Paulietics

Is it too early to start trying to figure out where the bouncing ball of the Presidency is going to end up when Trump is tossed into Leavenworth?

I didn’t think so.

Here’s the big difference between previous scandals (say, Watergate for example) and the Trump cult coup debacle. The GOP blocked and dragged their feet and made excuses for years with Nixon, but when the landslide of evidence slowly made it clear what the outcome would be and the rats deserted Nixon, there were still thousands of dedicated civil servants to keep the government running. Most importantly, we had Gerald Ford to hold it together. Say what you want about the man being as dull as dirt, he was the President we needed in that crisis and he came through.

This time? This time we’re just a tad more fucked.

It’s not just Trump that’s corrupt, evil, compromised, treasonous, and actively ignoring the rule of law and shredding the Constitution. It’s also Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell and about 90% of the Trump Regime Cabinet members – and it’s Pence.

Pence has been trying to lay low, but more and more information is coming out that is showing that he was involved up to the eyebrows in this entire clusterfuck.

Trump may resign, he may be impeached, or he may get the boot under the 25th Amendment – but when he goes, what do we do if the evidence is piling up that Pence is just as bad and just as guilty?

Aside from the fact that there’s NO procedure or legal precedent for impeaching or removing multiple members of our senior White House team (and right this second probably wouldn’t be a good time to start introducing that legislation), with ALL of them under investigation, who gets the gig for this week?

For reference, the current order of succession is:

1. Mike Pence (Vice President) – For the record, another truly evil fucker
2. Paul Ryan (Speaker Of The House) – Not only another truly evil fucker, but today a newspaper in his home town said that he needed to be replaced with an adult, while it was unfair to call him a “lapdog” because lap dogs actually had a minimial amount of usefullness.
3. Orrin Hatch (President pro tempore of the Senate) – I was surprised while doing some research on him, but Senator Hatch might actually not 100% suck and be a nightmare. He wouldn’t be my first choice in any kind of an election – unless he was running against Trump, Pence, Ryan, Tillerson, Mnuchin, Devos, Carson… However, having said that, there have been at least a couple of instances where I thought he looked okay for a Republican
4.  

   Secretary of State Rex Tillerson – An evil billionaire (“Drain the swamp!”) who used to be the CEO of Exxon-Mobil and is currently negotiating over $500B (that’s half a freakin’ TRILLION dollars!) worth of oil and gas leases with the Russians. No conflict of interest here, nothing to look at, move along! Move along…

5.  

   Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin – An evil billionaire from Goldman Sachs who is now in charge of “policing” all of his old friends that helped to make him a billionaire. Can you say “conflict of interest”? Sure, i knew you could!)

6.  

   Defense Secretary James Mattis – I could actually settle for “Mad Dog” Mattis – despite the funky nickname, he has a pretty good reputation as a bright guy who did a great job leading his troops. We could do a lot worse, and by the looks of things, we’ll be forced to at least six times.

After that it’s cabinet members all the way down, ranging from bad (Labor Secretary Alex Acosta at #11) to really bad (Energy Secretary Rick Perry at #15) to holy-fucking-shit-are-you-kidding-me-can-we-get-SCROTUS-back-pretty-pretty-please-with-a-cherry-on-top bad (Education Secretary Betsy DeVos at #16 and HUD Secretary Ben Carson at #13).

What a fucking mess!

At what point will the Supreme Court and the Joint Chiefs of Staff combine forces and step in to restore order?

Or Putin, maybe? I hear he’s tanned, rested, and ready!

The evidence grows like a tsunami.

A special prosecutor is assigned.

The cowards in the GOP, now at last, finally, more terrified of their constituents than the megacorps and billionaires that have the lien on their souls, are abandoning SCROTUS like the rats they are, fleeing the sinking ship that is the Trump Regime.

The Trumpencritter, defiant to the end, heads off to the friendly confines of Saudi Arabia, trusting that his (alleged) billions will keep them from turning on him as well.

While he’s gone, out of the country, Congress screws its courage to the sticking point and declares Trump incompetent to hold office under the 25th Amendment. Pence or Ryan or Hatch or Tillerson or MadDog ends up as President, at least for this week.

Air Force One is ordered to fly home from Saudi Arabia, leaving the Trumpencritter behind.

