Last Saturday afternoon, some 200 or so of Congressman Jim Renacci’s constituents stood in the cold outside his Parma office because the doors was looked and Renacci and his staff were missing in action. We will have another chance to demand that Renacci start doing his job in Strongsville on Monday, 6 March, at the Strongsville Business Network Breakfast hosted by the Strongsville Chamber of Commerce. The weather promises to be much nicer on Monday.

No one paid any of us to show up at these events, but Renacci draws a regular paycheck from us, the people he sought to represent. Renacci needs to stop trying to raise money so that he can get a different job as an elected official and start doing the job he has now.

Ralph Nader, writing in Breaking Through Power: It’s Easier than We Think, has much more to say on the topic nationally:

Back in Congress following February recess’s raucous town meetings, Republicans are shuddering. Instead of nearly empty auditoriums, where legislators’ staff often outnumber voters in attendance, meetings were packed with citizens determined to block the “take away” agenda of the Trump Republicans.

It takes provocation for people to show up for face-to-face confrontations with their Senators or Representatives. So when out of touch politicians in safe electoral districts are seen attempting to take away people’s health insurance, social security benefits or other protections—watch out! As the New York Times reported: “In the reddest of districts and the smallest of towns, a movement without name has hurtled ahead of expectations.”

Among these smug Republicans, who escaped because they had not scheduled any town meetings, the response is dismissive, alleging the protestors were professional, paid disrupters. This charge only made the people—many of whom Continue Reading »

Writing in Papers, Please for The Atlantic, Garrett Epps tells us”

American citizens had their introduction to the Trump-era immigration machine Wednesday, when Customs and Border Protection agents met an airliner that had just landed at New York’s JFK airport after a flight from San Francisco. According to passenger accounts, a flight attendant announced that all passengers would have to show their “documents” as they deplaned, and they did. The reason for the search, Homeland Security officials said, was to assist Immigration and Customs Enforcement in a search for a specific immigrant who had received a deportation order after multiple criminal convictions. The target was not on the flight.

After days of research, I can find no legal authority for ICE or CBP to require passengers to show identification on an entirely domestic fight. The ICE authorizing statute, 8 U.S.C. § 1357, provides that agents can conduct warrantless searches of “any person seeking admission to the United States”—if, that is, the officer has “reasonable cause to suspect” that the individual searched may be deportable. CBP’s statute, 19 U.S.C. § 1467, grants search authority “whenever a vessel from a foreign port or place or from a port or place in any Territory or possession of the United States arrives at a port or place in the United States.” CBP regulations, set out at 19 C.F.R. § 162.6, allow agents to search “persons, baggage, and merchandise arriving in the Customs territory of the United States from places outside thereof.”

So, they weren’t checking IDs of people who looked Hispanic, or Asia, or Semitic or African. They were checking the IDs of everyone, including, one can only presume, white guys in business suits who bought first class tickets.

Could this be a game changer?

PHOTO BY MARY JO HANLON

I’m only one-quarter Welsh from my father’s mother whose grandfather Thomas Evans came to America from Newtown, Wales in 1872, but I’ve come to identify more with that part of my heritage than any other to the extent that I have a Welsh flag hung over the fireplace in my office.

St. David is the patron saint of Wales just as St. Patrick is the patron saint of Ireland.

According to Wikipedia:

Saint David (Welsh: Dewi Sant) was born towards the end of the 5th century. He was a scion of the royal house of Ceredigion, and founded a Celtic monastic community at Glyn Rhosyn (The Vale of Roses) on the western headland of Pembrokeshire (Welsh: Sir Benfro) at the spot where St David’s Cathedral stands today.

David’s fame as a teacher and his asceticism spread among Celtic Christians. His foundation at Glyn Rhosin became an important Christian shrine, and the most important centre in Wales. The date of Saint David’s death is recorded as 1 March, but the year is uncertain—possibly 601. As his tearful monks prepared for his death Saint David uttered these words: “Brothers be ye constant. The yoke which with single mind ye have taken, bear ye to the end; and whatsoever ye have seen with me and heard, keep and fulfil.”

