A couple of years ago I’d have said that the situation we have today was impossible. I mean, come on: an incompetent, racist, sexist, criminal traitor, ushered into the White House by a foreign power – and still there eighteen months later despite all the damage he and his gang have done and continue to do; and on top of that a significant portion of the people who voted for him are still behind him even, claiming to stand by the constitution as he tears it up and burns it a page at a time. Yeah, I know: half of any population is below average intelligence – but this is the country that put men on the Moon. You’d think people wouldn’t be so okay with being lied to multiple times every day. But they don’t seem to care. Rather, they seem to love it that they can bring out the inner racist without shame. And boy, it’s an eye-opener to see that so many people are racist douches.

It’s depressing. It was bad a few days ago, but what’s being done to the families of asylum-seekers is too much. It seems to get worse with everything passing day. (The thing that prompted this post was an article pointing out that the immigration issue is heading in the direction of ethnic cleansing. Here. In America. And what’s really scary is that it’s believable.)

I’m having problems staying focused on day-job concerns, and writing is out of the question at the moment. I feel a need to get the hell out of the house – head out and take a long walk somewhere, maybe take my camera and get some pictures. But (sigh) I can’t – responsibilities and all that. So it’s back to the grind, and try to take my mind off the bad crap for a while.

I was at my local pharmacy earlier today, picking up a prescription, and as I was leaving I saw a big grey-haired guy. He looked about seventy-ish. He was wearing a military baseball cap—US Navy, I think, but I was a bit too far away to be sure—and everything about him said Veteran with a capital V. Looking at him, I’m thinking that this guy’s probably not quite old enough to have served in WWII. But I’m going to guess that there’s a good chance he had parents and possibly grandparents who fought nazis in that war.

And then he climbed into a big Chevy truck and I couldn’t help but notice a blue and white TRUMP sticker in the back window.

After everything that’s happened over the last few days, here’s someone who continues to support Trump after it’s plain to anyone keeping up with the news that he’s on the side of the nazis behind what happened in Charlottesville, and in fact nazis everywhere.

Just to be clear, since I haven’t heard a lot of people reminding us why we say nazis are evil: Those nazis in WWII were the ones that said straight white people like us are the best people and that gives us the right to murder the jews, and the gays, and blacks, and the disabled, and the mentally ill, and anyone else we think is inferior, which is basically everyone that isn’t us. And these nazis today—you can call them White Nationalists or Alt-Right if you like, but they’re still nazis—are just the same old shit in a dapper new wrapper. Same agenda. Same evil.

So here’s a guy who looks for all the world like a veteran, who should know better than most just how evil nazis are. Yet he’s supporting Trump, the nazi sympathiser. The nazi enabler. The nazi stooge who won’t say a word to condemn nazis because nazis got him into the White House and he doesn’t dare piss them off.

And in continuing to support Trump, this veteran guy is betraying the people who fought and in many cases died in WWII to stop the same damned nazis.

So I say to you: If you’re still supporting Trump after what’s been going on, then that makes you a nazi sympathizer too. If you can do that, knowing what the nazis were then and still are today, you should be ashamed of yourself.

YOU see this all the time in the TV police shows: cop does something suspicious; chief calls cop into office; chief tells cop, “You’re suspended pending the investigation. Hand over your badge and your sidearm.”

And that’s what you’d expect, right? Not just for police, but for just about anyone. If someone in a position of trust is under suspicion, you take them off the job until you’ve looked into it and decide whether to reinstate them, or fire them. Hell, if I was suspected of doing something wrong at work, I’d be suspended until the truth was known. It would happen THE SAME DAMNED DAY.

So . . . we have a “president” who’s under investigation for collusion with Russia. Among other things. And yet he’s still in the White House. Still signing Executive Orders. Still in charge of a bunch of idiots and corrupt officials determined to tear down anything that gets in the way of them making more money and paying less taxes — healthcare is under threat, as are education, civil rights, clean air and water and food . . .  the list goes on, and every day that passes is another day of erosion of everything that helps and protects the people of this country.

