Category: History

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Holy Murder – Got Mit Uns

January 5th 2020

The Washington Post is reporting this morning that Trump did not notify leaders of Congress of the planned assassination of Qassam Suleimani as he is legally required to do, but he DID notify the Russians. Kinda shows who he’s really working for, doesn’t it?

If anyone tells you that Putin and his criminal gang are better suited to hear American military strategies ahead of Congress, explain to them that they are fools and traitors to their country and to get the hell out of your sight. Yes, I’ve seen Trumpkins make that very claim. They are shit Americans.

Mike Pence, God’s Designated Liar on Earth, tried explaining that Suleimani was behind 9/11, an utterly factless claim put out there in Pence’s dim-witted hopes that people would somehow take this to mean that Trump had just prevented another 9/11. It’s on about the same level as assassinating Boris Johnson and then claiming he was involved in the 1605 plot to blow up Parliament.

Trump himself tried claiming that he had preempted an plan for an imminent attack upon American interests, which was about as factually-based as anything else that flushes out of that man’s mouth.

Nearly every pundit in the country is bloviating on what kind of blow-back America can expect, and what Trump will do next with the disaster he has created. They are even, gawds help us, asking if it saves Trump from impeachment. Fox News and the Christian Right see Trump as a resolute and godly hero for employing the same tactics that Trump assassinated Suleimani for. Lindsey Graham huffed that you can’t impeach a president during war time, and right wingers are even pushing for a constitutional amendment saying just that.

A few quick points, Lindsey: Trump has already been impeached. It was in all those papers and news sources you don’t read. Second, we aren’t at war. Iraq, where the assassination took place, is a putative ally—or at least was, more on that in a moment—and despite the incessant saber-rattling from Bolton and Cheney and the rest of the trash militant right, Iran is not an enemy. At least, not as of this writing. And third, if you have anything at all resembling a brain in that skull of yours, do you really want a loophole in the constitution that encourages a president to start a war in order to avoid being brought up on criminal charges? Really? Is that all that’s left of your bullshit “suthun honor”?

This morning, the Iraq Parliament voted by a small majority to kick American troops out. If Trump reacts the way I expect and decides to blow off the Parliamentarian decree (after all, if he doesn’t pay attention to the US Congress, why would he care about anyone else’s?) then he’s probably just rekindled the Iraq war. And Donald may be too stupid to realize this, but America cannot win ground wars in Iraq and Iran. Hell, in the past twenty years, America hasn’t been able to win a ground war in Afghanistan, an economic basket case. It will just mean thousands of lives lost, and trillions of dollars squandered.

And Iran has renounced the nuclear deal in total today. I don’t want to hear a single American whine about that: the US arbitrarily broke the deal two years ago, part of Trump’s efforts to score points with the “let’s bomb them all” crowd, and the criminal fascist Netanyahu.

Oh, by the way, Donald. Remember ISIS? Those are the indisputably bad guys you claim to have defeated. Well, funny thing. The people who really brought ISIS to heel were the Kurds and the Iraqis. But now you’ve betrayed the Kurds, and you’ve pissed off the Iraqis to the point where they want your ass out of their country right now, and so ISIS can regrow, abetted by the propaganda coup that your foolish assassination of Suleimani has given them. And no, they still aren’t nice guys. But then, neither are you.

In fact, you’re a lot like Suleimani, except he was a lot smarter and less of a corrupt fraud. He was a vicious and crafty bastard, a master at asymmetrical warfare, and yes, Americans were his most frequent target. You may be wondering how such a bastard could develop a devoted following. Well, next time you hold one of your mini-Nuremberg rallies, look at the rabid faces goggling back at you with mindless devotion. Same types of assholes, only unlike you, with your manipulative nihilism, Suleimani actually stood for something (if awful) and didn’t have to pretend to be a leader.

His assholes are more dangerous than your assholes, and most of them are a lot smarter. You might want to keep that in mind.

It’s no wonder you reported to the Russians first ahead of your own nation. Putin must be beside himself with joy. For many years, since before you were born, Russia has wanted strong influence in the Persian and Babylonian regions. Reducing both countries to utter chaos is the easiest way to do that, since he understands that he cannot win a ground war or sustain an occupation in either land. (Unlike you, he learned from a failed occupation of Afghanistan). You’ve given him the chaos he wants to become the principal cohesive entity in that region. He doesn’t need troops and bases there to subdue the locals; he just wants control of the currency and the main industries, and you’ve given that to him.

And of course, the only country capable of preventing him from doing that is already in chaos, and largely at Putin’s hand. He managed to get a puppet regime that trashed the country’s intelligence and military, and divided and enraged the population. Place called America. He managed to get that most unlikely piece of shit you can imagine into the Oval Office.

That would be you, Donald.

And you’ve pretty much destroyed the intelligence agencies you now desperately need to gauge world reaction. What a fucking fool you are.

I can’t wait to see you convicted and thrown in prison. I hope you never see daylight again.

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Boxing Days – People are hitting back at GOP rule

Boxing Days

People are hitting back at GOP rule

December 26th 2019

Back when the House was preparing to vote on impeachment (was it really only a week ago?) one online news feed had the header, “House prepares to vote on impeachment as Trump rages”. Had I seen that headline in a crystal ball back on November 2016, I would have called it very predictable, perhaps even inevitable.

The only surprise to me was how much of Trump’s shit people put up with before deciding something needed to be done about him. Americans in general have a strong streak of authoritarian personality; they really hate to challenge authority. Didn’t used to be that way, of course; Americans were defined for centuries by their willingness to thumb their noses at their leaders. It’s taken three generations of ceaseless propaganda from the right and corporations to blunt that particularly American trait.