For centuries, 1 March has been a national festival. Saint David was recognised as a national patron saint at the height of Welsh resistance to the Normans. Saint David’s Day was celebrated by Welsh diaspora from the late Middle Ages. Indeed, the 17th-century diarist Samuel Pepys noted how Welsh celebrations in London for Saint David’s Day would spark wider countercelebrations amongst their English neighbours: life-sized effigies of Welshmen were symbolically lynched, and by the 18th century the custom had arisen of confectioners producing “taffies”—gingerbread figures baked in the shape of a Welshman riding a goat—on Saint David’s Day.[

I’ve posted this before, but I’m always uplifted by listening to the singing of Men Of Harlech in the movie Zulu.

As an undergraduate at Ohio University I pursued a minor in Political Science with an emphasis on the then Soviet Union and fancied myself to be a budding Kremlinologist. One of my high points was calling Yuri Andropov as the next General Secretary of the Communist Party following the death of Leonid Brezhnev in November 1982. My classmates thought I was crazy (and I confess that my pick was probably a fluke since I didn’t see either Konstantin Chernenko or Michael Gorbachev coming) but I thought that the time was finally right for the KGB to wrest power from the party hacks. My appreciation for the Soviet secret service also greatly mitigated any surprise when in 1999 Russian President Boris Yeltsin elevated the former KGB officer Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin to the post of Prime Minister.

Putin’s term in power is second only to that of General Secretary Josef Stalin (31 Years) and shows no indications of ending in the foreseeable future. I don’t think most Americans have an appreciation for Putin and what he represents.

Glenn Greenwald does and his analysis or our institutional confusion in The New Yorker’s Big Cover Story Reveals Five Uncomfortable Truths About U.S. and Russia for The Intercept should only whet your understanding of what is happening in 2017. Greenwald begins:

The New Yorker is aggressively touting its 13,000-word cover story on Russia and Trump that was bylined by three writers, including the magazine’s editor-in-chief, David Remnick. Beginning with its cover image menacingly featuring Putin, Trump and the magazine’s title in Cyrillic letters, along with its lead cartoon dystopically depicting a UFO-like Red Square hovering over and phallically invading the White House, a large bulk of the article is devoted to what has now become standard—and very profitable—fare among East Coast news magazines: feeding Democrats the often-xenophobic, hysterical Russia-phobia for which they have a seemingly insatiable craving. Democratic media outlets have thus predictably cheered this opus for exposing “Russian President Vladimir Putin’s influence on the presidential election.”

But featured within the article are several interesting, uncomfortable, and often-overlooked facts about Putin, Trump and Democrats. Given that these points are made here by a liberal media organ that is vehemently anti-Trump, within an article dispensing what has become the conventional Democratic wisdom on Russia, it is well worth highlighting them.

Greenwald goes on to hit his five points:

1. Obama and Clinton have radically different views on Russia.

A major irony in the Democrats’ current obsession with depicting Putin as the world’s Grave Threat—and equating efforts to forge better relations with Moscow as some type of treason—is that it was Barack Obama who spent eight years accommodating the Russian leader and scorning the idea that Russia should be confronted and challenged. Indeed, Obama—after Russia annexed Crimea—rejected bipartisan demands to arm anti-Russian factions in Ukraine, and actively sought a partnership with Putin to bomb Syria. And, of course, in 2012—years after Russia invaded Georgia and numerous domestic dissidents and journalists were imprisoned or killed—the Obama-led Democrats mercilessly mocked Mitt Romney as an obsolete, ignorant Cold War relic for his arguments about the threat posed by the Kremlin.