This has to stop.

It’s way past time for Trump to be suspended pending the results of the investigations. House arrest at Trump Tower, or Mar a Lago, or Rikers goddamn Island. In the meantime, he and his corrupt hangers-on shouldn’t be allowed to sign anything — no laws, no Executive Orders, not so much as a cheque.

Hand over your badge, Trump.

THE title says it all. Do it now.

…I’VE learned a few things over the last couple of months:

• I now know more about the electoral process than ever before. In particular, why we have the Electoral College and how it works (or at least, how it’s supposed to work).
• I now know more about the US Constitution than ever before. I thought I had a pretty good understanding of the Bill of Rights, but thanks to recent events I can now say I have a much deeper, almost emotional, understanding of it, and why it’s so important. Especially that bit in the first amendment that talks about freedom of the press. Trump’s attacks on the press, apparently intended to cow journalists, is having the opposite effect in many cases. The last thing we need is journalism — fronted by the likes of Fox, Breitbart, InfoWars, etc. — that only prints Trump-approved crap. If there was ever a time when a free press was essential to protecting democracy, now is that time. If you’re a journalist, gentle reader, please continue what you’re doing — report the truth and don’t let the bastards stop you. We need you.
• Leading on from that, I understand the 25th amendment well enough to teach it to kids. Although I have to say, I don’t think there’s going to be any impeachment action going on any time soon, if ever. No, if Trump is kicked out of office I think it’ll be as a result of a trial — for treason, or corruption, or possibly even sexual offences. And when Trump goes down, I can see questions being asked about who in his cabinet of defectives knew, and what they knew and when they knew it, and some of those buggers will go down with him.

So all in all, I have to thank President Pussygrabber for (indirectly) giving me an education about some things that turned out to be far more important than I would have believed a year ago.

…THE one that the NPS asked people to download before The TrumpsterFire tells them to delete it? Well, I downloaded it. And now you can get it here:

climatechange_01-05_digitalprelim

(PDF, about 2.3Mb)

YESTERDAY was a black day.

But there’s still hope.

There are already those seeking impeachment on the grounds of conflicts of interest. There are still investigations into ties with Russia (which, I suspect, will turn up documented proof that the Trumpsterfire laundered Russian mob cash through his casinos and/or hotels).

And there are marches and demonstrations going on. It looks like the Women’s March in D.C. today has brought more crowds than the inauguration did, and they’re going on nationwide – and even worldwide; there’s a march in London as I write this, and I know there are others. (Update: I just checked the website and at this moment there are at least 673 marches going on all over the world.)

You Can’t Stop That Kind Of Signal.

So like they say, Prepare for the Worst, but Hope for the Best.

And always remember: there are more of us than there are of them. No matter how bad things start to look, you’re never alone. We’re all in this together, and we WILL beat this.

Misbehave.

RESIST.

WE’RE in a bit of a mess, aren’t we? There’s a president-elect, and the people he’s named as his cabinet, who are surrounded by controversy and illegality and just plain stupidity in the same way that a pile of dog poo has flies around it.

What amazes me is that despite all the obvious stink the whole situation has, Trump’s supporters are, in many cases, still in denial about the smell. You’d have to have been living under a rock for the last few weeks to have not got a feeling that something was very wrong, no matter which side of the fence you’re on.

How did we get here?

Well, first of course there was the election. We know Russia was behind the hacking of the DNC servers and the release of anything damaging they could find. And of course there’s going to be something damaging; these are POLITICIANS we’re talking about here.

One thing that was known about weeks ago was that the RNC servers were also hacked. But anything incriminating that was found, the hackers kept to themselves. And I suppose you could conclude that they didn’t find anything dirty or incriminating or illegal there because there was nothing to find. But, come on, does any sensible person really, honestly believe that? I repeat: these are POLITICIANS we’re talking about here. So one thing that’s been buzzing about is speculation that Putin is holding it in hand as a threat to Trump and others. I.e.: do and say what you’re told, or that shit goes public.