The problem, of course, is that a populace unwilling to challenge social and political leadership soon finds itself rapidly losing ground. Factory owners, priests, and aristocrats have never had your interests and heart and never will. It amuses them that they’ve trained Americans to, at worst, ask politely for their rights, and of course, they offer vague assurances that amount to a polite refusal.

Trump has undermined the pseudo-legitimacy of America’s ruling class, and the cracks are beginning to appear everywhere. Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham were convinced they could openly make Trump’s trial an utter sham, and they are learning that even if they can pull that off, it will come at an immense political cost. The Democrats have realized that they only need four Republicans in order to control procedural votes to help ensure a fair trial (if not a fair verdict) and are pressing hard for those four. A trial with actual witnesses and testimony is going to do massive damage to McConnell’s dream of sweeping the entire thing under the rug. The public is actually watching closely, and the Republicans are every bit as much on trial as Trump himself will be.

A Christmas Day poll revealed that 55% of the public support having a Senate vote on ousting Trump, and only 40% oppose. The day the House impeached Trump, the public supported such a vote, but only by a 48-47 margin. Even in the red states, protecting Trump from his crimes has become a risky pastime for Republican representatives and Senators.

Trump spent Christmas attacking the homeless. At least, the homeless in Nancy Pelosi’s district. He doesn’t gave a shit about the homeless, of course, unless it’s to set up for-profit concentration camps for them. He just has the misguided notion that people will blame Pelosi for the problem. But that sure catches that Christmas spirit, doesn’t it. “Get that filthy Mary and Joseph out of here with their bastard kid!”

The trash Christian right is falling apart as Trump finds and breaks through their ethical basement. They’ve had to be “Good Germans” for the past three years, pretending the moral smoke from Trump’s policies toward immigrant children and the poor and working people is just wood smoke, nothing more. That Trump has begun comparing his trial to the crucifixion of Jesus is a wake-up call to a lot of them, along with increasing pressure from the majority of Christians who haven’t bought the authoritarian Kool-Aid. Their message is getting louder and clearer: “If you think this human garbage scow of the president is the next Jesus, you are an embarrassment to both Christianity and America. Knock it off.” And it’s working. A large and vocal anti-Trump contingent is appearing in America’s pulpits and Christian publications. The “Jesus loves you but you gotta pay me for it” crowd are battening down, preparing for a social storm.

Public anger is growing as Trump’s scheme to slash Social Security and Medicare and further demolish Obamacare continues. People are aware that McConnell and the GOP want the slashes to pay for the $1.5 trillion tax cut for the rich that Ryan and Trump inflicted on us. People are tired of doing without so these upholstered parasites can afford a third yacht or a couple more Congressmen.

Panic is settling in. CNN had a poll of its pundits, including such luminaries as SE Cupp, to discover that in their collective wisdom, CNN believes Americans would be better off re-electing Trump than electing a socialist like Bernie Sanders or a liberal mixed-economy capitalist such as Elizabeth Warren. Think about that for a minute: the corporate media voices at CNN think that we would be better off with a psychotic, criminal, vicious and possibly demented disaster of a president over an FDR sort who believes that the national wealth ought to be shared with the people who created that wealth.

Welcome to the world of corporate media. They have only your best interests at heart, assuming you are rich, greedy and want only a docile workforce and a captive consumer market.

The corporate leaders already have the puppets posing as liberals in the Democratic party, the Biden/Klobuchar/Buttigieg contingent dancing to that same tune. Better to have a corporate eunuch who will only pretend to oppose America’s ongoing rightward drift into corporate feudalism, than someone willing to put up any kind of a fight to prevent the development of outright fascism.

McConnell is still making noises about keeping the fix in for his corrupt leader, but his protestations are increasingly hollow. At this point, some Republicans are realizing that they aren’t toying with losing a few seats in the next election, something their election fixers assured them couldn’t happen, but are, in fact, toying with the possibility of a popular revolt.

Americans were happy to follow their leaders, but now they see where the leaders have been taking them—and they don’t like it.

The GOP proceeds at its own risk.

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Quid Nunc? – Trump has been impeached. Now what?

Quid Nunc?

Trump has been impeached. Now what?

December 19th 2019

Seeing Trump get impeached was enormously satisfying, wasn’t it? He is the most corrupt, dishonest, and vicious president in American history, and it’s time he got a little recognition for that. He was already upset that they gave the Time Cover of the year to a little girl he could beat up with one bone spur tied behind his back, even though with Kissinger, Stalin and Hitler former personages so awarded, Trump more than qualified.

Trump did celebrate, going to one of his little Nuremberg rallies and proclaiming that John Dingell, the late representative from Michigan, was watching all this from hell. Why? Because Dingell’s widow, Debbie, who filled his seat in the House, voted for impeachment. I imagine that went over well in Michigan, where he just made a really cheap attack on their most popular representatives.

Being a tacky and mean piece of shit isn’t, in itself, an impeachable offense. But it does make it harder to scrape up any sympathy for him. Many pundits have noted that in the many hours of debate the House and its committees staged over the past four weeks, not one Republican stood to defend Trump’s personal honor. They may be cowards, they may be cultists, they may be endlessly servile, but none of them had enough imagination to come up with that particular argument. Even the old line about Hitler (“At least he liked dogs”) doesn’t pertain; Trump doesn’t like dogs.

Trump forecast violence in the streets if he was impeached, and he was right, if you define doing the Macarena as being violent. He’s impeached, and nobody with an IQ above 90 or a bank balance below one million is upset about that.

Now it’s supposed to be going to the Senate, the the jury foreman, Mitch “Moscow” McConnell is also going to be the leading defense attorney. He’s already said, among other things, that witnesses would not be allowed to testify: Democratic witness because they would be damaging to his client, and administration witnesses because they would be damaging to his client. (No, not really: Trump simply doesn’t want anyone from the administration testifying. It’s right there in Article 2 of the impeachment.) McConnell vows to make a farce of the proceedings, because fuck America.