The Saudis, realizing which side their bread is buttered on and not wanting to have any batshit crazy SCROTUS-in-exile dudes hanging around, quickly shove Trump into the Air Force One cargo hold as it’s taxiing to the runway.

Once airborne, Trump, helped by a loyal squad of Cub Scouts that were along for the international trip, tries to take control of Air Force One by force.

As Air Force One crosses the Atlantic the pilot tells air traffic control that they’ve been hijacked. ATC refuses to allow Air Force One entry into US air space.

Forced by the alien which has been living on Trump’s head as a fluorescent toupee, the pilot press onward despite the denial of permission to do so.

F-18s are scrambled.

The F-18s intercept Air Force One and confirm its identity. They fire warning shots to prevent an approach to Washington DC, herding the 747 Jumbo Jet away from the major population areas and toward the Midwestern states.

The Air Force One pilot breaks away and heads toward Mexico, as over the radio Trump can be heard screaming, “Take me to Zihuatanejo! They love me down there!”

The nation watches, riveted, as OJ Simpson’s classic low-speed chase is repeated in the skies, the pokey 747 trundling along off course on the orders of a batshit crazy madman, followed by a whole squadron of F-18 interceptor aircraft.

Will the Mexican government allow Air Force One to fly south of the border? Will they try to shoot it down? Will our F18s yell, “Dibbs!!” and shoot it down first? Will Trump do a D.B. Cooper and skydive out the back of Air Force One to set up a government in exile in the Ozarks? Will Trump forget to take a parachute and instead make a small, greasy, orange crater just south of Fayetteville?

Tune in tomorrow to seek answers to all of these questions, and more! Such as, when will I ever learn to stay off of the dill pickles, chocolate ice cream, and Red Bull smoothies? They’re doing some really weird stuff to my creative process…

I’m sure there are many GOP Senators and Representatives who believe in their heart of hearts that Trump is good and right and honest and the evil mainstream media is throwing up conspiracy theories and fake news stories fast and furious in order to try to smear the man’s good name.

Lets call these “The Delusionals.”

There are probably many more who know that Trump is absolutely batshit insane, yet they won’t turn on him – at least, not publicly and/or not yet. They’re cowering in fear of the big money companies who have bought their souls, terrified that without that power behind the throne and their election campaign coffers, they’ll go back to being small, impotent, little beings, fifth level junior partners somewhere without a shred of integrity left to peddle. So they toe the line.

Lets call these “The Cowards.”

There are a precious few who know that Trump is absolutely batshit insane and they’re starting to turn against him. There aren’t enough (yet) to impeach or remove Trump from office – but they’re getting there and every time SCROTUS pours gasoline on some fire, they see their own jobs being a little less secure.

Let’s call these “The Pragmatists.”

So when Trump does something incredibly and unbelievably insane, say, like handing the Russians some intelligence so top secret and restricted that we hadn’t even shared it with the Canadians or British because we didn’t want it to fall into the wrong hands (i.e., ISIS), the three groups all go into free fall, shuffling and re-arranging their order so that they can gain maximum for themselves by being the one kissing the most “Presidential” asses. They all pray that if Trump survives, they’ll prosper by being the loyal one who stuck with him.

Here’s where that fails.

Trump’s not going to survive.

Being near Trump won’t be a source of protection, it will be a source of getting destroyed as collateral damage in the upcoming Next Civil War.

Think of it terms of golf. No, really, it might be one of the few ways that any of us can get through that thick, fake, orange, Bozo-the-clown shock of hair.

It’s a tournament, and we’re all trying to make the cut so we can hang on for the finals instead of going home and watching it on television. However, in this case, the ones closest to Trump will get matching orange jumpsuits, while the ones who get out in front of the problems and help to resolve them with minimal bloodshed will get passed over when the Revolution comes.

When the music stops, being in a chair won’t do any good because Trump’s at the center of all of the chairs, holding onto leashes like a puppet master. Being up on your feet and running away from Trump at top speed will define the winners.

The current GOP might want to reconsider their plan, very, very quickly.

It’s a fine line between being dumber than a fucking sack of rocks and being an outright traitor, handing over critical intelligence information to an enemy state either because they’re blackmailing you or you’re in deep, deep debt to them. Today we found out that Der Trumpencritter is not just dancing along that fine line, but he’s waltzing along it like a drunken Dancing With The Stars contestant, more than happy to take our entire government and society over the edge with him when he stumbles.

