Tag Archives: Trump Administration

Clock Ticking on Trump Expiration Date

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New Orleans      The Trump meltdown is going from the dangerous to the ridiculous to the absurd now, and then back again to the dangerous.  Everyone knows Trump has lost, but the foot dragging of sycophants fearful of tweeting reprisals continues to attempt to try to disguise the fact that the emperor no longer has any clothes.

His efforts to collect honoraria and make speeches in front of oil and extraction groups once he’s living in Mar-de-Largo are forcing him to try and speed walk holding an auction for drilling leases in the Artic Wildlife Refuge in Alaska that have the Bureau of Land Management asking for comments, which they will undoubtedly ignore, so they can hold the event three days before Biden’s inauguration.  I’m not a lawyer, but I think I would have a fair chance of overturning that in court, and real lawyers will make mincemeat of this craven move.

Various agency staff are meeting with Biden and his team “off premises,” meaning outside of government buildings, to facilitate a transition being blocked by toadies willing to break their oaths of service.  The military is announcing that that will brief Biden fully as well, if Trump doesn’t yield by December.  People are pushing him back from attacking Iran.

He fires the head of the Defense Department for refusal to use troops against Black Lives Matter protestors this fall and for not evacuating troops fast enough from war zones to suit him, likely endangering those still on the ground among other things.  He appoints a bunch of no-names whose only qualifications are that they will do what he says.  Does that make us feel safer?  Oh, no!  He fires the cybersecurity chief for elections, because he made sure the voting was secure and accurate, rather than mouthing the falsehoods from the West Wing.

Come on, man, have you no shame!?!  Or, perhaps an even better question, have you no pride?

These are tinpot dictator moves.  We’re past bad loser sulking and ranting.  This is un-American.

I stumbled on former President Obama being interviewed on BET on the eve of his book plodding on shelves for sale with over 700 pages.  He reviewed the steps taken as a president turns over the keys to the White House at the inaugural ceremony, and then waves goodbye to America on a government helicopter returning him to his life as a citizen, while the new president takes over.  He wondered if Trump would even participate in the inaugural, but he hoped he would.  He ended his point, nodding his head, and said, “hope springs eternal.”

Somebody needs to tell Trump that being a bad loser is bad for his brand.  He might hear that finally, because for every day he drags this out, he’s shrinking his base from 70 million to little more than the hardcore, and with that goes his future as anything other than a marginal mouth in the media.

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Accountability Some Fine Day – Make Your Own List

Greenville       Georgia is now a 45-45 tie between Trump and Biden.  Democrats are worried that students stuck at home won’t vote, the way they would in college.  My bet on that is that students stuck at home will use any excuse, including voting, to get out of the house.  Trump is screaming that the Attorney General needs to investigate Biden before the election, and Senator McConnell is passing notes to the White House saying don’t send me any stimulus bill before the election.  The last of Trump’s captive drug companies has pushed back its vaccine timeline, and the numbers are now saying it’s down to only 55% who are willing to take it now that it’s become a speedup.  Just another day in America!

Meanwhile, hoping for accountability some fine day in the future, maybe next year or sometime after that, two former legal eagles from different parties who served under Bush and Obama, are floating their own sort of post-Watergate reforms if sunshine breaks through the clouds.  Supposedly these guys have fifty different proposals but here’s some:

Among their ideas:

  • Provide more authority and protection for future special counsels investigating presidents or other high-level officials and have them report their findings to Congress and the public rather than to the Justice Department.
  • Prohibit presidents from pardoning themselves and amend the bribery statute to make it illegal to use the pardon power to bribe witnesses or obstruct justice.
  • Bar presidents from managing or supervising private businesses or establishing blind trusts for their financial assets and require any business in which they have an interest to file public reports.
  • Authorize inspectors general to investigate and report on reprisals or intimidation of journalists.
  • Revise the authorization of force passed after Sept. 11, 2001, to prohibit humanitarian military intervention without additional votes by Congress and limit the use of nuclear weapons to self-defense in extreme circumstances.
  • Ensure that the attorney general makes decisions on prosecutions involving the president or presidential campaigns, not the F.B.I. director, as happened during the Hillary Clinton email case.

A lot of that is inside-baseball and not everyone’s cup of tea, but my idea is simple as an antidote for pandemic-induced, economic and overall depression.  Win, lose, or draw, maybe it’s worth just thinking about the fact that “another world is possible” and making your own list of what needs to be done to lock the doors tightly against the horror we have been facing, so we don’t have to endure this nightmare again.

Hope is not a plan, but it’s something to hang on to now, so we can imagine a better future.

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