So there’s a very outside chance Pelosi won’t even send the Articles to the Senate. The result would be the same, except Trump wants exculpation and revenge, and this would eliminate any possibility of that. The impeachment would just be there, a deep shadow over his “perfect” presidency. It would drive him nuts.

Of course it would backfire, as the Republicans would just claim that the real reason the Dems didn’t send it to the Senate is because the case is so weak. Under new Republican rules of self incrimination, you cannot be convicted of a crime unless you specifically say that you committed that crime. For instance, if you come running out of a bank firing a gun behind you and carrying a sack full of money from said bank, you can’t be convicted unless you say, “I robbed a bank.” And if you’re the president, the police can’t even arrest you. The Republicans have come a long way from their campaign to eliminate reading Miranda rights.

So it will go to the Senate, and I’m hoping that demonstrators by the hundreds of thousands will go with it. Republicans need to know that if they try to protect their Putin puppet, the American public will revolt—not against the government, but against the Republican Party. A very important distinction, that: most Americans like their country. But they hate what the GOP is doing to that country.

In any case, the Republicans need to know that trying to whitewash or circumvent a Senate trial will carry a fatal political cost. And yes, just nominating Trump in the first place should have done that, but we live in an era where custard heads consider propaganda more important than journalism because it’s more interesting.

In the meantime, the House must continue its investigations into the various and multitudinous crimes the Trump cartel has committed. There are going to be more convictions and more sentencing of various Trump henchmen, including Guiliani, and cases for impeachment can be brought to bear against Barr, DeVoss, and Pompeo. Mike Pence is likely to face impeachment over his role in the Ukraine thing. And of course, there are quite literally hundreds of other charges that can be made against Trump, including several dozen just from the Mueller report.

As satisfying as yesterday’s votes were, the fight has just started. Trump must be legally harried and pursued until he he either quits or is driven from office. And the GOP must pay a horrible price for their efforts to circumvent justice and for their role in degrading America.

It’s only just begun. Democrats, don’t think you can stop here.

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And Then There Were Two – On impeachment, Dems keep it simple, stupid

And Then There Were Two

On impeachment, Dems keep it simple, stupid

December 11th 2019

Abuse of Power. Obstruction of Justice. Two counts, both on their faces impeachable offenses. The formal text is available in hundreds of places (At random, here:  ) and is a short read, perhaps 2,000 words. It’s simple, clear, straightforward, and based on an absolute mountain of damning evidence.

The Democrats could have filed dozens of discrete charges against this most corrupt of all presidents, and in a court of law, have most of them stick. But this isn’t going to a court of law. It’s going to the House, where a vote along party lines is pretty much inevitable. Most of the Republicans will vote against it simply out of blind party loyalty. Some have an active hatred of a free and open United States, and want a fascistic dystopia in which they can maintain power and a life of ease forever. So yeah, party-line vote.

And it’s going to happen fast. Before the Christmas break, apparently. (If you had asked me last week, I would have said such votes would take place in the House in February or even March).

House debate begins tonight, and despite the best efforts of Jordan and Nunes and that lot, it will address those two simple and salient charges. Did Trump abuse the powers of his office for his own personal gain? There are hundreds of instances the Democrats can point to, and they need only make a convincing case for ONE of them. Most likely it will be the efforts to smear the Bidens through Ukraine. Just to clear things up, offering a bribe is just as criminal as accepting one, and offering a bribe through withholding monies mandated to be paid by law in order to secure a favor for a personal benefit is a clear case of bribery—and abuse of power. Just the clip of Mulvaney saying “deal with it” would make it an open-and-shut case in a court of law.

Obstruction of Justice is even easier. Trump publicly declared he would order his entire White House staff and dozens of people not even on his staff to ignore all Congressional subpoenas. Open and shut.

But it’s not a court of law; it’s Congress, one of the most lawless places there is. The intent here isn’t to appeal to the noble brows of solons preoccupied only with the sanctity of the Law. Most of ‘em ain’t got none of that.

Basically, it’s to point out the cowards, the corrupt, the criminals, and yes, the traitors. If America survives this and gets rid of Trump, then in the next election if your congressional voted in the face of all evidence to not support the charges, make sure your district is plastered with posters and leaflets pointing out that vote to people. Don’t be afraid to use colorful language; the Republican didn’t have a lapse in judgment, and it wasn’t just a difference of opinion on policy; he or she voted to trash America and all it stands for for the sake of a vicious and possibly deranged sociopath intent on dictatorship.

The vote might occur next week. It will pass. Then it’s on to the Republican-held Senate and Moscow Mitch. Moscow Mitch doesn’t like being called that, but he came by it dishonestly enough in his dealings with some of Putin’s henchmen, and his blind support of Trump.

There, it will take on something resembling a court trial, with the presiding figure being the Chief Justice, John Roberts. Whatever his personal opinions might be, Roberts is going to glance at the hundreds of cameras covering the proceedings, and the tens of millions of people who will be watching closely, and he will know that credibility—not only for himself, but for both the Senate and the Supreme Court—ride on the fairness and impartiality he brings to the proceedings.

That leaves the rest of the Republicans. Just about every pundit in the county is assuring us these guys will never vote to impeach a Republican president, and the track record of those senators, who cheerfully put party ahead of country, seems to support it.

But I’m going to go out on a branch here, and say that if the Democrats sell the notions that Trump abused his power and obstructed justice (and even by Democratic standards, it would take monumental amounts of ineptness to fail to manage that) then a lot of Republicans are going to be facing a deeply hostile electorate who will view them as scofflaws, betrayers, even criminals in their own right, obstructing justice to protect a criminal president.