And then there was the whole Fake News Thang. Seriously, that had – and still has – a lot of the more extreme Trump supporters believing in pedophile rings and murder and all kinds of other crap. These extreme supporters plainly have no critical thinking skills whatsoever. Print an outrageous claim and most sensible people will want to make sure they have the facts before they subscribe to it. Not the extreme supporters, though: they take it in, no matter how crazy it sounds, because GODDAMMIT IT JUST CONFIRMS WHAT I WANT TO BELIEVE COS, Y’KNOW, LIBRALS. And they accept every word that spews from The Trumphole: he won the popular vote (he didn’t), Russia didn’t hack the election (they did), ok maybe they did but it didn’t affect the outcome (it did). Who needs facts when you can just let Putin Trump do your thinking for you? Trump could say that Bernie Sanders is actually a reptiloid from another planet, and these people would probably believe it.

Read it, accept it, no filtering or actual logical thought about whether what you just read makes any sense at all. Then we end up with idiots waving guns around in pizza joints. I think many of these people are the same ones that read – and believe – crapsheets like the Inquirer and the Globe. (And I know people – well, one person, anyway – who reads those things and believes every single word.)

Moving along from the election, then, and the next thing was December 19 and the Electoral College vote. And the question we should all be asking is WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED HERE?

See, the Electoral College was set up (by Alexander Hamilton, at least primarily) as a guard against the wrong kind of person becoming president: agents or favourites of foreign powers, those without the qualifications for the job, the “merely famous”.

But the EC has had its teeth pulled. In many states, the electors must, by law, vote for the same person that their state voted for. In other words, the electors in those states are there to rubber-stamp the result, no more. A state could vote for Pat the Postman or Rasputin or Adolf fucking Hitler and the electors would have to go along with it. If they don’t, they can be fined and go to prison. So there’s hardly an incentive for the electors to actually, you know, do the job as intended by Hamilton.

So, even though there were electors who truly understood their duty, and who tried to make sure the other electors were also aware of that duty, and who voted against their states’ vote for Trump, it wasn’t enough.

That wasn’t the last gasp for that, though. That came this Friday past, January 6, when Congress met to ratify that vote. And just before that, we found that at least fifty of the electoral college votes were illegal. Yes, FIFTY, at least, and it could have been as many as a hundred. In some cases the electors voted on behalf of regions (counties or wards or however it’s broken down) that they don’t reside in. In others, the electors hold other government positions at the same time, and that’s against the law; for example, from memory one of the electors for Florida is also the state’s Attorney General.

So, if the votes were illegal, how could they possibly still count? I mean, they were ILLEGAL, right? But it turns out that in another case of teeth-pulling, members of Congress can point out that the votes are illegal – but if their objection isn’t accompanied by a signature from a senator, it’s ignored. Did one, even just ONE senator step up and do the right thing? Nope. Not. Even. One.  Joe Biden had no option but to go by the rules, and dismiss the objections. And so Congress ratified the EC vote despite the fact that Trump is everything the EC was set up to prevent, and that many of its votes weren’t even valid.

What a clusterfuck.

So, where are we now? As I see it, we’re in a kind of limbo until the inauguration. We’ve already got the banana Republicans set to tear down the ACA, which will rip healthcare away from twenty to thirty million people (including, I suspect, a fair number of Trump voters who didn’t think it would happen); and they’re trying to defund Planned Parenthood (again) which will, if they succeed, will endanger the lives of millions of Americans who rely on them for cancer screenings. We’ll have a climate-change denier in charge of the EPA, and a twat who doesn’t like public schools in charge of education, and a religious shit-for-brains VP who believes evolution isn’t real and (like too many people) seems to think that science is all a matter of opinion. On top of that, they’ll be sitting in those chairs without any ethics oversight, opening up opportunities for corruption on an unprecedented scale. And world-class traitor to America, Donald J Trump, Putin’s pet finger puppet, will have the nuclear codes. Well done, Trump voters! Thanks to you, we’ll all be Putin’s bitches. Bend over and take it like a man.