Clinton, however, had a much different view of all this. She was often critical of Obama’s refusal to pursue aggression and belligerence in his foreign policy, particularly in Syria, where she and her closest allies wanted to impose a no-fly zone, be more active in facilitating regime change, and risk confrontation with Russia there. The New Yorker article describes the plight of Evelyn Farkas, the Obama Pentagon’s senior Russia advisor who became extremely frustrated by Obama’s refusal to stand up to Putin over Ukraine, but was so relieved to learn that Clinton, as President, would do so…

2. The risk of a new Cold War is very real and very dangerous.

The most astonishing aspect of the post-election discourse on Russia is how little attention is paid to the risks of fueling a new Cold War, let alone of military confrontation between the two nuclear-armed powers. A different New Yorker article in December, by Eric Schlosser, described how many times the two countries came quite close to nuclear annihilation in the past, and how easy it is now to trigger a nuclear exchange merely by miscommunication or misperception, let alone active belligerence…

3. The U.S. media refuses to say if we interfere in Russia’s domestic politics.

U.S. media accounts often note that “Putin believes” that the U.S. Government has repeatedly interfered in Russia’s political process. Given how often Putin publicly makes this claim, that’s hard to suppress. But what they almost never comment on is the rather significant question of whether Putin’s claims are true: does the U.S., in fact, try to manipulate Russian politics the way Russia now stands accused of interfering in the U.S. election?

The New Yorker article demonstrates how steadfastly this question is ignored…

4. The U.S. still has provided no evidence of Russian hacking.

That Putin ordered Russian hacking of the DNC’s and John Podesta’s emails in order to help Trump win is now such consecrated orthodoxy that it’s barely acceptable in Decent Company to question it. But that obscures, by design, the rather important fact that the U.S. Government, while repeatedly issuing new reports making these claims, has still never offered any actual evidence for them. Even the New Yorker article, which clearly views the theory as valid, acknowledges this fact… and (the most important point that Greenwald makes…

5. Fixating on Russia distract us from systemic failures of U.S. elites.

Denouncing the autocratic abuses of foreign adversaries such as Putin has long been the go-to tactic to distract attention from the failures and evils of U.S. actions—including the unpleasant fact that support for the world’s worst despots has long been, and continues to be, a central precept of U.S. policy. Or, as then-Secretary-of-State Hillary Clinton put it in 2009 about the decades-ruling Egyptian tyrant: “I really consider President and Mrs. Mubarak to be friends of my family. So I hope to see him often here in Egypt and in the United States.”

That Putin abuses the civic freedoms of Russians plainly answers none of the policy debates over Russia, given how ready and eager the U.S. is to align with the planet’s worst monsters. It’s instead designed to encourage Americans to fix their gaze on bad acts by people thousands of miles away in order to obfuscate the corruption of their own society and savagery by their own leaders. In several places, the New Yorker article warns against exploiting and inflating claims about Putin as a means of ignoring that the real causes of America’s problems reside not in Moscow but at home…

In his piece, Greenwald jumps to a 23 October 2016 interview by Tilo Jung of Noam Chomsky where Chomsky details how the United States pushed hard against Russia following the collapse of the Soviet Union. I recall a conversation I had in the mid-’80s in a barracks with a few of my fellow platform instructors at the Ohio Military Academy on the topic of the Russians. In that conversation the subject of how historically the United States has related to the Soviet Union came up. Only one of the other sergeants in the conversation knew that the United States had actually, albeit briefly and with little real force, invaded Russia in the 20th century.

We can argue about the importance of a brief military excursion that happened nearly a century ago, but, compare our own current jingoed rage to the real anger of Iranians and Chileans (just to mention two instances of interference) with our own meddling in their democratic processes.

What price are we paying?

I posted yesterday how my Republican representatives—Senator Rob Portman and Representative Jim Renacci—are running for cover (along with many others Republican members of Congress), but silly me, I thought presidential Donald John Trump would show some class and backbone. Dang, was I wrong. Martin Pengelly, writing in Donald Trump will not attend White House correspondents’ dinner for The Guardian (now an honored member of the president’s fake news club) explains:

Donald Trump on Saturday capped a week of tumultuous relations with the press by saying he will not attend this year’s White House correspondents’ dinner, which is scheduled for 29 April.

“I will not be attending the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner this year,” the president wrote on Twitter. “Please wish everyone well and have a great evening!”

The news came as relations between the Trump administration and the news media, which he has called “the enemy of the American people”, have sunk to new lows. On Friday, leading outlets including the New York Times, CNN and the Guardian were excluded from a briefing by press secretary Sean Spicer while friendlier conservative organisations were admitted.