There’s about 10 Republicans who will support Trump no matter what. There’s a few that might vote to convict. The remaining 35 or 40 may be up for grabs, and if the Democrats make no mistakes and keep it a simple thing, may feel that they must vote to convict, if only to save their own asses.

Things are moving fast now. Stay tuned.

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Time is Running Out – That is a good thing

Time is Running Out

That is a good thing

November 27th 2019

Time is running out for the GOP. It’s only 11½ months until the 2020 election, and even if they aren’t admitting it yet, Trump has been a catastrophe both for the party and the GOP. Polls show that a slim majority of voters now want Trump impeached and convicted and removed from office.

Trump is clearly hoping the Senate and the Supreme Court can save him from the avalanche of misdeeds and flat-out crimes he has committed, but both those organizations, even if they were favorably disposed toward Trump at one time, know that they can’t simply let him off the hook without their credibility and public support crashing. Some have figured out already that it isn’t just a case of allowing corruption to continue; it’s a case of sparking a possible revolt.

With no reasonable doubts remaining about Trump’s guilt of a wide galaxy of crimes, and overwhelming evidence of an entirely corrupt and criminal administration, and an even more corrupt and criminal shadow government populated by Mafia cast-offs and self-entitled silver-spoon kids, the public is angry, and if Trump is not convicted, they will erupt in fury.

There is no more room for an otherwise noble sentiment that all men are entitled to their day in court, and until the judge bangs his gavel, there must be presumption of possible evidence. Trump himself, through his braying and mindless taunts, removed any doubts about his own guilt, and the evidence—nay, PROOF—offered in the hearings and in recently released FOIA requests and legal rulings, is there for anyone to see.

Anyone at this point who claims Trump is a good man and a loyal American is at best a fool, and at worst a liar and a traitor. The GOP won’t be able to bluster and bluff their way out of this. As for the clowns who say, in all sincerity, that he is a ‘good Christian’, they are part of the same toxic branch of the faith that made Hitler possible.

Much has been made of the ‘hardness’ of the support Trump sees in the polls, He has the support of a seemingly unvarying 38-42% of voters, and even as the proof of his malfeasance and viciousness and dishonesty mount, the numbers hardly vary. Pundits like to compare it to Nixon’s support, which remained high—much higher than Trump’s, in fact—right up until the release of the smoking gun tape which showed beyond doubt that Nixon lied about and covered up the Watergate scandal.

We’re well past the point where in the Nixon narrative, Nixon’s support in Congress and among the general public collapsed. That was a different breed of Republicans; less corrupt, less cynical, less determined to destroy freedom in America. Republicanism in America hardened when right-wing conservatism morphed into fascism, aided and abetted by the propaganda machines of authoritarian plutocrats and supported by massive corporations who didn’t mind a little authoritarianism in the name of protecting profits.

We’re reached the point where in the Nixon saga, we’ve all learned about his deliberate efforts to sabotage the Paris peace talks and cause an unnecessary 15,000 more American deaths and over a million Vietnamese deaths, only to achieve “Peace with Honor” with the same terms that North Vietnam offered Lyndon Johnson six years earlier. If he were still alive, Nixon may have faced trial for treason, along with a host of war crimes. Trump is already at that point, which is why he is fighting so hard to maintain the dubious protection of his office. He knows what once impeached and convicted, he will die in prison.

The media go on about how intransigent the supporters of Trump are, and how they will ignore all proof, forgive all crimes, betray everyone in their blind support.

What the media forget is that these toy nazis are a minority—38-42% according to the polls, and if we reach the point where even the fools start to see the gravity of Trump’s criminal administration, it may drop to 23-25%. They aren’t America; they are a tumor growing within America.

The rest of America is also hardening, but in a different direction. This is the other side of America. This is the side that went from only 30% wanting to help Britain in 1940 to “the greatest generation” over the next five years. They embraced once-unpopular if not unheard-of causes such as civil rights, desegregation, space exploration, and a determination to fight for freedom. They have been fairly silent over the past four decades, stilled by assurances that corporate masters know best, all the important battles have been won and no longer need be fought, and increasing self-doubt.

Ask yourself: how did “liberal” become a dirty word? The fact is the Constitution enshrines liberal values, and many of the most glorious moments reflected a rise of liberalism. Even the Republican Party’s greatest moments came from liberal causes and leadership—winning the Civil War and abolishing slavery, and breaking up the trusts.

Most of America is liberal—and yes, that includes most self-described moderates and even some self-described conservatives (!) Need proof? Go see what the polls say about the individual policies of that “wild-eyed socialist” Bernie Sanders. They ALL poll at least 55% support, and some are over 70%–universal health care, tuition-free higher education, creating a national bank in the post office system, all of it.

Liberals don’t really like to fight. They don’t like describing their neighbors and countrymen as the enemy. The realize that bloodshed should always be the last option, and that force is always illiberal.

But fight they can. Fight they will. Ask Dixie. Ask Hitler.

They are realizing that Trump and his corrupt, criminal gang pose the same existential threat to America that the Confederacy and Hitler did. They are realizing that it’s either Trump and the GOP OR America, but not both. Anger and determination are stirring.

Resolved, they are unbeatable. And resolve is hardening on that side.

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The Beginning of the End – Fire and Fury as Trump Regime Collapses

The Beginning of the End

Fire and Fury as Trump Regime Collapses

Nov. 3rd 2019

In a spectacle never seen before in American politics, 30 Republican congressmen stormed the secure rooms where testimony into the impeachment inquiry was being conducted. Their claim was that the meetings were secret, which was wrong, and that Republicans had no say in the matter.

