Tag: Donald Trump

Nancy Pelosi is dead wrong about impeachment

It is necessary. It is Congress’s duty.

Donald J. Trump, the falsely elected President of the United States, is obviously guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors.

This is not a controversial or debatable fact.

Trump was a criminal and a con man all his life, during the campaign, and after being sworn into office after an election that he stole through collusion with foreign agents.

As President, Trump fired FBI Director James Comey, and then went on national TV and admitted that the reason for the firing was to obstruct justice, because he wanted the investigation into Michael Flynn’s lies about illegal connections to Russia. Michael Flynn was a Russian agent, Trump knew, and he ordered Comey to drop the investigation, and when he didn’t, he fired him.

Trump fired Comey, because he himself is linked to Russia, and worked with them in order to benefit from a psy-ops campaign directed against American voters in order to sway the election to him. In return Trump has given aid and comfort to the enemies of the United States, namely Russia and North Korea, by coddling them and by poisoning our relationships with our long-standing allies. This amounts to Treason.

That right there should have been the end of Trump’s presidency. The only reason it wasn’t is that Trump is backed by the Republican Party, and they held power in Congress at the time, and because of their association, Republicans in Congress failed to do their duty to act as a check on the Executive branch, and failed in their duty to enforce the Constitution, and failed in their duty to impeach and remove a criminal President.

There’s a litany of other abuses of power and illegal acts that Trump has undertaken, both as President and as a private citizen and while seeking public office. It’s more than enough.

Democrat Nancy Pelosi, now Speaker of the House, doesn’t agree. Pelosi feels that there should be a high bar to impeachment, and that the process should be slow and careful. And there should be a high bar to impeachment. And yet, it appears no bar is high enough for our Speaker.

It’s difficult to imagine what crime would be high enough to warrant impeachment, in Pelosi’s mind, if obstruction of justice and outright treason fail to reach that level.

The authors of the Constitution did not intend for impeachment to be a slow, deliberative process. We elect officials to brief terms in office so that they may be removed by the public if it deems the official to be doing a poor job. For the president, they get a performance review every four years, and if they don’t measure up, the public will remove them. Four years is relatively brief amount of time, when compared to monarchs who rule for life, but it is still a long time. Impeachment is a remedy that is meant to be undertaken in the time between elections, to immediately rectify a situation where the President has committed crimes egregious enough that the situation cannot wait for the next election. Not to take the bulk of the term of office to move slowly toward maybe enforcing the law if it is determined to be politically popular and expedient. We are supposed to be a nation of laws.

With Trump, this started well before Day One in office.

Impeachment articles can be drafted in days or weeks, and a senate trial can be held in days or weeks, or perhaps months at the most. It is not meant for impeachment to happen only at the end of an investigation that takes up half or more of the presidential term in office. It’s ridiculous to suggest that. Robert Mueller’s investigation needs to be thorough, but we do not need to completely track down every last allegation about the crimes of Trump, his Administration, and his private business to know that impeachment is warranted, as soon as humanly possible.

President Obama was already aware of Russian meddling in the 2016 election, and had the FBI working on the case before the election.

Obama had enough reason to believe that the election was compromised that he wanted to make a statement to the public about this, but declined to do so when Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a rank hypocrite who has never willingly cooperated with anything that President Obama has ever wanted to do, and who has consistently opposed Obama at every opportunity, even when it means contradicting his own previous statements on the record, refused to cooperate with making a joint announcement to ensure the nation’s unity.

Regardless of McConnell’s unwillingness to work with the President on a matter of vital necessity to the security of the nation and its government, this should have been enough to delay certifying the election results, pending the full outcome of the investigation. But, for reasons I cannot fathom, President Obama chose instead to put his faith in the system to do its work to check the power of the President, even after the transition of power to a man who, if guilty of the things it appeared at the time he may have been guilty of, would have had every reason to obstruct that work, and have very little to hold him back from doing so.

Nancy Pelosi has stated that impeachment should not be a political move –that in order to be successful, it must have bipartisan support. This shows a terrible misunderstanding on her part of what impeachment is.

When we talk about partisan or bipartisan support for a measure that Congress is undertaking, normally we are talking about legislative acts — passing bills into law. Impeachment is a different matter, one of investigation into criminal acts by the President.

Laws are laws. Whether an accused individual has broken the law is a matter of facts, not political philosophy. When the Senate votes on impeachment, they are voting yes or no based on the facts presented in support of the charges. A no vote to impeachment is to say one of the following: that the evidence and arguments presented in the trial failed to prove the case, or that the charges are not sufficient to warrant removal.