When Trump invited two Russian “diplomats” (i.e., intelligence operatives  – pies, to you and me) into the White House Oval Office last week, with only the Russian press allowed in, we were all horrified. The common sense norms and practices derived from hundreds of years of hard-earned experience were being shredded and tossed aside like confetti. Yet all we heard from Fox News and the toadies surrounding Trump was how it wasn’t a big deal and we should all get over it.

We were stupid enough to think that the Russians would use the opportunity to plant listening devices in the Oval Office. What were we thinking?

Today we found out that, because Trump loves nothing more than to show off and boast, and because he hates nothing more than thinking or paying attention to someone who might be smarter than him (which means pretty much everyone in the room brighter than a dead cockroach), the Russians didn’t have to lift a finger to actually try to bug the Oval Office. They simply played Trump like a fiddle and got him to voluntarily GIVE THEM critical intelligence.

This was information so sensitive that we didn’t even share it with most of our allies. Because of the nature of the intelligence, the information itself could be used to derive how it was obtained, and from whom. This made the information almost infinitely top secret and confidential. Again, we weren’t allowed by the agencies that got the information to even share it with most of our own friends.

Yet. Trump. Voluntarily. Gave. It. To. Russian. Spies.

In.

The.

Oval.

Office!!!!!!!

People will die because of this. Absolutely critical channels of intelligence information from within ISIS will have already ceased to be, either because the agents and agencies gathering that information will have immediately been disbanded and fled for their lives, or because they didn’t get any warning and were killed.

The foreign government and agencies who developed these intelligence operations and sources? They will never share information with us again. We can go to hell, we’re now their enemies.

All of the members of our intelligence communities who risk their lives to gather information critical to keeping the United States safe? They’ve just been betrayed at a level almost indescribably far beyond their worst nightmares. By the ignorance, ego, and just plain old-fashioned fucking stupidity of their “Commander In Chief.”

We’re now more blind, more ignorant, more clueless, and far, FAR more in danger than we were last Friday. Because the man we have in the Oval Office is a traitor, a criminal, and one evil motherfucker who is doing everything he can to destroy this country.

He needs to be impeached immediately.

He needs to be removed from office by whatever means are available.

He needs to be in jail for the rest of his life for the damage he’s done to this country in the last three-plus months.

While we’ve still got a country to try to save.

It being Mother’s Day, as I was composing a comment earlier today and preparing myself to refer to SCROTUS as “the great orange shit stain on the conscience of American history” (which I thought was a pretty good turn of phrase), it occurred to me to wonder what my mother would think of such language, particularly directed as it was at the current office of the US Presidency.

I’m pretty sure that 2015 Nana (she passed away in late 2015) would be extremely upset with me and incredibly disappointed that I would use such language or have such an opinion of a US government official. Before she had a stroke and started going rapidly downhill, she was about as staunch and rabid a right-wing Tea Party member as there was. She loved Cruz and Huckabee and Ryan and McConnell and hated Obama with a passion.

I made no secret of my political views, so that was a topic that was off the table for years. I remember her trying to convert or proselytize on a handful of occasions when we would visit. I learned to smile, nod, and instantly change the subject (“How ’bout them Dodgers, eh?!”) because I didn’t want to end up not speaking to my mother over something like politics. Back in the day, it wasn’t like a political argument was literally going to potentially lead to the end of civilization.

(Ah, the good old days…)

Here’s the part that I never got, and I still don’t get when dealing with so many people just like my mother was. She was a devout Roman Catholic and as a result I ended up spending six years in Catholic school, years as an altar boy, and so on. But as a kid in the 1960’s and 1970’s in the midwest, that translated into a set of morals which were based on what I still see as the core values of the New Testament.

Take care of your fellow man. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Care for the poor and the sick and those less fortunate than you. Heal the sick. Be the Good Samaritan. Fight against injustice and racism. And so on.

I moved out of my parents’ house well over 40 years ago, and while I would visit them often and see them regularly, I can’t identify when those teachings of my childhood transmogrified into the hatred and bile being spewed out from Fox News and the fascist Republican Right. But for my mother, they did, at least in part.

