent packing by Elwood Caudill Jr, one of the men whose marriage license docs she would not process in the aftermath of that infamous court ruling three years ago.

The L.O.S.T. list also includes ultra Reich Wing nut Dave Brat, who was beaten by Abigail Spanberger, the ex-CIA operative whom he had scorned in their debates before she sent him packing in yesterday's contest.

Brat was the Tea Party darling who defeated Eric Cantor in their June, 2014 primary for Virginia's 7th District Congressional seat. Mr Brat can now contemplate his next career move which may or may not include displaying open contempt for women who commit the unpardonable sin of entering public life and attempting to serve the actual needs of constituents.

Well, that wraps up today's L.O.S.T. List! Lots of Rethuglican pols were given the pink slip last night by the voters in these much-watched mid-term contests.

I wrap up today by extending to these losers a totally sincere wish that they have lots of luck and success in their future endeavors... Yeah, right!




"Bulldog Ben" Basile


© 2018 Ben Lawrence Basile