In fact, the meetings were secret because House rules, set up by Republicans during the Obama administration, said it was ok to do so. And not only did the 38 or so Republicans that were on the four committees involved in the hearings have full access to those meetings, but 13 of the Republicans who staged the Brooks Brothers Riot II had access. Even by Republican standards, this reached new levels of hypocrisy, dishonesty, and sheer stupidity. The thirty Republicans involved are liars and clowns, and the Dems need to make the footage of them making their phony and ridiculous grandstanding a huge part of the election campaigns in each of their districts this coming year.

This past week, the Democrats, as planned, staged a vote to make subsequent hearings open and public. Every Republican voted against that, including the thirty mendacious clowns who protested for open and public hearings. They aren’t Congressmen. They aren’t even loyal Americans. They’re cornered rats.

Steve King re-tweeted a clever graphic of the shapes of red and blue states rearranged to resemble two rock’em-sock-em figures. Somewhat less clever was the caption, which was that the red states had something like nine trillion bullets, and so who was going to win?

Red states may have bullets, but blue states have brains. My money is on the blue states, if it comes to that. Louie Gohmert spoke openly of civil war. Louie doesn’t know his ilk lost the Civil War. And World War II.

In the meantime, a rapidly-unraveling Trump has been tweeting demands to know the identity of the original whistleblower (and some of the trash right have come up with names, putting lives at risk—in one instance, fingered by the neonazis at RedState based on the fact that he knew John McCain) and threatening retribution against whistleblowers, leakers, those called to testify and those testifying under subpoena. Each and every one of those threatening tweets is, in and of itself, a felony, and impeachable. But Trump is far too out there to understand it. In fact, he’s probably never had a non-psychotic view of how these things work.

The person who first reported to the DoJ about the Ukraine phone call has an attorney, and the attorney, with good reason, is afraid that these feckless, criminal assholes in the administration, Congress, and amongst the trash right media are going to get his client—and probably others—killed with their feverish attempts to protect their mad lump of a leader. So he contacted Devon Nunes, putative congressman and presumptive leader of the cowardly and criminal conspiracy to unmask the whistleblower, with a unique offer: the client would submit answers in writing but under oath to questions sent to him by the Republicans. Republicans only, for some unknowable reason. He would not answers pertaining to his identity. Nunes, being the kind of man he is, will probably turn down the offer, because he needs conspiracy theories and large fogbanks of disinformation in which to carry out his tawdry existence.

It’s a sign of how desperate and rat-cornered the right has become when Faux News Harpy Jeanine Pirro snapped that it was none of our business what the President does, legal or not. Someone told me she used to be an American once. Must not have been a very good one.

But this is nightmare week for Trump and the Republicans. White House attorney Eisenberg is defying a subpoena to testify under oath to the House committees. In time, he’ll probably be stripped of his license to practice law and perhaps get 30 days for contempt of Congress, but he’s of no real importance; just another corrupt and bent lawyer in a sea of pseudo-legal slime.

The main thing that has to be done is Congress must present a case so compelling that it will totally unravel any Republican political will to resist. Not only must they have sound legal evidence (which they have) but they must have such a compelling case that public and party support for Trump and his criminal administration collapses entirely.

The House moves to the open sessions, with attorneys doing examination and cross, instead of vainglorious and partisan congressional hacks shouting ‘Lookitme!” for five minutes at a time. Combined with what is already known, Trump’s guilt is beyond any possible reasonable dispute.

The release of new information from the Mueller investigation, deeply implicating Pence and Sessions and McConnell, should also provide many sweaty sticks of political dynamite.

Trump and the Republicans for now will defy any law, and most standards of civilized behavior, in order to prevent this onrushing train of judgment.

It’s up to us to make sure they don’t derail it.

If they do manage to derail it, America is lost. They don’t want to govern. They want to rule.

For a thousand years.

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Barr versus God versus America – Nobody wins

Barr versus God versus America

Nobody wins

October 20th 2019

Thirty years ago, in the days of BBSes, I had a user who argued strongly for the elimination of a separation of church and state. He trotted out the usual arguments: there is no phrase in the Constitution mentioning any “wall of separation” (true) and that the founders were devout Christians who wanted Jesus to be supreme over the government (false). I countered, mentioning the ‘no religious Test’ language (which he had never heard of) and pointing out quotes by the founders that countered and even derided orthodox Christian belief. I pointed to American history, where, while a long way from serene, it remained free in large part of Christian versus Christian strife, a problem that plagued Europe from the 14th century on as Protestantism arose. Outside of the Nativist riots in Philadelphia in the 1840s, and the “Lord’s Prayer” riots in New York in the 1920’s, open fighting amongst religious factions was rare in America.

As the number of instances I cited which he knew nothing of mounted, he began to develop doubts. This was unusual; most proselytizers by then had left in a huff, declaring me an unclean liberal. I pointed out that for people supposedly spreading godly truths, religious authorities sure left a lot out of their narratives.

Then I told him this: that church and the state were two very different things. The Church saw to spiritual needs, and answered to an authority that brooked no dispute. The State saw to secular needs, and in western democracies, at least, was an endlessly malleable tool of the people and conflicting interests. One represented eternal truths. The other represented an infinite range of open answers. One claimed certainty; the other advanced through uncertainty.

Being so diametrically opposed, it was impossible to blend the two without corrupting both. The fluidity of politics undermines the absolutism of the Church: the rigidity of the church undermines the adaptability of politics. And both are susceptible to the temptations of power; politicians would love to have true believer followers; Churches want to extend their power so they have control over people’s lives outside of church.

No, the fellow I was debating with didn’t stop being a Christian or advocating his theology. He did, however, stop being a Dominionist. He understood why there was a wall, and that both Church and State benefited from that wall, and the rest of us from the depredations of a combined Church and State.

There were two things in the news this week that reminded me of that long ago conversation.

