Month: March 2018

The Gathering Storm

Stormy

The naming of John Bolton as Trump’s new National Security Advisor is a dark cloud over the White House. As the third sentence of Friday’s NY Times editorial says: “There are few people more likely than Mr. Bolton is to lead the country into war.”

Bolton’s penchant for warmongering comes at a time when Mueller’s Russia investigation is tightening the noose around Trump and porn star Stormy Daniels is set to reveal details of the affair Trump tried to keep secret. It is an extremely dangerous time and the risk of war as distraction is high.

In his first memoir about the events leading to WWII, “The Gathering Storm,” Winston Churchill called the Second World War a largely senseless but unavoidable conflict. Today we face the potential for catastrophic war that is both senseless and avoidable.

The revelation that hacker Guccifer 2.0 was a Russian intelligence agent points to Trump associate Roger Stone pretty clearly conspiring with Russia and WikiLeaks to win the 2016 election. As The Daily Beast put it:

Mueller is likely looking to see whether Stone or other members of the Trump campaign played a role in suggesting the timing of the release of the Podesta emails, which occurred on the same day as the release of the Access Hollywood tape in which Trump spoke in vulgar and disparaging ways about women. The release of the tape was a potentially campaign-ending event for Trump. Instead, that story competed for attention with the story of the Podesta emails. 

While this news broke on Friday to start the weekend (another in which Trump is at his Mar-a-Lago property in Florida), the weekend is set to end with the 60 Minutes interview of Stormy Daniels.

After a $130,000 hush money payment just before the election, Daniels has fought the validity of a Non-Disclosure Agreement about the affair. Trump has tried a number of ways to keep this story from coming out, possibly including threats.

The Stormy Daniels story is only one of several recent accounts of sexual affairs by Trump to come to light, including one from ex-Playboy Playmate Karen McDougal. Trump’s reaction to all of this pressure on multiple fronts with few familiar faces in the White House left is hard to gauge, but his behavior has been a bit more unhinged than usual lately.

Now the man Washington Post columnist George Will calls the most dangerous man in America will be advised by the person Will calls the second-most dangerous American on April 9, when Bolton joins the Administration.

There is really only one cocktail to have this weekend, a Dark ‘n Stormy. This is Gosling’s Black Seal Rum’s signature drink, and one it has held a trademark on since 1988. I was out at the time I wrote this and used Cruzan Black Strap rum instead (making it not technically a Dark ‘n Stormy, but still tasty).

So breathe deep the gathering gloom, and grab your rum and ginger beer before the light fades from every room.

1.5 oz Gosling’s Black Seal Rum

4 oz Ginger Beer

Lime wedge

Build on rocks in a highball glass, squeeze the lime and drop into the glass.

Cheers!

Leaks to Drain the Swamp

Bijou

We have struck a rich vein of leak gems.

From DO NOT CONGRATULATE to news of McCabe being fired by Jeff Sessions over “Lack of Candor” after he authorized a criminal investigation of Sessions for “lack of Candor” in his Congressional testimony, the leaks are flowing like a river.

Administration sources are fighting back against the corruption of this administration (or their enemies within it anyway) by staying in constant conversation with reporters.

Of course the news isn’t all coming from Washington. The whistleblower who broke the news of Facebook’s privacy and fake news “difficulties” (and the undercover sting on Cambridge Analytica) are helping to make 2016 a little clearer.

And, of course, with the mounting court cases against Trump heading toward the discovery phase, the flow of information is only going to get stronger. Stormy days ahead for Trump.

As these jewels of knowledge fall too fast to pick them all up, relax and treat yourself to a Bijou cocktail. A classic that first appeared in Harry Johnson’s 1900 edition of the Bartenders Manual, I took the recipe from Amanda Schuster’s excellent book New York Cocktails. The Bijou (French for jewel) is:

1.5 oz gin (Plymouth in this case)

.75 oz sweet vermouth

.75 oz green Chartreuse

1 dash orange bitters

Stir, strain into a chilled coupe, garnish with lemon peel or brandied cherry.

Cheers!

 

Would You Believe…

Smooth

The most frequently used word in headlines over the past week has been chaos.

Between tariffs, North Korea, staff defections, the Russia investigation, and legal actions around Trump’s porn star hush money, to name a handful of the top stories, the disarray at the White House has been more than usual.

As Dan Balz notes in The Washington Post today, however, Trump promised just this kind of presidency. But for all the commentary that tries to liken the Trump presidency to a reality show, this week may point to a different TV genre and show.

We may be in an episode of Get Smart. Nevertheless, the past year and definitely the past week, has certainly been a battle between CONTROL and KAOS. Trump is absolutely the Mr. Big of KAOS right now, and Sebastian Gorka is straight out of Mel Brooks’ central casting for KAOS agents. (Not saying Mueller is Agent 86, btw.)

All of the chaos of the past week has led to a nearly universal feeling of being on the road to ruin. On one side are people fearful of the negative effects of a trade war, destruction of our democratic norms and atomic annihilation, on the other side are Republicans facing this fall’s elections.

While we watch Trump walk back meeting with Kim Jong Un and maybe not impose tariffs on allies, adding to the long list of erratic policy behavior, have a Smooth Operator cocktail.

Via Kindred Cocktails, the Smooth Operator is:

2 oz Plantation Stiggin’s’ Fancy pineapple rum

.25 oz orgeat

.25 oz Allspice Dram

2 dashes aromatic bitters (I used Dr Adam’s Orinoco)

orange twist

Stir, strain into a chilled cocktail glass, garnish

Cheers!

 

News Dump Bittersweetness

Symphony

It’s Friday evening, do you know where your Special Counsel is?

The last several days have been an onslaught of news. From gun control to trade wars to scandalous cabinet secretaries to Jared Kushner losing his security clearance and using his position as Trump son-in-law/Senior Advisor to secure massive loans to his family business, the past week has felt like months worth of major stories.

Even when you get outside of the White House, our institutions of government have run amok. The House Intelligence Committee is leaking texts of Senators for partisan gain. The end game of Mitch McConnell’s Senate obstruction is soon to play out in the Supreme Court with a union-busting case. Collective bargaining for public unions is hanging by a prayer.

We are definitely living the curse of interesting times. If Trump is draining the swamp, then we’re all in the sewer it’s running through.

Of course, some of this overwhelming pace of breaking news is not the kind that Trump wants to hear, either. Robert Mueller is tightening the noose around the Trump campaign and it ties to Russian election interference. Trump may have lost Hope (Hicks), but Mueller gives hope to the rest of us.

Whatever the news tonight, good or bad, it is sad we are even here. So while we wait, have a Bittersweet Symphony cocktail, put on some redemption songs, and think about how we might recover some of what we’re losing.

From Gaz Regan’s great book The Negroni, the Bittersweet Symphony is a tasty Negroni variation:

1.5 oz London dry gin

.75 oz Punt e Mes

.75 oz Aperol

Stir, strain into a chilled cocktail glass, lemon twist.

Cheers!