Which was also a real disconnect for me. Up until her stroke she was still extremely active in her church and part of that dealt with tasks such as bringing aid and Communion to the shut-ins, elderly, and poor. I never heard her make an overtly racist comment. She was, right up until the end, a perfect example of what the Christian ideal should be in practice.

As long as you didn’t discuss politics. And then she would turn instantly into a Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich parrot. For the life of me, I was never able to get her to see how her daily actions were so diametrically opposed to the political bilge coming out of her mouth when she was triggered.

Mom passed away before the Trump bandwagon started rolling, so I’ll never know what she would have thought of his particular brand of circus bullshit. But I’m afraid that she would have gotten swept up into the cult following behind him, simply because Trump ran against Hillary and Hillary was one of the only people Mom hated more than Obama.

For the life of me, I can’t tell you why she felt that way. It sure didn’t match what she taught me when I was growing up.

So while Mom might well have been one of the Cult O’ Trump that would defend him under any and all circumstances, and she might hate even thinking about how I feel about SCROTUS and the language I use to express my hatred and revulsion toward the man and everything he does and stands for, I’m comfortable with doing what I have to do without any regard to how much she might have disagreed.

I remember one particular lesson from a strict nun teaching third or fourth grade. She was talking about martyrs and commitment and staying true to our beliefs. In her mind I’m sure she was preparing us to go marching into some Communist country armed with nothing more than a Bible and our unwavering beliefs, even if it mean a horrible, torturous, painful death. That death was worth it because we would be sacrificing our lives up to the greater glory of… You get the idea.

I’m not marching anywhere with a Bible to ram someone’s ridiculous theology down anyone’s throat, but there was a good lesson in there. If you’re right, you know you’re right, there’s no DOUBT that you might possibly be wrong, and it’s critically important, life and death, then you have to have the courage to recognize what is right and good and work toward those goals NO MATTER WHAT. Even if that means sacrifice, even if that means pain, even if that means losses and discomfort and problems and taking the hard road.

We might disagree on the details, but the concept was strong.

So despite what my mother would think and how horrified she might be, I’ll be staying the course. I won’t be happy until SCROTUS is in a jail cell someplace for high crimes and treason, and Ryan, McConnell, Pence, Bannon, Sessions, and a whole slew of others are in matching cells there. The things that I write here ever day might very well be the straw that would have broken my mother’s back and left us not speaking to one another.

So be it.

Now if only Ryan, McConnell, Pence, Bannon, Sessions, and all of them would have the same backbone and moral integrity. We might be able to actually get out of this alive.

Instead we have an outright actively evil bastard in the White House who is working daily to destroy our government and the checks and balances and institutions that have kept our country stable and great for well over 230 years. We have traitors among us. We have people who are working hard to destroy this country from within.

Fuck Trump. Fuck McConnell. Fuck Ryan. Fuck Pence. Fuck Sessions. Fuck Tillerson. Fuck Mnuchin. Fuck Zinke. Fuck Perdue. Fuck Ross. Fuck Acosta. Fuck Price. Fuck Carson. Fuck Chao. Fuck Perry. Fuck Perry again, and maybe a third time, just because he’s Perry. Fuck DeVos, also repeatedly. Fuck Shulkin. Fuck Kelly. Fuck Preibus. Fuck Pruitt and McMahon over and over and over and over and over.

For you, Mom, and happy Mother’s Day. You taught me well, even if you might have lost your own way later on.

 

So now SCROTUS is threatening to cancel the White House daily press briefings because his teeny tiny little ego can’t handle the fact that the big bad reporters and news organizations are saying mean things about him.

This threat is, of course, unprecedented and terrifying. The egomaniac with the incredibly fragile and delicate ego (which no doubt must be fed daily with the beliefs of a thousand nubile virgins) will casually cast aside a pillar of our modern society and democracy simply because he’s got the actual maturity and temperament of a three-year-old.

Of course, the media (CNN, NBC, CBS, ABC, Reuters, NPR, New York Times, LA Times, Chicago Tribune, Associated Press, and a thousand others) are sounding the warning and raising red flags, pointing out the threat to democracy and our continuation as a free and democratic society.

One network, Fox, thinks it’s a great idea.

That right there should tell you everything you need to know. If the only group you can find to support your idea is one that’s even more batshit crazy than you are, perhaps it would be time to step away.