First was an extraordinary speech that William Barr gave at Notre Dame. Barr, purported Attorney-General, Opus Dei and Trump Thug blamed “modern secularists” for inflicting a “moral pathology” on America which lead to drug abuse, rising suicide rates and illegitimacy. (All of which are at their worst levels in the so-called ‘Bible Belt’). He went on to claim ‘secularists’ (presumably anyone who is not conservative Catholic) were engaged in “organized destruction” of everything that is good and holy in America, Donald Trump in particular. Yes, he claims Donald Trump is godly.

As if we needed further evidence that mixing church and state degrades both. The nation’s top cop feels that the 96% of Americans who aren’t conservative Catholic are moral scum; he also considers that prime example of moral scum, Donald Trump, to be godly.

The other story to catch my attention was the Pew Poll on religion in America. This isn’t the big decennial poll—that’s five years off. But they do smaller polls of the state of religiosity in America every year, and this years highlighted a growing trend: Christianity is in decline, while ‘no religion’ is on the rise. Twenty two percent of Americans have no religion (roughly a third of whom are either atheist or agnostic) and self-described Christians make up about 70% of the population, down from 78% in 2007. The non-believers crowd was about 16% in 2007. About half of that change occurred since Trump took office.

Largest decline was amongst Evangelical Protestants. While many may be repulsed by their corner’s blind adoration of the vile and amoral Trump, wouldn’t it be more in line for them simply to go to a different branch of Christianity, one that didn’t sell out its principles for an allegiance with Trump? The poll suggests that isn’t what’s happening, because while numbers punish the evangelicals more the the rest, it’s because they are a bigger part of Christianity in America. The percentage of each type of Christianity abandoning their faith is remarkably consistent. Dominionists and Unitarians are both losing members, even though they are very nearly opposites in belief and relation to secular power.

So even as the Catholic Church and the GOP are having fun degrading one another and America, something ELSE is going on.

I suspect that that three decade-old conversation I had is something that has become more and more common around the web, and more and more, true believers are encountering harsh realities that prove their faith is based on belief but not supported by facts; not just the relatively mild element of separation of church and state, but over bible literalism versus the actual world. More and more Christians find themselves uncomfortable with denying that evolution is real, or that climate change is occurring, or that they have a hammerlock on emotional and moral stability. Every day on the web, they encounter items that prove that their beliefs, based supposedly on immutable truths, are false.

My conversation was unusual, as noted, because the guy was willing to listen, and wonder. Others took longer. But now, with such knowledge universally available, and more and more undeniable, people are realizing that theocracy has let them down. And worse, the government of the United States has embraced a toxic form of Christianity to its own ends, making the argument for separation of church and state irrefutable.

Expect this trend to continue. But also expect increasing tides of reactionaryism against this trend. Trouble looms.

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Impeachment Barriers

Some Dragons are Imaginary

October 13th, 2019

There’s a lot of concern among the talking heads who aren’t just poseurs from the far right about why impeachment simply cannot get rid of the pestilence in the White House because it’s never succeeded before. Similarly, there is endless speculation about what might happen if Trump is impeached, convicted by the Senate, and refuses to leave.

Some of the concerns are well-founded, and some are grave enough that they need to be considered seriously. The coming impeachment is going to be a very tense and dangerous time for the country and anyone who says they know what’s going to happen is lying to you.

However, there is no acceptable solution that allows Trump to remain in office. He himself is the gravest and most immediate danger the country faces, and his behavior and words show that he has absolutely no compunction about sacrificing the country and the people therein to his own desires.

Yes, kicking him out is dangerous. So dangerous that the only thing more dangerous is allowing him to stay.

We’ve already passed a few of the ‘insurmountables’ that people said made impeachment a pipe dream. As recently as a month ago, only a dozen or so Democrats were willing to say publicly that they favored an impeachment inquiry, and it was ‘conventional wisdom’ that with the Republicans united and the Democrats divided, the impeachment process in the House could not begin. Obviously, that has changed, with only a few Democrats silent on the impeachment process, and disarray growing rapidly in the Republican ranks.

Another argument was that the public would never go for it. It wasn’t baseless: as recently as two weeks before he resigned, Nixon enjoyed 50+ favorable ratings, higher than any Trump has seen since he took office. The day he was impeached, Bill Clinton’s approval rating rose to 73%. It’s safe to assume Andrew Johnson’s impeachment was deeply unpopular, even though Johnson himself was unpopular. Johnson and Clinton were both impeached for political purposes, and the public knew that, and detested Congress’ abuse of its power to impeach. In the case of Nixon, when the “smoking gun” tape was released, his support, both in Congress and the public, collapsed, and only his resignation prevented a full-on impeachment and trial which he would have surely lost.

The scandal with the Ukraine, as manifestly, obviously criminal as it was, is just one of many smoking guns. Trump, after all, admitted he did it, and offered the defense that it’s not illegal when the president does it. That defense didn’t work for Nixon, and it won’t work here.

However, there are at least two dozen other criminal acts where any competent district attorney would have little or no reason to avoid taking to trial, based just on the available evidence. At least some of the crimes involve bribery, one of two specific crimes deemed impeachable in the Constitution. The other is ‘treason,’ and while he technically can’t be guilty of that as the United States is not formally at war with anyone, he is still committing actions to the detriment of the country, and in some instances, it can be shown that he did so for personal gain, or to cozy up to other authoritarians at the expense of Americans. This week’s nightmare decision by Trump to allow the Turks to invade Syria and massacre the Kurds has a lot more people questioning Trump’s patriotism than there were last week.