Editors of excluded organisations expressed anger, although White House Correspondents Association president Jeff Mason, of Reuters, attempted to calm troubled waters.

In a statement on Saturday, Mason said the WHCA:

looks forward to having its annual dinner. The WHCA takes note of President Donald Trump’s announcement on Twitter that he does not plan to attend the dinner, which has been and will continue to be a celebration of the first amendment and the important role played by an independent news media in a healthy republic.

We look forward to shining a spotlight at the dinner on some of the best political journalism of the past year and recognizing the promising students who represent the next generation of our profession.

President Ronald Wilson Reagan skipped the inner in 1981, after being shot. He did call in to the event and exchanged banter with attendees. President Richard Milhous Nixon skipped the dinner in 1972. Trump is in good company.

[Update @ 0824 on 25 February—GOP Lawmakers Duck Town Halls, But Still Make Time to Meet with Campaign Donors.]

[Republicans are going to ground…]

More than 150 people have signed up to take part in a National Day of Action tomorrow in Parma. According to Steve Holecko, political director of the Cuyahoga County Political Caucus:

Over the week of February 19th to 25th, Congress will be in recess and Congress people will return to their homes and local offices all over the nation. With so much at stake, now is the time to let your legislator know where you stand on the issues of Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, the Affordable Care Act and Universal Healthcare. Bring yourselves, your signs and your stories.

The resistance movement is real and growing. Just as Democrats attempted to dismiss the uprising of the Tea Party as Astroturf: a ginned-up creation of Fox and the Kochs that didn’t reflect real grassroots passion—read Molly Ball’s Is the Anti-Trump ‘Resistance’ the New Tea Party? in The Atlantic—so too, does President Donald John Trump and his minions now attempt to dismiss the resistance movement as so-called angry crowds. Ben Wikler, writing in Yes, liberals are planning town hall protests. It’s called democracy for The Guardian, explains:

Americans are flooding into town halls across the country. Fearful that their country is being torn apart, they are turning out to protest their representatives in record numbers. Clearly, the furious crowds have gotten under Donald Trump’s skin. In a sneering tweet, the president dismissed the “so-called angry crowds” at town hall events as “planned by liberal activists.” We’ll take that as a compliment.

More than two dozen progressive activist groups are using ResistanceRecess.com, a site posted just last week by MoveOn.org, to search among more than 500 local congressional events around the country. Anyone can RSVP for an event and get a reminder email. So yes, that’s evidence of planning – apparently more planning than goes into a typical executive order issued by this White House.

But here’s the thing: the crowds are unmistakably real, and the anger runs deep.

Many of those showing up at town hall events have never done anything like that in their lives. Just like the participants in the millions-strong Women’s March and the spontaneous airport protests, the people filling these town hall events are acting with moral urgency – and with a deeply responsible sense of civic duty. Now it’s up to members of Congress to decide how to respond.

There is a billionaire power grab in progress.

We can’t let that happen. Sign up and be there tomorrow.

Just in case you needed a reminder…

Ralph Nader, in Restricting People’s Use of Their Courts, writes:

In not so merry old medieval England, wrongful injuries between people either were suffered in silence or provoked revenge. Cooler heads began to prevail and courts of law were opened so such disputes over compensation and other remedies could be adjudicated under trial by jury.

Taken across the Atlantic to the colonies, this system—called tort law or the law of wrongful injuries—evolved steadily to open the courtroom door until the nineteen seventies. It was then that the insurance industry and other corporate lobbies began pushing one restriction after another through state legislatures—not restrictions on corporations’ rights to sue, but restrictions on the rights of ordinary people to have their day in court.

Lawmakers, whose campaign coffers were stuffed by corporate lobbyists, were not concerned about advancing their passing rules that arbitrarily tied the hands of judges and jurors—the same judges and jurors who were the only people to see, hear and evaluate individual cases in their courtrooms. Legislation imposing caps on damages – as with California’s $250,000 lifetime cap on pain and suffering – was especially cruel for those victims of medical malpractice who were young, unemployed or Continue Reading »

From Bernie Sanders, the Cuyahoga County Progressive Caucus and Our Revolution:

These are tough times. The future of our country and planet are at stake. Our job: Fight Back.