Again, the charges in the case of President Trump are obviously more than sufficient, if proven, to warrant his impeachment and removal from office. The only question then, is whether the facts can be presented. But Trump has time and again, blatantly and in public obstructed justice, and admitted to obstructing justice. Through his tweets, and through statements given in interviews. Firing Comey over the “Russia Thing” alone was sufficient. And then Trump confessed, quite matter of factly that the reason he did it was because Comey declined to drop the investigation. Game over, case closed. Open and shut. Slam dunk.

Trump should be in prison right now, and by now should be close to a year into a life sentence for conspiring and colluding with this nation’s enemies to defraud the public and steal an election in a bid to further the interests of a foreign government. If Congress were not derelict in its duty.

None of this has anything to do with the fact that Trump ran as a Republican, and that his political positions are abhorrent, or that he’s completely unqualified and incompetent to be in office. None of it. This is about the crimes committed by the President, or by his people, in his name and with his knowledge.

Impeaching Trump is not a political act. It is not a partisan act. It is a matter of law.

Congress’s role as a check to the Executive Branch demands that it act in this matter, in this way. Rather, not impeaching Trump is the political, partisan act. To ignore his crimes, to ignore evidence, to claim that the crimes aren’t crimes, or that his crimes don’t matter, or aren’t important enough, or that laws can’t be enforced against a sitting President because he is the top and somehow the law doesn’t also apply to him, is the political, partisan act. When articles of impeachment are brought to the Senate for a vote, the vote isn’t “I’m a Republican” or “I’m a Democrat”. It’s “Guilty” or “Not Guilty.” A Republican who can’t find a way to vote “Guilty” on this case when the facts show that the President is guilty of committing the crimes he is accused of, is voting “I’m a Republican.” And that is the true political act.

Democratic leadership seems to be against impeachment not because it’s not the right thing to do, but because they can’t successfully do it. But yet, right now the Senate is expected to pass a resolution drafted by the House to check the President on his emergency declaration on the fake border emergency. This, despite that it’s certain that the President will veto and the Senate will likely not have a veto-proof supermajority. Why is it fine to carry forward one measure but not the other?

Finally, impeachment will not divide the nation. The President has an approval rating around 40%. In the last election, his party was overwhelmingly defeated by a public that rebuked him, even with voter suppression and gerrymandering tipping the scales. The nation is united against Trump.

Even among the 40% of his supporters, many of them acknowledge that Trump may have committed crimes, but they support his party and its policies, and that is why they continue to support him. But it’s a political act to impeach him, not to defend him? Hogwash. Removing a criminal from office is not discretionary. It is a matter of duty, required by the rule of law.

Trump himself said that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and not lose support. It might be the one true thing that he’s ever said.

It’s quite apparent by now that nothing Trump does will damage the support he enjoys from his die hard base. Ergo, no matter what, the nation is divided. We cannot wait for Republicans who are comfortable aligning themselves to a criminal president in order to “own the lips” to come on board. We must move forward. “Only” 60% of the citizens support will have to do.

As Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi has the power to bring articles of impeachment to the Senate and put the President to trial. The situation requires this of her as a matter of duty. Whether the Senate is comprised of people who are willing to vote to remove or not is immaterial. The facts should be presented, and the public should judge the actions of the Senators who vote on the articles. Present the strongest possible case and if any senator can still vote no to impeachment, let him or her be voted out of office.

Right now, as it stands, Congress is aiding and abetting a criminal President. Sadly, this might have be expected of his own party, although it shouldn’t be. But for the Speaker of the House and member of the opposition party to say that it’s pointless to even try to impeach without bipartisan support, guarantees that the opposition party will never provide that support. News flash, Nancy: You will never get bipartisan support without trying to get it. All they have to do is help their President obstruct, and the crimes will stand. By bringing a case and backing it with proof, either the Senate will do the right thing and remove a criminal President, or it will join the President in his crimes by abetting and covering up.

By failing to bring articles of impeachment in a timely manner, Congress already is abetting and covering up those crimes.

Why is prosecuting treason a political act, but defending treason isn’t? Where are the bipartisan democrats defending the high crimes and misdemeanors of Trump?

Oh, that’s right… sitting in the seat of the Speaker of the House. God damn it.

This cannot be allowed. We do not have a nation of laws if this is allowed to stand. We do not have a constitutional republic. What we have is a kleptocracy of privileged elites who have so much power and influence that they can get away with whatever crime.

If you think you’re against this President, and you’re not impeaching him for his litany of obvious crimes, let’s be clear: you’re not against him.

Nancy, to be clear: If you’re not against the President, you’re with him.