Not that el Trumpencritter will step away, mind you. Just that he should.

 

I guess we should have seen it coming when Trump was caught on tape admitting to repeated sexual assaults prior to the election, and then BRAGGING about it.

After the completely unprecedented move of firing the FBI Director who was in charge of the investigation into his treason, SCROTUS today admitted in an interview with Lester Holt that he did it to cut short the investigation. While claiming that he wasn’t being investigated.

The associate White House press secretary also admitted it during today’s news briefing.

They’ve confessed, on the record, to obstructing justice. The same thing that got Nixon impeached. Plus the whole list of other impeachable offenses that we have evidence for, up to and including treason.

Yet Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan are sitting there, fat and happy, without even criticizing the so-called President who is by the hour shredding the Constitution and dismantling our government.

What.

The.

Fuck.

Are.

They.

Waiting.

For?

Perhaps someone at the FBI, the Joint Chiefs, or the Supreme Court (or ideally, a committee from all of the above) could suggest they get off their asses before they end up in adjoining cells at Leavenworth.

Perhaps.

Our democracy is undergoing an incredible stress test right now, on a par with the Constitutional crisis of Watergate. We can only hope it doesn’t make it to the level of strain (and casualty count) of the Civil War over 150 years ago. All of that bloodshed in the 1860s bought our survival from that crisis, despite the fact that we’re still learning from the experience.

The multiple crises being brought down on us by Trump, his sycophants, and his nihilist yes-men have the potential to be that bad – or worse.

What do we do if he’s impeached but refuses to leave?

What do we do if he simply tries to suspend the Constitution or declare martial law?

What do we do if he tries to start a major war in order to deflect attention away from his treason?

Like the 777 test aircraft in this video, our Constitution and democratic system have been built strong and flexible – but not unbreakable under any conceivable circumstances.

Let’s make sure that our way of life never gets tested to failure like that 777 wing was. Let’s do whatever we need to in order to ensure that our government and society never get to one hundred fifty-four percent of rated stress.

Unlike that controlled and contained test to failure, out in the real world things get very messy and can take generations to repair – if they can be repaired at all.

On October 20, 1973, Richard Nixon illegally fired Archibald Cox. Cox was a Special Prosecutor who was investigating Watergate and had refused a direct order from the White House to stop seeking access to secret recordings made by Nixon. It’s still known as the “Saturday Night Massacre.”

On May 09, 2017, Donald Trump illegally fired James Comey, head of the FBI, an organization that has multiple ongoing investigations into the connections between Trump and members of his regime who have been compromised by their intimate contacts with Russia, an enemy state.

On August 8, 1974, 292 days after he illegally fired Archibald Cox, Richard Nixon resigned the Presidency of the United States.

Anyone want to give odds that Trump makes it to February 25, 2018?

This goes one of two ways. Either the GOP Congress somehow manages to ignore the tidal wave of outrage over the blatant corruption and outright treason being shown by the Trump Administration and we end up in a Constitutional Crisis of a magnitude not seen since the Civil War over 150 years ago, or even the sniveling sycophants and toadies in Washington realize how much shit we’re in and they impeach Trump’s ass and throw him in jail. I don’t see any viable third option.

It’s May 9th. A better question than if Trump will make it to February would be if Trump makes it to August 8th.

 

Starting with the Liar-In-Chief himself,

I’m astonished today by the number of “patriots” who continue to wrap themselves in the flag and attempt to portray themselves as the last true defender of truth, justice, and the American way – all while rabidly defending a fucking traitor and Russian spy found in the highest levels of our government and intelligence community.

It boggles the mind. These cult followers (i.e., Republicans) are so blindly obsessed with hating Obama (who’s gone) and hating Democrats (who don’t control the House, the Senate, the White House, the Supreme Court, the state legislatures, or the governorships) that they can’t see that they have become the EXACT thing that they feared the most and fought against the hardest.

Can you even imagine the response if Obama had tweeted seven times in one day (in incomplete and incoherent partial sentences) about “The Fake News?” Can you even imagine how the GOP would have gone for the throat if a member of the Obama White House had been “compromised” by Russian intelligence.

It leaves me gobsmacked.

Yet, when Trump does it these cretins hear it as a rallying cry to protect all that used to be right with the United States. MAGA!