Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort. No person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open court.
The Constitution of the United States, Article III, Section III
Don’t worry too much about Donald Trump and this current Republican dominated Senate enabling an American dictatorship. It’s more important to look upon those things that really matter. Issues of real substance, like whether a giant rodent sees his shadow and whether we’ll be bailed out by the Year of the Rat.
Punxsutawney Phil put in his annual appearance at Gobbler’s Knob, apparently whispering in the ear of a member of the local business association that Spring will come early. You know it’s for real, because the man the groundhog whispered to was wearing a top hat. Just like Abe Lincoln.
Now there’s something good. Something nice. Something we can all get behind, because it’s something we can all understand. Like twenty-two over-developed men repeatedly bashing into one-another with all their God-given power on a grassy field while spectators scream their approval and feign their concern should one of the combatants be carried from the field after being repeatedly knocked bloody and senseless. Or two guys getting in a ring or a cage and beating the snot out of one-another.
Our recreational preferences say so much about how far we’ve come, don’t they?
The groundhog, really nothing but a big ugly rat without a tail, had no shadow this year and so Spring, they say (or the big rat says), will be arriving early. Isn’t that wonderful? Who doesn’t want an early Spring, other than shareholders at the power company who want to keep our furnaces burning as long as possible. You got a problem with that? What are you, some kinda Capitalism-hating Commie?
If the groundhog isn’t good enough for you, the Chinese Calendar tells us that this is the Year of the Rat. Being that China started things off with the Coronavirus, I’m not putting too much stock in getting any kind of a positive break from the rat.
But none of that really matters. Spring is coming early. We know this to be a fact, because a groundhog and not a rat, whispered it into the ear of some guy at Gobbler’s Knob. So everything is just ducky. Even though it’s a lie. What’s important is that it’s understandable. Something we can all support without thinking too much.
Don’t worry about any of the rest of that stuff people have been popping pills to try and forget. Stuff like democracy, self-determination or why the Russians seem to own the current occupant of the Oval Office, and whether we will be able to conduct a real election in November.
Groundhogs and rats aside, if you’re into signs, here’s one for you. I was down at the National Archives in D.C. yesterday and the the Declaration of Independence has nearly faded away. You can’t even make out the signatures, so maybe they were never really there? Maybe it’s all just a story made up by a bunch of evil liberal revisionist Trump-hating pinkos.
But don’t let any of that bother you, either. Thanks to Mitch McConnell and his Republicans, we now have someone who will be making all our decisions for us. An American dictator. A man who is above the law. So just let it go. Forget it and pass me another beer. The game is on and it’s something I can understand. Like Spring coming early.
The attacks came on September 11, 2001, killing nearly three-thousand people in New York City, at the Pentagon and in a field near Shanksville, PA. The nation’s airports were closed while public officials tried to sort out what was going on.
A few days later flights resumed and I was sent to Los Angeles International Airport to cover it for KTLA. On a spot of grass, just beyond the fence around the airport’s perimeter, I spotted a lone man holding a flag. Thinking it might be a story, we drove over to his location. He told me he had been there for several hours, wanting to be there to welcome the first flights back into Los Angeles. He had been there all morning. He had rigged up the flag in short-order with a pole he had in his garage when it was announced that the FAA was reopening the nation’s airspace. As we drove away he was still there waving his flag as airliners continued coming in.
I’ll never forget that man with his flag, our flag, who did what he did for no reason other than patriotism. And now, with a show-trial in the Senate and a nation divided, it appears we may once again be in for the fight of our lives. It feels as though we are facing a very real threat to Democracy and that there just won’t be any easy way out.
Recently a friend posted a picture on Facebook, a painting of George Washington, showing humility, faith and courage as he kneeled in the snow to pray at Valley Forge. The odds he faced were insurmountable. However, to borrow from the late Eric Sevareid, “This country was not founded by wimps.”
Don’t give up on us just yet. Remember that man with the flag. He had no reason for doing what he did other than he thought it was the right thing to do. The American thing to do. So he did it.
So Trump incriminated himself by releasing a transcript of a phone call wherein he laid out that he would withhold military aid to Ukraine unless the Ukraine would open a fake investigation into the Bidens. That’s Article I.
Trump has also repeatedly obstructed the Congress by refusing to honor subpoenas for documents and directing others who work for the White House, to not honor congressional subpoenas. And they’re arguing about witnesses? They don’t need no stinkin’ witnesses.
Trump is guilty as hell. He’s incriminated himself of “high crimes and misdemeanors” and has been indicted by the House of Representatives. It’s over. Take the vote and get it over with. Let the Republicans incriminate themselves by voting to acquit an obviously guilty president. All this other stuff is just muddying the waters and confusing people.
The Constitution lays it out quite plainly when it directs, “When the President of the United States is tried, the Chief Justice shall preside.”
To preside: 1 : to exercise guidance, direction, or control 2 : to occupy the place of authority : direct or regulate proceedings as chief officer -Merriam Webster
Mr. Chief Justice, our country is at stake. Please do your duty and take control. This is supposed to be a trial, not a sham proceeding designed to accommodate a president who would be dictator.
Chris Matthews just posed the question of whether what’s happening in the Senate is some kind of “jury nullification.” In other words, the jurors know what the law says they should do but they are going to vote for the opposite.
I think the problem is a bit different. Not only is the defense (the Republicans) threatening to nullify the law once it comes time to vote on the guilt or innocence of Donald Trump – they are also preventing evidence from being presented.