Patriots and nationalists: the real truth

French President Emmanuel Macron tried to make some point over the weekend about Nationalism vs. Patriotism, in a rebuke of Donald Trump’s nationalistic ways.

It’s bullshit.

Not the rebuke of Trump; that was much needed. But the idea that we can distinguish between nationalism and patriotism.

They’re synonyms. They more or less mean the same thing. Yeah, there are maybe some slight differences of connotation, of usage, but they’re pretty close to interchangeable.

English is a highly overloaded language and there’s a lot of redundant words, and we use them to reflect nuance, but sometimes that nuance isn’t really there, or isn’t really as big as we make it. But for one reason or another, we end up deciding we like one word over another, like we have better taste for having a more refined vocabulary.

But I digress.

There’s good things and bad things about countries, and therefore there’s good things and bad things about loving your country. You can’t take all the good things, shove them to one side, and say “we’re going to label that ‘patriotism'” and then take all the bad things, shove them over to the other side, and say “that’s nationalism”.

We have to come to grips with the fact that whatever label you use, there’s good and bad wrapped up in humanity, and therefore, irreducibly, in any human collective.

What we need to do is use our brains, our reason and judgment, our ability to perceive, to fix the problems that the bad causes, and amplify the good. We can do this. We have had a good, long run of doing it. The overwhelming trend over the last 10,000-50,000 years has been that we do it. It seems like as we’ve scaled up our numbers, the challenges have gotten greater, and that lately maybe we’re coming up short more than not. Those glaciers are melting. We need to get back to doing smart things, and fixing problems. Less petty fights, and definitely way less concentrating wealth and power into the hands of a tiny fraction of a percent of all people.

Back to Macron: If your takeaway from his speech was that there’s bad nationalists and good patriots and hey I’m a patriot, and that sounds good and makes me feel good to say it, and now I’m better than these bad nationalists, you’ve completely missed the real truth.

The real truth is this: There’s plenty of fucking bullshit wrapped up in patriotism. Plenty. There’s plenty of bad carried out in the name of patriotism. Patriotic sentiment can and has at times netted a positive good for human civilization. But it nearly as often carries with it that bad stuff that you can’t just scrape off and shed onto the word “nationalism” and then say “our country is so good, it’s the best! I’m a patriot!” and feel like all is right with the world. It doesn’t work that way.

A lot of the good stuff about patriotism could be applied just as well, just as easily to a larger collective of people inside an even larger border.

We could draw the border as the edge of our solar system, and feel all the good things that we currently ascribe to how we feel about our country.

We could say “We are the people of Earth! A good people! The only people, in fact, anywhere! We’re all here trying to make shit work, keep each other alive, and comfortable, and maybe laugh a bit, before we die.”

We could say that. There’s no reason we couldn’t. But most of us won’t, won’t even consider it. Why? Because countries. Because invisible lines agreed to by the ancestors of powerful men, and paid for in blood. Because we’re too afraid of each other to forgive and to forge trust. Because we’re too concerned with our small concerns, and trying to fuck over someone else just to get a leg up on everyone else.

In the mythical past when we were great, which existed even then as an imperfect, incomplete fiction, we dreamed of global unification, of reaching out into the cosmos and taming the void. We dreamed about mega scale engineering projects to transform dead worlds and branch out, extending our civilization. Because we thought that it was worth something, and worth preserving, spreading, and sharing.

No one much talks about those dreams any more. We talk about oil and natural gas reserves. We talk about garbage patches, turning the oceans into a plastic soup. We talk about fresh water, and sometimes about glaciers. We talk about the Kardashians, and not very much about the disappearing animals and the vanishing rainforests. We talk about our skin color and who we like to have sex with, like it’s some big deal that overshadows the great extinction event we’ve triggered. And we talk about wars that were fought a century ago, having learned nothing from them, even as we ignore the wars happening in poor places encircling the planet, the direct heritage of the War to End All Wars, which we so foolishly perceive to have “ended”.

We needed to discard patriotism a long time ago, and embrace humanism. We are a tremendous disappointment in so many ways. And a good third of us, at least, are mindlessly tugging the whole lot of us backwards, while another third of us passively do nothing, and another third express some reservations — politely, as though “how you play the game” matters more than winning or losing.

Well, I don’t have a tidy wrap-up. No happy ending. No hopeful message. No plan. Just some observations and some judgments. You can hammer the Like button if you want to, you can share this far and wide, you can copy and paste it, you can mail it and email it, you can print it on billboards, and you can carve it into mountains, but it won’t make a bit of difference, it won’t change a thing.

What will make a difference is what you do with your life.

Enjoy your time here, while you can. Try to fix some problems. Try to learn from some mistakes.