Donald Trump and his Republican friends thought it was going to be easy. They would get to Washington and ram through their agenda, taking health care away from 30 million Americans, privatizing Medicare, and defunding Planned Parenthood while giving huge tax cuts to their millionaire and billionaire friends.

Their plans have begun to unravel, but only because of the tremendous levels of grassroots actions we’ve witnessed—town halls overflowing with constituents, rallies across the country, and of course the unprecedented outpouring of activism during the Women’s March.

We cannot stop. On Saturday, February 25th, volunteer-led rallies will be held outside of elected representative offices across the U.S. It is up to YOU to ensure that your Representatives and Senators know the American people won’t sit Continue Reading »

So, yesterday I was talking with one of my students about the 14th Amendment to our Constitution which reads, in part: No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States. The legislature of North Dakota and that state’s Governor, Doug Burgum, believes that the 14th Amendment doesn’t apply to them. Shelley Connor, writing in North Dakota Senate passes bills criminalizing Dakota Access Pipeline protests for World Socialist Web Site, explains:

Embattled protesters, including Standing Rock Sioux tribe members and their allies, face increasingly stark odds as President Donald Trump and North Dakota legislators double down in defense of the Dakota Access Pipeline.

One of Trump’s first items of business as president was to demand that the Army Corps of Engineers scuttle any further environmental reviews of the final portion of the project and move directly to grant Energy Transfer Partners the final easement needed to complete the pipeline.

On Thursday, North Dakota’s Senate passed three separate bills aimed directly at anti-DAPL protesters. The bills significantly curtail protest rights and impose stiff penalties on protesters who run afoul of local or state law enforcement. One bill imposes sentencing of up to 20 years in prison.

The bills represent a sharp turn in the increasing drive to curtail protests in the United States; they equate protesting with rioting and public endangerment, and are bolstered by arguments from lawmakers, law enforcement, and industrial mouthpieces that the protesters are, in fact, terrorists.

We all need to remember that our own war of secession from the British Crown did not begin on 19 April 1775 but a full five years before, on 5 March 1770, when British troops fired on protesters and murdered five colonists, an incident that patriots seized upon to further the cause of liberty.

Tea Partiers can’t have their liberty both ways.

When the economy allowed us to live in the same community and draw a paycheck from the same company for decades, then buying a home, putting down roots, made a lot of sense. That was the American dream. That dream went away with globalization and the rise of economies that were not as great as our own, but were still strong enough to cause instability and begin the whittling down of the greatest middle class that the world had ever known.

I bought a house in 1987 and that was probably the worst mistake I ever made. When I sold the house in 2000 I lost money. Not a lot of money, but when I added up all the expenses associated with the house—the new roof on the garage, the hot water heater, the hours spent on lawn maintenance and snow plowing, the hot water heater, the stove, and, and, and—my investment sucked.

Gina Ragusa, writing in 3 popular pieces of money advice that are actually just myths gets that in myth No. 3, You’re throwing away money on rent:

Buying your first home has historically been a rite of passage for young adults, but is it really better to own rather than rent? While the life-stage argument for buying is strong—including building equity with each mortgage payment, putting down roots and having more freedom to customize property to your tastes—the financial advantages are not actually so crystal clear.

Not only does renting buy you flexibility as you pursue career (and salary) advancement—but it allows you to avoid certain financial drains. Aspiring homeowners tend to forget about the “add on” expenses of ownership, such as insurance, taxes, home maintenance and sometimes association costs, according to Forbes.

All of that is not to say that no one should buy a home, you just need to be clear about why you make that decision.

Waiting until you are truly ready to buy is better than rushing into a purchase you may not be prepared to handle. Just because you are renting, doesn’t mean you aren’t in the driver’s seat; additionally, in some cases, you can rent the property first and then consider purchasing it when you are ready.

“If you think you may be buying a house soon ask, ‘Do you have a mortgage clause?’ You can also ask about a job relocation clause. Simply ask, ‘Can you work with me?’ Each resident has the power to do that,” Tracy Atkinson, director of global marketing and relations for Goodman Real Estate, told Zillow.