What is accepted into evidence, by way of both documents and witnesses, should be up to Justice John Roberts, not Mitch McConnell and the Republicans. The Democrats need to figure this one out and so does John Roberts. Without it there can be no trial, and without a legitimate trial our system of checks and balances, our Constitution, is no longer valid.
Without it, we will have a dictatorship, not just now, but going forward as well.
McConnell and the Republicans are trying to throw away everything that makes the Republic work. They are trying to throw away our basic freedoms. Our liberty based in law. I’m fairly sure the founders never envisioned one party or another stopping evidence from being presented during a senate trial. Simply put, you can’t have a trial without the relevant evidence, and it should be up to the judge to decide what’s relevant.
Donald J. Trump is not without fault. Perhaps his greatest, is that his background rests with the business world and not with careful diplomacy or governance.
In business, the formula for success lies not with the good of the many, but in profitability. If dumbing down the millions to make it easier to increase sales becomes necessary, then so be it. If letting the market dictate prices even though the process will result in thousands of preventable deaths and untold bankruptcies, then let the beast that is the common man and woman care for themselves. Moving the market to its highest profitability is the greatest good.
If grinding Democracy beneath the jackbooted heel of Demagoguery becomes necessary to improve the lot of the few as opposed to the needs to the many, then let hired jackbooted thugs grind away.
Trump obviously has no understanding of of the good of the many or a decent feeling for just governance. Instead of carefully thought out policy decisions he prefers the roar of the mob, whipped up not by the truth but by political nonsense shot through with innuendo. This could be why he continues on in campaign mode rather than developing reasonable policies. It could be why he is attracted to totalitarianism and shows favor for “strongmen” like Vladimir Putin, Rodrigo Duterte, and Kim Jong-un, whom he recently referred to as a “smart cookie.”
Trump was and obviously is not prepared for the the Office of President of the United States. He must be impeached asap, if only for his violation of the Emoluments Clause.
Republicans, by their silence, are complicit in the threat Mr. Trump represents. If they continue to remain silent then they should be regarded as traitors.
Must we wait helplessly by for an illusory threat that requires the setting aside of The Constitution, the elimination of civil rights and the establishment of a totalitarian regime? Are there so few patriots left in the Republican Party?
Frederick Douglas is dead, Andrew Jackson was not alive during the Civil War, Barack Obama was born on U.S. soil and Donald J. Trump has no business being in the White House. He is there only because members of the Electoral College failed in their duty to protect our national best interest against an autocrat who is simply not qualified to lead.
And now it’s the Swedes? Those amazing Swedes, putting down a terrorist attack so quickly and quietly, you’d imagine that it never took place. Which it didn’t. Except in the mind of Donald Trump, apparently based upon a report he heard on FOX news and then exaggerated for his own purposes while addressing a crowd of rabid supporters who think he’s doing all he can to fulfill his campaign promises to a suffering middle class because to them, fake news is real news and real news is fake. A condition only made worse by an authoritarian president who declares the media to be “the enemy of the American people.”
Oh my. Can we talk?
The net migration of human souls into California from Mexico is less than zero. More folks are leaving than are coming in. The census takers tell us that a booming birth rate is the only reason California’s population continues to grow. Been that way for years. These are facts, not fake news, like the attack in Sweden.
You wanna talk refugees? Or as Trump calls it, “vetting?” The average processing time for an application is 18-24 months. Often times longer for those wanting to come in from Syria.
President Obama, became known as the “deporter-in-chief” for detaining and then deporting millions of undocumented aliens. Two and one-half million, to be precise. More than every single president of the 20th Century combined. He also tightened up our southern border. Big time. But those facts wouldn’t win an election for the Donald. No, he needed to manufacture problems and then find a scapegoat to pin it on, so he went after Mexican immigrants and by association, Mexican-Americans, and pretty much anybody else with brown skin.
God help you should you happen to be Muslim or even Hindi. A Hindu women with a “bindi” or third eye of divine sight (a little dot) on her forehead was detained by the police here in Maryland a couple of weeks ago for going for a walk in her own neighborhood. She’s lived here for decades. Went to high school here. She’s thoroughly American. Never had a problem until the Donald began turning anyone with brown skin into the enemy. There are also reports that incidents of anti-Semitism are rising while it is widely believed that the ban on Muslim immigrants will drive new recruits into the waiting arms of ISIS.
And now, in his latest incongruous outburst, President Donald J. Trump is on stage and in the media freaking out about an attack in Sweden that never happened. And he’s President of the United States.
Let’s do that one again, he’s President of the United States, the most powerful man in the world.
Well, he had to do something to get elected, didn’t he? He needed someone to blame. He needed a scapegoat. The truth, that the problems of the middle class have been caused largely by automation and the off-shoring of jobs by greed-driven multi-national corporations while the markets boom and 99% of all new income flows to the top 1% wouldn’t have gotten the job done. Too esoteric to get a mob all worked up. So much easier to go after people who don’t look like “us”. It worked for screaming authoritarians in the past and now it’s working for Trump.
But now he’s using the Swedes? What will he say next? Something that puts the Russian generals on high alert which in turn causes the United States to go to defcon one, making the Cuban missile crisis tame by comparison because Donald is sitting there with his finger on the trigger? The Russians have already sent out jets to buzz a U.S. warship in the Black Sea and parked a spy ship off the coast of Connecticut. What’ll be next? Can we depend upon Russian macho man Vladimir Putin not to to overreact to the Donald’s next outburst?
This is nuts, and it’s getting to be exhausting.
Dear Republicans in the House and Senate. You wanted power? Well, you’ve got it. For God’s sake, begin impeachment proceedings now. You have got to get this guy out of there before he does any more damage. He is yours, he is dangerous, and you damn well know it.