Another objection is that McConnell would prevent a Senate vote on the impeachment evidence. That’s not likely since the Senate MUST hold a trial for findings of impeachable crimes by the House. No wriggle room there, and McConnell may be bent, but he isn’t stupid. The public is watching, the evidence is overwhelming, and the blowback would destroy him and his party. Nor does he have the option of holding a farce process; Chief Justice John Roberts will be presiding, and unlike most of the Republican appointees of late, he seems determined to be a justice first and a member of the Heritage Society second. He’s certainly no liberal, and will vote for corporate interests every time, but he’s not a hack. He isn’t going to let McConnell make him look like an ineffectual clown. And with cracks already showing amongst once-solid Republican ranks, the flood of testimony and evidence should make it impossible for the Senators to stand and vote on a kangaroo trial. Many of them have already figured out that the only thing worse than having Trump as an enemy is having Trump as an ally.

People think the courts will protect Trump. But thus far, he has lost every single court battle relating to investigations into his possible criminality. Every single one. And at the final level, the Supreme Court, while Alito, Kavanaugh, Gorsuch and Thomas are GOP hacks, the rest aren’t—including, critically, John Roberts. And even Alito and Gorsuch might concede that Trump does not have a valid defense in his appeal. At the very worst, they understand that a blatantly political decision would permanently damage the Court. It’s still trying to recover from Bush vs. Gore.

Most dictators are astute enough to keep their corruption as hidden as possible. Trump couldn’t be bothered with such sublime considerations, and it puts his supporters more and more in the position of appearing corrupt themselves just by blindly supporting him. Republicans know they can’t get away with much trying to protect Trump now, and with each passing day, Trump gives them fewer and fewer reasons why they should protect him.

Trump has already suggested that the Democrats might spark a civil war by persecuting him. Most people took that as a dog-whistle to both the military and his loonier cult followers. While there are a lot of Dominionists and other ultra-righties in the military, it’s not a given that they would take Trump’s side to spark a civil war. While he may be their Commander in Chief, an order to round up his political foes and falsely detain them would be an unlawful order (the technical term is ‘lynching’). In a more practical stance, those members of the military (hopefully a small minority) who dream of staging a military coup to rid the nation of goddless librul commies might reconsider the wisdom of such if it meant Trump would be dictator-for-life.

Among patriotic members of the military, this week’s misadventures with Syria and the Turks and the subsequent slaughter of Kurds destroyed any illusions of Trump’s concern for the national welfare. The deliberate targeting of American troops by the Turks, led to an ignominious retreat by the US military and the abandonment of their allies, the Kurds. It didn’t help that Trump snorted disparagingly that the Kurds weren’t our allies in World War 2. They were, in fact, and played a key role in keeping Hitler from invading the oil fields in the middle east. The Turks, however, were not.

It was a disgraceful moment for America and America’s military, and the most likely motive was that Trump wanted to do Turkish despot Erdogan a solid in order to protect business interests he had in Turkey.

So no, the military isn’t likely to go to war against America on Trump’s behalf.

That leaves Trump’s more lunatic followers. Yes, they are a danger. But to be an effective danger, they would need to form a Resistance to back their terror cells, and a Resistance requires widespread popular support, and that just isn’t there. A lot of his support remains loyal Americans who want to support the GOP, and he’s making it harder and harder for that to remain a tenable position. Few of them are willing to kill or be killed by their countrymen in the name of Trump.

As I said at the start, these are very dangerous times. There’s always a bugger factor. America is weak and divided right now, and that could pose an invite to unfriendly interests abroad. Trump, knowingly or not, could stumble us into a major war. A natural catastrophe could persuade the nation to put politics aside, wisely or not. There’s a million things. I just gave opinions on a half dozen of the most likely scenarios.

Meanwhile, keep a close eye on the news, and be ready to jump.

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Times We Live In – We all lead interesting lives now

September 25th 2019

My, but we live in interesting times, don’t we?

Following US politics right now is a bit like Kremlin-watching from aboard an out-of-control train. A whole lot of mysterious goings-on, happening far too fast to make any real sense of it. Here’s a caveat that any forecast I make is likely to be invalid ten minutes later because Developing News. So I won’t embarrass myself by trying.

Let’s see: 48 hours ago, 135 Democrats favored a formal start to the impeachment process. As of this evening, 219 do—a House majority.

The DNI office formally turned the whistle-blower report over to the House this afternoon, amidst swirling reports that the Trump appointee threatened to resign if Trump interfered with either the turning over of the report, or the Director’s plans to testify before the House Intelligence Committee next week. Trump denied the reports, but then, he would, wouldn’t he?

There was an astonishing report that he told President Zelenskiy today at their meeting that Nancy Pelosi was no longer Speaker of the House. Nobody is quite sure what the hell he meant by that, but if he fired her, she apparently didn’t get the memo. The poor dear still thinks she’s Speaker of the House.

Trump went out of his way to implicate Mike Pence in the mushrooming scandal. He told the media not once but several times to get transcripts of Pence’s calls to the Ukraine. He may have decided to throw his veep to the wolves in hopes it will take the heat off of him, an action that for Democrats would be Christmas and Mardi Gras and New Years’ Eve all rolled into one. The would love to go straight from President Trump to President Pelosi and avoid having to deal with the psuedo-religious freak.

The edited transcript the White House released of the phone call, which included 11 minutes of conversation in a 30 minute call, reminded everyone that Trump and Bob Barr are both liars who don’t mind altering evidence in order to obstruct justice. Mueller report “summary,” anyone? Barr will be in the same prison wing as Trump, Pence and McConnell before this is all over.

However, it also highlighted their utter incompetence. Not only did the transcript make it clear that Trump did withhold funds and press for the Ukraine to try and find dirt on Hunter Biden, but by the use of a single word, “though,” Trump make it clear that the aid was to be conditional on them finding something Trump could use against the man Trump feels most likely will be running for President against him next year.

Yesterday, the Senate unanimously passed a demand that the Whistle-blower report be released to the House Committee. Yes, it’s required by law, and there’s no wriggle room on the issue, but respect for the law never stopped McConnell’s pack before, did it?