Remember, it’s easier, and possibly less expensive, to get out of a marriage than it is to say goodbye to all the money you pour into a house.

Previously…

So, we’ve all heard what our President has to say about the 92nd element, but did you know (thank you sonderval) where he’s getting his information from ?

You know what uranium is, right? Well, it’s not exactly a “thing called nuclear weapons”, but Uranium is a tremendously important element. Incredibly important. Nuclear weapons would not be great without uranium.

You see, uranium is really important, because it is radioactive. Now, the media are constantly hitting uranium because they say “radioactive is bad”, but that is so unfair. The periodic table is full of radioactive elements, very bad elements that are much more radioactive than uranium, but nobody talks about radioactive Technetium. The media are talking about uranium all the time. And why?

Because uranium is big. it is really a big, big atom, tremendous size really, like my hands. (Nothing wrong with their size, you know.) People would probably think that having 50 or 60 of these small positive things, you know what I am talking about, that this would be enough for any atom. Many people would think so, but that is all fake physics, because Uranium has a lot more of them, like 90 or so…

I’m sure the Germans have a word for this…

To put an interesting twist on the whole Trump-Putin love fest, I can across this headline this morning—Like Keystone XL, Much of Dakota Access Pipeline Steel Made by Russian Company Tied to Putin—and yes, I did mean THIS Chamberlain…Nev

While I remain a registered democrat—I do want to vote in the primaries—I left the Democratic Party in 2009 after I couldn’t stand the frustration of the bait-and-switch tactics of presidential politics any longer. Yes, I supported Bernie Sanders in the Democratic Primary, but that was because I understood that Bernie was an Independent who didn’t want to blow up the race and hand the election of one of the passengers in the Republican Party clown car. Few understood that the owner of the clown car would become President.

I’ve also given my support to the election of Keith Ellison as the next chair of the Democratic National Committee. The election this week will be contentious. Ellison is not a sure winner. Debate, however, is good.

In that vein, I received the email below this afternoon from Victor Tiffany, Co-founder of Revolt Against Plutocracy.

Fellow revolutionaries,

I have gotten a lot of replies from our call to help Sam Ronan become the next DNC Chair. They come in three basic categories: 1) willingness to help, 2) Bernie is supporting Keith Ellison, so why aren’t we and 3) screw the Democrats, I want nothing to do with them again. For those willing to contact members of the DNC, thank you for your understanding and help with #SamOrBust.

Yes, Senator Sanders is backing Keith Ellison. He was backing Hillary Clinton too, so it’s pretty clear we don’t always agree with Bernie’s choices. Sam Ronan wants the U.S. to get out of the Middle East; Ellison does not. Sam wants to eliminate superdelegates; to my knowledge Ellison does not. The RAP committee rejected Ellison as an option long ago, and we would not be getting involved if Sam had not come to my attention via “the avatar of the Bernie or Bust movement,” H.A. Goodman (on Twitter). He asserts Ronan is “a million times better” than Ellison, and in private conversation, Jill Stein’s campaign manager told me Sam is the real progressive running for DNC Chair. While I do not believe the establishment DNC will vote to make Sam the next chair, we’re trying to send them, who are also superdelegates, a message. They can either reform their Party or else #DemExit will continue until the Democrats join the Whigs in the ashcan of history. Honestly, I do not care how that turns out. If they remain a party of neoliberalism, I will take pride helping kick them into that ashcan.

When I saw all those Bernie delegates walk out of the DNC, I thought at the time the establishment is no longer in control of the Party. #SamOrBust is a way to reinforce that message. CNN is having a debate Wednesday night. Sam is expected to participate. I encourage those with access to watch it and then decide for yourself. If you have not yet but would like to help RAP send the DNC members a message—elect Sam or see the #DemExit movement accelerate—please use our post as a guide to write them a short email advocating for Sam or else.

