{"id":31711,"date":"2018-08-21T22:06:56","date_gmt":"2018-08-22T06:06:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sparselysageandtimely.com\/blog\/?p=31711"},"modified":"2023-12-18T19:48:21","modified_gmt":"2023-12-19T03:48:21","slug":"at-last-some-welcome-news-from-washington","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sparselysageandtimely.com\/?p=31711","title":{"rendered":"At last some welcome news from Washington; meanwhile nature provides a welcome diversion from the Trump calamity"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Paul Manafort (Photo by Elsa\/Getty Images)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I first heard the news from gleeful friends <\/strong>whom I ran into downtown around noon. This morning, President Donald Trump’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, was convicted of eight felonies. The corruption charges should mean he will now spend the rest of his life in prison, unless Trump pardons him. That could happen. After Manafort’s verdicts were announced, Trump made a point of calling the crook “a good man” and calling his conviction “a disgrace.”<\/p>\n

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Equally significant, Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen<\/strong> in another courtroom pled guilty to eight felonies, including tax fraud, false statements to a bank, and campaign finance violations on behalf of Trump. Cohen, you’ll recall, is the bag man who paid off porn star Stormy Daniels and former Playboy<\/em> playmate Karen McDougal before the 2016 election to keep quiet about Trump’s exta-marital affairs with them. Cohen has apparently now agreed to provide information to help the Justice Department’s investigation of the President’s repeated wrongdoing.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Cohen wasn’t the only one singing. A dark-eyed junco <\/strong>on my deck sang when he began eating his supper.<\/p>\n

Lynn and I scatter birdseed on the deck railings a couple of times a day for all the jays, doves, crows, towhees, juncos, sparrows, finches, chickadees, quail and more that stop by on a regular basis.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

A scrub jay<\/strong> drops by Mitchell cabin for his dinner. Like the junco, he is for me a symbol of a tranquil world away from national politics.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, a roof rat<\/strong> helps himself to the birds’ seed and the birds’ bath.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The junco is a bit wary of the rat<\/strong> but doesn’t stop pecking up seed.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Dining on the deck along with the birds and rats, are raccoons<\/strong>. They too avail themselves of the birds’ bath. And like some birds, they don’t hesitate to bathe in the water they’re drinking.<\/p>\n

Even without the general schadenfreude over the Trump team’s starting to get its comeuppance, my home and animal friends would have seemed especially cheerful today.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I first heard the news from gleeful friends whom I ran into downtown around noon. This morning, President Donald Trump’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, was convicted of eight felonies. The corruption charges should mean he will now spend the rest of his life in prison, unless Trump pardons him. That could happen. After Manafort’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":623,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31711","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-news","category-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sparselysageandtimely.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31711","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sparselysageandtimely.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sparselysageandtimely.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sparselysageandtimely.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/623"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sparselysageandtimely.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31711"}],"version-history":[{"count":32,"href":"https:\/\/sparselysageandtimely.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31711\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40546,"href":"https:\/\/sparselysageandtimely.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31711\/revisions\/40546"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sparselysageandtimely.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31711"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sparselysageandtimely.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31711"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sparselysageandtimely.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31711"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}