This afternoon, a GOP flak named Mike Murphy, with close ties to the Senate, told MSNBC that a discreet poll of GOP senators found 30 of them that might support impeachment at this time. It was already fairly clear that the GOP at large, while perfectly happy to work Trump’s corruption and viciousness to their advantage, were heartily fed up with the thankless task of protecting his ass.

Trump has the remarkable ability to demand loyalty of ‘his’ people, and then piss on their heads. And most Republicans have wet heads right now. Republican solidity is about to vanish, I think. Should be fun to watch!

Once the Ukrainian president was safely away from Trump this afternoon, a spokesman in the Ukraine, Serhiy Leshchenko told ABC News, “It was clear that [President Donald] Trump will only have communications if they will discuss the Biden case. This issue was raised many times. I know that Ukrainian officials understood.”

As a part of that story, ABC has a good recap of what happened with Hunter Biden and the Kyiv government, and shows how utterly futile Republican efforts to try to rebrand events as “The Biden Ukraine Scandal” are both futile and sad. https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/ukrainians-understood-biden-probe-condition-trump-zelenskiy-phone/story?id=65863043

It was a part of GOP talking points the party released to the faithful (including, of course, Faux News) this morning. We know this because the charming incompetents of the GOP accidentally sent the same memo to all the Congressional Democrats, who gleefully showed it to the press. Ooops.

The pace, already torrid, may actually accelerate tomorrow. Keep an eye on the news. These are historic times.

And as the old Chinese curse has it, these are also interesting times.

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Trump is Toast – He has created a prima facie case for impeachment

Trump is Toast

He has created a prima facie case for impeachment

September 24th, 2019

Speaker Nancy Pelosi has just announced that a full-blown impeachment inquiry will proceed against Donald J. Trump. Clearly, she believes that the evidence supports it, and that the House will support it.

Republican resistance is beginning to crumble: The Senate voted unanimously to demand that the transcripts of the calls to the Ukraine be released. It’s a small concession in a way: the transcripts are of one phone call to one leader, and all reports are that the complaint itself involves at least a half-dozen calls to several world leaders, including Putin and Kim Jong Un. But given the utter solidity of GOP intransigence in the Senate, this relatively small accommodation to the law represents a massive surrender.

Trump himself reacted to this, characteristically, with a self pitying whine. “Such an important day at the United Nations, so much work and so much success, and the Democrats purposely had to ruin and demean it with more breaking news Witch Hunt garbage. So bad for our Country!”

Thank you, Mister President. You may sit down now.

We’re going to hear a lot about how the transcript may not show anything really bad and how Hunter Biden is the one who should be investigated, along with lots of other apologist gaslighting. Trump just said that the transcript will show “no quid pro quo unlike Hunter Biden.” Hunter Biden isn’t the president, and even if he was as corrupt in the Ukraine as Paul Manafort, he didn’t violate the Constitution. Trump, however, did.

By his own public statements, he withheld $400 million in military and foreign aid to the Ukraine while pressing the Ukrainian president to dig up dirt on Hunter Biden. The office of the president, Volodymyr Zelensky, indirectly confirmed this, issuing a statement that they would respond favorably to ally legal request through intelligence channels regarding any activities involving Biden, but not in response to extortion.

There is absolutely no question that extorting a foreign power in order to dig up dirt on relatives of a possible political challenger qualifies as a “high crime or misdemeanor” and there’s no reasonable doubt that Trump did exactly that.

The transcript, even if damning, is small potatoes. The whistleblower complaint addresses a pattern of corruption and subversion, you can be absolutely certain of that. I have my own suspicions as to who the whistleblower is, and when his identity is revealed, he will prove to be someone who did directly witness Trump acting in a feckless and even treasonous manner in his interactions with other world leaders. Voters will recognize treason when they see it.

The complaint is part of a far larger pattern of corruption. Not just Trump, but his adult children, his vice president, and dozens of members of Congress. The fact that McConnell and others may be caught up in this mesh of villainy may result in them throwing Trump, his family, and Pence under the bus in an effort to save their own hides.

Don’t think it will happen? I call your attention to today’s unanimous resolution in the Senate. McConnell has finally realized he cannot stonewall his way out of this, and the known evidence suggests that he, too, is involved in corruption involving favoritism toward Ukraine gangsters. He isn’t going to let himself go down with Trump.

The GOP is disintegrating before our very eyes. Dozens of Congressmen are quitting, and dozens more will quit between now and the start of primary season. They know that the party will be utterly destroyed if they do not rid themselves of this cancer on America.

The impeachment inquiries will produce a huge barrage of evidence showing duplicity and treason by a large segment of the leadership of the GOP, and it will be out there with the public watching, in in a form where Faux News can’t pretend it isn’t there, or that it can deflect the overwhelming evidence with whattaboutery.

It’s unlikely, in my opinion, that we’ll see impeachment come to a formal vote in the House. The GOP cannot afford to let that happen. Indeed, they need to stop this before the lurid public testimony begins, and the real and irreversible political damage sets in.

The GOP cannot survive a full public inquiry into the multiple facets of Trump’s criminality, and their own complicity. They know this. They can no longer stop it by stonewalling.

So right now, behind the scenes, party leaders are debating how much of the Administration they have to destroy in hopes of cutting out the gangrenous parts of their party. They may already be considering forcing Trump to resign, or failing that, a 25th amendment move. They may have to sacrifice Pence (and thus the White House) if that’s what it takes to convince the public they aren’t really anti-American gangsters.

Except a lot of GOP bluster over the next few days. But it’s empty bluster meant to distract from the fact that Trump is finished, and threatens to take the entire party down with him.

Trump is toast. The GOP need to concentrate on trying to save themselves.

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