To those who want nothing to do with the Democrats, we are currently in the #DemExit, build the Green Party stage. This is not a permanent strategy, and until a progressive 3rd party can compete for national offices in 3 or 4-way contests and win, the best shot progressives have is through the Democratic Party. Unlike Our Revolution or Progressive Democrats of America, our inside/outside approach is more menacing. We are loyal to a revolution, not to any given party. We are #DemExit now, but we’ll #DemEnter and #DemExit again on an as needed basis. Instead of parties using us, we aim to use parties to get progressives into office. This strategy will be laid out in greater detail in the “What’s Next” chapter of Bernie or Bust: A Promising Strategy of Electoral Revolt, coming soon to a bookstore near you. I’m as angry at the DNC and the Democratic Party establishment as anyone else, but I’m not going to be guided by my emotions. Because we don’t give a crap if an election is won by a neoliberal Democrat or a neoliberal Republican, we can use our anger to get our way, to help elect real progressives to office.

In solidarity,

Victor Tiffany
Co-founder of Revolt Against Plutocracy

If I could cast a vote, and I can’t, I would still back Keith Ellison. Saturday’s aftermath will be interesting in the fullest meaning of Joseph Chamberlin’s words.

Yesterday I wrote:

In reading this morning I cam across the reference to a tweet that suggested:

I think both houses of Congress should assemble and watch the video of this press conference w/o interruption, then talk about what to do.

That won’t happen because the vast majority of Republicans in our Congress either loudly and enthusiastically applaud President Trump’s ever utterance or they’re scared witless by the real threat of the beating they would receive from Trump loyalists.

That mention lead to a conversation of the two, Constitutional, ways that a President may be removed from office. The first is reasonably well known—impeachment by the House of Representatives and a guilty verdict by the Senate for Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors—but Americans are now starting to talk about a mostly unknown path to remove a President: the 25th Amendment.

Adopted in 1967, the amendment (specifically Section 4) reads:

Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.

Thereafter, when the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that no inability exists, he shall resume the powers and duties of his office unless the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive department or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit within four days to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office. Thereupon Congress shall decide the issue, assembling within forty-eight hours for that purpose if not in session. If the Congress, within twenty-one days after receipt of the latter written declaration, or, if Congress is not in session, within twenty-one days after Congress is required to assemble, determines by two-thirds vote of both Houses that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall continue to discharge the same as Acting President; otherwise, the President shall resume the powers and duties of his office.

I have argued elsewhere that Vice President Mike Pence was President Trump’s insurance policy against impeachment. Following the surreal press conference on Thursday, I no longer believe that to be true. I think the President’s mental state presents a clear and present danger to the existence of our nation. We may have to deal with a President Pence, and that historic change will carry other grave challenges, but the calculus has changed.

So, I listened to much of President Donald John Trump’s press conference yesterday while I was driving between students and I have never been so fearful for the future of my country as I was then and as I am now. Trump’s performance vividly recreated conversations I’ve had over the years with students whose self-esteem was so low that they resorted to grandiose posturing to mask their own feeling of inadequacy and despair. In reading this morning I cam across the reference to a tweet that suggested:

I think both houses of Congress should assemble and watch the video of this press conference w/o interruption, then talk about what to do.

That won’t happen because the vast majority of Republicans in our Congress either loudly and enthusiastically applaud President Trump’s ever utterance or they’re scared witless by the real threat of the beating they would receive from Trump loyalists.

Trump is fond of brandishing false claims about the size of his accomplishments—just as he has no compunction about against bragging about the size of his penis (remember those cute days when the nation was shocked that a candidate for President of the United States of America would take and answer a question regarding what type of underwear he wore?)—but I’ll allow him this: he is clearly the most mentally unstable person ever elevated to the Oval Office.

From Intercepted at The Intercept:

The first contestant in Donald Trump’s reality administration has left the West Wing. This week on Intercepted, Glenn Greenwald offers some provocative pushback on the Russia fearmongering surrounding Gen. Michael Flynn’s resignation (or firing). Naomi Klein walks the dark aisles of the Trump family department store. Former Rep. Liz Holtzman, a key figure in the impeachment of Richard Nixon, explains how impeachment actually works, and how the smoke around Trump could fuel a fire aimed at unseating him. Hina Shamsi of the ACLU recounts her interrogation at the border — which echoes the treatment her clients have received. And underground hip-hop legend Vinnie Paz of Jedi Mind Tricks sends in some verses.