What’s the best we can hope for? I originally gave Trump eighteen months, tops, before he does something so incredibly stupid and illegal that even his supporters can’t go along with it. I’ve adjusted that estimate down a couple of times, and at this point I’d give him at most four months. When the hammer falls, he’ll be out. (I still have this delicious vision of him being dragged from the White House in an orange jumpsuit and shackles and thrown in the back of a police van, and taken to an “undisclosed location” never to be seen again.) Or maybe, as some have said, he’ll get bored with the whole president thing and fuck off to play golf somewhere while Pence takes the wheel. (Not that I’m saying Pence in charge would be a good thing – he’s a weapons-grade shit-for-brains, too, but certainly less of a liability than Trump. Lesser of two evils, I guess.)

Last comment: Trump was going to build a wall and make Mexico pay for it. Then it was going to be more like a fence. Now he’s saying Congress is going to pay for it, then Mexico will pay it back. (Mexico has already told Trump where to shove that idea, so good luck with that.) Now, I read yesterday that the wall, if it ever materialises, will cost $1 billion. Trump’s a billionaire. So, Trump, why don’t YOU pay for it and send the bill to Mexico, so the rest of us don’t get stiffed. Let us know how that works out.

Until next time . . .

 

 

TWO more days. That’s how long before the electoral college casts the votes that will decide who becomes President of the United States.

Trump hasn’t won. Not yet. And hopefully he won’t win on Monday either. The electors can still block Trump, and if they have any care for democracy in this country, any sense of duty at all, they will do just that. Hell, seventeen security agencies agree that Putin has his puppeteer hand so far up Trump’s arse it’s a wonder we don’t see his fingernails when Trump opens his mouth. Regardless of the fact that those agencies haven’t produced a documented report to that effect—they really haven’t had time to do that in time for the electoral convention on Monday—they’ve made public statements saying that Russia was behind what’s been going on.

Lots of Clinton supporters are, of course, hopeful that thirty-seven Republican electors will vote instead for Clinton, which would make her President. I think the chances of that are so slim that they’d slide under my front door. On the other hand… it’s been suggested that if enough Democratic electors could be persuaded to vote for a moderate Republican, and enough Republican electors could get behind that, it would be a compromise solution that, while awful in its own way, would be waaaaay better than letting Trump within a mile of the White House.

Take eight minutes to watch this. Yes, Olbermann can get a little worked up but I think he’s got a damned good right to. Hell, we should all be this worked up about the mess we’re in:

Alexander Hamilton’s Plan to Keep Trump From the White House

It’s pretty weird to think that four years ago I was very against Mitt Romney; the idea of a one-percenter in charge was abhorrent then and it still is now. And yet, today, if the choice ends up being between President Romney and “president” Trump, then like Olbermann I’d back Romney in a damned heartbeat and consider us all lucky.

[Update on that, having looked into what Olbermann said a bit more: I don’t trust Romney as far as I can spit (no change there) and I don’t think McCain’s up to it. McMullen would be my choice. But any of these guys would be far more acceptable than asshole-elect Trump.]

I’ve heard a couple of people say they’re worried about what the more rabid Trump supporters would do if the electors vote against their darling. They worry about armed Trump supporters starting something.

I’m not so worried about that. Despite his win, only something like twenty percent of the electorate actually voted for him—which means that even if every single one of them went out armed, aiming to cause trouble, they’d still be outnumbered four to one by those who didn’t vote that way. And what would they do, anyway, other than get themselves branded as domestic terrorists?

What worries me more is the vision I have of Trump in power, winding the clock back to the nineteenth century and widening the divisions we’ve seen narrowed over the last few years. That, in my view, is more likely than anything else I can think of to kick off violence on a large scale.

We have a duty to keep telling the electoral college to do the right thing—to keep a Russian stooge with Talents of low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity out of the White House.

Resist.

Peace.